To: President Donald Trump, The Utah State House, The Utah State Senate, Governor Gary R. Herbert, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Real Homeland Security: Protecting Women and Children who are victims of terrorism in their own h...
Women and children who are terrorized by the violence of a perpetrator who is their husband or father have few options for safety. If the woman leaves she & the children are usually plunged into poverty without a safe, decent place to go and no means to support themselves. The father almost always can still see the children without supervision, if she doesn't let them go she'll face contempt charges even though she knows he'll abuse them and she can't be there to even try to protect them. Plus most women can't afford an attorney to advocate for her and her children's rights to be free from abuse, which certainly precludes our constitutional right to pursue happiness.
Why is this important?
The casualty rate for women and children each year in America is far higher than all the victims of the 911 terrorist attacks. Police responses are arbitrary, sometimes they follow the law and charge or even arrest the perpetrator if there is evidence of domestic violence; but all too often the man is told to leave for a few days, they don't call it domestic violence even though the circumstances meet the legal definition, they charge both parties even though the man is almost always the primary aggressor, if the woman scratched him, etc. in defending herself they charge her with domestic violence too and on and on. Also protective orders are often hard to get and/or aren't enforced by the police when the perpetrator violates one. The message being that the man still has the right to harass/threaten his wife and children, 'visit' her or the children and to take the children for visitation. I'm a clinical social worker and have had many women clients whose ex/husband had a documented history of DV but was still able to have unsupervised child visitation and one who even got cucustody of the children. She killed herself in her despair.