[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

[[Page 1527]]

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.