On Thursday night, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey will light up the dome at the Arizona State Capitol purple -- a color that represents Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It's an issue that does not discriminate. Domestic violence affects all cultures, races, ages, and genders. Arizona Public Radio spoke about the issue with Holly Hulen, assistant director of the Family Violence Institute at Northern Arizona University
Aaron Granillo: Let's start out with the term, "domestic violence." It can refer to a lot of different situations. Can you give us a general overview of what exactly domestic violence is?
Holly Hulen: When we're looking at domestic violence, we can look at physical, sexual, and emotional violence. Often I think people think that domestic violence is the hitting, the kicking, the pushing, and more violent acts. Domestic violence can also incorporate that emotional part. Things like just saying, "you're fat." Or your no good, nobody's going to love you. Or cooking a dinner and saying that dinner's terrible. So, it's just that constant coercive control and putting somebody down.
And I bet that has long-term, short-term effects on people, right? People who are in the situations that you just described -- what sort of effects can that have on them for the rest of their lives?
Often isolation. So, they feel alienated. they lose contact with their friends and family. So that's part of it. Children also have impacts when they witness domestic violence. And, those impacts can include lower educational scores, it can increase anxiety. It can have behavioral problems. it could impact them as they become teenagers and have higher risk factors that are involved.
In Arizona, we know domestic violence affects about 25 percent of women. About one in seven men as well. What do this numbers look like across our region here in Northern Arizona?
In our region, I would say that they parallel those numbers. When we're looking at statistics in Flagstaff this past year, Flagstaff PD responded to over 2,000 calls that had some kind of domestic violence involvement. Arizona typically is one of the top ten states that has a domestic violence rate, and also is one of the top ten states usually for intimate partner homicide. The other factor that plays a role is that Arizona has a large reservation population. And Native American areas typically have a higher rate of domestic violence.
And why do you think that is? Because there have been studies published recently by the federal government that show the Indian American population suffers from domestic violence at much higher rates than the rest of the country. Why is that?
There is a couple of reasons why that might be so. One is the geographic area itself. It's a large rural area. A larger amount of land, so services are not readily available. Often times if law enforcement receives a call it can take a couple hours to respond just because of where it's located. There are cultural reasons where families may feel more connected and less likely to report. There's also poverty. Poverty can be a big factor.
A lot of times we hear situations where somebody is being abused. They are in a domestic violence relationship and they don't leave. They feel like maybe they can't leave or don't want to. What are the reasonings behind that?
I think it's important to remember that a lot of times people do leave. There are a lot of women or men who do leave a relationship. But, people stay in relationships that they're being abused for many different reasons. Sometimes it can be because they may think they are going to change. It could be for the children. It's often a lack of resources. They feel like they have nowhere else to go. They may be fearful. They may be afraid for their children. They may be threatened for their lives. But, I think it's important to also ask why does he or she batter rather than why doesn't she leave?