Two funeral services were held this weekend in my hometown. A man aged 32 and a woman aged 28 went missing during the first week of January. Their bodies were found buried in a makeshift grave in rural Oklahoma last week.
The suspect is believed to be a manipulative, abusive and controlling ex-boyfriend of the female victim.
The two victims, whose relationship has been described by friends and family as being purely platonic, had been murdered in a horrific and vengeful display of domestic violence.
This unbelievable story of domestic violence shook my hometown, but simultaneously reignited my outrage over violence against women and the legal system that fails to protect us.
The female victim in this story had reported multiple accounts of threatening and violent behavior of the suspect to the police months before she was murdered.
The legal system had been made plainly aware of the suspect’s potential for further violence. In the coming weeks, the family and community surrounding the victims will understand how swift and effective action by the justice system could have saved these two young people’s lives.
Unfortunately, lack of action in response to women expressing fear for their lives is the common thread woven throughout the United States’ justice system.
In October 2018, the slaying of University of Utah track athlete Lauren McCluskey by a former boyfriend stunned the nation. McCluskey had reported her ex-boyfriend’s potential for violence and retaliation over a dozen times to local police agencies. Her frantic and legitimate reports were lethargically ignored. She was subsequently shot and killed on campus while on the phone with her mother.
In the past few days, McCluskey’s parents took to the media to speak out in frustration over the preventability of their daughter’s death.
“McCluskey’s still-grieving parents Matt and Jill McCluskey said they believe their daughter’s death was preventable, and that the university failed to protect her,” according to an article from goodmorningamerica.com.
In addition to our already unresponsive legal system, President Trump inconspicuously edited the Department of Justice’s definition of domestic abuse in April.
In a story originally reported by Slate magazine, the Trump administration altered the former administration’s definition of domestic abuse by limiting it to only recognizing physical abuse.
“The previous definition included critical components of the phenomenon that experts recognize as domestic abuse—a pattern of deliberate behavior, the dynamics of power and control, and behaviors that encompass physical or sexual violence as well as forms of emotional, economic, or psychological abuse,” as stated by Slate.
By intentionally limiting our definition of domestic abuse, we are perpetuating the complacency of law enforcement and excluding a major portion of domestic abuse victims.
Domestic violence tragedies, like these and many others, will continue to occur if we remain silent while law enforcement systematically ignores our mothers’, sisters’ and daughters’ cries for help.
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