    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [October 2, 1995]
    [Pages 1526-1528]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Observance of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month
    October 2, 1995

        Thank you very much, Sergeant Wynn, for your remarks and for
    dedicating your life to this important work. Thank you, Bonnie Campbell,
    for doing a great job as head of the Violence Against Women Program in
    the Justice Department. Thank you, Attorney General Reno, for believing
    in this and for driving it. Thank you, Secretary Shalala, for reminding
    us this is a human tragedy.
        Thank you, Jerry Rossi. You stood up here and you tried to convince
    us that you were really worried about the bottom line, and everybody who
    saw you knew that what you were really worried about was all those
    people out there, right and wrong. And every American who can see you
    would be proud of you and would wish that every person in business in
    this country would have those values and that kind of passion. Thank you
    so much.
        And thank you, Tana Sherman, for being brave enough to tell us your
    story. Before we came over here, Tana and the five people who are on the
    back row with Bonnie Campbell all told me their stories. One of them had
    to have her back broken before she actually asked for help. Another
    waited until her oldest child was assaulted with a meat cleaver.
        This is not just a woman's problem. I was glad to hear that. This is
    a children's problem, and it's a man's problem. And we're not doing
    anybody any favors, least of all the abusers, by ignoring it any longer.
    And I thank all these brave women for the power of their example. And
    there are others in this audience who have been severely abused in
    domestic situations; I thank them all for having the courage to be here
    and for the fight they are fighting.
        I'd also like to thank the Congress for the support that they gave
    this program a year ago and to say a special word of appreciation to the
    United States Senate for restoring funding for the Violence Against
    Women Program just last week. Thank you, Senator Leahy; thank you,
    Congresswoman Morella; thank you, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. And I have
    to thank my good friend Senator Joe Biden, in his absence, for all of
    their work on behalf of this program.
        Last week we had a great week in Washington. We celebrated progress
    in peace in the Middle East. We celebrated the beginnings of peaceful
    agreements in Bosnia. I spend a whole lot of my time trying to make or
    keep peace, Northern Ireland, Southern Africa, Haiti, trying to get rid
    of the nuclear weapons that have threatened to disturb our peace
    profoundly and permanently. But we don't need just peace with other
    countries, we need peace on our streets, in our schools, and perhaps
    most of all, in our homes. All of us should want a peaceful world, but
    we know a peaceful world has to start with each of us, in our homes and
    at work and in our lives.
        This problem has been swept under the rug for quite a long while
    now. It's really always

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    existed at some level or another. It is time to recognize that domestic
    violence can quickly and easily become criminal violent activity that
    affects us all, regardless of our race, our income, or our age,
    regardless of where we live or what we do.
        You've heard about how it increases health costs and absenteeism and
    reduces the productivity of businesses. You know the most important
    thing is that it undermines the most important things in life; it
    undermines the most important institution in the world.
        Most of us have been privileged to know, in greater or lesser
    degree, the joys of family life. And everyone who has ever been part of
    any family knows there's no such thing as a perfect family and they all
    have their problems. But there's a whole lot of difference between a
    family with joys and problems and a family dominated by violence and
    abuse.
        If there is anything I could say to you today that would leave a
    lasting impression, I would hope it would be to echo what the fine man
    who introduced me said, and that is that we don't have to put up with
    this. We do not have to put up with this. We can do something about it.
    It can be changed. It can be better.
        And everybody, not just the battered women but their children who
    suffer psychological wounds that can only be imagined and can never be
    fully predicted, and the abusers themselves, will be better off if we
    determine that we are going to put a quick, firm, rapid, unambiguous
    stop to every single case we find out about, as soon as we find out
    about it. That is what we should all leave here determined to do.
        I wish the First Lady could be here today, but Hillary has to--she's
    going to New York, and she couldn't be here. But when we lived in Little
    Rock, we spent a lot of time at the shelter for battered and abused
    women and children. It was run by some saintly people we knew and
    respected. We enjoyed, if you can use that word, the time we spent
    there. We learned a lot. And it sort of stiffened my resolve to see this
    as a problem of society, not just an unfortunate thing that happens to
    some families on occasion, including mine.
        And when we were debating the crime bill a year ago, I was so moved
    by the commitment that the Attorney General had and that many in the
    Congress had to make a bipartisan departure from national policy and say
    that we were actually going to single this out, that we were going to
    pass a crime bill that was comprehensive and meaningful, that carried
    the real potential of lowering the crime rate, changing the conditions
    in which crime would occur. And it really was a brilliant piece of
    legislation. It had the assault weapons ban. It had stronger penalties
    for serious offenders.
        You see now people are beginning to be put away for good under the
    ``three strikes and you're out'' law, and the two cases that I've seen,
    I'd say the law has been properly implemented. It had money for
    prevention, for community strategies. It had money for 100,000 police
    officers. We see all over the country now community policing lowering
    the crime rate. You do not have to put up with this; we can make this
    better. We can bring the crime rate down, and we can certainly reduce
    the rate of domestic violence.
        But the Violence Against Women Act is really a peculiar part of the
    genius of the crime bill because of its commitment to raise to national
    prominence an issue that had never, ever been there before and because
    it combines tough sanctions against abusers with assistance to police
    and to prosecutors and to shelters. And I don't know--several of the
    people who talked with me before I came out here were emphasizing how
    important it is to educate and train not only the police officers but
    also the prosecutors and the judges. All the police can do is to bring
    the case to the criminal justice system. Prosecutors and the courts have
    to do the rest.
        To make sure this act had a good chance to work, we created the
    Office of Violence Against Women in the Justice Department, and we named
    Bonnie Campbell, the former attorney general of Iowa, to head it. And we
    hope that we can say now that as a matter of national policy, with the
    support of people all across America in uniform, in women's groups, in
    support groups, the days of men using physical violence to control the
    lives of their wives, their girlfriends, and their children are over.
    And it is not a women's issue; it's an American issue, it's a values
    issue, and it is now an issue around the world.
        A lot of kind things have been said about the speech that Hillary
    made at the women's conference in Beijing, speaking out against abuses
    against women and little girls in other parts of the world. But I would
    remind you, she also spoke out against the problem of family violence.
    And the Beijing conference made that

