Senate Resolution No. 874 BY: Senator WEBB MEMORIALIZING Governor Kathy Hochul to proclaim May 2, 2023, as Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Day in the State of New York WHEREAS, Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive behavior and tactics used by someone against their intimate partner in an attempt to gain or maintain power and control, and types of abuse can include physical, sexual, psychological, technological and economic abuse; and WHEREAS, Domestic violence is not limited to specific groups based on race, socioeconomic status, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age, religious affiliation, or social location, but rather is perpetrated by abusers from all social groups; and WHEREAS, On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States -- more than 10 million people over the course of a year; and WHEREAS, Approximately one in three women and one in four men have experienced some form of domestic violence or interpersonal violence in their lifetime, and one in ten women have been raped by an intimate partner; and WHEREAS, Due to systemic racism, racist policies, and racist societal structures, both Black women and Black men experience intimate partner violence at a disproportionately high rate, with 45.1% of Black women and 40.1% of Black men experiencing intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner sexual violence and/or intimate partner stalking in their lifetimes; and WHEREAS, Domestic violence affects the LGBTQ+ community at a rate equal to or even greater than that experienced by the cisgender, heterosexual community, with 43.8% of lesbian women and 26% of gay men experiencing rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, and more than 54% of the transgender and gender non-conforming community has reported experiencing some form of intimate partner violence, with transgender women of color experiencing heightened levels of violence; and WHEREAS, More than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women and men have experienced violence in their lifetime, and more than one in three have experienced violence in the past year; and WHEREAS, Nearly 20.9% of female high school students and 13.4% of male high school students report being physically or sexually abused by a dating partner, and 43% of dating college women report experiencing violent or abusive behaviors from their partner; and WHEREAS, Researchers estimate that one in 15 children in the United States are exposed to intimate partner violence, and children who witness intimate partner violence growing up are three times more likely as their peers to engage in violent behavior; and WHEREAS, Domestic violence survivors experience a host of physical and mental health-related consequences at far greater rates than their counterparts who have not been abused; and WHEREAS, New York State consistently has the greatest demand for domestic violence support services in the country with 9,157 survivors requesting services on just one day in 2022, and 951 unfulfilled service requests because domestic violence service providers did not have the resources or staff to provide such services; and WHEREAS, In 2020, there were 165,577 orders of protection issued that required entry in the New York State Registry; and WHEREAS, The NYS Office of Children and Family Services reported that nearly 48,000 survivors of domestic violence and their children received services from New York residential and non-residential domestic violence service providers, and more than 252,500 hotline calls were received across the State in 2020; and WHEREAS, According to the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services, there were 61 intimate partner homicides in New York State in 2020; and WHEREAS, The cost of a single homicide is estimated at $17.25 million when considering medical care, lost future earnings, other related public programming and services, and property damage and other losses; and WHEREAS, The economic burden of domestic violence in the United States is staggering, with costs to the U.S. economy estimated to exceed $8.3 billion annually, with 21-60 percent of victims of intimate partner violence losing their jobs due to reasons stemming from the abuse; and WHEREAS, Primary prevention strategies address the root causes and conditions that make domestic violence possible, and public health research has shown that implementing prevention activities at multiple levels on the social ecology scale - individual, relationship, community, and societal - will lead to lasting social change; and WHEREAS, Primary prevention is focused on establishing gender equality, cultivating, and promoting healthy relationship behaviors, and changing conditions in communities and culture to stop domestic violence before it starts; and WHEREAS, Domestic violence advocates consistently provide comprehensive and compassionate life-saving services, advocacy, and support to survivors of domestic violence and their children, while leading essential primary prevention efforts within their communities to motivate the change needed to stop domestic violence from happening in the first place; and WHEREAS, As part of executing its mission, the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence seeks to create and support the social change necessary to prevent and confront all forms of domestic violence, to ensure the availability and accessibility of innovative and effective supports and services for all domestic violence survivors and their families, and to dismantle oppression, end systemic racism and uproot the inequities that foster violence; and WHEREAS, New York State needs to continually and significantly invest in services and supports for domestic violence survivors and their families in order to meet the rising demand for assistance and to continue progress toward ending domestic violence once and for all; now therefore, be it RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to memorialize Governor Kathy Hochul to proclaim May 2, 2023, as Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Day in the State of New York; and be it further RESOLVED, That copies of this Resolution, suitably engrossed, be transmitted to The Honorable Kathy Hochul, Governor of the State of New York, and the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.