Domestic Violence Headlines for the Week of June 9

Another week and we're still manifesting believing women and not romanticizing red flags. Here are some domestic violence headlines you may have missed.

Budget Cuts, Reclassification Suggested for Office on Violence Against Women 

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) may be “consolidated” into the Office of Justice Programs while experiencing a 29 percent cut to its funding if the fiscal 2026 budget request appendix is approved by Congress. 

While the current administration has been making cuts to programs across the board in order to address what it considers wasteful spending, the multimillion-dollar reduction in OVW’s budget would be like “a slap in the face to survivors all over the country,” says Jean Bruggeman, the executive director of Freedom Network USA, a coalition of anti-trafficking service providers and survivors.

“You’re going to leave survivors without a confidential counselor, without medical assistance, without emergency shelter and without accompaniment into courthouses to go through getting protection orders,” she added.

The additional suggestion to potentially remove OVW’s name and fold it into another department would have an impact on the work it does to reach victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and dating violence, say experts.

“It would convey a de-prioritization of our nation’s commitment and efforts to prevent and address violence against women,” said Rosie Hidalgo, former director of OVW under the Biden administration. She added the change would “undermine the ability of the OVW Director to exercise leadership” in implementing Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) grant programs.

However, the administration argued that grant funding from the office has been “offered for biological men,” which could be the impetus for deleting it as an entity of its own with “Women” in the name.

In September of last year, VAWA celebrated its 30th anniversary and allocated $690 million in grants to support services for survivors. It took the steadfast dedication of advocates like Debby Tucker and Rita Smith to help pass VAWA in 1994. Since then, the OVW has awarded over $8 billion in grants to fund programs combating violent crimes against women. But Alliance for HOPE International co-founder and CEO Gael Strack says there is still so much to be done. 

“We have seen domestic violence homicides rise across the country for the last ten years.  We cannot be celebrating when we are seeing murders on the rise and now are seeing large numbers of staged crime scene homicides—hidden homicides—where men kill women and make it look like a suicide or an accidental death.”

Source: rollcall.com

Man Kills His Family and Himself, Police Blame Depression

A tragic double murder-suicide occurred Saturday in Katy, Texas. Police responded to an apartment on Saturday where they discovered a 7-year-old child and a woman dead from gunshot wounds. A man was also shot, but still alive. He was transported to a local hospital where he died from his injuries. 

According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, the 43-year-old man was the husband and father of the victims and “had been depressed lately due to unemployment and other issues,” but that “we don’t know what transpired that led him to take this type of action.”

It is unclear if the perpetrator had a history of domestic violence, however, many abusers do blame their abusive behavior on mental illness, as well as drug or alcohol misuse. The fact is that these things do not cause someone to exert power and control over others. Abusers are often portrayed as being “out of control,” but advocates attest the opposite is true. Abusers are very much in control of their behavior and often only exercise their violent tendencies behind closed doors. They often have a plan for exactly what they will do to continue to exert power and control over a partner and/or children. 

People who suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, panic disorders, substance use disorders and personality disorders are more likely to abuse their partners than people without these problems. But mental illness does not cause them to strike out against their partners. Treatment for the mental illness will not necessarily make them less violent. Most people with mental illness do not harm others. Instead, they are more likely to be victims themselves.

Abusers who threaten to kill themselves should be taken very seriously as many who decide to take their own lives often kill their partners at the same time, yet another power and control grab. An estimated 48 to 40 percent of abusers who murder their partners kill themselves afterward. To learn more, read, “What to Do If an Abuser Threatens Suicide.”

Source: People.com

At Least 20 D.C. Area Women Fell Victim to Serial Strangler They Met on a Dating App 

An Army major facing 43 counts of sexual assault and strangulation was in court this week in Fort Meade, Md. Jonathan Batt, 40, was court-martialed after being charged with raping or sexually assaulting at least 17 women in the Washington, D.C. area between 2019 and 2023. Batt was originally charged with assaulting 20 women, but several of the charges were dropped when some of the victims decided not to testify in court. 

The women stumbled upon each other in 2022 through a Facebook group called “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Someone had posted a photo of Batt and multiple women came forward to share their disturbing histories with him. 

The women met Batt mostly through dating apps. At first, he seemed like a decent guy, they testified. But when things became intimate, the women’s accounts held disturbing similarities—Batt violently strangled them, sometimes placed a pillowcase over their head or around their necks, and several women attested he tied them up with ropes and bit them, all without their consent. 

Batt’s lawyer, Nathan Freeburg, argued that strangulation is actually “a pretty common sexual act.” He claims that text messages the women sent to Batt after their dates do not indicate the women thought they were violated. 

Strangulation during sex, often inaccurately referred to as “choking,” and sometimes called erotic asphyxiation or breath play, is actually not a safe practice in intimacy or any other setting, no matter if it’s consensual or not. Strangulation can kill a victim in mere minutes, though sometimes death can come days later as a result of a blood clot, cardiac arrest or stroke. Many victims don’t believe they’ve been injured from strangulation because they rationalize that they never lost consciousness or the act lasted only seconds. However, this is simply untrue.

Besides delayed death, strangulation victims also run the risk of a TBI or traumatic brain injury. A mild TBI, which strangulation more commonly leads to, may not even show up on an MRI and CAT scan, and symptoms like headaches, difficulty thinking, memory problems, attention deficits, mood swings and frustration can be easily overlooked or misdiagnosed. The more often a person is strangled, the higher their risk for brain damage. 

“It takes only four pounds per square inch of pressure to the neck to occlude [close off circulation to] the jugular veins,” says Casey Gwinn, co-founder of the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention “Once they are occluded and the carotid arteries keep pumping blood up to the brain, brain cells start to die within 10 to 15 seconds. Externally, little red spots appear called petechial hemorrhages. You can see those.  But if those petechiae are on the outside of skin they are also inside the brain—and that is permanent brain damage.” 

Not to mention, strangulation is also the most prominent predictor of homicide. Strangulation is a tactic of perpetrators who want to show that they can kill if they want to. In a study of homicide victims killed by an intimate partner, it was found that 43 percent had suffered a non-fatal strangulation prior to their murder.

Batt has elected to be tried by military jury, known as a panel, which will consist entirely of officers senior to him, by law. The trial is scheduled to run through June 27. If found guilty of rape, the charge carries a potential life sentence according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ. 

Sources: WashingtonPost.com, Stripes.com