"Intimate partner violence is epidemic in this country."
 | By Susannah Meadows Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
About two weeks ago, as the media erupted with news that a young woman named Gabrielle Petito was missing, we received a guest essay submission about intimate partner violence. Though a 911 caller reported seeing Petito being slapped by her boyfriend, and she was found dead a month later, we don't know if she was the victim of abuse by her boyfriend or if he killed her. |
The essay, written by Amy Butcher, tells a larger story. She reports that one in four women and one in 10 men have suffered from sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner. The numbers are even more horrific for women of color and people who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. |
The first question that came to me after reading her essay was, how could this be? |
Butcher illuminates not only the scale of the problem — she calls intimate partner violence an epidemic in this country — but also helps us grasp the reality of this abuse by sharing her own story. |
She describes how she was in a relationship with a man seven years ago who could become intimidating and terrifying. One night, he "became enraged suddenly and uncontrollably. He was livid, gesticulating wildly and moving closer to me," she writes. "Though he did not physically harm me, I believed that evening that he would kill me." |
Butcher goes on to explain that she didn't tell anyone about it at that time. "I was embarrassed that the person I loved was someone who could be so cruel to me," she writes. |
She says that no one would have believed how scared she was of him, and she wouldn't have believed it either. "We don't think these things happen to us until they do." |
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