Senate votes to renew, expand Violence Against Women Act; Rep. Huffman calls for House to pass act

February 13, 2013

By a robust bipartisan majority, the Senate voted Tuesday to renew the Violence Against Women Act with new assurances that gays and lesbians, immigrants and Native American women will have equal access to the act's anti-domestic violence programs.

Following the vote, North Coast Congressman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, called in a press release for Congress to pass the act, saying it is “so important that it's one of the very first bills I signed onto after I was sworn in as a member of Congress.”

The 78-22 Senate vote to reauthorize the two-decade-old act that has shielded millions of women from abuse and helped reduce national rates of domestic violence turns the focus to the House, where Republican leaders are working to come up with their own version.

”Over 160 million women across the country are watching and waiting to see if the House will act on this bill and finally provide them the protections from violence they deserve,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The act expired in 2011, putting efforts to improve its many federal programs on hold. Last year both the Republican-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate passed renewal bills, but they were unable to reach a compromise.

”Renewing VAWA is more than a year overdue, and I applaud my colleagues in the Senate for their passage of VAWA today,” Huffman said in a press release. “The House must act now to extend and improve the law.”

”The Violence Against Women Act has been necessary and effective in protecting women and saving lives. We should not wait another day,” the release continued. “I look forward to working for its swift passage.”

Six Rivers Planned Parenthood Director of Public Affairs Tia Baratelle said the act would support routine work that the local health center performs.

”The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is important to us,” she said. “Planned Parenthood health centers proactively screen and refer intimate partner violence. We are committed to our role as confidential and trusted health services providers.”

She said the act supported the local peer education group Spare Change.

”It goes toward supporting work in local communities that also includes conversations about healthy relationships,” she said. “That will give us the opportunity to be there for women whenever they need help.”

This year House Republicans, sensitive to their lackluster showing among women voters in the November election, have vowed to move expeditiously on the issue. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has taken the lead in negotiating the terms of a House bill.

On Monday 17 House Republicans wrote Cantor and Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, urging immediate action. The act's “programs save lives, and we must allow states and communities to build upon the successes of current VAWA programs so that we can help even more people,” they wrote.

The Senate bill, while promoted by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and other Democrats, is cosponsored by a Republican, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and garnered 23 Republican votes. All of the Senate's 20 women voted for the bill.

President Barack Obama praised the Senate in a statement for working across party lines to pass the bill and said: “the bill passed by the Senate will help reduce homicides that occur from domestic violence, improve the criminal justice response to rape and sexual assault, address the high rates of dating violence experienced by young women, and provide justice to the most vulnerable among us.”

The act provides grants to state and local authorities for legal assistance, transitional housing, law enforcement training, stalker databases and domestic violence hotlines. The Senate bill extends the act for five years and provides $659 million for VAWA programs, down 17 percent from the last reauthorization in 2005.

The legislation includes a provision, backed by a bipartisan group headed by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that would speed up the analysis of DNA evidence in rape cases. There's now a rape kit backlog estimated at 400,000, with evidence that might link an assailant to a victim now sitting on police department shelves for months and even years.

Provisions promoted by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's second-ranked Democrat, address sexual assault in immigration detention facilities and help ensure that child sex trafficking victims are referred for treatment rather than prosecuted as criminals.

The Senate on Tuesday also approved an amendment by Leahy reauthorizing a law that funds programs to combat human trafficking both inside and country and around the world.


Source: By Grant Scott-Goforth