This video was created by Sigurna kuća (“Safe House,” in Croatian) and shows a year of abuse in one minute. The pictures are staged.
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How do we reduce rates of sexual assault?
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusThe hard fact is that, while it’s clear that sexual assault is never the fault of the victim, and the involvement of alcohol in no way excuses the perpetrators’ heinous crime, it’s a little less clear how to most helpfully discuss the correlation between rates of sexual assault and alcohol. Once you know the research […]
What do you say to a child who has witnessed domestic violence?
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusThis year in Maine, about 27,000 youth are estimated to have direct exposure to domestic violence as they watch events — or are victims of actions — that occur in their homes. Nearly one in 10 children saw one family member assault another within the last year. They may see their father beat their mother […]
How specific policies can help stop Maine’s prescription drug abuse epidemic
Drug Abuse Maine FocusThe rapid rise of the sale of prescription drugs between 1999 and 2010 has resulted in a corresponding problem: death. Sales of prescription painkillers have quadrupled nationally in that time, and so have overdoses. Now more people die from prescription drug overdoses than those from heroin and cocaine combined. In Maine, the rate of death […]
Are Maine men standing up to domestic violence?
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusCarlin Whitehouse of Portland, a prevention program educator for Family Crisis Services in Bridgton, recently wrote an OpEd for the BDN called “A Maine man against violence against women.” That headline is also the slogan for bumper stickers making their way around the state on cars, vans and trucks. The goal is to get more […]
Why don’t you just leave?
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusBillie-Jean Niedorowski, an advocate at Spruce Run-Womancare Alliance in Bangor, put her domestic violence experience to paper in an OpEd for the BDN today. She details horrific examples of her former abuser’s control. Importantly, she discusses why it’s not easy to leave. She writes: For all the screaming and crying, all I knew was I […]
The wide reach of domestic violence homicide
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusEach year, an estimated 30,000 people are victims of domestic violence in Maine. Even if people don’t experience the crime directly, it leaves a wide path of devastation. People never know when the crime will happen to someone they love and tear into their own life. It happened to Pat Pendleton, 72, of Rockport, who recently shared her experience dealing with the shooting death of her daughter, Vicki, in 1987, and raising her two children.
Protecting victims from their pimps
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusWhat can communities do about sex trafficking?
Maine’s chance to predict, stop domestic violence homicides
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine FocusOver the course of 20 years, Dorothy Giunta-Cotter’s husband, William, kidnapped her, beat her and strangled her with a telephone cord. He pushed her down a flight of stairs when she was pregnant. The day he hit one of their daughters repeatedly in the head, because he didn’t like what she was wearing, Dorothy took […]
The making of Proof
Domestic and Sexual Violence Maine Focus Project AnnouncementsLearn how a team at the BDN created a multimedia project called Proof, about sexual assault in Maine, and our survivors’ response to it.