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Home - Contacts - Collaborators
Ensuring Women's Safety
Safe communities, homes, and schools are essential to women's economic security. When women and girls experience violence or abuse in any of these environments, it has a detrimental impact on their ability to succeed at work or school. Women who flee dangerous relationships often enter into disadvantageous financial settlements, or may trade their financial security for freedom from an abusive partner. Women who are physically attacked may incur significant medical bills, even if insured, and may become disabled as a result of the attack, with their capacity to earn wages diminished. Inadequate community resources, such as the lack of affordable housing or civil legal services, or an unresponsive criminal or civil justice system, can compromise a woman's ability to achieve the stability necessary to perform well in the workforce.
The Issues
For women to achieve and maintain economic security, it is imperative that a broad range of safety issues be addressed. These include:
- Family Violence
- Sexual Assault
- School Safety
- Workplace Safety
- Access to Civil Legal Services
- Responsive Civil and Criminal Justice Systems
Priority Recommendations
Family Violence and Abuse
- Ensure continued funding for domestic violence services so that the immediate safety needs of abuse victims can continue to be met.
- Require that all childcare providers receive training regarding procedures to ensure the safety of children who are in a situation where one parent has a court order for protection against the other.
Sexual Assault
- Continue funding for sexual assault crisis and support services, including immediate response and ongoing support for survivors of sexual assault.
- Increase access to therapeutic services for adult and child victims of assault. Specifically, extend Medicaid coverage to Masters-level clinical social workers.
- Provide victims the opportunity to have sexual assault related injuries be covered through the VictimsÕ Compensation Board without having to report the assault to law enforcement.
- Strengthen workplace violence legislation to include paid medical leave to survivors of sexual assault.
- Enhance criminal penalties for sexual crimes, particularly those involving child victims.
- Require and fund treatment for sex offenders, particularly those who are juveniles.
School Safety
- Require and fund in-school violence prevention programs which address sexual harassment and assault, as well as other forms of violence. Ensure that such programs include training for faculty and administration.
- Require policies in all public schools that clearly address sexual harassment and violence, with language explicitly including sexual orientation and gender identity in these policies. Evaluate these policies' effectiveness in preventing such incidents and in responding to them when they do occur.
Workplace Safety
- Require employers to develop and implement safety plans and policies that protect workers from on-site violence. Require training for management personnel in recognizing and responding to potentially violent employees.
- Enforce the Maine law that mandates that employees who are victims of abuse or harassment be allowed release time from work while seeking services or attending legal proceedings related to domestic violence or sexual assault.
- Provide education to employers so that they are aware of their obligations under the law, understand the complexities of domestic violence and can be supportive of employees dealing with an abusive partner.
Legal Services for Victims of Assault and Abuse
- Enhance funding for civil legal services for abuse victims by attracting federal funds and by allocating additional state resources for these services.
- Require and fund mechanisms to assist low-income families to acquire the services of a guardian ad litem in cases of contested child custody, particularly when there is a history of domestic violence.
- Require and fund ongoing training for judges, case management officers, guardians ad litem and court mediators, to increase their understanding of the complexities of intimate partner violence and how it impacts the partners' capacity to negotiate fairly during divorce and to co-parent after separation, and the impact that witnessing abuse has on children, even if the child is not a direct victim of violence.
Responsive Civil and Criminal Justice Systems
- Train high-level law enforcement officials in all aspects of understanding and effectively addressing domestic violence situations, to ensure these officials create and sustain a law enforcement culture that is responsive to victims of abuse.
- Train all law enforcement personnel at the local, county and state level in the most effective methods of responding to a domestic violence situation, with emphasis on identifying the primary aggressor and being responsive to the victim.
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