Domestic Violence and Immigration
 
I was 5 years old when I heard one of my parents frequent arguments end with a loud smacking sound.  I had just walked in the front door after the school bus had dropped me off in front of my house from a day at kindergarten to the loud yelling and arguing of my parents, unfortunately something I had grown accustomed to.  If you can imagine my father was well over 6 feet with a loud bellowing voice, my mother just under 5 feet.  With frustration and anger my father struck my mother, leaving a bright red hand mark on the left side of her fair, Asian face.  This was the first time I saw the expression of resentment and hate in my mother’s face for everything that led to that point.  That act of violence shattered the facade that my parents had built up to try to hide the truth from me, that their marriage was a sham and in no way functional.  There were deeply rooted problems within their relationship and after that moment my eyes were wide open to them.  Later I would realize there were great amounts of psychological and emotional abuse in my parent’s relationship that would be directed solely towards me.
 
My father was an American born in the south, a victim of abuse and neglect by an alcoholic father who was void of most emotion, except anger and depression spurred by the bottle.  My mother, the eldest of her siblings, grew up in third-world poverty with an extremely controlling mother.  In 1977, my mother started receiving pen pal letters from my father.  She became enamored with the idea of a man she had never met before, a man who promised to take care of her and give her a better life, more than what she could have ever imagined.  About a year later when my mother was 23, she immigrated to the United States.
 
The man who wrote such beautiful words on paper was not reflective of the man my mother met when she came to the U.S. and in less than a month, the fairy tale was over. The stark realities of the deception, lack of respect and obsession over my mother’s every movement was too much to endure. My mother however, was fearful to leave my father with the domestic violence taking place.  My father, a man ridden with personality disorders, would admit years later that his choice to marry my mother was due to the amount of “submissiveness” women like her had for their husbands and the ability to “teach” them and make them become what he wanted.
 
Unfortunately the story of my parents is not unique. It bares many similarities to the stories of many immigrants who find themselves in relationships where domestic violence is present.  One thing that remains consistent however, as with many instances of domestic violence,  is there is one person that seeks to have control over the other who is thought to be weaker.
 
Women and men have shared with me their personal experiences, and those of other immigrants who were involved in domestic violence relationships that they knew.  I began hearing similarities in the stories:
 
• Victims had little interaction with people other than their partner or lived in complete isolation.
• Victims were eventually embarrassed by their partner regarding their own language and culture.
• Communication decreased over time with their families in their homeland.
• Finances were controlled by the abusive partner.
• The partner threatened to have them deported or have their children taken away from them if they showed signs of fighting back or escaping.
 
So many of these stories also began sounding familiar as I realized my mother had faced the same problems with my own father.
 
Help for Immigrants
 
Immigrants who are dealing with domestic violence face many challenges unlike those around them because of language and culture barriers.  Whether waiting for citizenship or seeking refugee status, immigrant victims of domestic violence do have rights and can get help to protect themselves from abuse.  There are organizations like American Immigration Lawyers Association, The National Immigration Project, The Tahirih Justice Center,  WomensLaw.org and specialty organizations like The Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center,  that help with direct services or referrals at little or no cost.   It is important that immigrant victims get trained advocates to support and assist them in the proper steps to make themselves and their children safer, whether the abuse is physical or not.  Another good online resource is the following link:  http://www.aardvarc.org/dv/immigration.shtml that talks more in depth about the issue and addresses aspects of the immigration process.  Also the spouses and children of U.S. citizens can self-petition to obtain lawful permanent residency under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).  VAWA also allows certain battered immigrants  to seek safety and independence from the abuser by filing for immigration relief without the abuser’s assistance or knowledge .  
 
Domestic violence is wrong, period.  A person’s nationality does not exclude them from the physical and emotional pain that is inflicted from domestic violence.  The best thing we can do as advocates is to remember the warning signs of abuse, stay informed about the issue,  spread awareness and encourage our Federal immigration system to strengthen laws and distribute violence and abuse awareness materials, making them available in multiple languages to each person that comes to their offices and websites. 
 
I am encouraged about the amount of work that has been done with this issue compared to my mother’s time as an immigrant but there is still much work to be done in raising awareness about the problem.  If you see someone who displays signs of being a victim, offer them in confidence the resources they can go to for help.  You will be surprised how far a bit of information and slice of humanity can go to help save a life and lead someone to new found freedom, hope and truly a much better life.

By Lyn Twyman

You are invited to submit a personal essay for an inspirational anthology: “The Woman I’ve Become.”

Seeking women of all ages who have experienced challenging, negative, toxic and/or abusive relationships in the past and have overcome these situations to become the woman she was meant to be. Were you raised in an overly restrictive, negative, disempowering or abusive family? Did you find yourself in a challenging or toxic relationship with men, friends, co-workers or your children? How did those relationships define the “earlier you”? What was the turning point? Was there some person(s) or event(s) that facilitated your beginning and/or continuing on this journey to greater self understanding and self definition? Who is the woman you’ve become?

Critria for Submission :

Name, age, email address, phone number (optional), mailing address, title of your submission on and a short bio on a title page; your name on all other pages
Minimum of 500 words; Maximum of 1,000 words
Double spaced
Submissions should be sent in an email attachment to grampat8@comcast.net
If you are unable to use attachments, you can either include the submission in the body of the email or snail mail it to:

Changes In Life, Anthology
305 Anne Ct
Prospect Heights, IL 60070

If your submission is accepted you will receive a copy of the anthology once it is published

* If you are interested in joining an ongoing larger community of women sharing their experiences, log on to changesinlife.wordpress.com

Finding way to make a difference

As the Editor of the Laws.com Legal Network, I’m often faced with the challenge of providing interesting, relevant content for our readers.  At the same time, I try to use my position as an outlet to create change and make a difference.  Combining the two can often be challenging, however when it came to domestic violence, it seemed like a match made in heaven.

