A Message from WI Attorney General

P.O. Box 7857
Madison, WI 53707-7857
www.doj.state.wi.us



J.B. VAN HOLLEN
ATTORNEY GENERAL


For Immediate Release For More Information Contact:
September 25, 2008 Bill Cosh 608/266-1221


Murder Victims Remembered


Today, September 25, marks the nation’s second National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. The national observance was established with unanimous bipartisan support at the request of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, Inc., in order to honor all victims of murder and to recognize the impact of homicide on surviving families, loved ones and communities.

In this week, people gathered to remember their loved ones at vigils and ceremonies throughout the country and our state. The Department of Justice was honored to participate as a host at today’s ceremony at the Milwaukee War Memorial - a ceremony at which public officials and homicide survivors remembered these lives and those left behind. This observation, co-hosted by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, the City of Milwaukee Mayor’s Office, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Career Youth Development and the Greater Milwaukee Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children reminds us all of the horrible legacy murders leaves in our lives and our communities. Local businesses, victim support groups and government agencies worked together to organize the ceremony, sending a message to survivors that we, as a community, remember their loss and that we will continue to work to provide for safer communities. Violent crimes affect the entire community, but no one so acutely as those left grieving the death and loss of a murdered loved one. This solemn remembrance ceremony was an opportunity to demonstrate to victims that they, and their murdered loved ones, are not forgotten.

Bravely, homicide survivors Barbara Prevort, Jodi Jagdfeld and Denise Everett shared their stories and asked us all to remember. I thank them for their courage, energy, and commitment to honoring their loved ones while seeking to make us all safer.

For my part, I have looked into the faces and heard the voices of those who suffer every day because someone they love was violently taken from them. For every victim there are family members - including children and other loved ones, co-workers, neighbors, teachers, and friends whose lives are changed forever. Sadly, in Wisconsin, there were 337 lives taken as a result of alcohol-related traffic crashes last year. 183 murders shook Wisconsin in 2007. Of those, 105 occurred in the city of Milwaukee.
There are no quick and easy solutions to this problem. But there are many promising cooperative efforts and strategies underway that I have been proud to participate in and support.
I am a working member of the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, a homicide review process aimed at reducing the occurrence of homicides in Milwaukee. The Commission has developed over 100 recommendations based on its review of over 150 homicides in an effort to promote innovative and proactive strategies to reduce violence in the community.
The Department of Justice has funded a pilot Witness Protection Program working together with Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, to protect victims of crime and potential witnesses from intimidation, violence and coercion. I have made the Department’s own criminal investigation agents available at the request of District Attorney Chisholm to supplement his own investigative unit, to actively investigate crimes involving witness tampering. Since May 2008, this witness protection project has resulted in the investigation of 250 cases and 24 arrests and convictions. The success of this pilot has allowed for progress in establishing ongoing witness protection efforts in Milwaukee County. For this we can all be pleased
School safety is also a priority. I am working with local school officials on legislation to facilitate information sharing with law enforcement to keep school campuses safe.
Finally, in addition to my own efforts in Milwaukee, the Office of Crime Victim Services has been working to identify and collaborate with local services providers to expand outreach services to victims and survivors.

The National Day of Remembrance will soon pass but we continue to work daily to create safer communities, to investigate and prosecute violent crime and to provide assistance to victims and witnesses of crime. We continue to fight for public policy to increase resources for the investigation and prosecution of crime and to provide adequate protection to victims and witnesses who courageously seek justice.