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    an international goal for improving the condition of women the world
    over. And since we had so much to do with that, we ought to say, ``We've
    got a lot of work to do right here in the United States, and we want to
    lead the way to guarantee women and their children a safe life and a
    chance at a good, constructive family.''
        Again, let me say, I'm grateful to all the corporations who have
    worked on this. Jerry Rossi made an eloquent statement. There are many
    others; the GAP, Liz Claiborne, Aetna, Polaroid are among the great
    companies in this country who have made a difference in the way their
    employees are treated and the way they think about themselves and their
    options and their possibilities. I thank them for that.
        I want to thank the Congress again--I mean the Senate, for restoring
    the funding. I want to say again, we will not be able to do this right
    unless there are police officers like Sergeant Wynn who will give
    themselves to this work. And I often say this in Washington--very often
    a national movement like this starts with someone like him, who had to
    live with the reality of domestic abuse. But we can't bring it all the
    way home with only police officers who grew up in families where there
    was abuse. We now have to have a systematic commitment to sensitize
    people who, thank God, did not have to live through it to be a part of
    this movement, to sensitize prosecutors, to sensitize judges, to
    sensitize all of us in decisionmaking capacities, whether or not we had
    domestic abuse in our homes.
        And let me finally say that as a kickoff to the National Domestic
    Violence Awareness Month, I signed today an Executive memorandum to
    ensure that our Federal Government continues to be a leader in this
    national effort. I've asked the heads of all the executive departments
    to conduct employee awareness campaigns modeled after the one that the
    Attorney General has put in place at the Department of Justice, to
    provide information and the resources to deal with domestic violence.
    After all, we know there must be Federal employees at work, even as we
    speak, who themselves are the victims of domestic violence and who are
    sitting there at their desks staring blankly at a piece of paper while
    we here proclaim victory in this fight, and they haven't even taken the
    first step. So we want to set a good example.
        Let me lastly say that, to all the women here and all across America
    who are abused or who have been abused, you are not invisible. The
    people who have stood with you today can now say that you are being
    heard, you are being seen, you are being understood.
        The following quote is from one of Hillary's favorite books, and I
    asked if I could use it today. It's called ``In the Spirit,'' by Susan
    Taylor, the editor of Essence magazine, and it talks about your courage,
    your strength, and your hope. She writes, quote, ``While we cannot
    change the past, with the isdom of spirit, we can change what it means
    to us and to our future. With understanding and compassion, we can break
    a cycle of despair, rise above our sorrows, and find a new emotional
    home from which to create a brighter tomorrow. Each breath we take
    offers us a chance to create a better life.''
        Now, I hope because of all these efforts, we will all, with each
    breath we take, resolve that a part of that better life will be less and
    less and less domestic violence and abuse, until we have taken it out of
    the spirit and the soul and the life of the United States of America.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:06 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Sgt. Mark Wynn, detective,
    Nashville-Davidson, TN, police department; Jerry Rossi, president,
    Marshalls, Inc.; and Tana Sherman, survivor of domestic violence. The
    proclamation on National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the
    related memorandum is listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.