‘Til Death Do Us Part: Inside the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Domestic Violence Exposé

[niyad]

(trigger warning)

(the full expose can be read at the second link)

‘Til Death Do Us Part: Inside the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Domestic Violence Exposé



This week, The Post and Courier, a family-owned and operated newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Public Service gold medal for their in-depth investigation into the devastation wrought by domestic violence in their state. In seven heart-wrenching installments, “‘Til Death Do Us Part“ explores the roles culture, patriarchy, law enforcement and legislation play in enabling domestic violence, as well offering commonsense strategies to combat it both statewide and nationally. The Ms. Blog spoke to Jennifer Berry Hawes, one of four journalists tasked with exposing the brutal reality of domestic violence in South Carolina, about shedding light on the suffering of so many at home.

Why this story now?

It started [in 2013] when the Violence Policy Center released its annual rankings for women who are killed by their domestic partners. It’s a ranking that comes out every year and South Carolina is always near the top so, for us, quite honestly, it wasn’t incredibly shocking that South Carolina was first. It’s one of those things where we’re somewhat used to covering, so originally, we kind of approached it as the usual daily story and then my colleagues got together and discussed taking a deeper look. It wasn’t just that we were ranked number one, but that our rate was twice that of the national average. There was obviously something going on here and we decided to take a deeper look at what that was.

How did you approach gathering the data and interview subjects?

[First], we divided up some of the work just by topic. Then, as a group, we decided to take a look at a list [compiled by] The Silent Witness National Initiative that details all of the people who have been killed by their domestic partners [each] year. We went through those lists of all the people who were killed and we tried to trace back details about the perpetrators’ offenses. We went back and looked at [their] other criminal domestic violence (CDV) convictions, other assault-type convictions… if they were repeat offenders. That proved to be really difficult and that’s when we really started to think this is one of the problems. In South Carolina, your first CDV offense is a maximum in jail of 30 days. There were abusers who had multiple first offenses so, there again is another obvious flaw in the system. If you get just a matter of weeks for beating your wife and then do it again and again just get a matter of weeks, what is your [deterrent]? Even if you have the moral recognition that what you’re doing is wrong, you’re not suffering any real punishment. That’s when we realized more than three hundred women had died [at the hands of abusive partners] in the past decade. [About] 1 every 12 days. So, we put a database together and then moved forward gathering more information about the victims themselves, pulled out some of the cases we wanted to really dive into and then we met with surviving victims who could share their stories. One thing that we found that I didn’t realize was that women are actually the most at risk of being killed [by abusive partners] when they do try to leave [and] that’s one reason why a lot of them stay.

Were you surprised by the prevalence and severity of domestic violence?

I have to say when I went in, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of it, [but I] was completely proven wrong. I had people come out of the woodwork. A neighbor of mine, the wife of one of my sons’ coaches [whose] mother had been a victim, there was a killing in my own neighborhood. You start to realize that it’s everywhere and how hush-hush it’s kept. I thought at the start of this that we may wind up focusing on a few key victims who have particularly disturbing stories to drive this, but I think what we found was there were so many. These were women who [felt] trapped in their relationships financially, but others were the breadwinners in their family. They were educated, they had the [financial] ability to leave and support themselves, but there’s so much more entwined in why they stayed. Whether it was because they believed nobody else would care about them ever or they thought, “if only my husband stops drinking, if only he stops doing drugs, if only he could control his temper, if only I’m a better wife, if only I don’t screw up dinner.” It was just so much more complicated than I expected.

. . . .

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/04/26/til-death-do-us-part-inside-the-pulitzer-prize-winning-domestic-violence-expose/


http://www.postandcourier.com/tilldeath/partone.html

https://www.vpc.org/ (the violence policy center)

http://www.silentwitness.net/ (the silent witness initiative--stories of domestic violence)

[niyad]

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