[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 80 (Wednesday, June 22, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                            FAMILY VIOLENCE

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a very 
fine op-ed piece in the St. Paul Pioneer Press from yesterday be 
printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this past week there has been a very 
strong and serious focus on the issues of family violence. I agree with 
the Senator from Delaware [Senator Biden]; we really ought to call it 
family as there is nothing domestic about it.
  We are coming to realize as a country that for all too many women the 
home, rather than being a safe place, is a very dangerous place. We are 
coming to realize as a country that family violence knows no 
boundaries. We are coming to realize that this violence is a crime and 
should be treated as such. We are coming to realize that perpetrators 
must be held accountable.
  Mr. President, I think most important of all, we are coming to 
realize that this kind of violence within families, as opposed to once 
upon a time when we thought it was nobody's business, is everybody's 
business, and it is very much an issue we need to address in our 
communities to make life better in our country.
  My wife Sheila and I have learned a great deal from men and women and 
children who have been down in the trenches on this issue in Minnesota. 
We brought to Washington, DC, the silent witness exhibit, an exhibit of 
life-sized silhouettes of 26 women who were murdered in 1990 in the 
State of Minnesota. It was displayed in the Russell Building. A number 
of my colleagues came up to me and said that on their own they went 
over and just looked at it and thought about it. It was so powerful.
  This past year in Minnesota alone at least 28 women were killed by a 
husband, former husband, boyfriend, intimate partner or other family 
member. Every 12 seconds in the United States of America a woman is 
battered.
  Health care: We might want to talk about family violence as a health 
care issue. It depends upon whose study you want to believe. Estimates 
are that between 37 and 60 percent of women across all race, class, and 
educational lines are battered or abused while pregnant. Blows to the 
abdomen can result in fetal fractures. The children of battered women 
may be born with handicaps due to the trauma received while in the 
womb. Studies are starting to show a causal effect between the 
battering of pregnant women and low birth weights of children.
  Mental illness: Mr. President, 26 percent of all women who attempt 
suicide are victims of family violence. And, Mr. President, the long-
term effects of this are impossible to estimate. Judges in Minnesota 
tell me that if you want to ask the question how can it be a child--
even a child is a child at age 15 or 14--can commit such a violent 
crime, all too often those children have been victims of this kind of 
violence as well. Seventy-five percent of men who batter women also 
batter their children.
  So I rise on the floor today just to say that given this focus, I 
think it is important that we in the Senate and House of 
Representatives take the issue seriously.
  On a positive note, when we go to communities in Minnesota, I am 
amazed, women show up, 200, 300, 400, even in small towns. So do the 
police, so do men, so do clergy, so do business people. I think we 
finally are realizing that we cannot turn our gaze away from this, that 
we cannot put these problems and the issues in parentheses.
  Senator Biden has done yoeman work. The Violence Against Women Act is 
part of the crime bill, and we must pass that.
  I want to say to you, Mr. President, that the Child Safety Act that 
is part of that bill was an amendment that I introduced that sets up 
safe visitation centers so when a parent or parents come, a father 
comes back to a home to visit a child, violence cannot happen again at 
the home. There can be a safe exchange at a visitation center. When a 
child is abused by a parent, no matter what that parent has done to 
that child, the child still loves the parent. The child needs to see 
the parent, but there has to be supervision.
  Finally, there is the Domestic Violence Firearm Prevention Act, which 
is an amendment we passed in the Senate along with the Child Safety 
Act. I do not think we want to let that be bottled up in conference 
committee.
  Mr. President, if you have committed an act of violence against your 
spouse or child, whatever your gender is, you should not be able to own 
a firearm. If you have committed a felony, you cannot own a firearm. 
Family violence clearly, even though we do not treat it as a felony, is 
a serious crime. If there is a restraining order against you, you must 
not be able to own a firearm or possess a firearm.
  Mr. President, all too often the difference between a battered woman 
and a dead woman is a gun.
  We passed this amendment on the floor of the Senate. We passed the 
Child Safety Act as an amendment on the floor of the Senate. We passed 
the Violence Against Women Act on the floor of the Senate.
  These provisions are not the be-all or end-all. There is a whole new 
generation of things we can do with people and communities to really 
deal with the issue because that is where the solutions are going to 
take place.
  I do speak for a call to action that these amendments and that these 
initiatives pass as a part of that crime bill and not be bottled up. I 
really think we can take some important steps here in the Nation's 
Capitol that will be a positive message to women and to children, and I 
hasten to add to men, who care fiercely about this issue and know, in 
the words of my colleague from Illinois, we can do better.

                               Exhibit 1

                  [From the Saint Paul Pioneer Press]

              Simpson Case To Force Abuse Issue Into Open

       When the dam burst in the Simpson homicide case, a flood of 
     emotions spread across a nation that suddenly, collectively, 
     had to come to terms with the cultural illness of domestic 
     abuse.
       For more than a week, the sordid and the speculative, the 
     sensational and the surreal has filled the reservoir of 
     fascination with the celebrity crime. O.J. Simpson, a 
     graceful drawing from the Great American Success Story of 
     athletic wealth and stardom, stands accused of killing his 
     ex-wife and a guest at her home. The televised pursuit of a 
     distraught Simpson on the lam Friday displaces the stored 
     images of a young man running his way out of meager 
     circumstances and to the Heisman Trophy. Between the 
     charming, handsome public person and the private person who 
     emerged in full camera light last week, stood a long story 
     secreted in the ways that domestic abuse can hide itself.
       As facts are separated from scandal-mongering, remember 
     Simpson has not been convicted. It is also important to keep 
     asking if Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are dead 
     because domestic violence danger signs were not taken 
     seriously enough, letting O.J. Simpson beat the legal system 
     previously because of his prominence.
       The electrifying notoriety of the Simpson case has the 
     potential that other celebrity disclosures have shown to pull 
     matters of life and death out of the closet. AIDS, with Rock 
     Hudson and Magic Johnson. Alcoholism and breast cancer, both 
     with Betty Ford.
       If the Simpson case can accelerate the American culture 
     change on domestic violence, there is something profound to 
     be gained. Domestic violence remains America's most common 
     crime, 37 percent of women will experience battering. 
     Battering is the leading cause of injury to women ages 15 to 
     44. Some 47 children and women were killed in the state last 
     year by domestic assailants.
       Through concerted efforts of advocates, domestic violence 
     has begun to receive the encompassing attention demanded to 
     address it effectively. The talk in coffee shops about the 
     Simpson case is really talk about what happens next door and 
     just down the street. Every 18 seconds, next door, down the 
     street, in a stylish California home, a woman will be beaten.

  Mr. WELLSTONE. I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. CAMPBELL. Mr. President, I wish to first associate myself with 
the comments of my colleague Senator Wellstone. Certainly the 
activities of the past week has brought this issue of domestic violence 
to the forefront.
  I might say as a former policeman--and I know several Members of this 
body are former policy officers--those of us who did work the streets 
at one time as policemen saw the tragic effects of domestic violence, 
you might say, firsthand.

                          ____________________