The House GOP unveiled their watered-down version of the Violence Against Women Act today, prompting an immediate and vocal reaction from the Democratic majority in the Senate.

From TPM:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the author of VAWA, derided the legislation as “partisan” and said it omits critical measures designed to protect vulnerable populations like Native Americans, immigrants and the gay and lesbian community.

“Next week, the House of Representatives plans to revert back to its partisan version of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act,” Leahy said in a statement. “The Republican House leadership has decided to replace the Senate-passed version with a substitute that will not provide critical protections for rape victims, domestic violence victims, human trafficking victims, students on campuses, or stalking victims. This is simply unacceptable and it further demonstrates that Republicans in the House have not heard the message sent by the American people and reflected in the Senate’s overwhelming vote earlier this month to pass the bipartisan Leahy-Crapo bill. A majority of Republican Senators — and every woman serving in the United States Senate — supported it.”

I would act surprised and/or outraged by this, but I’m not. The GOP’s war on women continues unabated.

What’s most amazing to me is that the House GOP strip out the protections for human trafficking victims. To give you an idea of just how deranged that is, consider that the very same protections passed in the Senate with a rare 100-0 vote.

Former Miss Navajo Radmilla Cody has turned adversity on its head. Photo: Robert Doyle Photography

Navajo singer Radmilla Cody has been nominated for her first Grammy. She will likely turn heads at the ceremony Feb. 10 in Los Angeles in her traditional Navajo dress and moccasins. But the former Miss Navajo has never been afraid to stand out in a crowd.

Cody’s grandmother raised her on the Navajo Nation amidst the rust-colored plateaus and sagebrush.

[…]

Growing up half African-American on the reservation, even her relatives called her names.

“My uncles were not too fond of having a biracial child in the family,” Cody said. “They would make it known that was how they felt by basically belittling me, demeaning me.”

Years later when she ran for Miss Navajo Nation some tribal members protested because of her dark skin. Because of her own struggles with racism, Cody is working with educators to replace a derogatory Navajo word for African-American people with a more respectful one.

[…]

Cody also works to empower victims of domestic violence. A survivor of an abusive relationship herself, she speaks out about reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

[…]

Read the whole thing, see more photos, and listen to her beautiful voice at this link: Former Miss Navajo Rides Rough Road to Grammys

Radmilla Cody has her own website as well, here.

Leave Before He Kills You: In Native Populations’ Struggle to Overcome Domestic Violence, Survivors Play a Pivotal Role

Eleanor, a domestic violence survivor, tells her story at gatherings like this candlelight vigil in order to help other survivors heal.

Najaway, a Navajo woman, survived 20 years of domestic violence at the hands of two husbands—one Native, one non-Native. Now in her early 50s, she still can’t get the nightmare out of her head.

“I remember my daughter looking at me after I was beat down and covered with bruises, saying, ‘Mom, you should go away and not come back, because Dad might kill you,’” Najaway recalls. “She was all of six years of age.”

And she is one of the lucky ones. In some communities, Native American women are murdered at a rate more than 10 times the national average. Nearly half of all Native women have experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, according to federal crime and health data.

[…]

Still, there is hope. In places where justice cannot reach, survivors are coming out of the shadows to tell their stories, reliving the pain in order to help others avoid similar suffering. Over the past two months, SFR interviewed six Native people—five women and one man—each of whose life has been touched by domestic violence. Individually and together, they’re working to build a long-term solution that heals past abuses, restores traditional practices and funds community programs and services.

It is, at the very least, a start.

[…]

Navajo medicine man Johnny Henry Jr. stresses the importance of integrating traditional beliefs into the healing process.

The same author published a related story in another venue, radio station KUNM. In this one, she writes about the Violence Against Women Act.

[…]

A 1978 Supreme Court decision ruled that tribes can’t prosecute non-natives who commit criminal acts on their lands. Arthur Michaels is a tribal prosecutor in Espanola. He says the court ruling is just wrong. “It’s abhorrent and it’s injustice not to have non-Indians prosecuted on Indian lands when they commit the crime on Indian lands.”

Michaels says that this ruling keeps tribal communities from obtaining justice. He explains that when a non-native abuses or kills a native woman, the case goes to federal agencies like the FBI, and this could take up to two years to prosecute. “First, they have to determine if you did it. They have to determine if it’s a misdemeanor or a felony; then they have big case loads. So, justice is not done, justice delayed is justice denied.”

This past year, tribes fought to get their power to prosecute non-natives back through a provision in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The bill stalled last year because of continued concerns about the non-native defendant’s civil rights. But, advocates say these concerns are unfounded, because the proposed law protects their rights, like the right to a public defender The bill also provides funding for domestic violence services.

[…]

There’s audio at this link, and the same video is at both the Santa Fe Reporter and KUNM. There are also more photos at each link. I assume the author is the photographer as well. Photo credits are not given.

nytimes.com

She was 19, a young Alaska Native woman in this icebound fishing village of 800 in the Yukon River delta, when an intruder broke into her home and raped her. The man left. Shaking, the woman called the tribal police, a force of three. It was late at night. No one answered. She left a message on the department’s voice mail system. Her call was never returned. She was left to recover on her own.

A sign at Emmonak’s shelter. One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. More Photos »

“I drank a lot,” she said this spring, three years later. “You get to a certain point, it hits a wall.”

One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. And no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service.

The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.

More

chicagotribune.com

Sidestepping a politically dangerous fight, Senate Republicans made temporary peace with Democrats to approve the reauthorization of a popular law designed to help prevent and respond to domestic and sexual abuse.

