How would you feel if your dad were beating your mother? How would you handle the nights you were kept up solely because of yelling? Domestic violence's whirlwind effect has been around since human life itself. America needs to crack down and needs to aid the fight against domestic violence. The American government should become more involved in educating students about the problems concerning domestic violence. Doing so would safe lives; decrease future domestic violence cases and would save money for businesses and health departments.
What defines domestic violence? Domestic violence can be defined as any relationship of unequal power and control where there is coercion, threats, intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation, minimizing, denying of freedoms, blaming, use of male privilege including spousal rape, or economic denial (Lynch). There is no doubt that domestic violence has taken a great toll on the women and children of America. Each year, 1 million women and 1.4 million children are assaulted by members of their own families (Kuehl 115). The outcome of these assaults can be deadly, 17% of all murder victims are killed by family members and more than 50% of all American women who are victims of homicide are murdered by a current or former partner. Nearly 3-4 million women are physically abused by a family member, resulting in 1 woman beaten every 7 seconds in the United States (Statistics on Domestic Violence). A third of all women's injuries coming into our emergency rooms are no accident. Most are the result of .
deliberate acts of violence (Bender 26). Husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends kill Thirty-four percent of the women homicide victims over age 15 (Domestic Violence 3).
Approximately two-thirds of reported domestic violence incidents are classified as "simple assaults," which are a misdemeanor rather than a felony. But up to 50 percent of these "simple assaults" result in physical injuries that are as, or more, serious than 90 percent of all rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults (lynch.