My name is Heather. I am from Burton, Ohio. Since no one has ever heard of it, I usually just tell people about 30 miles east of Cleveland. I’m a Junior Sociology/Criminology major. I am unsure exactly what I want to do with this yet (I’m thinking something towards the Social work end of things), but I know I’m in the right area. My father was a police officer for about 30 years, until he passed away last December. Growing up submersed in law enforcement is part of why I am so passionate about it. My older sister, lives in Pa, and is a corrections officer in Erie. People usually say it must run in our blood. I am a member of Alpha Phi Omega, the National Service Fraternity on campus, and I love every minute of it. We volunteer and do service all around the community. I especially enjoy the service project I participate in every quarter, which is bowl on a league with members of ATCO. It is a lot of fun, and very rewarding.
I sat here trying to figure out what I wanted to write about for our first blog, and not really sure how to begin. I decided to look through my iTunes to see if anything sparked my interest. Ironically one of the first songs that it shuffled to was Alyssa Lies by Jason Michael Carroll. I think this is a great place to start.
I’ll give a short summary of the song for those of you who have never heard it. It is from the perspective of a father, whose young daughter meets a new friend (Alyssa). The daughter tells her father “Alyssa Lies to the classroom, Alyssa lies everyday at school, Alyssa lies to the teacher, as she tries to cover every bruise.” The father goes to school the next day to try to get Alyssa some help, and “My little girl asked me why everybody looked so sad, the lump in my throat grew bigger with every question that she asked. Until I felt the tears run down my face and I told her that Alyssa wouldn’t be at school today. Because she doesn’t lie in the classroom, she doesn’t lie anymore at school. Alyssa lies with Jesus, because there’s nothing anyone would do.”
I have very strong feelings about domestic violence. Although it has become a more known problem in recent years, I don’t believe that people in our society know enough about it. Did you know that “Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States”? (1) Or did you know that “20,608 domestic violence cases were filed in OHIO in 2006”, “345 of which ended in death”? (2) (That doesn’t include the probable thousands that AREN’T reported!) Obviously violence towards women is much more prevalent, but violence towards men DOES occur-more often than you might have thought. Even more heart wrenching is that violence towards children occurs quite often as well.
This song obviously illustrates domestic (which just means within the house or family) violence towards a child. It is such a sad song but at the same time it enrages me. It takes a young girl to realize that her friend is in trouble. And once someone (the father) gets up the courage to say something and do something to help this little girl, it is too late. Which unfortunately happens ALL the time. People don’t want to say anything because they don’t want to get involved. And people who are experiencing it don’t say anything for fear of making it worse.
I believe this ties in well with the part of Yep’s article that refers to violence. The main thing to remember is it happens to everyone, of every race, age or sexuality.
Works Cited
1) Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 183781, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at iv (2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/183781.htm
2) National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
You know I think that this is an interesting point. Many of the Yep article discussed ways in which this violence can occur and why it occurs towards homosexuals but it didn't really talk about the outcome in a way that I thought it would. I thought there would be more numbers given, such as the suicide rates in people being "othered" by their sexual preference. What I would be interested in is maybe comparing some of those rates with other things. For example, comparing those relationship assault numbers to smoking deaths, drunk driving injuries, sport related injuries, etc. It could bring about a new thinking of which things become more cared about by the community.
ReplyDeleteThe song you posted is very interesting, Heather. It reminds me of Suzanne Vega's "Luka," which is a story of domestic abuse told from the child's perspective. (The child in the song is the one being abused.) The child makes a lot of excuses (lies) for why he's bruised, etc. It's interesting that songwriters choose to tell these stories from a child's perspective. Why do you think that they do that?
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