The
New York Times reports on a devastating new survey:
An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.
Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported being beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report. [...]
Sexual violence affects women disproportionately, the researchers found. One-third of women said they had been victims of a rape, beating or stalking, or a combination of assaults.
While women overwhelmingly comprise the majority of victims of sexual violence, men certainly are not immune:
One in seven men have experienced severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner, the survey found, and one in 71 men — between 1 and 2 percent — have been raped, many when they were younger than 11.
Given that the epidemic of violence against women in this country is even worse than previously thought, the release of this new data makes clear the urgency of reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
And it also makes clear why the proposed funding cuts would be disastrous. As Amnesty International's Marianne Møllmann recently explained:
[T]he proposed [reauthorization] bill substantively slashes the funding for the implementation of the bill, reducing the authorized funds by more than $144 million (almost 20 percent) of 2005 levels over 5 years. [...]
In all, assaults on women cost almost $6 billion every year. Because these estimates are based on rates of violence before the current economic crisis, the true cost may well be higher today.
In other words: the bill proposes to cut $144 million over 5 years from services that seek to remedy a problem which, even with the current government involvement, will cost society about $30 billion over that same period.
When one in five American women have experienced sexual assault, and one in four have experienced domestic violence, now is not the time to be cutting funding for programs and services aimed at reducing violence and helping victims. Congress should not only reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act immediately, it should also make sure that the necessary funding is there to effectively address this horrible epidemic before it gets even worse.
