One of Wisconsin’s representatives in Congress, along with state leaders of Native American and gay rights advocacy groups, voiced their support for an updated bill that aims to prevent violence against women, which is set to go into federal law Thursday.
According to a statement from President Barack Obama, the law, which passed at a 286-138 vote, will now assist Native Americans, undocumented immigrants and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community members who are victims of domestic and sexual violence as well as stalking.
“Eighteen years ago, I envisioned a world where women could live free from violence and abuse,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement. “Since VAWA first passed in 1994, we have seen a 64 percent reduction in domestic violence.”
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, one of three legislators to introduce the VAWA bill to Congress last week, said in a statement Thursday the bill was truly a victory for women everywhere.
Moore, who said on the House Floor last March she had been sexually assaulted many times as a child and raped as an adult, said Native American and LGBT victims of domestic and sexual abuse need equal protection under law.
“I would say as Sojourner Truth would say: Ain’t they women”? Moore said. “They deserve protections. We talk about the constitutional rights. Don’t women on tribal lands deserve the constitutional right of equal protection and not to be raped and battered and beaten and dragged back onto Native lands because they know they can be raped with impunity?”
Executive Director of the LGBT Center for Southeast Wisconsin Jolie McKenna said her group has been fighting to protect LGBT community members suffering abuse for 15 years. She added it is rare for domestic violence centers to provide support to gay and lesbian victims, so she is pleased the issue has finally received enough visibility to be addressed by federal law.
McKenna noted LGBT community members should be protected from sexual and domestic assault under law because they fall victim to these crimes as often as everyone else.
“Violence statistics within the LGBT community are exactly the same as they are for the straight community,” McKenna said.
UW law professor Richard Monette said a series of studies since 1996 have uncovered the high rates of physical and sexual violence against Native American tribal women in Wisconsin. He said he attributes the updated VAWA bill to an increase in awareness from these studies.
Monette, who is also the director of the Great Lakes Indian Law Center, said Wisconsin is one of only a handful of states that grants tribal groups legal jurisdiction. This means tribal authorities can prosecute members of the tribe who commit violent or sexually abusive crimes against Native American women.
However, he added women in the tribe would not typically be protected and criminal investigations rarely occur when these women are violated by individuals from outside the tribe. While tribal women will now be protected by the new VAWA law, Monette said men will not.
“I think that this is a first step only, but it seems like a big step,” Monette said “There’s a lot more work to do.”
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, however, did not vote for the legislation in the Senate because he said it turned a nonpartisan issue into a conflict-ridden and politically charged bill.
He said in a statement the reauthorized law grants unconstitutional rights to tribal groups and could inflate the federal deficit.
“The Senate has approved a piece of legislation that sounds nice, but which is fatally flawed,” Johnson said. “By including an unconstitutional expansion of tribal authority and introducing a bill before the Congressional Budget Office could review it to estimate its cost, Senate Democrats made it impossible for me to support a bill covering an issue I would like to address.”