Initially my goal was to raise awareness on the legalities of domestic violence and the applicable laws. I had my team write numerous articles on these topics but the more research I did, the more I felt compelled to provide additional content.  The fact is, I realized just how overlooked domestic violence is in our society.

This conclusion hit me after we compiled a list of DV statistics.  I was ASTONISHED by the results our research provided.  Here’s a few examples:

1. Over 1/4 of women are raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their life by their partner.
2. More than 50% of women that are killed by a firearm are murdered by their partner.
3. Nearly 1.5 MILLION women are physically assaulted by their partner every single year in the US.
4. Close to 33% of women that are murdered are killed by an intimate partner.

The list goes on and on.  
    
The bottom line is this: Domestic violence is an issue that plagues our society and must be paid the proper attention.  Considering I deal with the law and legal issues each and every day, I think I’m qualified to say that DV is severely under-prosecuted by law enforcement.  Maybe stricter punishment would help deter sexual assault, however there is something we can all do to help: RAISE AWARENESS.  Victims need to be made aware of their options, as well as where they can turn for help.  The amazing thing about all these statistics is that those are the KNOWN accounts, nevermind how many women are attacked or raped and never come forward.  Approximately 18% of women that experience domestic violence do not report it to the authorities.  Chances are, those women were afraid because they were unaware of exactly what type of assistance they could receive..until now.

 Check out Laws.com for a comprehensive list of domestic violence resources, including domestic violence laws and organizations victims can turn to.

By Michael Foti
Laws.com

Domestic violence: medical records can sound an early warning

Domestic abuse often goes undiagnosed until too late — yet medical records often contain subtle clues that doctors often lack the time to fathom out. Now, researchers from the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program and Division of Emergency Medicine demonstrate that tapping commonly available electronic health records could help doctors spot abuse early. This display, designed for physicians, pulls a patient’s diagnostic history into one view, sounding an alert when the pattern of visits suggests possible domestic abuse.

Each colored bar above represents a diagnoses recorded in the patient’s chart, grouped by category, during the four years before her abuse diagnosis; the most recent diagnoses are shown at the bottom. The color coding denotes the degree of abuse risk, calculated using data from the study (green, low risk; yellow, medium risk; red, high risk). As indicated by the blue “detect” arrow, the system would have sounded an alert as early as 34 months before domestic abuse was actually diagnosed.

In the future, the researchers hope that their models can detect when a person is at risk for abuse before abuse even occurs. Although the study, published in the British Medical Journal, was done in adults, the plan is to validate the model in children, too, and to develop similar models for conditions that are often missed, like depression and early-stage diabetes. According to Ben Reis, PhD, who led the project, such “intelligent histories” are an important step toward the larger goal of predictive medicine — helping busy physicians not by making diagnoses for them, but by offering a decision support tool that can flag patients who merit specific screening.

by Nancy Fliesler

Laws.com is a website dedicated to stopping crime and awarding heroes. They firmly believe in providing the public with information and they specialize in the area of crime prevention. The website works closely and supports top organizations around the world. They feature blogs, articles, videos and news covering areas such as domestic violence, child abuse, personal injury and more.

CBS Evening News with Katie Couric

Technology has made abuse easier than ever, allowing perpetrators to employ new mediums such as cell phones, email and social networking websites to control their partners. Sheryl Cates, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and loveisrespect, weighed in on the issue during the program and stated that technology has changed the dynamics of abuse. Please visit cbsnews.com to read the full story or click here to view the entire broadcast.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Marilyn French’s Characters Speak to Me

By Kate Murphy

A college senior considers both The Women’s Room and French’s posthumously published novel, The Love Children, from the point of view of her own generation. And the experience clarifies her feminist sensibility.

As I plunged headfirst into The Women’s Room, the most famous novel of the late feminist Marilyn French, I found myself submerged in a foreign world, or so I thought. Beginning in the 1950s, the novel follows Mira Ward through her teenage years, her young marriage, her life as a stay-at-home mother, and her subsequent feminist rebirth during her forties, while a student at Harvard University. Hers was a world where women were second-class citizens; where all that many young women had to look forward to was a life of suburban discontent and servitude. I found it shocking. But at first I just couldn’t relate to it.
 
Flying through the first few chapters, gripped by the grim reality Mira and her friends faced, my perception changed, the way one’s eyes gradually readjust after the room suddenly goes dark. On the last page of Part I of The Women’s Room I realized I was reading a story that was my own, every woman’s. Isolde, a friend of Mira’s, says to her, “I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes.” French ends the chapter with, “So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.”

I don’t know why, but that struck me. Maybe I couldn’t see myself reflected in the exact life experiences of these women on a surface level, but I couldn’t help thinking of what I would do in their places, how I would feel if I were them. Page after page, I found myself shocked, outraged, and terrified at the depth of unhappiness of the “typical American housewife” of the time. Even after Mira left this life—dumped by her husband and forced to pick up the pieces and start anew, she moved to Cambridge to attend Harvard—I still thought of the women she was leaving behind. Women trapped in loveless marriages, with no means to survive on their own; women doomed from the start.

As I continued reading, I found the women who “made it out,” the women whom Mira met at Harvard, still experienced unhappiness, emptiness, rape, rage, alcoholism, and adultery. But somehow, they fared better. The difference, and it was no small thing, was that these women recognized themselves, and one another, as women at their core, as burgeoning feminists. They formed a community. They shared in each other’s every experience, not on a superficial neighborhood-acquaintance level, as Mira’s friends before had, but on an existential level.