# # #

Local DV Homicides

Two domestic violence homicides in one month in Rock County. Read about them, give us your feedback, then stay tuned to hear our voice, including alarming statistics, safety plan suggestions, and warning signs. Our sympathy goes out to all the families involved in these two terrible tragedies.

http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2008/aug/12/beloit-murder-suspect-arrested-hours-attack/

http://gazettextra.com/news/2008/aug/19/family-mourns-two-deaths-murder-suicide/

Elder Abuse: A Story

Four months ago, a women I'll call Bea, phoned me and asked what she could do about her granddaughter, who was constantly asking her for money, stealing money out of her purse, and calling her very bad names. The granddaughter, upon occasion, pushed her and yelled at her in her face. Bea was terrified every time the granddaughter’s phone number appeared on her caller ID or when she saw her face through the peephole in her apartment door. This granddaughter, who as a young girl she had cherished, developed a substance abuse problem and was intimidating and threatening her grandmother into supporting her addictions. Bea lived alone and was under such stress that she couldn’t eat or sleep. Her doctor was very worried about her. The rest of Bea’s family simply would not confront the granddaughter and allowed this frail elderly woman to be abused physically, financially, and emotionally. It took some convincing to get her to understand that this treatment would not simply “go away” like she wanted. She was not able to understand how or why this person that she loved would treat her like that. After some safety planning and education about abuse I was able to guide her through the Restraining Order process. Since she was over the age of 60, the YWCA was able to use the new Elder – At –Risk statues §46.90(1)(bt). This statute allows our agency to file on her behalf. At the injunction hearing the judge allowed Bea to teleconference since she was too frail to come to court to face her abuser. Bea was granted the order and her life has been significantly less stressful.

When I think back to the best gifts I have been given I do not think of objects like my camera or my computer. The ones that stick out for me are the relationship gifts. The ones that your children give you like a homemade scrapbook of remembrances, or photos of family, or memories of time spent in special ways together. Perhaps the best gift we can give to our elders is awareness! Awareness that abuse can and does occur! Awareness that some elderly are very vulnerable! Awareness that some elderly have significant needs in later years! Awareness that not all families have the ability to cope with special needs! Awareness that there are public and private agencies that offer help to the elderly and their caregivers! Awareness that abuse is a difficult thing to talk about and that older persons may have special fears and vulnerabilities: health care, finances, dependence on others for personal care, etc. Growing older use to carry special significance in terms of wisdom and honor in the family. This no longer exists in a culture that worships youth, mobility and money.


So the question becomes:
What can you do for those who have paved our way?

By Jane McCauley, YWCA Abuse in Later Life Advocate

Think Elders Are Safe From Abuse? Think Again.

Sunday, June 15 was World Elder Abuse Awareness Day! As I sit and think about what this means several ideas came to mind. This is not your typical ‘holiday’. No one raises the flag or shoots off firecrackers. There are no picnics or special food. You don’t think “What can I get for my elder on this very special day? Perhaps she would like a pair of fuzzy slippers – or –he might like a new fishing lure.” Not that kind of day? Not a gifting day? Or is it?

When I think about the people in my life who have raised me or have had significant input into my being, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling. I know their later years will be filled with good memories, family that cares, and reasonably healthy years ahead. But through the work that I do, I realize that not all elders have good memories, families that care about them, nor can they look forward to reasonably healthy years. Here is what I have found not only through research, but in face to face contact with this vulnerable population in the state of Wisconsin:

Fact: A total of 4,372 cases of suspected abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation were reported in 2006, an increase of 3.3 percent from 2005. Tragically, 24 were fatal and another 260 were considered life threatening. About one in eleven (6.5%) involved a life-threatening or fatal situation.
Fact: 49.9% of this population lived in their own home or alone in an apartment; 39.2% of these were 80-90 years of age and; 53.4% suffered from self neglect (no one cares enough to help out/no money to get them help/caregiver burnout.)
Fact: Almost 43% of the abuse of our elderly population comes at the hands of their own sons and/or daughters. 14 % of abuse is attributed to a spouse; 10%, a neighbor or friend. Home agencies, facility staff or other service providers (nursing homes, CBRF, etc.) are responsible for 5% or greater of elder abuse.
Fact: Reporting agencies list self-neglect, financial exploitation, neglect by others, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, treatment without consent, unreasonable confinement/restraint as the kinds of abuse seen in this population

(All statistics taken from: Wisconsin’s Annual Elder Abuse and Neglect Report: 2006, Jane Raymond, Advocacy and Protection systems Developer, Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services – Division of Long Term Care, Bureau of Aging and Disability Resources, Madison, WI.)

