The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the greatest social upheaval of our lifetimes. In nearly every aspect of American society, this deadly virus has sustained its damaging impact. It not only created unprecedented challenges for governments and healthcare personnel, it also exacerbated already existing societal problems. Now 15 months into the pandemic, we continue to see the strongest and most devastating effects of COVID hit the most vulnerable population groups: those who rely on social safety programs to be able to put food on the table, those who live on the streets, and domestic violence victims, to name a few.
Around the world, local government officials imposed shelter in place orders, requiring residents to stay home as much as possible in order to curtail the spread of the virus. However, for domestic violence (DV) victims, and their children, home is a dangerous place. Without having separation from abusers, victims have found themselves trapped in an environment where the opportunity for violence against them surges. According to the American Review of Public Administration, there is typically a strong increase in domestic violence in times of turmoil, when individuals accumulate financial stressors, suffer job loss, experience more trauma, and community dislocation. The COVID-19 pandemic is a combination of all of the above.
Another major factor contributing to the elevated impact COVID-19 has on DV survivors is the reduction of resources. Shelters, victim service centers, and other response services are not operating in the same pre-pandemic manner, and in some cases, are not operating at all. At a time when individuals already feel socially isolated and scared for their safety, it is especially handicapping to not have the same access to potentially life-saving resources for themselves and their children. The organizations and entities responsible for assisting DV survivors, even before the pandemic, were either ill-equipped, such as law enforcement, or understaffed. With the pandemic-related reductions in employees and capacity, these resources are further overextended, which pose even greater safety risks for survivors.
As predicted by these heightened risk factors, reported domestic violence incidents surged in the United States by 8.1 percent since March 2020. Across the United States, there have also been pockets of data in individual cities. New York City reported a 10 percent increase while cities like Portland, Oregon and San Antonio, TX reported increases closer to 20 percent.
In the city where I currently reside, Chicago, the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline received 16 percent more calls in 2020 than in 2019, and according to experts at the Chicago Battered Women’s Network, the increase in calls can be directly explained by the sudden evaporation of other vital essentials, such as leaving home for work or taking kids to child care. Similarly, according to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine and the United Nations Group U.N. Women, cases of domestic violence abroad increased 300 percent in Hubei, China, 25 percent in Argentina, 30 percent in Cyprus, 33 percent in Singapore, and 50 percent in Brazil. Existing and growing evidence shows the pandemic has made domestic violence globally more common and more severe.
Clearly, the pandemic has taken a uniquely catastrophic toll on domestic violence victims. There are two major questions remaining. The first is, What can leaders do to protect those at risk of domestic violence amid the pandemic? The Inter-American Commission on Human rights, as well as the U.N, emphasize the need for governments to incorporate gender perspectives in their COVID-19 responses. Several countries have taken innovative steps in this direction. Italy more proactively advertised an already existing service called the 1522 helpline, a government-assistance website to report incidents of stalking and harassment. Canada allocated $50 million to women’s shelters and sexual assault centers as part of its COVID relief package. And other European Union countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, have labeled services for domestic violence victims as essential, which allows these services to maintain capacity and ability to serve without reduction.
Other solutions, perhaps more pertinent to the United States, include ensuring equal access to broadband Internet services in people’s homes. This would permit survivors to have expanded access to telehealth services as well as maintain critical connections with other social services. Access could be expanded if a subsidy program were created, something that mirrors the Federal Communications Commission Lifeline program.
Second, governments need to understand the role of social determinants of health in American society, and how it creates an inequitable distribution of hardships amongst survivors of color. Following this, any government action to address the needs of survivors must be drafted with this in mind. To its credit, the Biden Administration did incorporate significant relief for domestic violence victims in the recently passed American Rescue Plan. The legislation includes almost $50 million in direct aid for service providers, most of which are culturally sensitive services in order to address the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. Other important elements is the $180 million in Family Violence Prevention and Services Act funds for desperately needed emergency housing services, and $198 million for rape crisis centers, the first federal relief funding targeted specifically to respond to sexual violence.
The second biggest question remaining is, What will be the long-lasting impact of COVID-19 on domestic violence victims? With the vaccine rollout going smoothly in the United States, and with health experts predicting a return to semi-normal society in fall 2021, we can assume the pandemic will soon subside. If so, many of the exacerbated problems domestic violence survivors experience will somewhat diminish.
However, domestic violence itself will remain a pervasive problem in the United States and around the world. One of the most concerning future challenges is the potential the pandemic creates for future increases in domestic violence. The APA PsycNet completed a study on intergenerational transmission of partner violence, and found that the odds of a person becoming a perpetrator of violence as an adult increases dramatically if that person witnessed or was the victim of violence as a child. Reduced services for victims, a direct result of the pandemic, mitigates the opportunity to break the cycle of violence in families. Additionally, children have been spending much more time at home with perpetrators of violence, due to the pandemic, and may have increased exposure to domestic violence. And as noted above, the greater the exposure, the greater the risk down the line of becoming a perpetrator. Experts warn that COVID-19 will also likely increase of teen dating violence.
I should note that while many of the long term effects of the pandemic on domestic violence are still unknown, what is clear is we need to learn from the lessons of the past. Dramatically reducing incidents of domestic violence requires x-raying ongoing public health grievances, why they still exist, and eventually overhauling how we think of victim support. As previously mentioned, many of the obstacles domestic violence victims must overcome to receive help are because of much more fundamental issues with our healthcare system, housing system, and economic stability system. None of these were created by the pandemic, the pandemic just illuminated their integral problems.
In order to prevent future generations from the same trauma, as a society we need to reevaluate if these structural systems are truly serving everyone equitably, or if they were indeed manufactured to be helpful for some but obstructive to many more. That is the biggest lesson we can take from the pandemic, which forced us to really think about these issues. We must protect survivors, here on out, by striving for more systemic change.
Great article. Thank you for increasing awareness for this vulnerable population!