Domestic Violence: The Silent Epidemic

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Domestic Violence: the Silent Epidemic Elise Perkins DeVry University Section I: Introduction Rajesh never imagined that bare knuckles alone could bring about so much blood and ugliness. He’d seen plenty of TV shows and action movies, but had only a faint idea of what a really strong punch could do. What he was looking at now, however, was something entirely different. It was Anjali who had been hit. It was he who had hit her. In the dim afternoon light of his bedroom, Rajesh saw with vivid detail what a punch could do, and there was no suited announcer to separate him from the intensity of the scene (Manoharan, 2015). Although many believe domestic violence affects only low-income families, it affects people from all socioeconomic,…show more content…
Even though domestic violence is considered a criminal and civil crime under law, most people are not protected. According to Sarah Anderson, an intern at SISGI Group, (2012), “In many states the laws are still not encompassing the totality of the effects of violence on women. Some states still don’t recognize that domestic violence involving pregnant women should be treated as a violent felony because it also affects the unborn child. Even when domestic violence involves a pregnant woman, the abuser is often still awarded custody rights after the child is born because the law does not recognize the abuse against the pregnant woman as abuse against the unborn child” (Not Good Enough). Twenty-one states in this country have mandatory arrest laws (Barton & Diedrich, 2012), but there is no one to enforce them, and if laws are ignored, there are no penalties. In Wisconsin, every law enforcement agency is required to have a written policy that spells out how they respond to domestic violence calls, but local departments are not required to submit their policies to any state agency for review, and it is not known how many departments have actually written one (Barton & Diedrich, 2012). Mark Wynn, a retired Nashville Police Department lieutenant and a domestic violence expert, argues, “It may have a great policy, but somewhere along the chain it is not being followed. You may have two policies, a written and an unofficial policy of practice, and that is a problem. That is a failure of leadership. We know this: If you have a performance problem in a police department, people will die" (Barton & Diedrich, 2012). Because of this, most domestic violence cases are not being

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