Stay tuned for next week when this series continues with a story about a victim of elder abuse…

By Jane McCauley, YWCA Abuse in Later Life Advocate

Childhood: equal or unequal?

Once a month, a group of people gather around the lunch table; we not only share lunch but also a discussion about a specific topic. The past two discussions have centered on ‘childhood’. Not MY childhood especially, or another’s specified era, but childhood in general. I guess it’s not exactly an innovative thought that not everyone’s childhood looks alike.

I grew up in a homogeneous rural community in the 1950s. Opportunities were pretty much the same for everyone. If you had the interest, and the money, you sent your children off to college. Everyone else worked in blue collar jobs, served in the Armed Forces, and/or started a family right after high school. But even in my generation, all childhoods did not look alike. Rural community childrearing looked different from urban childrearing. Socioeconomic levels did have an impact then, but, surprisingly, not as much as they do today.

Annette Lareau, author of Unequal Childhoods, highlights how the intersection of race and class has a great deal to do with family life: how we groom our children to not only perceive the world differently, but act and react in that world differently. The work is a culmination of a large field study on family life in various classes, races and cultures. Lareau categorized childrearing in two ways: Concerted Cultivation and the Accomplishment of Natural Growth.

Concerted Cultivation draws upon the determined effort of the parents to cultivate the development of a child by gifting them with as many opportunities as possible. Children grow up feeling accomplished and entitled to certain amenities in the adult world. Within to this type of child rearing, organized activities such as sports and music lessons is a major element. Family time is centered on children’s sports schedules or other organized events. Often the family budget suffers dramatically as a result of extra-curricular activities, but parents deem it a worthwhile investment. Parents of middle class families focus on the education system and are heavily involved. Parents feel all of these things give the child a leg up in the adult world of cooperation, teamwork and business ventures.

The Accomplishment of Natural Growth, according to Lareau, manifests itself more often in working class and poor families. The child’s life is organized around family events with less emphasis on structured sports and events that cost a lot of money. Neighborhoods provide playmates and areas to play. Children know about money issues and are accountable for their own spending. Parents do not unequivocally supply the latest and greatest gadget.

There are definitely benefits and disadvantages for both ways of raising children and everyone in the group certainly had their own thoughts on the subject. The group consensus so far is that some children who are given everything, grow up with an over-inflated sense of entitlement and power. As a whole we felt healthy self-esteem comes from validating feelings, giving an appropriate amount of freedom and power, and nurturing compassion and passion within. We talked about classes -- middle and working, and we shared what we felt were the ‘best practices’ for childrearing. Again, not innovative thoughts and perhaps a bit academic, but all our comments emphasized our being able to do the best we can with what we have. We call it ‘the good enough’ parent.

So what are your thoughts? Do you feel sports, recreational and extracurricular activities, and the latest in technology foster teamwork, cooperation and increased knowledge in kids as they move into adulthood? Do you feel providing no-cost to low-cost recreational activities set examples of hard work and personal accountability? Should parents strike a balance between the two? Tell us what you think.

Submitted by Jane McCauley

How to Manage Nutrition and Rising Food Prices

The sharp increase in food prices over the past couple of months has raised serious concerns about the food and nutrition situation of people with low incomes. Many people feel healthier food is more expensive, but eating fast food because of its convenience and low cost is not necessarily a good choice, either -- especially in the long run for obvious health reasons. Since many of our participants escaping abuse leave with virtually nothing in order to secure safety, YWCA Rock County turned to nutrition consultant, Stephanie Tuss of Foods for Wellness for tips on making the most out of our trips to the grocery store, including making economical, healthy and nutritious choices for you and your family.