Passage of the Violence Against Women Act on a 68-31 vote gives momentum to the legislation, which would reauthorize more than $650 million in programs. Fifteen Republicans joined Democrats in passage. But the bill still faces hurdles in the House, where Republican leaders plan to offer an alternative proposal.

“The Violence Against Women Act is an example of what the Senate can accomplish when we work together,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the bill’s author.

Usually the reauthorization has bipartisan support. But this year it has become enmeshed, at least temporarily, in the partisan wrangling that has dominated this Congress.

Senate Democrats sought to expand the legislation to specifically ensure protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Their version, which had a robust 61 cosponsors, also sought to increase the number of visas available for immigrant women facing abuse.

A Republican alternative largely skipped those provisions, and added new ones that many Democrats did not support, including mandatory sentences for certain criminal convictions.

But Senate Republicans decided to avoid a prolonged fight in an election year in which Democrats have accused them of waging a “war on women.” The GOP had sharply criticized the Obama administration’s requirement that insurance plans offer free contraceptive coverage.

“I’m going to support the Violence Against Women Act even if it falls short,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who put forward the Republican alternative.

More

google.com

Senate Democrats fired the latest political shot in what they’re calling the Republican “war against women” Thursday, pushing to renew and expand a law that fights violence against women and pays to help victims. They dared GOP senators to vote against it.

“Protecting women against violence shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” Sen. Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said from the Senate floor, where a group of female senators spoke in favor of the legislation.

Money for the Violence Against Women Act has been widely supported by lawmakers of both parties since the law was first signed in 1994. But the timing of the 2012 Senate debate is unmistakably political. It comes at the height of an election year in which the presidency and the congressional majorities are at stake. And it fits neatly into the Democrats’ overarching campaign theme that Republicans aren’t standing up for women on contraception, abortion rights, health insurance and now domestic violence.

While grappling for a way to rebut the “war on women” narrative, Republicans said the legislation at issue would add objectionable measures to violence against women law.

Two weeks ago, Republicans narrowly lost a Senate vote on trying to reverse President Barack Obama’s directive that health insurers pay for the cost of birth control pills or devices even if they object on moral or religious grounds.

Republicans criticized Democrats for making a scene Thursday on the Senate floor without having so much as scheduled a vote. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell complained that the issue distracted from a small business bill that could create jobs.

“Their plan isn’t to work together to make it easier to create jobs but to look for ways to make it easier to keep their own, then use it for campaign ads in the run-up to the November elections,” said McConnell, who has voted for the Violence Against Women Act in the past.

Too disgusting for words (at least, those I can safely repeat here):

nytimes.com

Even in the ultrapolarized atmosphere of Capitol Hill, it should be possible to secure broad bipartisan agreement on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, the 1994 law at the center of the nation’s efforts to combat domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. The law’s renewal has strong backing from law enforcement and groups that work with victims, and earlier reauthorizations of the law, in 2000 and 2005, passed Congress with strong support from both sides of the aisle.

Yet not a single Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor last week when the committee approved a well-crafted reauthorization bill introduced by its chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy, and Senator Michael Crapo, a Republican of Idaho, who is not on the committee.

Stupid, evil, horrid, reprehensible. Even more so when you look at their reasons:

The Republican opposition seems driven largely by an antigay, anti-immigrant agenda. The main sticking points seemed to be language in the bill to ensure that victims are not denied services because they are gay or transgender and a provision that would modestly expand the availability of special visas for undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic violence — a necessary step to encourage those victims to come forward.

Conservative Values!™

Senator Charles Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican, offered a substitute bill that not only cut out those improvements but called for a huge reduction in authorized financing, and elimination of the Justice Department office devoted to administering the law and coordinating the nation’s response to domestic violence and sexual assaults. His measure was defeated along party lines.

Mustering the 60 votes needed to get the bill through the full Senate will not be easy, even though previous reauthorizations were approved by unanimous consent. Recalcitrant Republicans should be made to explain to voters why they refuse to get behind the federal fight against domestic violence and sexual assaults.

This is why there’s no such thing as language too harsh or “partisan” to describe the current crop of GOPers - cartoon villains brought to life. Repulsive, bigoted, woman-hating throwbacks who have no right to occupy higher office. Vote them out before they do even more damage.

google.com

The Obama administration on Friday expanded the FBI’s more than eight-decade-old definition of rape to count men as victims for the first time and to drop the requirement that victims must have physically resisted their attackers.

The new definition will increase the number of people counted as rape victims in FBI statistics, but it will not change federal or state laws or alter charges or prosecutions.

The expansion has been long awaited because policymakers and lawmakers use crime statistics to allocate resources for prevention and victim assistance.

Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett called the change a “very, very important step.” The issue got top-level White House attention starting last July, when Vice President Joe Biden raised it at a Cabinet meeting.

Biden, author of the Violence Against Women Act when he was in the Senate, said the new definition is a victory for women and men “whose suffering has gone unaccounted for over 80 years.” Calling rape a “devastating crime,” the vice president said, “We can’t solve it unless we know the full extent of it.”

Since 1929, the FBI has defined rape as the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will. The revised definition covers any gender of victim or attacker and includes instances in which the victim is incapable of giving consent because of the influence of drugs or alcohol or because of age. Physical resistance is not required. The Justice Department said the new definition mirrors the majority of state rape statutes now on the books.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said all rape victims “should have access to the comprehensive services that will help them rebuild their lives.”

In November, Leahy introduced legislation to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and provide an increased emphasis on efforts to stop sexual assault.

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