Til Death Do We Part: A Pulitzer for Domestic Violence Reporting
South Carolina has long been a dangerous place for women, particularly those in intimate partner relationships. The Carolina Post & Journal took on the topic and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its efforts. The series, Til Death Do We Part, explored the state’s history of sanctioned violence. South Carolina is a state leader for the number of women murdered by men, and on some occasions it has been No. 1. In the latest report, South Carolina was ranked No. 2.
The Post & Journal’s investigators studied 300 deaths of females by current or former intimate partners over the past decade and exposed a legal system in which first-time offenders face at most 30 days in jail for a domestic violence beating but can get five years in prison for cruelty to a dog.
Glenn Smith, special project manager for the Post and Journal, stated on WNYC‘s The Takeaway, “Guys grow up to believe this is how you treat women.”
There you have it in a nutshell, folks.
And the problem exists in all U.S. jurisdictions.
The solution to domestic abuse will come only when we examine how we are raising our boys. And we must be willing to do something about it. Until civil society is willing to fund effective interventions with boys, including examining why we do not consider verbal degradation of women in front a children as child abuse, little change will be made.
The effort would require a huge culture shift. We would have to admit what survivors have been saying all along: verbal and emotional abuse is far more damaging, and far more difficult to recover from, than physical abuse. Non-physical forms of violence are prelude to serious physical injury and death. We would have to overcome our fears of invading privacy when physical abuse may not be involved. Mostly, we would have to let go of our stereotypes of what constitutes abuse and open our minds to a paradigm shift.
You may listen to the entirety of the Smith interview here.