*Ignite*
“You’re dead.”
He mouthed the words from across the room. In an instant I went after him, the man who had abused me, my mother and sister 12 years earlier.
*Ka-boom*
Thankfully friends and family (in law enforcement) ran interference and removed me quickly, but not before a brief and violently acidic verbal exchange. I could’ve killed him, and him me. Thank God, because now I have two little girls to protect and serve.
That confrontation was over two decades ago now. But no, it didn’t happen at home. It happened at a very publicly packed sports bar in the early evening. Thankfully, we were never a news story that night, but sadly he was never arrested for the pain he had caused us. It was a complicated scenario where we were just fortunate enough to get out with our lives.
Domestic violence doesn’t stay home; it follows the abusers and victims wherever it goes. We were only customers that night in the bar, but what if I had worked there? Did the bar have any domestic violence and/or workplace violence policy in place? We’ll never know since now it’s been long out of business.
But what about the beauty salon in the recent Seal Beach shooting tragedy. Did it have any such policy, considering the suspect’s ex-wife worked there? There must’ve been some documented history of dysfunction, since in 2007 Dekraai filed court documents complaining of “harassing and threatening” phone calls from his ex-wife.
Whatever the case, it’s still such a tragic child-custody dispute gone horribly wrong, the worst mass killing in Orange County California documented history. Companies big and small need to have workplace violence and domestic violence policies in place. Thinking it’ll never touch your business means you need to think again.
However, I heard recently from a Freakonomics podcast about a new book by Steven Pinker called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined:
In tribal societies, hunter-gatherers and hunter-horticulturalists, an average of about 15 percent of people met their ends through violence. In the 20th century, if you try to come up with the highest estimate you can, combining all the wars, all the genocides, all the man-made famines, you get to about 3 percent.
Three percent. That’s an amazing decline when you consider the dramatic population growth in the past 100 years, but the toll continues:
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), intimate partner violence victims lose a total of nearly 8 million days of paid work a year, the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs, and the cost of domestic violence to the U.S. economy is more than $8.3 billion. A national telephone survey by Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence (CAEPV) found that 21 percent of full-time employed adults were victims of domestic violence and 64 percent of them indicated their work performance was significantly impacted.
In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, my good friends at the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence (CAEPV) is pleased to present Telling Amy’s Story – A Tool for Addressing Domestic Violence in the Workplace.
This webinar will highlight how the documentary Telling Amy’s Story has been successfully used at workplaces as a tool to educate employees and managers regarding domestic violence and how this success can be replicated in other workplace settings.
And now that it’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month and I’ve ordered a new batch of purple superhero bracelets.
Join us. We can use a little more Hope, Faith, Courage, and Strength these days.
MarcomHRsay.com is an HR and Recruiting B2B blog for the real world and companies small, midsize and the entire enterprise, focusing on what helps people thrive and businesses grow.
It’s absolutely stunning the numbers of kids that are abused. So sad.