Domestic Violence Happens Everywhere, All The Time.

A week ago the term "domestic violence" was not one that was tossed around much in daily conversation. Chris Brown's (alleged) assault on Rihanna has brought this issue to the extreme forefront, covered widely in the mainstream media, countless blogs and even more twitter feeds. A lot of the news is speculation and more disturbingly, complete rumour.

Which is why I felt a certain tingle of synchronicity when I received word that the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) released their annual survey of domestic violence, taken over a 24-hour period on September 17th, 2008.

While the assault on Rihanna has made us all (even Kanye West!) take a cold hard look at domestic violence, we should all continue the momentum of awareness and take the time to read through this report. The statistics are sobering, but most importantly, they highlight that domestic violence happens way too often, every single day in every city.

According to the survey, despite being extremely underfunded, domestic violence programs, in one day:

• served 60,799 victims, 30,433 sought refuge in emergency shelters or transitional housing and the remaining 30,366 received counseling, legal advocacy and children's aid
  
• received 21,683 calls to hotlines
  
• turned down 8,927 requests due to lack of funds and/or resources
  

You can read the one page summary here and the full, thirteen page report here.

If you want to know about the Chris Brown/Rihanna case, Jezebel.com has an excellent recap of the past few days events.