Tiffany Bond  🦞 🇺🇸Verified account

Domestic violence is not joke and very difficult to escape. Many cultures do not take abuse seriously. This permits people, usually women and children, to live an entire life of unfathomable fear with no hope of escape. To a few, the US is all the hope they can manage.

Perhaps they are in a refugee camp, torn from their home country by war or famine, not particularly "protected" by a flimsy tent...where the violence can come from other members of the tent or random passers by. Would you wish that upon your children?

Imagine being put into a sex trafficking ring by an intimate partner or family member...and no one believes you or gives you help because you are a "whore". How would you feel if that was your neighbor?

A protection from abuse order here in Maine isn't a very robust tool to escape violence. There are so very many violations, and many of those violations police refuse to take action on. I've seen it first-hand.

Are you *sure* he forwared your mail? Why didn't you take video of him driving into your driveway? How do you know it was him calling from the blocked number repeatedly? I could take up at least 20 tweets with violations I have seen get no action.

Imagine being somewhere you cannot even get this minimal protection, or if you can there is no enforcement. That's a lot of the world.

Now look at what this could mean for people here on a temporary visa, suffering abuse from a spouse. It is common I get calls from people afraid that they will be deported if they report the abuse or leave. It's not just a threat. In today's climate it can happen.

Whether here legally, temporarily, or out of desperation, we should be offering protection from abuse. It's the right thing to do. We would want the same for our children, our neighbors, our friends.

If you were lured to the US by an abuser, the American promise is more than that. You should not fear your new home. If you have survived savage attacks, the threat of murder, or actual murder of your family and crossed through hundreds of miles, you have the grit to be here.