Let Ohio exit Dark Ages by expanding protections to dating-violence victims

When it comes to affording victims of domestic violence adequate and comprehensive protections, the Buckeye State continues to fall woefully and shamefully short.

Ohio and Georgia remain the lone holdout states in the union that fail to extend meaty safeguards for victims of dating violence, a large and growing subset of the pervasive and pernicious crime of domestic violence.

That must change, and it must change soon.

Toward that end, Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, told Vindicator Statehouse correspondent Marc Kovac last week that firmly closing gaping loopholes in domestic-violence statutes will be priority No. 1 when the Legislature gets down to business later this month. We’ll hold Rosenberger to his word.

After all, the legislation to strengthen protections for dating-violence victims clearly merits top billing. It also warrants expeditious passage by both chambers of the General Assembly before the spring recess.

Such speed was inexplicably nowhere to be found in the year just ended. HB 1 is expected to mirror HB 392, co-sponsored by the entire Mahoning Valley House delegation and passed overwhelmingly last spring, only to languish and die a slow and ignominious death through inaction in the state Senate last fall.

That scenario must not be allowed to replay this winter. After all, protections for victims of dating violence cannot be viewed as a political issue. They are matters of human rights, dignity and compassion that should transcend sleazy political gamesmanship.

ABOUT THE LEGISLATION

HB 1 is expected to include several key elements contained in last year’s doomed legislation: permitting courts to issue civil-protection orders against perpetrators of dating violence and stalking, providing greater access to domestic violence shelters to all victims and adding dating violence to the Ohio attorney general’s Victims Bill of Rights, which is encoded in state statutes and widely distributed in pamphlet form statewide.

Clearly, widening the definition of domestic violence makes eminently good sense. After all, its horrors are not committed only by husbands and men who are the father’s of women’s children. The expected legislation would expand the number of partners to also include dating mates, unmarried partners, common-law marriages and others.

One need only take a passing glance through The Vindicator on most any day to recognize the scope and severity of the crime. In recent weeks, this newspaper has reported on women who have been punched, stabbed, scarred, thrown off porches and otherwise victimized by intimate partners, many of whom were not married to the aggressor.

PERVASIVENESS OF CRIME

National data illustrate the pervasiveness of the depraved crime.

According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Forty-three percent of college-age young women report having experienced violence or abusive behaviors from their boyfriends.

Nearly 15 percent of American women and 4 percent of American men have been injured as a result of violence perpetrated by intimate romantic or sexual partners.

Most female victims of intimate-partner violence were previously victimized by the very same person. That breakdown includes 77 percent of females between 18 and 24 years old, 76 percent of those 25 to 34 years old and 81 percent of those 35 to 49 years old.

Clearly, it’s long past time for Ohio to move out of the Dark Ages and join the overwhelming majority of U.S. states that have wisely widened the scope of protections to domestic-violence victims to include those involved in close-knit relationships, regardless of whether they are technically viewed as legal family members.

After all, a committed but deeply flawed intimate relationship should never give one partner a license to assault, rape or kill.