{"id":44248,"date":"2019-05-08T09:05:06","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T16:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/?p=44248"},"modified":"2019-05-08T09:05:06","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T16:05:06","slug":"what-we-dont-know-about-domestic-violence-can-kill-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/what-we-dont-know-about-domestic-violence-can-kill-us\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Don\u2019t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Acclaimed journalist Rachel Louise Snyder takes the Town Hall stage on <\/span><\/i>May 21<\/span><\/i><\/a> to deliver a reckoning with the urgent and widespread problem of domestic violence with insight from her powerful new book <\/span><\/i>No Visible Bruises (<\/span>glowingly reviewed recently in the <\/span><\/i>New York Times<\/span><\/a>). She\u2019s joined onstage by KUOW\u2019s Sydney Brownstone, and together these two journalists reveal the scale of domestic violence in our country. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Katie Kurtz is a Seattle based freelance writer, currently working on a true crime memoir about three of her classmates whose murder remains unsolved 30 years later. She previews Snyder\u2019s event here<\/strong>:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Why didn\u2019t she leave?<\/i><\/b> This question pointed toward victims illustrates why the culture surrounding domestic violence thrives: The onus is on the woman to escape, not on the abuser who makes her feel like she needs to run for her life. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the National Domestic Violence Hotline reporting that nearly 1 in 3 women (35%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and\/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime, everyone is touched by domestic violence.<\/b> The numbers may never be fully known, though. Whether the victim is still in the relationship or has managed to leave, the fear instilled by the abuser effectively silences her forever. <\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>No Visible Bruises: What We Don\u2019t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us<\/span><\/i>, Rachel Louise Snyder unpacks the systemic reinforcement of domestic violence and the various inflection points where intervention is possible. The book opens with a case study of Michelle Monson of Montana and traces hers and her children\u2019s eventual deaths at the hands of Michelle\u2019s husband Rocky. Snyder\u2019s investigation includes interviews with all surviving relatives, including Rocky\u2019s who completed suicide immediately after killing his wife and their children. One among 1,200 possible cases (that\u2019s how many women in the US are killed annually by a partner), Michelle Monson\u2019s story shows how it isn\u2019t one single factor that could have pointed toward a violent end to her life but a gradual accumulation of events.<\/span><\/p>\n

Awareness is growing that abusiveness does not start out as physical and, as Snyder notes, 20% of these relationships don\u2019t entail physical violence at all. Abusers use various tactics to maintain power over the victim through emotional, psychological, financial, and sexual control. These forms of coercive control can look a lot like the Hollywood version of a budding romance. Stopping by unannounced with a bouquet of flowers may look dreamy in the movies but it can also be an excuse for the suitor to confirm she is where she says she is. France and the UK have laws against coercive control; the United States does not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Snyder\u2019s book covers the persistent question about whether angry and controlling men can be rehabilitated. Men recognizing their own violent behavior is fundamental to dismantling the structures that support it. But the difficulty in how we get there can be illustrated by this conundrum: Joe Biden was the senator who introduced the Violence Against Women Act in Congress in 1990, shortly before his campaign to discredit Anita Hill. Now we know that gaslighting\u2014named for the 1944 movie <\/span>Gaslight<\/span><\/i> starring Ingrid Bergman who was slowly being driven insane by her husband\u2014is a form of psychological abuse. <\/span><\/p>\n

Many of us were glued to Christine Blasey Ford\u2019s testimony about the Supreme Court nominee who\u2014despite our collective fervent invocations that maybe just this once the sexual predator doesn\u2019t win\u2014was approved. Her quote, \u201cIndelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,\u201d speaks to the long-term effects trauma has on survivors. <\/span>Indelible<\/span>. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There will likely be a number of survivors in the audience for this event.<\/b> We need our community there with us, too. <\/span>If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate partner violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit <\/span>The Hotline<\/span><\/a> website.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>
\n<\/span>Tickets are on sale now for this powerful event, <\/span>happening on May 21<\/span><\/a> in Town Hall\u2019s Forum. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Acclaimed journalist Rachel Louise Snyder takes the Town Hall stage on May 21 to deliver a reckoning with the urgent and widespread problem of domestic violence with insight from her powerful new book No Visible Bruises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,24,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-featured","category-guest-contributor","category-town-crier"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}