Fox News reported a story today of a mother who drove her van full of her 4 children into the Hudson River, killing herself and 3 of the 4 children. Her four children were the ages of 10, 5, 2, and 11 months. The 10 year old boy was able to break the window and swim through waters of 45 degrees about 25 feet to shore where he then ran to the local fire station to get help. He suffered from mild hypothermia but was expected to be fine. The reason why the mother did this is still under question. But she had been described by a neighbor as “…a very good mom. (who) took care of her kids.” Police do know that 10 minutes prior to the accident, they received a domestic disturbance call to the family’s house and when they showed up, mother and children were gone.
In the local newspaper in Sweetwater, Tennessee posted just today was an article titled “Drugs, domestic violence in Madisonville and Vonore.” One man was arrested for threatening to kill his wife if she told cops that he was in possession of drugs. The lady’s husband also told her she “would be dead before the police arrived.”
According to domesticviolencestatistics.org, every 9 seconds in the US a women is assaulted or beaten. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women – more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. Studies suggest that up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually. Every day in the US, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends. These are just a few statistics.
In 1983, Time Magazine published a cover story on domestic violence and even then, some of the statistics were shocking. “A justice department survey counted 178,000 rapes during 1981, but for every woman who reported a rape to the police, perhaps nine or maybe 25 did not.” The article also says, “The worst thing about family violence is its natural reproduction of itself, like a poisonous plant sending out spores. Most rapists were preyed upon sexually as children, and most violent criminals were raised in violent homes. Children of punched-out women, accustomed to seeing family business transacted with fists, are prone to become battered wives and battering husbands themselves. Worse, battered children grow up predisposed to batter their own offspring. Sexually abused boys often become pedophiles and rapists, while sexually victimized girls, perennial targets, are likelier to become battered wives.” I could not have said this any better.
Domestic violence is something that so many women (and men) face on a daily basis and it’s just sick. It’s pathetic that people feel the need to abuse their partners to the point that some are even killed. Domestic violence towards women is significantly higher but there is still violence towards men at home as well. All it takes is one time for a parent to freak out on another parent or the child and they could easily be doing the same thing as the young mother first mentioned, who took all by one of her children’s lives. Hopefully, anyone who is a domestic abuse victim will stop it from happening in someone else’s and get it stopped within their own.
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