AARA Extends Unemployment Benefits for DV Victims

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) included several provisions for modernizing state unemployment insurance systems, such as providing access to unemployment insurance benefits to various groups who were not previously covered by state laws, including victims of domestic violence. Under ARRA, the federal government provided incentive payments to states that chose to [...]

Indian Law Resource Center Launches New Site

Violence Against Native Women Violates Human Rights is a new website launched by the Indian Law Resource Center in coordination with the National Congress of American Indians. The website discusses how to use international advocacy to end violence against Native American women. 
How can international advocacy reduce violence against Native American Women?

Attorney General Eric Holder on Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Excerpts from remarks by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  Full text
. . . . Last year, there were over a half million non-fatal violent victimizations committed against women age 12 or older by an intimate partner. And more than 2,000 women and men were killed by intimate partners last year. [...]

Immigrant Survivors of Abuse

http://www.womensenews.org/story/domestic-violence/091009/immigrant-survivors-abuse-seek-freedom
Women’s eNews has a two-part series called Immigrant Survivors of Abuse: Seeking Freedom.
Clenching her fist, she said she was scared of being deported and was petrified of her abuser. She found herself locked in a labyrinth of helplessness.
 

Baghdad’s Underground Shelters Help Iraqi Women Escape Violence and Abuse

by Anna Badkhen, from Ms.
Source and full story: Utne Reader
On a bullet-scarred side street in Baghdad’s downtown, where U.S. Marines famously helped tear down the statue of Saddam Hussein in April of 2003, an inconspicuous entryway tucked between a steel-shuttered shop and a rickety candy stall leads to a flight of steep concrete stairs. Rusted [...]

News: Violence against women in military and war

Oct. 7
Yesterday, by a 68-30 vote, the U.S. Senate passed Senator Al Franken’s amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Bill (Amendment 2588) that, according to Stop Family Violence, prevents the Defense Department from using contractors that require“mandatory employment arbitration of employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault claims.” Franken’s amendment was a response to [...]

Book: If I Die In Juárez

If I Die in Juárez by Stella Pope Duarte

From the red-light districts in Ciudad Juárez to remote villages hidden away in the mountains of Chihuahua comes a tale of one of the darkest crimes to be recorded in the history of humankind. If I Die in Juárez traces the lives of three young women—Evita, a [...]

Commemoration of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women

Ottawa, Ontario (October 4, 2009) – The following statement was released by the Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice, the Honourable Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, the Honourable Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety and the Honourable Helena Guergis, Minister of State [...]

Voices of Our Sisters in Spirit

The Sisters In Spirit initiative is a multi-year research, education and policy initiative funded by Status of Women Canada. The initiative is designed to address the disturbing numbers of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. Through the Sisters In Spirit initiative, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) aims to better understand [...]

Missing women found buried near Albuquerque

Story by Women’s eNews
Summary of article: After combing an almost 100-acre area on the outskirts of Albuquerque, investigators found the remains of 11 women, one of whom was four months pregnant. As of late-September, seven of the 11 women have been identified.
All had been reported missing between 2003 and early 2005. Each had [...]

Saving the World’s Women

Saving the World’s Women
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and SHERYL WuDUNN, New York Times
August 17, 2009
In the 19th Century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and [...]

Recovery Funds Help Native American Women Victims of Violence

Recovery funds offer promising start on justice issues
By Leeanne Root

Source: Indian Country Today
 September 4, 2009
Some terrible statistics loom over the lives of indigenous women: They are more than twice as likely as non-Native women to be victims of sexual violence and domestic violence, and one in three will be raped in her lifetime. According to [...]

Send a new message in our rural communities

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Text:  Send a new message in our rural communities
“In rural areas, you’re probably going to see a higher proportion of domestic violence cases just because THE PERPETRATOR IS NOT GETTING THE MESSAGE that it’s wrong to keep doing what they’re doing.”
Law enforcement quote in response to the killing of Candace Wertz and three other people, [...]

What women want poster

Text:
what women want — is justice
___________________________
“If someone commits murder, it shouldn’t take no frigging two years to put them away.”
Quoting Claudette Carpenter, whose mother, Marie Desmond, was stabbed thirty-three times. George Howard Desmond, Marie’s estranged husband, was sentenced to life in prison two years after Marie’s death.

Give Us Your Huddled Masses – But Battered Women Need Not Apply!

The Huffington Post July 6, 2009
William Fisher
Give Us Your Huddled Masses – But Battered Women Need Not Apply!
Here’s a note for the “to do” list of the Obama Administration’s newly appointed Domestic Violence Czar – or Czarina in this case: Battered wives and significant others pose a serious law enforcement and public health problem affecting [...]

Vice President Biden Announces Appointment of White House Advisor

June 26, 2009
Vice President Biden Announces Appointment of White House Advisor
on Violence Against Women
Washington, DC – Vice President Biden, the author of the landmark Violence Against Women Act, announced today the appointment of Lynn Rosenthal as the new White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. Ms. Rosenthal is one of the nation’s foremost experts in [...]

Mom: System re-violating girl

Woman says they weren’t told about plea hearing
Source: The Coloradoan
The mother of a 14-year-old Loveland girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted by at least three men earlier this year said she feels betrayed by the very system set up to protect her daughter’s rights as a victim.
The mother of a 14-year-old Loveland girl who was [...]

Strengthening Sexual Assault Victims’ Right to Privacy

The focus of this online guide, developed by Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services, Inc., is sexual assault victims’ right to privacy. It reinforces the importance of keeping information confidential and highlights the power of employing consistent practices to create a culture of respect for victims’ privacy. This guide contains general recommendations, addresses common challenges, provides [...]

Battered women charged with “failure to protect”

American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence
Article: The Nicholson Decisions
New York’s Response to ‘Failure to Protect’ Allegations
“it became abundantly clear that the Nicholson, Udoh, and Tillet cases were not aberrations but rather the result of a burgeoning City policy of removing children from battered mothers and prosecuting the mothers for child neglect—a policy that was [...]

Refusal to tolerate gender violence

End Torture, End Domestic Violence
by Rhonda Copelon
From On the Issues, Progressive Women’s Magazine Winter 2009
When one compares what is done to a woman in an advanced domestic battering cycle and to prisoners subjected to torture, the situations are frighteningly similar. But only recently have they begun to be equated legally and culturally.
How would the world [...]