On the recordMay 16, 2012
I do appreciate the woman walking us through the protocols for the unfunded mandates. And I would submit to her that the National Network to End Domestic Violence, who does a point-in-time counting of domestic violence services nationwide, would indicate that it costs not only personal anguish, but there are costs in society, actual fiscal costs, to not protecting women who are suffering in violent situations. Right in my own State of Wisconsin, 714,000 women have been assaulted, raped, or stalked by an intimate partner. This number actually exceeds the population of the entire city of Milwaukee. Imagine the cost to employers when people don't show up at work. Imagine the cost in emergency rooms when people show up battered and bruised and broken and have no health insurance. Approximately half a million of these women were fearful or concerned for their safety. Two hundred and eighty thousand Wisconsin women, 12.7 percent of our population, have been stalked in their lifetime. Imagine the cost of additional police work when these women call the police and nothing has been done in terms of making arrests and asking for accountability. A study of childhood exposure to violence in Milwaukee has found that 16 percent of Wisconsin adults report having experienced recurring violence between adults in their childhood. Imagine the loss of productivity at schools.…
