“Telling Amy’s Story” lays out how and why law enforcement, the justice system, colleagues, friends, and family fail to stop domestic violence before it claims lives.
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I’ll admit I really didn’t want to watch this film, and I can understand why you wouldn’t either. We all love happy endings, and this film doesn’t have one. It ends the way so many stories of abuse and domestic violence end, with the “unexpected” death of the victim. I was particularly reluctant to watch, because I am particularly close to this issue. I have a friend of many years in the process of extricating herself from an abusive relationship, so seeing the story of an abusive husband’s deadly reaction to his wife’s attempt to escape was particularly searing. But I made myself watch. And I hope you will, too.
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Amy substitutes the words “That’s Vince,” for “that’s abuse” when her friends comment about her husband’s controlling and violent behavior, and … explains away the problem …
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The video does not try to induce a reaction by citing shocking statistics or attempting to dramatize domestic violence and “make it real” for the viewer, and it doesn’t offer advice or promote the efforts of coalitions and support groups. It is instead a coldly logical portrayal of how a death that could have been predicted and prevented was allowed to occur, a map of the glaring gaps in our law enforcement and criminal justice systems, and a wake up call to anyone who thinks these kinds of things are best kept quiet and are someone else’s problem.
Chances are you live in a relatively safe community. The murder of Amy Homan McGee occurred in State College, Pennsylvania, a safe town with a low rate of crime. But as State College Police Department Detective Deirdri Fishel, who narrates the film, points out, “If you can’t be safe in your home, does it matter if your community is safe?”
Unless you are actually a survivor of domestic violence, you can’t possibly know how being unsafe in your home feels, how what is supposed to be your sanctuary and place of protection becomes the place you are most vulnerable, your own private hell.
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The more I look closely at domestic violence and come to unearth what underlies it, the more I begin to understand how and why we allow it to continue.
One cause is the death of investigative news. I recently encountered the phrase, “documentaries are the new journalism,” but I didn’t fully know what that meant until I watched “Telling Amy’s Story.” What became crystal clear to me is that our culture of the 24-hour news cycle, fueled by shock value and the need for instant answers, causes us to view violent acts of any sort as “incidents” rather than the end result of an accumulation of incidents or the culmination of an observable and predictable pattern.
Our culture of the 24-hour news cycle, fueled by shock value and the need for instant answers, causes us to view violent acts of any category as “incidents” rather than the end result of an accumulation of incidents or the culmination of a pattern.
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A second cause is our failure to see the pattern not solely as the violent behavior of one partner but an intimate dance between both that precedes and precipitates violence. In saying this, I am not in any way implicating the victim’s behavior as the cause of the violence, but I am suggesting that different, more proactive behavior supported by a different system could change outcomes. As one of Amy’s colleagues from the Verizon store where she worked—and a domestic violence survivor herself—lamented, “You can’t force a person being abused to come forward. She’s scared; she has no self-esteem; and she’s not sure if anyone will believe what she’s saying.” Detective Fishel echoes this when she explains that Amy couldn’t testify against her husband because she didn’t feel safe. “You talk about a victim that wouldn’t testify. If we could guarantee the victim they would be safe, that the outcome of a court case would be better for them, then I believe that a victim would testify. But we can’t guarantee that.”
“You can’t force a person being abused to come forward. She’s scared; she has no self-esteem; and she’s not sure if anyone will believe what she’s saying.”
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A third cause is another, equally subtle, equally devastating pattern: the call and response, or more accurately the call and failure to respond sufficiently of our law enforcement and criminal justice systems. At one point, Amy goes to the hospital with a broken nose and tells the police officer who meets her there that her husband hit her in an argument. The officer doesn’t arrest her husband but gives Amy some information about protective orders and tells her to call the police if the problems continue when she gets home. A few days later, Amy tells her doctor she was hit in the face by a softball. Detective Fishel explains why Amy would change her narrative and protect her abuser. “When you’re the victim of domestic violence and you finally have the courage to disclose to a police officer in a hospital bed what happened to you … and nothing changes? Are you going to keep telling the story?” And you won’t believe how this next sentence ends. A colleague of Amy’s describes her one day in the Verizon store when her husband is bombarding her with phone calls as “scared to death” and says “she begged and pleaded with me, please … don’t call the police.” Not please call, but please don’t call … because Amy was terrified of retaliation from her husband, terrified that the police would be unable to protect her and that she would be harmed more seriously if she called.
“When you’re the victim of domestic violence and you finally have the courage to disclose to a police officer in a hospital bed what happened to you … and nothing changes? Are you going to keep telling the story?”
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The fourth cause is our own prevailing false sense of security. Because we believe domestic violence happens to other people, we deny the warning signs when we see them in our own lives or the lives of family members, close friends, or colleagues, particularly if those people are similar to ourselves or living in comfortable upper middle class situations where we find it difficult to envision violence. Amy substitutes the words “That’s Vince,” for “that’s abuse” when her friends comment about her husband’s controlling and violent behavior, and as the victim minimizes, excuses, and explains away the problem, we are all too ready to accept those explanations, because we are all too reluctant to believe that something else, something evil and potentially deadly could be happening to our brother or sister, our co-worker, or our next-door neighbor. Because if we did accept the presence of that evil, our acceptance would come with a responsibility to speak up and intervene. How else could Amy’s parents have sat in the car with her children and allowed her to go unaccompanied into the marital home, where her husband, Vincent, who’d parked his truck in the garage, was waiting for her with a loaded gun? The next thing they saw was Vincent running out of the house shouting, “Someone call 911. I just shot Amy.”
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At the end of the film, Detective Fishel fills with emotion and outrage and says, “Every time I tell this, I think to myself, make it end differently, make it end with a happy ending, and I can’t, because this really happened in the life of Amy Homan McGee, and so we ask ourselves, what can we do as a community to change the ending for another victim?” With nearly 50% of female homicides in the U.S. tied to intimate partner violence, and 5% of male homicides, could there be a more pressing question?
The page on Penn State University’s website where the trailer for “Telling Amy’s Story” appears indicates that the full 40-minute film is available only through PBS member broadcasts and DVD purchase, but the full-length film is available here as as presentation of Virginia Currents, along with an introduction by Mariska Hargitay, founder of Joyful Heart Foundation, and commentary that follows.
To join a national conversation on ending domestic violence by building a culture of respect, email [email protected].
Photo—http://telling.psu.edu/
I’m angry and speechless but not surprised. As a survivor of years and years of domestic violence myself I must say, CHANGE THE STUPID LAWS. On many, countless occasions the father of my child assaulted me, ” if he can’t have me, no one will”. Each time he pleaded guilty and was out within 3 months of time served. Each time he came out the violence got worse. From slapping to choking to punching while I’m holding our 17 days old daughter. Restraining order????? What a joke, peace of paper didn’t stopped him from trying to slit my throat in… Read more »