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Terrorism and Domestic Violence in America
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Police photos of Heather Thompson in a hospital bed (AP Photo/Nell Redmond)
Two recent fatal shootings, one of late term abortion doctor George Tiller as he attended church services in Wichita, Kansas, and the other of security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns on duty at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., have sparked a blitzkrieg of media coverage, but it was another story reported by the Associated Press that caught my attention. It didn't create much of a splash, but I found it more deeply disturbing and compelling than these shootings. This was a case involving not terrorism, but domestic violence, a scourge that is far more virulent and deadly in this country, but gets relatively scant attention. This lack of attention is similar to the curious media tendency to obsess over al Qaeda, while ignoring ordinary crime, a far more pervasive and dangerous threat to national security.
Threatening letter Thompson's former husband wrote to her
while he was in prison (AP Photo/courtesy Heather Thompson)
Heather Thompson, 38, of North Carolina was assaulted and beaten repeatedly by her then husband fifteen years ago. He was eventually arrested, convicted and sent to prison for over a decade. But he was released two weeks ago, and Heather, who received a death threat from the man while he was incarcerated, now lives in abject terror for her life. It is a dire, all too typical scenario that menaces untold thousands of women from all walks of life, year after year, but seldom receives the media attention that acts of domestic or foreign terrorism do. To be sure, Heather and her current husband Dwayne did appear recently on the MSNBC Today show to tell their story, but that is the only follow-up that I have observed. Meanwhile, the cable news talk shows have been saturated with coverage about the two shootings, and the hard right wing anti-abortion and ethnic hate groups that allegedly provoke violent acts among the lunatic fringe. But these shootings pale in comparison to the horrifying epidemic of domestic violence.
In 2001, for example, nearly 600,000 women were assaulted in the United States by their intimate partners - husbands, boyfriends, cohabitants, friends. Of these assaults, 42,000 were for rape, 44,000 for robbery, and 81,000 for serious beatings. In addition, 1247 women were murdered. That's the ugly, shocking truth, the insidious secret that families kept to themselves until the 1970s. Think about that. Nearly 600,000 separate incidents of horrific violence committed against women every single year. Millions of women in total, bruised and battered and mortally afraid that it will happen again, are subjected to a living hell while the legal system fails to protect them unless the offenders are behind bars. And yes, men become victims, too, and it happens to them far more often than you would suspect.
Consider their isolation and sense of helplessness, their interminable hurt and dread that what happened in the past still haunts them in the future, that they cannot escape from it, yet must persevere with their lives, working and caring for their children. How does their courage and fortitude compare to our reaction to the constant drumbeat of terrorist fear mongering that politicians and the media lay on collective America? You would think our lives were in perpetual and imminent danger from al Qaeda, that we must be constantly vigilant against these demonic fiends who lurk behind every corner and blend in with every shadow, ready to attack us with guns, poison gas and car bombs. We imagine legions of brutal warriors bent on the destruction of western civilization itself, and we shiver and shake, petrified by the specters of swarming barbarian hordes devouring everything in their paths. This is Al Qaeda, almost invincible, evil incarnate.
It's all nonsense, of course. Ridiculous. A Bogeyman. And we fall for it. The 9/11 commission estimated that al Qaeda operates on a budget of $30 million a year. Not the $150 billion we throw at them. Not even $30 billion. Just $30 million. And how many of them are there now, in 2009? Millions? Hundreds of thousands? Tens of thousands? Not even close. Maybe around 200-300, according to the latest estimate! That is what is scaring the bejesus out of the American people.
Meanwhile, countless sufferers from domestic violence live out their lives with real world fears, not politically propagandized doomsday fantasies. Every day new victims are plundered and beaten, raped and murdered. And most of them, the fortunate survivors, carry on with the unimaginable burden that it might happen again, and all too often it does.
Now that is true terror. Not the orange alert variety that the rest of us experienced after 9/11. The real victims are those we've forgotten about, not ourselves.
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