EMAIL DETAILS

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release March 13, 2013


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOMICIDE REDUCTION

Montgomery County Government Executive Office Building
Rockville, Maryland


10:36 A.M. CDT


THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hello, everyone. It's an honor to be with you. (Applause.) Thank you very much. Please sit down.

Mariska Hargitay is with me today, and I have to say that -- with us today. And, Mariska, you've been with us a lot, and I've had the great honor and pleasure of getting to know Mariska. You all know her from the television series in which she stars, but I've gotten to know her for her heart and her intellect. This is a woman who has -- I don't know how you find the time in your career for what you do -- but has devoted a considerable amount of her time and her fortune to dealing with these issues of abuse. And -- hey, Ben; hello, Ben Cardin. Thank you for permission to be in your state today. And, Governor -- is the Governor there? Governor O'Malley, I'm sure you've already been introduced today, but -- and I understand that the man who prepared me to survive a debate, Chris Van Hollen, it's his district, is that right? And Chris is trying to figure out how to deal with the budget back in the House, so he's not here today. I want to acknowledge him. But Mariska has become a champion for so many women, whether it's been at the White House Domestic Violence Awareness Month, or at my home and the Violence Against Women Act, when we were celebrating its passage; everything that -- good that we've done to try to change this scourge on our society.

This is the most tragic of all crimes. And a man who claims to love a woman, an estranged husband, a boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend actually in his -- I don't know how you even describe it -- his warped view of his right and role relative to that woman decides that he has the right to take her life.

A lot of people have told us over the years since we began this effort in the violence against women field that, there are certain behaviors, Joe, you can't change. You've heard it, Governor. There are certain things you can't legislate. You can't legislate familial relationships. You can't legislate certain things -- what we used to call crimes of passion. We know they're now crimes of power. But there's not much you can do about that. I've heard that refrain from the first day I picked up a pen to begin to draft -- I know that sounds strange, but I actually did pick up a pen. We usually get a lot of help. (Laughter.) But I was determined that we ought to be able to do something about the epidemic -- it was an epidemic of violence against women in our society.

I was -- some of you've heard me say this before, but I was raised by a guy -- a gentle man, a strong man, who thought -- my dad -- who thought that the worst sin of all, the cardinal sin of all sins is if a man raises his hand to a woman or a child; or anyone with power, physical power -- abuse their power. That was the single worst sin any human being could commit in his mind.

And what -- when we started this effort a long, long time ago, and many of you started it before I did, there was -- we were constantly met with the refrain that this is a family issue. This is a family issue. It's not the business of government.

We actually had when we were holding those hearings in the beginning testimony from actual -- a few -- one psychologist saying, well, there's just something that a woman triggers in a man's brain and he can't be held responsible for that. We were into a culture which we've been trying to fight back where any time a woman was abused, it somehow was her fault. She shouldn't have walked that way. She shouldn't have looked that way. Why wasn't dinner on the table? Why wasn't the bed made? Why wasn't -- it was the fault. And the hearings that I held I was dumbfounded 22 years ago when people would actually testify, and women would testify who had been abused and say, I thought I had done something wrong. And establishing the principle that no man has a right to raise his hand to a woman for any reason at all -- for any reason at all -- other than self-defense, there is never, never, never a justification. No matter what she's wearing or not wearing, no matter where she is, no matter what she said, period. There was no right. When I first uttered that phrase in a hearing, I got some death threats. I was pilloried for suggesting that what an outrageous -- actually what I said was -- I said if a woman got up out of my hearing and walked across to the Capitol stark naked, she could be arrested for indecent exposure, but no man had a right to do anything to her other than her to be arrested for indecent exposure. And that was the comment that set off a firestorm -- that somehow, somehow women who are abused -- somehow it was what they were wearing, what they said, they didn't show up on time or whatever.

And we're constantly told nothing could be done about this. Nothing really could be done about this. It was part of our culture. That's what I was told, that's what a lot of you were told -- that nothing could be done. But we all refused to accept that, and I think the collective refusal of all of you in this room and many others has proven critical to tens of thousands of women all across America. People once said we'd never be able to change the way we enforce the law. The Sheriff and the Chief will tell you that it used to be that there was a reluctance to arrest for any reason other than a sworn complaint. We changed the law so you could arrest on observing that a crime had been committed.

We learned that it was awful hard for a five-foot-two, hundred-and-seven-pound woman standing before a six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-forty-pound guy just beat the living hell out of her to turn to the police officer and say, yes, he beat me up -- knowing he'd be out tomorrow and probably do it again.

