162 Days Have Passed Since The House Reauthorized VAWA
By: Mary Gay Scanlon
Tags: Domestic Violence, Vawa

Earlier this year, I joined my colleagues in the House as we voted to reauthorize VAWA, Today, we celebrate VAWA’s 25th anniversary with a renewed sense of urgency as this vital law’s reauthorization remains on Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s desk.

VAWA was the first piece of federal legislation to acknowledge domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes and has dramatically improved our nation’s response to helping survivors in both the short- and long-term.

Since its enactment in 1994, VAWA has brought together law enforcement, social service organizations, and victims’ advocates to bring domestic violence to light, provide survivors with support, and hold abusers accountable for their actions. VAWA was, and still is, a piece of legislation developed by the people who work closest to these issues in their communities. The bipartisan bill we will vote on this week reflects the ongoing commitment of members on both sides of the aisle to ending domestic violence and abuse in all forms.

I’d like to share two stories about my constituents to illustrate why VAWA reauthorization is so necessary, and why we must continue to commit ourselves to preventing domestic violence at every opportunity.

Please keep in mind that each of these stories happened less than a week apart.

A young mother named Stephanie was murdered by her ex-husband at a convenience store where the two were meeting to exchange custody of their six-year-old son. The ex-husband left their son at home, and instead brought an AR-15 style rifle which he used to murder Stephanie in the middle of the store. He was caught by law enforcement after he fled the scene, but as a result of his horrific actions, a woman was murdered in cold blood and a young child has effectively lost both parents.

This was not the first time the ex-husband had threatened to kill Stephanie during a child custody exchange just like the one this past week. Following an incident three years ago, he was charged with harassment and making terroristic threats, and Stephanie was granted a Protection from Abuse order. But this did not prevent Stephanie and her family from living in constant fear of what her ex-husband might do next. Tragically, the very worst happened.

And then, only a few days later, , another woman was asleep in her home in Upland with her three children when, just after midnight, her ex-boyfriend broke into her house, entered her bedroom and shot her. Her five-year-old child witnessed the shooting. Had his gun not jammed when the ex-boyfriend fired a second time, the victim would be dead. This victim too had a Protection from Abuse order against her attacker, hers being issued just five days prior to the attack.

These two attacks happened just miles apart from each other, just a few days apart.

These stories are all too common.

Violence against women is all too common.

I am willing to bet that every member of this body could point to similar examples of violence against women from their own congressional districts. These acts of violence are not isolated incidents, but are instead representative of a larger, systemic problem.

According to the National Center on Domestic Violence, one in four women experiences severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more.

The same organization found that one in three women have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner, and one in seven women have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.

Intimate partner violence accounts for 15 percent of violent crime nationwide, and women between the ages of 18–24 are those most commonly abused by an intimate partner. Those are formative years in which you are expected to undergo significant growth as you mature into adulthood. They can be difficult enough without the threat of abuse from an intimate partner — it is absolutely no wonder why domestic victimization is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behavior later in life.

Further, 19 percent of domestic violence involves a weapon of some kind, and the presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500 — yes, 500 — percent. You don’t need to be a mathematician in order to see that guns in the hands of domestic abusers routinely leads to violence and death.

The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act recognizes this indisputable fact and takes active measures to correct and improve our laws.

In the United States, women are 21 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in any other high-income country. 4.5 million American women alive today have been threatened by intimate partners with firearms, and one million of those have actually be shot or shot at by their abusers. I have represented some of those women and seen the fear that they live with and the impact it has on their children.

This bill finally closes the “Boyfriend Loophole.” While federal law prohibits gun possession by people convicted of or under a restraining order for abusing their spouses, dating partners are generally exempt from these restrictions. This gaping hole in our gun safety laws has become even more deadly over the years. The share of homicides committed by dating partners has been increasing for three decades, and today women are as likely to be killed by dating partners as they are by spouses. Closing the “Boyfriend Loophole” is a fact-based, common sense response to a very real threat.

The provisions in this reauthorization would protect women from abusive dating partners by ensuring that their abusers are prohibited from possessing guns under federal law. The definition of “dating partner” is already contained in the Violence Against Women Act, and this simple update to policy will provide increased protections for partners in unmarried relationships.

Closing the Boyfriend Loophole has been a bipartisan issue since long before this bill. Last year, six Republicans cosponsored legislation that would have closed this loophole, and 23 states have already acted to prevent abusers from obtaining guns in their own laws including Pennsylvania and Arizona. It’s time we updated federal law to reflect the reality which our states have recognized to prevent violent dating partners from being able to access weapons.

This bill also closes the “Stalker Loophole.” Stalking is a predictor of intimate partner violence and homicide, though current law does not prohibit misdemeanor stalking offenses. A study of intimate partner homicides and attempted homicides involving female victims found that 76 percent of those murders and 85 percent of attempted murders were preceded by at least one incidence of stalking before the attack.

Passing this bill will protect women from stalkers by ensuring those convicted of stalking offenses are prohibited from possessing guns under federal law.

On top of limiting stalkers and abusive dating partners from legally owning weapons, this bill strengthens enforcement by alerting state and local law enforcement when an abuser fails a firearm background check. This notice gives state law enforcement an opportunity to intervene before the abuser can obtain a firearm or do any further harm.

This provision mirrors a bipartisan bill that was introduced earlier this year to notify state law enforcement each time a person who is not allowed to have guns tries to buy a firearm and fails the background check. Clearly, keeping guns out of the hands of those who should not have them is a bipartisan priority.

One of my first experiences as a young attorney was representing women and families who had sought shelter at the People’s Emergency Center in West Philadelphia. Many if not all of them had been subjected to domestic abuse. This was before VAWA was law of the land, but even then, it was clear there were significant problems with how the system cared for abused women and punished their abusers. When VAWA was enacted in 1994, it spoke to so many of the problems my then-clients were facing: issues with housing and employment, caring for young children, and fighting for custody in court.

What makes VAWA such a critical bill is not just the legal protections it puts in place to protect women, but the structures it sets up to help women who have been abused. This reauthorization bill builds on those critical reforms from 25 years ago and updates them to address current needs.

The bill funds and improves screening for victimization and the perpetration of intimate partner and sexual violence across federally-funded healthcare programs. The healthcare system is often one of the first places women go where unseen abuse can be brought to light, and empowering healthcare professionals to test and deal with such delicate situations can help to avert abuse before it escalates or prevent it from happening in the first place.

The bill ensures that survivors of domestic abuse can maintain housing in the event of a break-up with their partners — and further protects their privacy through strengthened confidentially agreements with housing authorities. Similarly, the bill extends transitional housing grant opportunities to organizations that helping underserved populations.

Victims of domestic abuse are often at risk of significant financial loss if they are unable to work and provide for their family as a result of abuse. This bill protects survivors from termination from employment due to disruption caused by domestic abuse, and additionally addresses the impact of domestic abuse on a woman’s credit rating.

We should also note that transgender people are disproportionately survivors of sexual assault and violence, and they deserve to access services consistent with their gender identity.

Domestic violence providers and law enforcement agree: transgender women being in the same space as other women does not make either less safe. Laws that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity have been in place for years — including specifically for VAWA programs. Minneapolis, for example, has had gender identity protections since 1975. There is no evidence that the existence of these laws has contributed to violence against women. Instead, they simply keep transgender people safe.

VAWA has provided critical tools to survivors of domestic abuse, law enforcement and community organizations to prevent and address the impact of domestic abuse.

We cannot delay its reauthorization any longer.