[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 26 (Monday, February 25, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S807-S808]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT

  Mr. LEAHY. I have often said, Mr. President, that the Senate is 
supposed to be, it can be, and often is the conscience of the Nation. 
Well, we became the conscience of the Nation 2 weeks ago when Senators, 
both Republicans and Democrats, voted overwhelmingly to pass the 
Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act and the Trafficking Victims 
Protection Reauthorization Act. We made protection of these victims our 
top priority. After compromise and extensive negotiations, we set 
partisanship aside and came together.
  The Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act will 
provide immeasurable help to all victims of domestic violence and of 
rape throughout our country and to victims of human trafficking in the 
United States and around the world. The Senate passed it with an 
appropriate show of bipartisan unity. A majority of Republican Senators 
voted for our bill, as did every woman elected to this body and every 
single Democratic Senator and the two Independents who caucus with the 
Democrats. My amendment adding significant human trafficking 
legislation passed with the support of 93 Senators.
  Senators from across the political spectrum have shown that stopping 
domestic and sexual violence in the most effective way possible is an 
issue above politics. I mention this not to pat ourselves on the back 
but to say that, in contrast to this action where Republicans and 
Democrats came together to

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protect women in this country, the House leadership is poised to once 
again take a different route. Tomorrow they are scheduled to substitute 
our bipartisan bill with a partisan alternative that leaves vulnerable 
victims without protection and mires our efforts in partisan politics, 
which delays getting help to victims. I hope they reconsider this ill-
conceived approach. The overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate 
for the VAWA reauthorization Senator Crapo and I introduced sent a 
powerful message to survivors of violence. But this bill is about so 
much more than sending a message. It includes real, meaningful 
additions to the law to fill gaps and address needs that law 
enforcement, victims, and the service providers who work with victims 
every day have identified for us. None of these provisions are about 
politics. They are about preventing terrible crimes and helping the 
survivors of violence.
  The Senate-passed bill takes new steps to prevent domestic violence 
homicides. It will increase the focus of law enforcement and victim 
service providers on rape and sexual assault crimes that too often slip 
through the cracks. It will take needed steps to address the horrifying 
epidemic of domestic violence in tribal communities and to increase 
protections for vulnerable immigrant victims. It ensures access to 
services for LGBT victims who experience domestic and sexual violence 
at rates at least as high as the rest of the population but often have 
no place to go for help.
  Our bill strengthens protections on campuses, where too many students 
experience devastating violence instead of the wonderful experience of 
learning and growth that we all wish for our children. It includes new 
bipartisan measures to ensure that rape kits are promptly tested so 
that victims no longer live for years in fear when the perpetrators 
could be identified and taken off the streets. Our bill would give law 
enforcement and service providers new tools to crack down on sex 
trafficking and labor trafficking and help the victims of these 
appalling crimes. These common sense provisions will make a real 
difference in so many lives.
  The poor substitute the Republican House leadership is putting 
forward once again takes a tragically different approach. Instead of 
taking up legislation developed over years of work with victims and 
those who help them, they have presented a version put together by a 
few here in Washington. For reasons I cannot understand, they have 
jettisoned the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act 
altogether and stripped provisions developed by Senator Cornyn, Senator 
Grassley, and me to take meaningful steps to reduce the backlog of 
untested DNA evidence in rape kits. Those provisions could help victims 
and could help law enforcement keep our communities safe.
  The House substitute drastically weakens protections for vulnerable 
victims. It eliminates key protections intended to keep college 
students safer. It fails to include meaningful language to ensure that 
LGBT victims can get the same help as any other victims. For immigrant 
victims, the House substitute actually adds new hurdles that would make 
it harder for victims to help law enforcement and receive assistance. 
It adds new burdens and loopholes to protections for Native women who 
experience domestic violence at horrific rates. The House substitute 
would continue to allow the most aggressive abusers of native women to 
escape justice since the most that could be charged in tribal courts 
would be a misdemeanor. That is not justice for the most vulnerable 
victims of domestic violence.
  I have been working on this legislation for years. During the last 
year we have amended and tweaked its language many times to accommodate 
the requests of various Republicans who support the effort. I stand 
ready to work with House leadership and have reached out to Speaker 
Boehner several times. I have not heard from House leadership once this 
year. I appreciate the efforts of such conservative House Republicans 
as Congressmen Tom Cole and Darrell Issa, who have tried to find common 
ground with reasonable compromise approaches to the tribal provisions. 
I know there are many others in the House of Representatives who 
believe that we must reauthorize and reinvigorate the Violence Against 
Women Act so that it protects all victims. It is not too late for 
others in the House to follow their lead and come together to pass a 
meaningful reform that protects all victims.
  The poor substitute the Republican House leadership is proposing will 
disappoint the community of violence survivors and those of us who are 
trying to prevent further violence by passing needed protections. If 
the House leadership were serious about getting the Violence Against 
Women Act reauthorized and protecting our most vulnerable victims 
against rape, sexual violence, stalking, and human trafficking, they 
would simply take up the Senate bill. So many Republicans, Democrats, 
and Independents here support it and passed that bill.
  I don't understand this picking and choosing about who is going to be 
considered a victim. I have said this so many times on this floor, I 
almost wonder if anybody hears it, but, as many other Senators have, I 
had the privilege of being a prosecutor before I came here. I went to a 
lot of very violent crime scenes at 2 and 3 and 4 o'clock in the 
morning, and some of them I remember almost as graphically as if it 
were yesterday, with a victim of severe violence, often dead, there on 
the floor. The police never said: Well, we have to find out if this 
victim is gay or straight, if this victim is Native American or an 
immigrant. No, they knew that a victim was a victim was a victim. If 
somebody has been treated that way, a crime has been committed, and the 
police want to find out who committed the crime and stop them before 
they do it again.
  Back then, we didn't have anything like the Violence Against Women 
Act--an act which has protected so many people before they could become 
a victim, and which provides the tools to prevent this sort of 
victimization. I think of some of the victims I saw, sometimes in the 
morgue, and I know if we had something like our Violence Against Women 
Act at that time, they would be alive today.
  So let's put aside gamesmanship and let's worry about the real 
victims in this country. None of us here will face the horrendous 
things these women go through, but we can help stop these horrendous 
things from happening to them, and we should do that.

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