Topic: Domestic Violence

Legal Aid Society: Cost-effective legal lifeline for Middle-Tennesseans

By Turner McCullough Jr. | July 30, 2008 |

Legal Aid Society delivers $2 in benefits for every $1 it receives

In 2007, the Legal Aid Society helped more than 7,000 Middle Tennesseans find justice when they had nowhere else to turn. As a result, women were protected from abusive husbands, people still had roofs over their heads and the sick got the medical care they needed, among the many other benefits received by Middle Tennessee’s most vulnerable citizens. Like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the Legal Aid Society was able to make a little go a long way in meeting these needs - basically delivering $2 in benefits for every $1 it received. The $5,761,160 it spent in 2007 generated $11,096,830 in benefits.

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APSU to host Ensler’s Vagina Monologues

By Debbie Boen | February 21, 2008 |

The Vagina Monologues will be presented at APSU Clement Auditorium on Feb. 26-27 at 7 p.m. Admission is $5.00.

One in three women are raped, mutilated and/or assaulted, says Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues. If that’s the case, why don’t we hear about it all the time, everyday, every hour? Because women have a tendency to think that it’s their fault.

Dr. Jill Eichhorn, Coordinator of APSU’s Women’s Studies Program, teaches The Vagina Monologues class, a class whose students participate in The Vagina Monologues production. This is the 7th year The Vagina Monologues has been presented at Austin Peay State University. Eichhorn hopes to help women claim control over their lives, their bodies and their voices. She wants women to release the shame that comes from sexual abuse, including the abuse that women and girls experience daily when they see women objectified on the media.

Dr. Eichhorn (left) with Eve Ensler at Vanderbilt University

Women think that the horrible feeling they have after being assaulted somehow belongs to them. Being invaded or touched inappropriately invalidates them incredibly. It makes them feel as if their own body is disgusting, that their body has betrayed them; they hate it for that. They think that they have become the nasty, fear-based, controlling, invasive feeling that they are left with. It makes them feel so low down that they cannot speak up. «Read the rest of this article»

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Stop Violence Against Women

By Bill Larson | June 3, 2007 |

One in three women worldwide will be beaten, raped, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. Every 15 seconds a woman is physically assaulted by an intimate partner.

Throughout the world, women face violence every day. From the battlefield to the bedroom, women are at risk from violence in all areas of life. Violence against women is an abuse that is not confined to any political or economic system. It is prevalent in every society in the world. It cuts across boundaries of wealth, race and culture. It affects the young and the old. Wherever we live, women are suffering violence.

Violence against women persists because society allows it to. Virtually every culture in the world contains forms of violence against women that are often invisible because they are seen as normal or acceptable.

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