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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I just want to join the comments of Senator Murkowski and Senator Ernst and Senator Feinstein. I want to thank them for allowing me to join a pretty power-packed team working on the Violence Against Women Act.
Senator Feinstein is our lead sponsor on the Democratic side. I am happy to work with her all the time. I want to especially thank Senator Ernst on the Republican side, who has been designated as the official negotiator on the reauthorization of VAWA for the last 3 years, and, as you have just heard, a passionate supporter of our efforts, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska--we worked closely together on other legislation, and this one is extremely important.
This afternoon, Senators Ernst, Feinstein, Murkowski, and myself have announced that we have reached a bipartisan agreement and that we will be introducing an updated version of VAWA next month when we return. We are coming together in supporting the simple premise that VAWA will save lives. We need to ensure every survivor, whether they live in rural Alaska or urban Illinois, can reach out for a lifeline in a moment of crisis.
We still have work to do. We still need cosponsors. We are going to be working individually, Member to Member, to make sure this important legislation passes.
It is a statistic that should shock us all: Nearly one in three women living today--nearly one in three--has experienced some form of physical or sexual violence. That finding came from the WHO, surveying women in more than 160 countries across the globe. It proves that this crisis of sexual and domestic violence touches every community in the world. But our responsibility, first, is here at home, in all of the 50 States, to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect women who are vulnerable.
Let me tell you about one of those survivors; her name is Meaghan. And she reached out to my office to share her story. Five years ago, Meaghan was brutally assaulted by her ex-husband. The beating was so violent that, today, she is still suffering from hearing loss.
While Meaghan was being attacked, her 2-and-half-year-old son--who is on the autism spectrum--ran over to help her. Her ex-husband responded by throwing the child through a closet. Meaghan says the experience was so traumatizing that her son didn't speak for a full year after the attack.
When Meaghan finally broke free from her ex-husband, she packed her bags, buckled her two children into the car, and fled for her life. But he continued tracking her, requiring Meaghan and her children to move 10 times in the last few years.
As Meaghan and her family have begun to heal from this horrifying ordeal, she says they have found much-needed compassion and support in the detectives and social workers that came to their aid.
She wrote that service providers ``were patient with me and didn't push me, [they] only showed me they cared, and most of all didn't give up . . . with their support and guidance I found the light at the end of the tunnel and I fought my way out of the darkness that my ex- husband had cast . . . on my life.''
Meaghan's story illustrates how laws like VAWA have the potential to change--and even save--lives. In her case, VAWA provided critical resources to law enforcement and social service agencies that helped her and her family escape a perilous situation.
And today, at a moment when sexual and domestic violence are on the rise in America, we need to do more than reauthorize VAWA. We need to build on its achievements--and we need to do it on a bipartisan basis.
I thank the group for allowing me to join them.
We have work to do, and I am looking forward to doing it with you.
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