Urge Congress to Reauthorize VAWA

By Amal Bass, WLP Staff Attorney

On January 23, 2013, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Michael Crapo (R-ID) introduced S. 47, a bill that would reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In the U.S. House, Representatives Gwen Moore (D-WI) and John Conyers (D-MI) have introduced H.R. 11, which is identical to S. 47. If passed, these bills will continue vital programs and services for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

Originally passed in 1994 and reauthorized in 2000 and 2005, VAWA is a monumental piece of legislation. In 2011-2012, a strong VAWA reauthorization bill passed the Senate, but the House passed a substantially different bill that limited protection for immigrants, Native Americans, and LGBT victims of domestic and sexual violence. The partisan politics at the time derailed VAWA’s reauthorization.

This session, it is vital that Congress reauthorizes VAWA by passing a comprehensive bill that includes protection for all victims of domestic and sexual violence. The bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill is similar to the bill that passed the Senate in the last session in that it includes enhanced protection and services for tribal, LGBT, and immigrant victims. The current Leahy-Crapo bill does not, however, include a provision that would increase the number of U visas available to immigrant victims of sexual, domestic, and other violence (A U visa offers temporary legal status to victims of certain crimes who assist law enforcement).  Senator Leahy’s office has stated that it hopes the concession will “better ensure passage of the Senate VAWA” and has indicated that the Senator is planning to include the U visa provision in separate immigration reform legislation.

Please contact your Senators and Congressional Representative to urge them to support the bipartisan S. 47 and H.R. 11. The health and safety of sexual and domestic violence victims is a high priority and should not be subjected to partisan politics.  To call your Senator or Representative, dial 202-224-3121.

VAWA Receives Only Partisan Support

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has never been partisan legislation. Signed into law in 1994, it was reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2000, and again in 2005. But earlier this month, anti-violence advocates were shocked when VAWA passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party line vote of 10-8, without a single committee Republican voting for the reauthorization.

Senate Republicans are concerned about two provisions in the new bill: one that expands allowances for undocumented victims of violence to obtain special visas, and one that prohibits resource centers that receive VAWA grant money from denying services on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Most anti-violence advocates consider those provisions necessary improvements. Immigrant women have always been more vulnerable to intimate partner violence than their citizen and legal- resident counterparts, with abusers often using their partner’s immigration status as a means of control – for example, by hiding or destroying important documents. Since its inception, the Violence Against Women Act has sought to aid undocumented victims of violence through what is called the VAWA Self-Petition, which allows battered spouses and their children to petition for lawful immigration status without their abuser’s knowledge or permission, freeing them from dependence on their abusers’ willingness to petition for lawful status on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs surveyed service providers last year and found that 85% have worked with victims who were denied services because they were LGBT – among advocates who had worked with LGBT victims who were denied services, 91% witnessed such discrimination coming from domestic violence organizations, and 64% saw it coming from law enforcement.

Despite this data, Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking Republican on the judiciary committee, claims that “advocates of this [LGBT-nondiscrimination] provision haven’t produced data that shelters have refused to provide services for these reasons,” calling the protections “a solution in search of a problem… a political statement that shouldn’t be made on a bill that is designed to address actual needs of victims.”

Grassley proposed a substitute bill that, in addition to removing the additional protections for LGBT and undocumented victims of violence, called for a major reduction in authorized financing and elimination of the Justice Department Office on Violence Against Women, but the measure was defeated along the same party lines.

This sudden partisan turn came as a surprise to many of VAWA’s supporters. One of the bill’s primary sponsors, Senator Mike Crapo – who is not on the Judiciary Committee – is a Republican, as are four of its thirty-four co-sponsors. Democratic sponsor Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, “I’ve had other senators tell me — Republican senators — that they just cannot understand how this happened.”

Supporters on both sides of the aisle are confident that VAWA will pass the Senate in a floor vote – but we can’t take chances. Call your senators today (if you call the capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, you can ask to be transferred directly to your senator’s office) to find out where your lawmakers stand. Tell both of your senators that you are a voting constituent, that the issue of relationship violence is important to you regardless if the person being victimized is straight, gay, transgender, immigrant, or citizen, and that you believe elected officials should not prioritize his or her own feelings toward a group of Americans over addressing a pressing public safety issue.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/violence-against-women-act_n_1273097.html

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/02/02/senate-panel-approves-lgbt-inclusive-domestic-violence-bill/

http://www.now.org/news/blogs/index.php/sayit/2012/01/30/more-bipartisan-support-needed-for-violence-against-women-act

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/opinion/republicans-retreat-on-domestic-violence.html?_r=3

http://www.domesticviolencecenter.org/get-help/information-for-latina-and-immigrant-women.htm

http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/content/features/detail/778/

WLP Executive Director to Testify at Senate Hearing About Police Mishandling of Rape Cases

Next Tuesday, September 14, WLP Executive Director Carol E. Tracy will testify at a Senate Judiciary hearing in Washington, DC, about police mishandling rape reports. The Women’s Law Project has been working on this issue since the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2000 that the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) was wrongly labeling reported rapes and conducting little or no investigation of the reports.

