Violence Against Women Act was introduced in Congress in January 1991 by Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware. In 1991 an estimated 4 million women were victims of Domestic Violence, with 20 percent of all assaults that were reported to the police occurring in the home. The bill was made part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and was signed into law on 13 September 1994, by President Bill Clinton.
The act authorized $1.6 billion to be spent over six years on the creation of rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters and authorized additional local police, prosecutors, victim advocates, and a domestic violence hotline. Funds were also made available to provide special training for judges who hear domestic violence cases. Provisions of the act expanded rape shield laws, created offenses for interstate spousal abuse, and allowed victims of gender-based crimes to sue those responsible in federal court. The act requires victims to prove the crime was not random and was motivated by animus based on gender. Portions of the act not originally part of the Violence Against Women Bill include restrictions on gun purchases for persons guilty of domestic abuse, safeguards to protect the confidentiality of information kept by state motor vehicle bureaus, and increased penalties for hate crimes in which the victim is targeted on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. Although Republicans attempted to remove domestic violence provisions from the act, on the grounds that funding them constituted government waste, they were narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives and by a cloture vote ending a filibuster in the Senate.
Bibliography
Brooks, Rachelle. "Feminists Negotiate the Legislative Branch: The Violence Against Women Act." In Feminists Negotiate the State: The Politics of Domestic Violence. Edited by Cynthia R. Daniels. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997.
Justice Research and Statistics Association. Domestic and Sexual Violence Data Collection: A Report to Congress under the Violence Against Women Act. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.
Schneider, Elizabeth M. Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Turning Act into Action: The Violence Against Women Law. Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1994.
From the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization for economic and social policy research:
• More than half of sexual assaults are committed by partners, friends, or acquaintances of the victim.
• Approximately two million women per year are severely assaulted by male partners in the United States.
• Domestic violence occurs in more than twenty-five percent of mar riages. Severe, repeated violence occurs in one of every fourteen marriages.
• In 1994, twenty-eight percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.
• One-fifth of all medical visits by women, and one-third of all emer gency room visits by women, are due to battering.
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) (P.L. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1902) was introduced in Congress in 1990 and enacted as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to address the widespread problems of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of violence against women. VAWA is a comprehensive law that includes measures to reduce the frequency of violence against women, provide services to victims of gender-based violence, and hold perpetrators accountable.
Features of Vawa
The act effected the following changes:
the creation of a national domestic violence hotline
increased funding for battered women's shelters
new criminal penalties for domestic violence committed across state lines and interstate violations of protection orders
required states to enforce orders of protection issued by other states
increased prison sentences for certain federal sex crimes, with perpetrators required to make restitution to victims
the creation of a mechanism enabling battered immigrant women to obtain lawful immigration status without relying on the assistance of an abusive citizen husband
provided funding for increased education on sexual assault and domestic violence and for studies of gender bias in federal courts
the creation of a civil rights remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence, which would allow victims of such violence to bring suits in federal court against perpetrators for violation of the victims' civil rights—a remedy later deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
Proponents of the Act
Support for VAWA came from a broad range of organizations, and much of the organizing around this legislation occurred at the grassroots level. Proponents of VAWA argued that violence against women is a form of discrimination based on sex. Because a climate of fear prevents women from participating equally in society, gender-based violence has the effect of turning women and girls into second-class citizens. Proponents argued that violence against women is a pervasive problem that keeps women from fully participating as citizens in their homes, workplaces, and in society in general. Existing state and federal laws, they claimed, were inadequate to address this problem.
Congress heard testimony from a wide variety of witnesses, who presented the following information in support of VAWA:
three out of four American women will be victims of violent crimes sometime during their life
as many as 50 percent of homeless women and children are fleeing domestic violence
an estimated four million women are battered each year by their husbands or partners
the incidence of rape rose four times as fast as the total national crime rate
an individual who commits rape has only about 4 chances in 100 of being arrested, prosecuted, and found guilty of any offense
less than 1 percent of rape victims has collected damages
almost one-quarter of all convicted rapists never go to prison and another quarter received sentences in local jails where the average sentence is eleven months
almost 50 percent of rape victims lose their jobs or are forced to quit because of the crime's severity
After intensive lobbying by supporters, VAWA gained wide bipartisan support in Congress for most of its provisions. The civil rights remedy created by the VAWA was by far the most controversial element of the legislation. Opponents argued that the civil rights remedy would bring before the federal courts issues traditionally and more properly dealt with by the state courts, such as domestic relations and other family and crimincal law matters. Proponents maintained that existing state laws provided inadequate and ineffective remedies to victims of gender-based violence.
Supreme Court Challenge and Subsequent Legislation
In 2000 the Supreme Court considered a challenge to the civil rights remedy created by VAWA in United States v. Morrison. The Court held that Congress did not have the power to enact this provision and deemed it unconstitutional. The act's other provisions were unaffected.
