Listen to ALL Survivors this Domestic Violence Awareness Month
When Shameka Layton was fourteen, she left a dysfunctional household and never returned. She met a fellow runaway named Walter who left a group home in search of his parents and siblings. Walter soon began drinking and selling drugs, which resulted in him becoming abusive towards Shameka.
When Shameka became pregnant at seventeen, with nowhere else to go and no one to turn to, she stayed despite Walter’s ongoing abuse. By the time she was eighteen, Shameka found herself participating in a robbery that resulted in the loss of a life. As a result, her life had ended before it had a chance to begin.
Too often prosecutors say, “we speak for the victims,” but ignore the stories of survivors like Shameka, especially if those survivors are women of color, queer, low income, or are part of a marginalized community.
This October, in keeping with Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it is time to demand justice for all survivors–including those whose experiences of trauma and abuse led to their criminalization. A Survivors Justice Act in Michigan is long overdue, as this would allow courts to reduce prison sentences for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking when that abuse meaningfully contributed to a later offense.
Natalie Holbrook-Combs, Director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Michigan Criminal Justice Program, explains that the needs of women in prison are often overlooked by correctional authorities and advocates. She states, “prisons threaten women’s rights everywhere. Michigan stands as a glaring example of this systemic failure, with one of the highest numbers of women serving life sentences in the nation.”
Some statistics highlighting this problem include:
Up to ninety percent of women sentenced to prisons in the United States are survivors of sexual violence, either in childhood, adulthood, or both.
Over 400 women serving long or life sentences have little access to rehabilitative programs, education, or therapy because people must be near their release dates to qualify for many of these programs.
One in three women in the U.S. have experienced sexual violence between the ages of five and twenty-five.
Forty-two percent of women in U.S. prisons identify as LGBTQ+, revealing another layer of social marginalization.
Judges currently do not have the ability to resentence outside of extremely narrow cases such as appeals or in response to Supreme Court decisions. A Survivor’s Justice Act would allow for judges to account for the impacts of trauma and abuse when reviewing cases, as the longterm consequences of domestic violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking would be taken into consideration under this new legislation.
Prosecutors and punishment-first decision makers or elected officials have ignored stories of survivors like Shameka for too long, but you can help change that. MI-CEMI is working with partners across the state to launch a new storytelling initiative to amplify the experiences of “criminalized survivors” like Shameka and “reconciled survivors” who support second chances for individuals convicted of a crime, and whose experiences are also too often ignored by prosecutors.
Above all, this Domestic Violence Awareness Month please remember that too many survivors are behind bars for offenses related to their abuse, and they deserve justice too.
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Chuck Warpehoski, Project Director — MI-CEMI
If you would like to share your story, or you know someone who does, please share it with us by reaching out to Amber Hardiman at amhardim@umich.edu or mail@mi-cemi.org.
