Women’s Issues: Victimized Twice

Women and girls – and, for that matter, children of both genders – who are victims of violent crime, including domestic violence and human trafficking, are often victimized twice, and that makes equity in the prison and criminal justice system one of the least under-reported women’s issues of our times. While we, as a Western society, like to believe that we have evolved enough to treat women equally, that we do not oppress women and we allow them equal opportunity to jobs, education and the elements of a happy life, the facts – not the statistics, but the facts – say otherwise. In fact, far too often, women who are injured and caught up in domestic violence, drug trafficking, human trafficking and so-called victimless sex crimes, are victimized a second time by our societal judgments and by the criminal justice system.

Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence

One in four U.S. women will be victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives. Of all women’s issues, the issue of domestic violence may be the most pernicious and intractable. When we talk about spousal abuse, relationship abuse and intimate partner abuse publicly, most people say all the right words. Most people believe the things that they say – but far too often, when they are confronted with real incidents of domestic abuse in their lives, they question everything they think they know. They find themselves wondering:

Why doesn’t she just leave?

How can she keep going back?

Why does she antagonize him when she knows he’ll hit her?

Why did she take him back… again?

If it’s your sister, your mother, your best friend, your neighbor – you sometimes see the effects up close and personal. It can be enormously frustrating when you watch the person you love go back into an abusive situation again and again. It’s easy to throw up your hands in defeat, or to condemn her for staying.

It’s even worse when the woman has been dragged into committing crimes. Drug cartels, for example, often use women to prepare drugs for sale and transport them, often under threat of physical abuse or violence against their families. The societal attitude toward a woman charged with a crime under these circumstances tends to penalize them even further.

These women’s issues are not easy to understand and deal with. There are no simple answers, and even the complicated ones often victimize women further. If you know someone who is in a difficult situation, the most important thing you can do for her is to just be there to listen and try not to judge.