We changed a lot. We ordered specialized police units that finally change the way we respond to these calls. Instead of just talking -- taking the guy for a walk around the block and telling him to calm down, we learned how we could legally arrest him and put him in jail. And we learned that it was important when you showed up at the scene of a crime to take photographs of the bruises and take photographs to have photographic evidence so it didn't just come down to he said, she said when it got to the point where the trial occurred three months later and the woman was physically looking okay and healthy.

All these things helped change the way we deal with this issue. People once said we'd never stop abusive husbands from tracking their wives from state to state, but we changed the laws so orders of protection had the enforcement across state lines, and it mattered.

People used to say we didn't need a national hotline to combat domestic violence, but we set it up anyway and now that hotline answers over 2 million calls a year. And imagine the courage it takes for a woman being abused, essentially held in the prison of her own home, to walk over to a corner and pick up a phone, and whisper into a phone to someone she doesn't know and not at all sure anything is going to come back her way, fearful her husband might hear that, I -- I need help -- I need help. But it's begun to change. Two million women last year took that courageous step of picking up a phone.

And, overall, the rate of domestic violence has dropped by over 60 percent since we passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. And I might add that the murder rate of women is actually down. We've learned a lot over the last 20 years, and what we've learned most is if we look hard enough, we can identify behavioral patterns most likely to result in something like the taking of a life.

This is a process of learning. Now that we've delved into it and resolved it, we're going to do something about it. Every day, three women die at the hands of a boyfriend or a husband or their ex-husband. Three women every single, solitary day. These aren't statistics -- these are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters. These are people who mean the world to their families. And for those families, it means a father who won't hear his daughter's laugh; or a mom who will not feel the caress of her daughter running her hand along her face, or a child who reaches out in the night and nobody's hand to grasp. We have to do everything in our power, every single thing in our power to keep these tragedies from recurring.

And my message today, and the message you've already heard, is we can -- we can -- do more to prevent these tragedies from happening. We can fundamentally alter that rate of homicide. And, Governor O'Malley, that's exactly what you've done here in the state.

In a sense, it's both complicated and simple. We've learned that certain behaviors on the part of an abuser portend much more danger than other behaviors. For example, if an abuser has attempted to strangle his victim, if he's threatened to shoot her, if he sexually assaulted her -- and there's a number of other signs, about eight others -- these are telltale signs to say this isn't your garden variety slap across the face -- which is totally unacceptable in and of itself. These are the guys -- these are the guys, this is the category from which you're most likely to get those folks who will take out a gun the next time and blow their brains out, who will strangle to death the next time.

So what we've learned is that when a police officer shows up at a scene, or a victim shows up in an emergency room, that's the time to talk to her, right then and there. What we learned from the very beginning is there's a very narrow window -- a very narrow window -- for most women to have the courage and the capacity to say exactly what happened to them, and if you don't catch it then, she may be gone. She may be gone right back into the arms of her abuser, thinking again, rationalizing, as happens, that this was an aberration, I can fix this, this can work.

And so when we, in fact, began this 25 years ago, that's why we learned that when a woman shows up in an emergency room, that's the time when she -- and by the way, the majority of women showing up in an emergency room with a broken bone or bleeding are bleeding or have a broken bone as a consequence of a man's fist. Now, the intake docs knew that. But they'd say, well, why have you -- why that black eye? Why that bruise on your face? Well, I ran into a door jamb. You know that's not what happened.

So what we did we, through the Violence Against Women Act, encouraged emergency rooms -- we actually set up units to ask them -- we'd say, no, it's okay, it's okay to tell me, because I have a policeman right outside here who will put you in a car, and I have a lawyer I can get you to who will get you a protective order, and we can provide housing for you so you don't have to -- if you don't get the woman at that moment, we've learned that it's most likely they'll slide right back into that vulnerable position she was in before.

Well, the same thing can be said of what we've learned with regard to those women who ultimately die at the hands of their husbands. It's similar. If a police officer or a nurse asks the right question at the right time, it may save a woman's life down the road. So the grants that we have -- that the Attorney General has announced to communities all across the country will give them the tools -- the tools they need to train local folks to look at predictive behavior so that we do one of two things -- you get that woman out of harm's way. You provide her with a vehicle. And many women who have been victimized like this have never fully understood what services are available to her.

All you guys out there, think about it, man -- when you were kids in the playground and the bully knocked you down on the ground and took your lunch money. Remember what your dad said -- just look up and punch him right square in the nose. You want to hit his nose and he'll bleed and he'll leave. How many of you had the nerve to do it? It was true. If you did it, that's what happened. Not a whole lot guys I grew up with had that nerve. Not a whole lot of them. And yet we stand back and we say, why wouldn't women, having gone through this, why don't they just stand up and leave or walk out or strike back? It's human nature.