Since that time, the WLP has been contacted by reporters in several other major American cities, including New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Cleveland, about police departments using similar tactics to sweep reports of rape under the rug:

In New York, according to articles in the New York Times and the Village Voice, police have been downgrading rapes from felonies to misdemeanors – or rejecting victims’ accounts as untrue.

In Baltimore, the Sun reported that police had dramatically reduced their annual tally of rapes while tripling the figure for complaints deemed false. The newspaper said that Baltimore police led the nation in the rate at which they called rape allegations “unfounded,” rejecting almost a third as false.

Despite years of feminist pressure over the issue of rape and the favorable portrayal of special-victims-unit officers on TV, advocates say that treatment of victims of sexual assault remains a major problem. Often, they say, women who report assaults can find themselves victimized a second time by police who label them liars or blame them for the attack.

The WLP led the advocacy effort that resulted in a reinvestigation of misclassified cases that found 681 cases should have been classified and investigated as rapes, while 1700 other cases should have been investigated as other sex crimes.  Massive reforms took place, including an invitation for advocacy groups to review case files.  Ten years later the review of files continues.

We are glad to see the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, especially Senator Arlen Specter in his position as Chair of the Sub-committee on Crime and Drugs, paying attention to this issue affecting women across the United States. Sexual assault is a hugely underreported crime, with 60% of assaults not being reported to the police. Those who do report rape and sexual assaults are often re-victimized by a system in which they aren’t believed, their cases are not fully investigated, and the perpetrators are allowed to roam free, potentially committing more preventable crimes. This is exactly what happened to Sara Reedy, a Butler County woman who reported an assault to the police and ended up being arrested for false reporting. Her charges were only dropped when her assailant confessed to assaulting her and two subsequent women.

You should be able to watch the hearings live online here at 2:15 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 14, and we’ll keep you updated on any further developments.

Comprehensive Health Care Reform – Unless You’re a Woman

On Saturday night, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 220-215 to overhaul the health care system in the United States. Media outlets are framing this as a victory for progressives, and to be sure, some elements of the bill will be helpful in the long run. But the Stupak amendment, which was attached to the bill at the last minute on Saturday and was approved by a vote of 240-194, makes this bill a setback for women’s equality.

The amendment reads:

No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act (or an amendment made to this Act) may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.

This cripples women’s access to abortion in several ways:

The provision would apply only to insurance policies purchased with the federal subsidies that the health legislation would create to help low- and middle-income people, and to policies sold by a government-run insurance plan that would be created by the legislation.

Abortion rights advocates charged Sunday that the provision threatened to deprive women of abortion coverage because insurers would drop the procedure from their plans in order to sell them in the newly expanded market of people receiving subsidies. The subsidized market would be large because anyone earning less than $88,000 for a family of four — four times the poverty level — would be eligible for a subsidy under the House bill. Women who received subsidies or public insurance could still pay out of pocket for the procedure. Or they could buy separate insurance riders to cover abortion, though some evidence suggests few would, in part because unwanted pregnancies are by their nature unexpected.

Abortion is fundamental to women’s equality. It’s that simple. Without the ability to decide when and if to have children, women will never be able to control their destinies as men have been able to do for centuries. Contraception is available – though not as widely as you may think – but abortion must also be available, it must be accessible, and it must be affordable.

Over half of the women seeking abortions in the United States were using contraception at the time of their pregnancy. The Hyde Amendment – which looks strikingly similar to the Stupak amendment above and which bars the use of federal funds for abortions for women on Medicaid – has forced women who would have terminated their pregnancies to carry them to term.

To carve out this specific procedure which is so crucial to women’s autonomy and deny coverage for it – even for women who buy their own insurance with their own money – is unacceptable. And even as they spoke out against it, supporters of women’s rights voted for the final bill:

“If enacted, this amendment will be the greatest restriction of a woman’s right to choose to pass in our careers,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, one of the lawmakers who left Ms. Pelosi’s office mad.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, said the bill’s original language barring the use of federal dollars to pay for abortions should have been sufficient for the opponents. “Abortion is a matter of conscience on both sides of the debate,” Ms. DeLauro said. “This amendment takes away that same freedom of conscience from America’s women. It prohibits them from access to an abortion even if they pay for it with their own money. It invades women’s personal decisions.”

But Ms. DeGette, Ms. DeLauro and other defenders of abortion rights said they would nonetheless vote in favor of the health care bill and fight for changes in the final version, to be negotiated with the Senate.

We hope that the final version of the bill, after the Senate votes on it, will not include this restrictive provision on abortion coverage, and that supporters of women’s rights in Congress will not allow women’s equality to be hijacked as legislation moves forward. We will work as hard as we can to ensure that this doesn’t happen and hope you will too. The rights hanging in the balance are too crucial to women’s equality to do otherwise.

Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act Passed

Last Thursday, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act was approved by the Senate 68-29. The long-awaited legislation makes it a federal crime to assault people based on gender, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identity, and allows for added charges and harsher jail sentences for hate crime perpetrators.  Civil rights and LGBT groups rejoice in the passage of this law: ”The day is within sight when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will benefit from updating our nation’s hate crimes laws and giving local law enforcement the tools they need to combat hate violence,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

What this Act means for women everywhere, regardless of sexual orientation, is that gender will soon be protected under federal hate crime prevention laws.  As the American Association of University Women blog notes:  ”While it is important to recognize that not all crimes against women are hate crimes, it is true that some crimes against women are committed with hatred against women as a motivation.”  Recent examples of misogynist violence widely covered in the media remain in our minds as we anticipate President Obama’s signing of the law: the Amish schoolhouse massacre in 2006, in which only little girls were slain, and the Bridgeville gym shooting of August 2009, which left three women dead and numerous others injured.

Standing Up for Victims of Sexual Assault and Harassment

Senator Al Franken may be new to the U.S. Senate, but he’s trying to correct some old problems. He has introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill, SA 2588, that would bar the Department of Defense from contracting with companies that force their employees who file sexual assault or harassment claims into arbitration.

The issue came to the surface with the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of defense contractor KBR who says she was gang-raped by fellow employees in Iraq and then locked inside a shipping container when she reported the incident. A court recently ruled that Ms. Jones has the right to bring a lawsuit against KBR, but the incident happened at least three years ago.

Please contact your senators and tell them that you support this amendment to the bill. No victim of sexual assault should have to endure such treatment.

Pennsylvania Women Rank Low in Politics

As names are being thrown out to the public for possible candidates to run in the upcoming senatorial and gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania, it is important to note that the number of women’s names is disappointingly low. This allows us to expect little to no change in Pennsylvania’s abysmal ranking of 46^th in female participation in state legislatures. Democratic U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz and Republican Peg Luksik of Johnstown are the only known female candidates who may possibly run against Sen. Arlen Specter. No women have announced their candidacy in the gubernatorial race.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently published an article exploring several possible reasons for Pennsylvania’s  low rank in female political participation. Firstly, Pennsylvania is a large state, geographically speaking, making a commute to Harrisburg potentially difficult for women juggling a political career and family. On top of that, history shows that mothers who do run in Pennsylvania face judgment from the media and the public in general. In the mid-1990s, Judge Joan Orie Melvin was asked (by a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, no less) who would be home taking care of her children if she were elected. And the article notes that times haven’t changed much: “State Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, said she frequently was asked who was home taking care of her son when she first ran for office in 2004.”

Pennsylvania is also a traditionally harsh political climate for women, being a Rust Belt state whose political atmosphere is dominated by men in positions of leadership. As women tend to wait until they are asked to run or think they need to be trained first, it is important that party leaders are put under pressure to encourage female candidates.

According to the article, studies have shown that unless the gender mix is at least 30%, the minority’s voice will likely not be heard. Gender diversity is important and effective in politics, allowing more voices to be heard and incorporating various styles of leadership into political decision making processes. An increased number of female policy-makers also usually corresponds to higher emphasis being placed on issues that affect women, children, families and health. The state of women in politics is also a national issue, which we blogged about here. We need to put pressure on our state and national leaders to urge women to run for elected office, from city council to the U.S. Senate.

Take Action To Support Dawn Johnsen Confirmation

President Obama’s nomination of Dawn Johnsen to serve as the Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) marks an important landmark in American legal history. Dawn Johnsen has long been a champion of reproductive justice and an ardent supporter of the rights of pregnant women. Since her nomination, she has promised to take the OLC in a dramatically new direction from what it was under the Bush Administration. She is an extraordinary legal scholar, attorney, and women’s rights activist, making her position in the OLC incredibly important for Women’s Law Project supporters. Johnsen is a uniquely qualified candidate, as she already served in the OLC during the Clinton Administration and is an expert on executive power and the role and obligation of the OLC in restricting presidential decisions to their lawful scope.

Her nomination, however, which is expected to be voted on tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, may face some trouble. Opponents in Washington have attacked her strong stance on abortion, threatening this important appointment. We must urge our Senators to confirm Dawn Johnsen for this instrumental position. Please let your senator know that you want her/him to vote to confirm Dawn Johnson by sending a message here.

Sen. Boxer to Chair Subcommittee on Global Women’s Issues

Via Feminist Majority comes the news that Senator Barbara Boxer of California will chair a Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Global Women’s Issues. According to FM, “This is the first time in history where women’s issues will be a specific focus of a foreign relations subcommittee.”

Senator Boxer was vocal about the treatment of women around the world during confirmation hearings for Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State. In response, then-Senator Clinton promised to make women’s rights a focal point of her platform in dealing with foreign countries.

In a statement, Senator Boxer thanked Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for the opportunity to chair the subcommittee. She also had this to say:

This new subcommittee assignment offers a tremendous opportunity to shine the light of day on a very overlooked issue. Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Congress and with Secretary Clinton to stamp out violence against women in the world.