{"id":4248,"date":"2014-01-21T22:51:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T04:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=4248"},"modified":"2014-01-21T22:51:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T04:51:56","slug":"private-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/private-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Private Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #800080;\"><strong>\u201cEvery day in the US, at least four women are murdered by abusive (and often, ex) partners. Over 75% of the homicides occur when the woman attempts to leave or has left her abuser.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Today I attended the showing of the documentary Private Violence at Sundance Film Festival.\u00a0 The documentary follows the story of Deanna Walters, a mother who was abused horrifically by her estranged husband, ultimately leading to him kidnapping her and beating her with a Maglite flashlight over the period of four days from the back of his 18 wheeler with her young three year old daughter watching as he did it\u2026all this happened while the estranged husband\u2019s cousin was in the truck with them driving the vehicle.\u00a0 When the police finally pull the vehicle over they don\u2019t arrest the husband because the wife is too afraid to accuse him, so she is rushed to a hospital and he is allowed to simply drive away.\u00a0 Kit Gruelle, a former victim of abuse herself who now serves as an advocate to seek justice for women who have been abused, sets out to get justice for Deanna.\u00a0 It takes her well over a year and tremendous effort to get the authorities to even file any charges against the estranged husband.\u00a0 When you see how badly she was beaten it will sicken you to know that it took so long to have charges brought against this man.\u00a0 It took even longer to have his cousin charged as an accessory to the crime.\u00a0 The documentary highlights the problems with our justice system in protecting these women.\u00a0 It also highlights the need for community to get involved in helping these abused women and the need for people like Kit Gruelle who will help fight for justice.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a clip from the movie:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/iframesrc=\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/80041224width=500height=281webkitallowfullscreenmozallowfullscreenallowfullscreen\/iframe\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/80041224\" height=\"281\" width=\"500\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/a><\/p>\n<p>No question it is difficult to watch because it highlights the ugliest of crimes \u2013 being hurt by the person who is supposed to love you the most; the person who has sworn to protect you and stand by you.\u00a0 For the victim of abuse it causes feelings of shame and a sense of being unworthy of love. The victim feels humiliated and isolated.\u00a0 People wonder, \u201cwhy doesn\u2019t she just leave?\u201d or \u201cwhat did she do to cause that?\u201d , furthering the feelings of humiliation and embarrassment for the victim.\u00a0 The complexities of the emotions the victim goes through, the fear, shame, isolation, heartbreak, etc, are impossible to completely understand unless you have been through it yourself.\u00a0 But victims can overcome their situation \u2013 they can get help and get out \u2013 just as Deanna Walters did.\u00a0 She is an example of courage, strength, and moving forward to a better life.\u2026<\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in how you can help, the film\u2019s website provides information:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.privateviolence.com\/things_you_can_do.php\">http:\/\/www.privateviolence.com\/things_you_can_do.php<\/a><\/p>\n<p>~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEvery day in the US, at least four women are murdered by abusive (and often, ex) partners. Over 75% of the homicides occur when the woman attempts to leave or has left her abuser.\u201d Today I attended the showing of the documentary Private Violence at Sundance Film Festival.\u00a0 The documentary follows the story of Deanna [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[326,3261,3259,1234,3265,2097,3279,3280,163,3268,3262,1836,3276,3270,3272,3273,3260,3274,3275,3277,3266,3267,3263,35,545,3271,3258,3278,1231,3269,777,466,465,885,3264],"class_list":["post-4248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abuse","tag-abuser","tag-abusive","tag-advocate","tag-authorities","tag-beat","tag-complex","tag-complexity","tag-courage","tag-crime","tag-deanna-walters","tag-embarrassed","tag-embarrassment","tag-estranged","tag-ex","tag-heartbreak","tag-homicides","tag-humiliate","tag-humiliating","tag-isolation","tag-justice","tag-justice-system","tag-kit-gruelle","tag-love","tag-move-forward","tag-partners","tag-private-violence","tag-privateviolence-com","tag-protect","tag-protecting","tag-strength","tag-sundance","tag-sundance-film-festival","tag-understand","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4248"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4253,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4248\/revisions\/4253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}