But if, in fact, they know that there's a way out, there's a safe haven, the law can be on their side, that the police will protect them, that there's a possibility of getting a stay-away order. There's even a community up in Massachusetts who goes even further, which I think is a great idea -- just editorializing here -- that, in fact, focuses on the abuser, does background checks and determines whether or not there's anything in that person's background they can find to be able to arrest that person. Are they -- is there any outstanding warrant for that person? Is there is any crime they have committed? Are they being looked for? Whatever it is, I think both should be done, in my humble opinion.

But these grants are going to be able to set up programs that make sure that when an officer shows up at a scene of the crime or a nurse sees a victim with suspicious injuries in emergency rooms, they'll talk to them; they'll ask them specific questions -- not just hand them a pamphlet -- ask them specific questions about the nature of the abuse, about the threats that have occurred before, and be able to give them the warning and also give them the option out as to how they can get out of that circumstance.

If a woman tells them that her husband tried to strangle her or threatened her with a weapon or other high-risk factors, they can help her get in touch with a domestic violence hotline. They can help them get in touch with the local law enforcement -- I mean, with the local courts. They can help them get stay-away orders. They can help them get to shelters. They can sit with her while she makes the calls. This is all one woman at a time. It's not like it's something that you can have a cookie cutter for. This is one woman at a time.

One of things I learned early on in this -- and I apologize for going into this detail -- but it's all granular is the way this works. I remember, as I used to be a public defender in the city of Wilmington, Delaware -- or in the state of Delaware before I was elected to the Senate -- and I can remember how one of the things that would happen is, in a family court a woman would walk in and obviously -- and walk up to an intake officer and say, I want to report that my -- "Speak up, I can't hear you." That one sentence is enough to have the woman turn around and walk out the door. Because this is such a tough call -- such a tough call for a woman to make at that moment. She's thinking about her kid at home. She's thinking about where will she go. She's thinking about what she'll be able to eat. She's thinking about what clothes will be on her back. And this whole idea here is identify the women who are most at-risk and hands on get her to a better place, get her to a better place, get her to a different place.

Let me make it clear: We believe that this will save lives. It already has. And it's our hope -- and it's saved lives here in the state of Maryland already. It's saved lives in places where these programs have been set up.

Now, one of the things some of our critics will say is, well, it's only basically 12 grants across the country. And this is not going to be a drop in the bucket. Our hope is -- and my belief is -- communities will pick this up on their own when they see the success of these programs. I hope that by next year there won't be 12 of these programs, there will be 25; and by the next, there will 125; and the following year, there will be a thousand.

You say, well, Joe, isn't that kind of Pollyannish? Well, we've convinced people that when people see good things, it spreads. Back when we were writing the Violence Against Women Law, we made an overwhelming dent, and here's what we did, we went in and had a report "The Day in the Life of a Woman, Women in America," and we went to all these states and pointed the laws that existed that were impediments -- impediments -- to women's safety.

After we passed the Violence Against Women Act, we couldn't change those state laws. We didn't have the authority to do that. But in the meantime, since then, 700 laws have been passed in the states at a state level; 700 laws have been changed. In my little state of Delaware, one of the first ones changed was -- which was astounding -- a man -- if a woman went out on a date with a man or knew the man that had abused her or raped her, that man could not be held liable -- could not be convicted of first-degree rape, only second-degree rape. Now think of that. Think what that said about the cultural norms in this country that if you went out with me and you knew me, you must have done something; you must somehow be partially responsible for my raping you. If I jumped out of an alley and didn't know you and did the exact same thing to you I did to you on a date, I could be held -- the man could be held for first-degree rape. But if I knew you and you willingly went out with me, it had to be second-degree rape.

The point I'm making here is once we showed the way federally, states all across America changed 700 of their existing laws on the books. They toughened their responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, and that's the overwhelming reason why the nation has changed. It's not just the Violence Against Women Act. It's changing the culture, a cultural norm of what we're prepared to accept and not accept.

So it's our hope that this program becomes a model for every community across America. And the great thing, as the Governor knows better than I do, that governors and mayors -- in this case it will be local officials, mayors, county executives, et cetera -- that's a great area of experimentation. Some will come up with programs even better than the ones that exist. And the best model -- the best model -- will emerge, and the reason is because of all of you out here. All of you out here who are non-elected officials are basically the providers. You're the women and men who see that woman walk through the door. You're the woman or man who is sitting down with and talking to and understands the horror of her circumstance. And when we find a better way -- no matter where it's found -- there's folks like you all across the nation led by women like Mariska who are going to see to it that the best model comes to the fore.

