Human Rights Activist Leads Domestic Violence Discussion

Reebok Human Rights Award winner Stacey Kabat led a discussion on domestic violence last night as a part of this week's Take Back the Night events.

The audience, over half of whom knew people who were the victims of domestic violence, watched a screening of Kabat's Academy Award winning documentary "Defending Our Lives," a film about eight women imprisoned for killing their abusers.

Following the film, Kabat offered statistics and answered questions from the audience.

Kabat said domestic violence is the number-one danger facing women in the United States.

"We desperately need your help," she implored the audience of approximately 40 students. "I believe domestic violence is a human rights emergency."

Although roughly 95 percent of the victims of domestic violence are females, Kabat stressed the widespread effects of violence in the home.

"This is not a women's issue. This violence affects everyone," she said.

In this way, Kabat said she supports one of the purposes of Take Back the Night, to make women's issues more universal.

"Take Back the Night not only brings really strong campus leaders together to work to improve the situation on campus," said Lauren A. Hammer '98, a co-chair of Domestic Crisis Outreach Committee (DCOC). "It allows those leaders to channel women's concerns, which should be the concern of both sexes, into campus and community life."

Kabat said the elusive nature of dealing with domestic violence makes it difficult to bring about change.

"What is so insidious about this violence is that you never know where it's going to come from," she said.

One approach Kabat advocated was improving education on the national level, stressing the need to provide information in this kind of forum.

"The situation will change, and it constantly does, but we need to talk about it in our communities," she said.

The audience responded enthusiastically to Kabat's speech.

"I think this is really great," said Jennifer L. Fines '99, a volunteer with DCOC. "I was inspired by her confidence that on a grassroots level [the threat of domestic violence] could possibly change."

The speech was sponsored by the Take Back the Night Organization and DCOC.