Domestic Abuse Awareness Month

She was a beautiful woman/child. She was sweet, demure, shy, and didn't warm up to strangers very quickly but to those she did, her personality came shining through.

He was a man's man; a multi-sport athlete and a good-looking guy who, with a little patience, care, love, and understanding, could have been anything he wanted to be.

But the common bond they have with each other is that they were brothers and sisters who grew up in an abusive household; a household where they were exposed to their mother being verbally or physically abused almost every single day by their dad.

Research tells us that boys who grow up in a home like this are more than twice as likely to be abusive in their own marital relationships as boys who aren't. And girls are over three times more likely to become a victim of abuse, like their mother was, than girls who weren't exposed to that kind of atmosphere.

This is the scourge of our times. It is a crime so unseemly and so unspeakable that most of us bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it's not happening. But it is. The local abuse hotline receives over 1500 calls a years from people, mostly women, and that's just the women who have finally worked up the courage to call SOMEBODY and tell them what they're going through. Most women don't. They suffer in silence, ashamed to admit to anyone what they're enduring and somehow convincing themselves that what their children see and hear on almost a daily basis won't affect them.

But it almost always does.

Kids raised in racist homes are more likely to become racist than kids who aren't. Kids raised in homes where at least one parent is an alcoholic are more likely to become alcoholics than kids who aren't. Kids raised in Republican homes are more likely to become Republican than kids who aren't. And the list goes on and on and on. We are what we learn, we become what we're exposed to and of all the things kids can be exposed to, domestic violence is the worst.

According to U.S. Department of Justice Statistics, 95 percent of all victims of domestic violence are women. A woman is battered in the United States every 9 seconds. Domestic violence is the single major cause of injury to women, more than muggings and car accidents combined. 50 percent of all women murdered in the United States are killed by a spouse or an acquaintance. Domestic violence occurs in 60 percent of marriages and is THE most underreported crime. Domestic violence costs an estimated $1.4 billion annually in medical bills, and an additional $900 million in mental health treatment. And the saddest and most alarming statistic is that 90 percent of battered women report that their children were present when they were beaten.

There are a plethora of reasons why women stay in abusive relationships. Embarrassment, shame, humiliation, and fear are only a few. It's bad enough when the only victim is the woman herself. But the abuse is compounded exponentially when children are present and are forced to listen to the verbal abuse and watch the physical abuse. Even if the male children don't become abusers themselves and the female children don't become victims, they are still permanently scarred as human beings. They will carry those scars with them throughout their lives and every relationship they have, whether it be platonic or romantic, will be impacted by it.

Domestic abuse is society's greatest tragedy.