Looking back at the Violence Against Women Act after 30 years of protection

A crowd of politicians, attorneys, administration officials and survivors of domestic violence gathered on the South Lawn of the White House on September 12 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The event featured numerous speakers, including President Joe Biden, who spoke about his efforts to write and pass VAWA in 1994.

“The Violence Against Women Act is my proudest legislative achievement over the years I have served as senator, vice president and president,” Biden said. “I mean it from the bottom of my heart. … (It) broke the dam of congressional and cultural resistance, brought this hidden epidemic out of the shadows, and began to shift the legal and social burdens from survivors to perpetrators where they belong.”

Among the crowd was Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor in Johns Hopkins University’s schools of public health nursing and one of the bill’s early sponsors. That same week, Campbell participated in various events to celebrate VAWA’s anniversary and discuss new initiatives with other leaders in the field.

“It was a great joy for all of us to be able to meet again,” she said. “We all know each other.”

As many as one in four American women experience domestic violence in their lifetime. For many of these survivors, VAWA is a salvation and a shield against further violence. The Act provides resources and protections for women experiencing domestic violence, intimate partner violence, stalking or sexual assault. It was the first federal legislative package aimed at ending violence against women and eliminating barriers to justice by trying to get the entire country on the same page.

And, as the numbers show, it was effective. Between 1993 and 2022, the annual rate of domestic violence decreased by 67%. Rapes and sexual assaults decreased by 56%. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, established by VAWA in 1996, has received more than 7 million calls.

Before VAWA, very few police departments had special victims units. There was no national hotline for people experiencing domestic violence. Shelters had fewer resources. State laws varied greatly in the protections women were afforded and the assistance they could expect from law enforcement, especially if victims or perpetrators of violence crossed state lines.

It was in this atmosphere that Campbell began traveling to Washington by train every week. There, she met with Patricia Roos, one of the founders of VAWA who helped create the bill.

“A lot of us worked really hard with very small pieces,” Campbell said. “My research was on femicide. (…)Being a nurse, doing it from a nursing science perspective was different. Most of the other people who worked on it were lawyers or barristers.”

Campbell pushed for the bill to expand the role of the health care system, but recalled Biden’s insistence on crime being the focus.

“Senator Biden was very strategic in making this bill a crime. If it had been looked at from a different perspective, it would never have been adopted,” Campbell said. “(Biden said) ‘this can’t be about women’s rights. It must be about crimes against women. This way we will get the support of Congress,’ which he did. He was always very smart about how Congress works, how to get legislation passed. It still is.”

Campbell says many Americans in the 1980s and 1990s viewed domestic violence as a private family matter best resolved behind closed doors. He recalls how critics accused Biden of “breaking up the American family.” As a result, VAWA contributors had to be careful in formulating the act. For example, funding for domestic violence shelters was not about enabling wives to leave their husbands, but about helping assault victims escape from their attackers.

VAWA was introduced by U.S. Republican Jack Brooks in October 1993. After receiving bipartisan support in Congress, President Bill Clinton signed it into law on September 13, 1994.

In addition to new regulations and resources, VAWA also provided funding for researchers, including Campbell. In 2003, Campbell and her colleagues published a now widely cited study in the journal American Journal of Public Health showed that perpetrators of violence with access to weapons are five times more likely to kill their partners.

“It’s a little more than five, but five is stuck in people’s minds,” she said. “Various people have cited these studies. They didn’t quote me, and most of them don’t know where it came from. And people say, ‘Oh, Jackie, doesn’t that make you feel like yourself?’ have not your goods been given to you? And I said, “If a study I did is so well known that everyone talks about it as fact, then I’m proud.”

“I was a small cog, but somewhat connected to my activities and research on the health effects of domestic violence, through (VAWA) reauthorizations we were able to get more funding for domestic violence research and health care.”

Since it was first enacted into law, the VAWA program, which requires reauthorization every five years, has significantly increased in scope and funding. But his success and longevity do not make his policies untouchable. Earlier this year, there was a Supreme Court case United States v. Rahimi questioned the law restricting the possession of firearms to persons convicted of domestic violence. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law in an 8-1 decision, but the case still shocked many women’s advocates, including Campbell.

“Most domestic violence homicides occur with guns,” she said. “It’s always been true. However, thanks to some provisions of VAWA, the rate of domestic violence gun homicides has actually decreased. … That made the difference.”

Campbell believes there is optimism when it comes to looking to the future. VAWA was reauthorized in 2022, with increased support for marginalized communities. New government initiatives are underway to create an interagency domestic violence task force and improved threat assessments to determine a woman’s level of risk of future violence. Closer to Hopkins, Campbell hopes to receive a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the long-term effects of suffocation and head injuries on survivors.

For Campbell, this month’s celebration was a reminder both of how far the nation has come in protecting women and how far there is still to go.

“It was exciting, amazing and wonderful to be (at the anniversary celebration) and find out who the new players are,” she said. “And also kind of discouraging. I guess I can’t retire completely yet because there are so many more policy issues I can be helpful with.”