Domestic Abuse: The Hidden Epidemic We're Still Failing to Stop

Domestic violence isn't a game, a joke, or a passing topic of conversation. It isn't just a tool for virtue signaling, and survival is more than a trauma-scar to be used for sympathy. Domestic violence is, unfortunately, still a way of life for too many people—and as aware as we like to think we are, so much of the world still willfully ignores the fact that domestic crime is one of the most pervasive epidemics in history.

We campaign constantly against violence, speaking out against guns and terrorists, war and deportation, racial injustice and rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. And in many ways, we boldly acknowledge that the violence we speak against isn't just on the other side of the world. It isn't just on the other side of the political divide, and it isn't just in the places where racism runs rampant and poverty drives desperate people to crime in order to survive. It isn't limited to the shadows. Because men, women, and children victimize each other right in the open: in malls, theaters, churches, schools.

The truth we don't want to examine is that violence is right here, in front of all of us. It's in our homes, our neighbor's homes. And how many of us turn our heads? Why do we pretend we don't see? How can we be so brutally aware and so militant about protecting the rights of others...but in this, we tell ourselves it isn't our problem?

While you're reading this, at least 1 in 3 women worldwide have fallen victim to domestic violence. One in three. In the last six months, close to 400 women lost their lives to domestic violence—and that's just in the US.

Right now, someone is being brutally beaten to death by a partner they loved and trusted. Right now, someone is being stripped down and violated by a partner who promised never to hurt them. Right now, women and children are homeless, living in cars or cramped shelters, desperately trying to rebuild what's left of their lives.

Right now, there's a victim living in fear. A victim who desperately wants to be a survivor but can't escape the danger zone they call home.

And maybe they can't see it yet, but there's hope. Through the provision of shelter, hotline assistance, and legal aid to victims of domestic abuse, organizations focused on taking a stand against domestic crime provide desperately needed support to countless victims every day. These are the places where victims of domestic violence start over. Places that teach advocacy and do the work to help victims become survivors. Places that are real-life versions of what I imagined when I designed the Safe House program in Fighting For Freedom.

When my mother fought for her own freedom after her second marriage left our family and her health in shambles, those places didn't exist—at least, not in the same ways that they do now. The stigma was greater, the shame and the impact were often overlooked. And while we've come a long way since then...the need for a book like Fighting For Freedom proves that there's still a long way to go.

I grew up in a place where domestic violence was a daily norm, and I witnessed abuse in almost every living situation I ever experienced as a child, regardless of where I was or who lived there. I saw things thrown. I saw things broken. I heard ugly words and vile threats. There were members of my family who knew what scattered brains looked like before they even made it to Kindergarten. It was the dirty little not-so-secret hiding in the homes of nearly everyone I knew.

When I was young, I saw my mother's body held against a wall, her toes barely touching the front porch of the single-wide trailer we lived in, her husband's hand clenched tight around her throat...because she made his sandwich wrong. When I was in third grade, I got pulled out of class and utterly humiliated in the guidance counselor's office as police stripped me down to my days-of-the-week panties...so they could photograph the bruises on my body.

I remember rage. Fear. Helplessness. And I didn't realize yet how pervasive desensitization to that lifestyle would be. I hated my parents for exposing me to people who hurt me. For failing to protect me. But I had to learn my compassion for victims the hard way.

In my first serious relationship, I got slapped in the face once, because when he warned me that he would hit me, I didn't believe him—and I tickled him one time too many. I was fifteen. And for the longest time, I believed with all my heart that it was a little bit my fault. That I "asked for it." That because he had threatened me, I "should have known better."

By the time I realized how wrong that was, I was in another relationship, and that one got abusive too. He grabbed my wrist, held me back from walking away from an argument. I panicked and turned around swinging, with fear twisting my gut and rage like fire in my eyes. Maybe a part of me was warning him, or maybe a part of me had gone back in time to finally stand up for my right to space and the control of my own body. When I left him, he threatened to kill me, screamed violent threats on my voicemail, and even hunted me across town with a truckload of his friends.

Other relationships and experiences have forced me to develop a compassion I should never have needed to have, igniting a fire that should never have needed to burn. I know what it is to need help and not be able to find it. I know what it is to have the very people who say things like, "Why don't you just leave?" actually take the side of an abuser. I know what it's like to speak out—and get punished for daring to use my voice.

But I have daughters of my own, and as I raised them I watched them closely, even with other family members. Even with their dad. Even with people I've trusted all my life. Because all too often, the people you trust are the ones who hurt you the most.

And that's why domestic abuse is the worst kind of violence. It isn't just ugly bruises or broken bones. It isn't just sad hearts or scary situations. It's sneaky. And it's quiet, like an unacknowledged demon squatting in our homes, stalking the people we love but don't protect. And too often, we don't move to stop it. Too often, we shake our heads and turn away.

And that's why Fighting For Freedom is so important. The world needs stories like Christine's, to rip the secret skeletons from our closets and air out the proverbial stench of dirty laundry. To tell perpetrators of domestic crime that the world will be silent no more. That frightening statistics will never drown out the courage of resilient survivors. And that every woman of any age, race, shape, style, and color deserves the safety to believe she can...