October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Alabama. The Centers for Disease Control estimates nearly nine percent of women are victims of violence from their partners every year. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence says close to forty percent will experience an attack in their lifetimes. Stephanie McTarsney is with the support group Kelly’s Rainbow in the Huntsville area. She says rural parts of Alabama are often hit harder…
“We go into the schools and we, you know, we go to court with them in Cherokee County, and we do protection orders in Cherokee County, it's harder for them to flee because they don't know, you know, necessarily, because it's such a rural area that there is actual help out there,” she said.
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency operates a website called Crime.Alabama.gov with funding from the Department of Justice. It quotes data from 2021 that ranks Mobile County as highest in the state with over four thousand occurrences of domestic violence that year. Jefferson County comes in second with almost three thousand. McTarsney says the problem exists despite Alabama’s reputation as a religious state…
It's like a dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about. Everybody likes to think that we're the Bible Belt, and so nothing goes wrong, when, in fact, you know, it's rampant here. Our numbers are up like 34% that it was last year,” she said.
The support group AshaKiran will hold a human chain against domestic violence event in Huntsville on Sunday at Big Spring park. The gathering will take place from two to three p.m.
