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Imagine a world in which your every move is scrutinized.

Imagine a world in which you are criticized, belittled, and physically

abused.

Imagine a world in which you are terrified to go home.

The Scope of the Problem

• For 25% of women, this is the life they face (CDC, Survey of Women’s Health, 1999)

• Between 600,000 and 6 million women are victims of domestic violence each year; and between

100,000 and 6 million men (Rennison, C. (2003, Feb).  Intimate partner violence.  Us. Dpt. of Justice/Office of Justice Programs.)

• Nearly 3 out of 4 Americans know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence (Allstate Foundation National Poll on Domestic Violence, 2006)

Costs

• The health-related costs of intimate partner violence exceed $5.8 billion each year. Of that amount, nearly $4.1 billion are for direct medical and mental health care services, and nearly $1.8 billion are for the indirect costs of lost productivity or wages. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States, April 2003.)

• The ultimate cost of domestic violence is measured in lives: On average, more than three women and one man are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S. 1993-2004, 2006.)

Stalking• Annually in the United States, 503,485 women are stalked by an intimate partner.

(Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, National Institute of Justice, 2000)

• One in 12 women and one in 45 men will be stalked in their lifetime, for an average duration of almost two years(Tjaden and Thoennes, “Stalking in America,” Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 1998)

• Seventy-eight percent of stalking victims are women. Women are significantly more likely than men (60 percent and 30 percent, respectively) to be stalked by intimate partners.(Center for Policy Research, Stalking in America, July 1997)

• Eighty percent of women who are stalked by former husbands are physically assaulted by that partner and 30 percent are sexually assaulted by that partner.(Center for Policy Research, Stalking in America, July 1997)

• Victims may experience psychological trauma, financial hardship, and even death.(Mullen, Pathe, and Purcell, Stalkers and Their Victims, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

• Seventy-six percent of female homicide victims were stalked prior to their death.(MacFarlane et al., “Stalking and Intimate Partner Femicide,” Homicide Studies 3, no. 4 (1998): 300-16)

Getting Out

Imagine that you gather the strength to escape from this world of fear and violence.

Imagine that your only protection from this abusive life and the abuse is an order of protection.

Imagine that the success of that order depends upon the abuser/stalker’s willingness to comply.

A New Start• Now, imagine a life in which abuse and

stalking victims know that their abuser is a preset distance from them at all times.

• Imagine that if that perimeter is breached, an alarm warns the victim, providing the direction in which the offender is traveling so they can shelter and call for help.

KEEP ME SAFE

• Keep Me Safe is a GPS based system in which a transmitter worn by the offender and a receiver worn by the victim are constantly monitored for separation by a preset distance (for instance 5 miles). If the two devices come within that distance the victims device alarms warning them to find shelter and call for help.

• Many of the monitoring systems in place now protect victims at home or work, but in other areas they are vulnerable to attack. This system will fill those gaps.

• Victims and their families deserve lives free from fear. This system provides a measure of that freedom.

Statistical Information

• Statistical information contained in this presentation obtained from :

http://www.dvrc-or.org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/#hom