So all this is meager in the scope of billion-dollar budgets and the scope of the problem, it is consequential because I predict to you this will change. But there's another fact, though, that's not very much known, and I'll end with this.

As you may know, I've been working, at the President's request, on gun safety since that god-awful tragedy where 20 innocent babies were just brutally, brutally, brutally murdered up in Sandy Hook.

And what most people don't know when they think of mass murders, they think of Sandy Hook and Columbine, and Virginia Tech, and Aurora, and the Sikh temple, et cetera. But most of the women who die in a domestic homicide case, die as a consequence of a gun. In many of these cases, it's not just the abused woman who loses their life, or who is injured. It's innocent bystanders. From 2009 to 2012, 40 percent of all shootings with four or more victims started with the murderer targeting a girlfriend, an ex-wife or a wife. And there is one number that you should hear -- a recent study shows that the number of women shot to death by an intimate partner is 36 -- 38 percent lower in states that require background checks for handguns.

Guns are the surest way to kill someone. They are the weapon of choice. And in those states where you need a background check, there's 35 percent fewer murders of wives, ex-girlfriends, et cetera. The issue of domestic violence and reducing gun violence are connected. They both require urgent action. That's why the President and I believe that every person who buys a gun -- every person -- should have a criminal background check, because there are some people we know who should not own guns -- domestic abusers -- and by the way, we had this gigantic fight, as some of you remember because you helped me with it, this gigantic fight, the authorization before this last one of the domestic violence law, seeing to it that misdemeanors were included if they were domestic violence misdemeanors, because, again, we know the pattern. And it mattered. It matters since that has been passed. It's included that if someone who's convicted, even if it's a misdemeanor, of sexual assault or domestic abuse, cannot own a weapon. They shouldn't own a weapon. Remember that fight? A lot of you are nodding your heads. You were all in that up to your ears. But guess what -- it works. And in those states where there's universal background checks required, 35 percent fewer domestic violence murders.

But the point is that in those murders that we are focusing on today, the vast -- 40 percent of them it occurs in the office space, at a restaurant, in a place where other people are present. And so 40 percent of the cases where there are more than four people injured with a gun or murdered, they're a consequence of a domestic violence dispute. So convicted criminals or those who are a danger to themselves should not have access to guns -- it's common sense.

And I want to compliment the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday for voting to expand the background checks. The full Senate will vote on that soon. It's my hope, Ben, I know you -- where you are, it's my hope we can convince our colleagues to, in fact, pass that common-sense piece of legislation. (Applause.)

Folks, we know this violence can be stopped or greatly reduced without impinging on anyone's Second Amendment rights. It has no impact on the right to own or bear arms. It has zero impact, but it can fundamentally alter the physical safety, particularly of women who are the victims of domestic abuse. I truly believe we can achieve this together because progress does happen. As I've said, just look at two weeks ago when the United States House of Representatives, at long last, passed the Violence Against Women Act. It's kind of disturbing to think that we were still debating it. But it got passed. It got passed. And it's going to make a difference.

But, look, I've spoken too long. I feel too strongly about this subject I guess, but the generic point and the specific point I want to make is what the Attorney General announced today will save women's lives. It will save women's lives. We should act on the things we know, and we know with those telltale signs of the person most likely to engage in the most violent of abuse. And we can get ahead of it. God only knows how many women may be alive today if we had gotten ahead of it earlier.

But there's progress. I'm committed, as the Governor is and as the Senator is and the Attorney General is, to not stop until this -- a woman being abused and a woman being murdered at the hands of someone who allegedly loved her is an overwhelming exception -- an overwhelming exception -- not happening three times a day in America. It's a blight on our nation's conscience that it does. And there's no higher, there's no more urgent need than to deal with it now.

I'd be remiss if I didn't thank the police. You guys have been my biggest cooperation. Everybody -- you helped write the domestic violence legislation back over 20 years ago. You've enforced it. You do it with honor and with dignity. And I want to thank you and publicly recognize your efforts, because it's not easy. There's nothing more dangerous for a law enforcement officer than being called to a domestic violence scene in a two-story walkup having no idea what he or she is going to meet when that door is opened.

So I thank you for your commitment, thank you for your courage. And God bless you all. As my grandpa would say, with the grace of God and the good will of the neighbors and the crick not rising, we can make some real progress here. And, Governor, you've already done it. Thank you. (Applause.)

END 11:06 A.M. EDT