For Victims of Domestic Violence, Each Day Carries Danger - Metro
When you live with an abuser, everything is a weapon. In their hands, innocent objects like ice-cube trays and checkerboards and apples and pillows become ways to inflict suffering, to demand submission.
radio• dog• steak knife• sneaker• apple• box cutter• lunchbox• leash• wine• glass• pole• coffee cup• sandwich• table• window• hairbrush• table leg• coat hanger• cooking pan• glass table•
“I got hit with a branch when I was pregnant,” said Tuti, sitting with three other survivors at a shelter in Dorchester on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon. They counted the ways their former boyfriends failed to love them. “He punched me in the head,” Tuti continued. “He spit on me. He kept hitting me with a bottle of water.”
“He picked up a video game, anything near me,” said Trinity. “He hit me in the head with a bag of Pampers.”
It is all there in the police reports, set out in mundane, relentless detail. Globe data visualization reporter Gabriel Florit analyzed more than four years of reports on domestic violence between intimate partners in Boston, up to April 2014. That is when the police department changed the way it reports these incidents, providing less detail on this world of cruelty and terror.
More: For Victims of Domestic Violence, Each Day Carries Danger - Metro - the Boston Globe
IN THEIR EFFORT to overhaul the state’s domestic abuse laws, Massachusetts legislators failed to think through the broader implications of a provision that was tucked in the bill with little to no debate. It prohibits information about domestic abuse complaints and arrests from being logged into daily police records, which are public. There may be some victims of domestic abuse who would rather keep these details private, but the provision mainly serves the interests of accused batterers. Like anyone else accused of a crime, they should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. But they shouldn’t be accorded extra courtesies along the way. Governor Patrick, who must sign the bill by Monday, should instead send it back to the Legislature for amendment.