The same year Congress passed VAWA 2000, which reauthorized the original VAWA provisions and created a number of new provisions. One of these provisions made it easier for battered immigrant women to obtain lawful permanent resident status by cooperating in the prosecution of their batterers. VAWA 2000 also made money available to develop policies and training programs to address the needs of older women and women with disabilities.
VAWA directed a great deal of public attention to the issue of violence against women. As a result of this legislation, a federal office was created to administer VAWA grant programs, conduct studies, and provide information to the public on to gender-based violence.
Bibliography
Frazee, David, et al., eds. Violence Against Women, Law and Litigation.Deerfield, N.Y.: Clark Boardman Callaghan, 1997.
Schneider, Elizabeth M. Battered Women and Feminist Lawmaking. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
Schneider, Elizabeth M., and Clare Dalton. Battered Women and the Law. New York: Foundation Press, 2001.
The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law. It was passed as Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 HR 3355 and signed as Public Law 103-322 by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994. It provided $1.6 billion to enhance investigation and prosecution of the violent crime perpetrated against women, increased pre-trial detention of the accused, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted.
VAWA was drafted by then-U.S. Senator Joseph Biden's office with support from a number of advocacy organizations including Legal Momentum and The National Organization for Women, which described the bill as "the greatest breakthrough in civil rights for women in nearly two decades."
VAWA was reauthorized by Congress in 2000, and again in December 2005. The bill was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 5, 2006. [1]
VAWA will be up for reauthorization in 2010.
There is a division of the U.S. Justice Department that deals exclusively with violence against women. In June of 2009, Vice President Biden announced the appointment of Lynn Rosenthal to the new position of White House Advisor On Violence Against Women.
The World Health Organization[3] conducted an extensive study on worldwide domestic violence. Released in 2005, the study analyzed data from 10 countries and sheds new light on the prevalence of violence against women. It seeks to look at domestic violence from a public health policy perspective. The survey is viewed as controversial by many because it did not assess the extent of partner violence against men, and its failure to use a validated survey instrument.
The findings from this and other studies can be used to inform a more effective response from government, including the health, justice and social service sectors, as a step towards fulfilling the state’s obligation to curtail domestic violence under international human rights laws.
Debate and legal standing
The American Civil Liberties Union had originally expressed concerns about the Act, saying that the increased penalties were rash, the increased pretrial detention was "repugnant" to the US Constitution, the mandatory HIV testing of those only charged but not convicted is an infringement of a citizen’s right to privacy and the edict for automatic payment of full restitution was non-judicious (see their paper: "Analysis of Major Civil Liberties Abuses in the Crime Bill Conference Report as Passed by the House and the Senate", dated September 29, 1994). However, the ACLU has supported reauthorization of VAWA on the condition that the "unconstitutional DNA provision" be removed.[4]
The ACLU, in their July 27, 2005 'Letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Regarding the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, S. 1197' stated that "VAWA is one of the most effective pieces of legislation enacted to end domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It has dramatically improved the law enforcement response to violence against women and has provided critical services necessary to support women and children in their struggle to overcome abusive situations." [5]
In 2000, in a controversial 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court of the United States held part of VAWA unconstitutional in United States v. Morrison on federalism grounds. Only the civil rights remedy of VAWA was struck down. The provisions providing program funding were unaffected.[6]
Organizations that support VAWA
Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP)
Texas Civil Rights Project has a Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) department. TCRP is a nonprofit law office that offers free legal help to women and men whose civil rights have been denied. TCRP handles cases involving abused documented and undocumented immigrants to start the process of helping them gain legal status in the United States. Ninety percent of the clients they work with are female immigrants from Mexico; however, they also work with female immigrants from Central America, Russia, Korea and Viet Nam.[7]
Criticisms of VAWA legislation
Various persons and groups, including Marc H. Rudov, Glenn Sacks, Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR), and African-Americans for VAWA Reform (AAVR), have voiced concerns that VAWA violates due process, equal protection, and other civil rights. None of these groups oppose laws protecting victims of domestic violence. As with many laws passed in the US, the VAWA has been used as a vehicle for unscrupulous immigrants to gain access by marrying US citizens and claiming abuse under the act when no abuse has occurred. While not limited only to women, some male immigrants also use the VAWA act to gain fraudulent access to immigration benefits every year. It is reported that as much as 30% of all immigrant marriages each year are a part of immigration fraud with over half of that number, 15-20% of total marriage based immigration, involves false claims of abuse. The unsuspecting American citizen is often abused and bankrupt in this fraud. The fraud also covers minor children of the immigrant and often false allegations of child abuse are involved. USCIS guarantees the privacy and security of abused immigrants under the VAWA and the citizen often is left without any rights to fight against the fraud of which he or she is victim.
^ See: United States v. Morrison,529 U.S. 598, 627; "For these reasons, we conclude that Congress' power under § 5 does not extend to the enactment of § 13981.... The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Affirmed."
