Our goal is to bring the plea of incarcerated, battered women to the world. Over 2 million viewers tuned in for our television premiere in October 2011, the Sin by Silence team continued the momentum at the California State Assembly.
On Thursday, October 27th we participated in an Assembly hearing to strategize legislative changes that would gain freedom for the survivors of Convicted Women Against Abuse who remain trapped behind bars. The result? Success!
The Sin by Silence Bill is now underway to help free the remaining convicted survivors…IMPACT!!!
As Assemblywoman Fiona Ma states…
“Since my very first year in the Assembly I have been the Chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Domestic Violence. Over the course of the last five years, I’ve worked on a variety of issues including restoring shelter funding, relieving victims from being arrested, protecting men and women from stalkers and I have even worked to establish a statewide registry of convicted domestic violence felons. I’ve worked on a wide variety of issues, but there is none that is more dear to my heart than the issue of incarcerated victims.
After watching the moving film Sin By Silence, I decided that action needed to be taken. Next Thursday, I will be holding a hearing on this issue in Sacramento. I would encourage you all to attend to hear the stories of previously incarcerated victims, legal experts and more as the committee looks at potential legislation. Brenda Clubine, star of the documentary, “Sin By Silence,” will be in attendance to share her story of spending 26 years behind bars and why there is a need for legislative change to help the women she left behind.
At the hearing, the Committee will hear about challenges facing victims who are domestic violence’s worst case scenarios: women that have killed their abusers and who were convicted of crimes related to their experiences of being abused. A California state prison study found that 93% of the women who had killed their significant others had been battered by them; 67% of these women indicated the homicide resulted from an attempt to protect themselves or their children.”
Sincerely,
Fiona Ma
Assembly Speaker pro Tempore
AB 593 and AB 1593 seek to bring justice for the domestic violence victims that were unintentionally denied their original writ of habeas corpus due to limited expert testimony evidence and continue to be given unjust parole hearings.
Assemblywoman Fiona Ma was first elected to represent the people of California’s 12th Assembly District in November of 2006.The 12th Assembly District includes the cities of San Francisco, Daly City, Colma and Broadmoor.
Violence toward women used to be one of those setoical issues that no one talked about and many women suffered.The numbers are still staggering. Stats Canada reports that 44% of female victims of spousal abuse indicate that they suffered injury because of violence.These students are spreading an important message to both women and men and I am proud of their efforts. Proud that their school, the teachers and most of all their principal, has the initiative to organize such a movement. We will never know the impact that this may have on prevention they will remember that violence against women is wrong and that message will be passed on through everyone they meet. Those teens, in their T-shirts, with its strong message, have the power to change thinking. We see NPSS students in those unique black T-shirts often at the baseball diamond, at the movies, in the stores spreading their message of hope to women everywhere. Well done, North Peace!
Unfortunately, I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence to add to the discussion…In my youth a young woman, for reasons never fully explained, unloaded a kick in my groin at the local pool. Later she muttered something about just wanting to see what would happen.Another charming young lady slapped my face and drove my head into a door jam. (She had been provoked—in spite of our familiarity with one another, I had transgressed established boundaries with a salacious remark. Still, a stern rebuke would have been more appropriate).Later in life I spent time with a woman who had a bit of a reputation for having a bad temper. She was a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, standing five-foot-three-inches tall. There was nothing but dynamite packed into that frame, and if someone lit that short fuse—look-out. She backed big men down with shear ferocity.Another New England beauty—tall, lean and wonderful—recounts a story of an altercation with a demure smile. She had a close call on the road with a gentleman driving a Corvette. After a near collision both she and this man pulled over, each angry at the other. She climbed out of her vehicle, ran to the driver’s side of his car and began kicking the door, cursing like a modern sailor only wishes he could curse. The Corvette driving gentleman left abruptly without further engaging the beauty.One charming conversation with a modern woman ended abruptly when she declared men were the source of all relational discord. I left, shaking my head at the shear idiocy of her declaration.There are so many more tales to tell… Still, I’m only a male, and women are quite clearly superior in nature to my brutish, unthinking masculinity.
” I’ve long thought that the best iniocatdr for family violence is the 2:1 ratio based on need for medical care. That is two female victims for every one male victim. That ratio has the best science to back it up. “Sorry but that does not tell you who is abusing who or who started the fight, it only tells you who won the fight or who is stronger, just like when a human gets bitten by a dog, the fact that the human is the one bleeding and the dog is not, does not tell you what happened.The fact that the human requires stitches does not prove the human was the victim or that the dog is vicious.You can not see the days or weeks of teasing and taunting the dog went through before it got to this point, you can only see the bite on the human’s hand.A few punches from a 5’2″ and 105 pound woman can not leave much of a mark on a man, but the damage on a woman’s face from one single punch from a 6’2″ 250 pound man will make a nice front page photo for your local news paper…but it does not tell the story – at all.I could have gone with the car analogy; in a two car accident, does the fact that the compact car has suffered much more damage than the big SUV proves the SUV’s driver is the one who ran the red light?