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Newsflash: Not Every Domestic Violence Story Has to Be Commented on By A Man Who Blames Women
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Let’s focus on saving lives, not victim-blaming
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Let’s see what happened in America in just the last week:
— In Maine on Tuesday, a mom put her twin 8-year-old daughters on a bus to school. Her boyfriend, the girls’ father, shot her to death soon afterward. Neighbors said that he had made threats days earlier, and the girls yelled, “Don’t kill our mom!” (Naturally, there are comments on the web blaming the victim for not simply leaving.) And also:
On Monday, in Perryville, Missouri, a woman was killed by her estranged husband in front of her children, the St. Louis Dispatch reports.
On Tuesday, a 63-year-old pastor in the Bronx was charged with murder after allegedly stabbing and running over his “estranged” wife in front of their grandchildren.
Before you think I’m cherry-picking examples, an average of nearly three women per day — a number that FBI murder statistics confirm, and that’s only relationships known to law enforcement — are killed by a current or former male romantic partner in the U.S.