Top 10 Simple Strategies for Surviving the Supermarket
Stephanie Tuss, Nutrition Consultant

A wise man once said that you “either fail to plan or you plan to fail.” That’s’ the key to surviving a supermarket. You may feel like it’s more expensive to eat healthy, but if you go in with a plan, you will find yourself saving money and taking care of your health and the health of your family at the same time. Below is a list of strategies that will help you create a plan and stick to it!

1. Bring a list and follow it! Make a menu plan for the week and consult the store ads and coupon offers to see what is on sale that week so you can incorporate it into your plan. Especially watch for sales on meats, and if there’s

a good deal. Stock up.
2. NEVER go grocery shopping hungry.
3. Stick to the outer aisles of the store first and avoid the aisles that aren’t on your list.
4. Never-ever eat in the store or in the car on the way home…this goes back to strategy #2.
5. Beware of the sample ladies…just say no thank you!
6. Skip the specials. It’s not a deal if it’s not on the list.
7. Buy local to save money. The summer is the best time to stock up on inexpensive nutrient rich foods. Visit the

farmer’s market on the weekend, but wait until closing time to purchase anything. Most farmers would rather give

you a deal than see their produce go to waste. Buy LARGE quantities and freeze it.
8. Buy bulk sizes of items that you use frequently and have a longer shelf life like brown rice, whole grains and dried

beans. Store them in Ziploc bags in a dark and dry place.
9. Marinate chicken breasts with your own healthy marinades rather than buying pre-marinated meat.
10. Make your own healthy salad dressings using equal parts olive oil and vinegar, mustard, and your choices of herbs. http://www.foods4wellness.com/

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More food for thought:

“Twenty-three percent of the nation’s lower income classes are obese, compared with 16 percent of the middle and upper classes … Large supermarket chains (the best bet for affordable, fresh and healthy foods) abandoned less affluent city neighborhoods, focusing instead on the suburbs … A 1997 USDA study found that food prices, including those for produce, are, on average, 10 percent higher in inner-city food markets than they are in the suburbs … There are three times as many supermarkets in wealthy neighborhoods as in poor ones, according to a 2002 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine …” (Goodman 2003, pp. 137-158).

Mother's Day and the YWCA

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.

-borrowed from Wikipedia

This Mother's Day, we ask you to keep mothers from all over the world in mind as they continue to work to end war, improve life, end suffering, stand up for causes, and so much more. To contribute to the YWCA Mother's Day Campaign, visit http://ywcarockcounty.kintera.org/momsday

And on behalf of everyone here at YWCA Rock County, Happy Mother's Day to you and your family!

Economic Inequality: educate yourself, and solutions!

Parts 1,2, and 3 of this series looked at the ways the economic system is set up to the detriment of female workers. Pay equity issues affect not only individual wage-earners, but the community as a whole.

I wish that I had the answers, but I am just a working woman dealing with the consequences. I do know that there are several current relevant pieces of legislation: the Fair Pay Restoration Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and the Fair Pay Act.

I also know that every year since 1923 the Equal Rights Amendment goes in front of the congress—and almost every year Congress manages to simply ignore it, but maybe the time has come to pass it. In 1848, Mott and Stanton wrote, and I believe: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”

(Editor's note: Some helpful links in the info box. Oh, and about those local solutions? Learn more about the YWCA Women's Economic Empowerment Center, which we're launching this year with help from the Women's Fund and other local supporters. Visit: www.ywca.org/rockcounty and go to economic empowerment under Programs.)

Economic Inequality, part 3: Blame the Victim.

In parts I and II of this series, we looked at gender-based pay disparities during and after the working years. Today I want to talk about how the government penalizes the victims of this situation.
Our government’s response to inequality is to compensate, in constantly decreasing amounts, the families at the lowest economic levels. Yet, they never address the compensation lost by all families with working women as members. This suggests that the blame for poverty lies with the economically poor families who are being cheated out of fair compensation. It gives a state endorsement of the system that sets women (especially single-parent families, but all households with female wage-earners) behind from the first years of their working lives, ensuring they can never get ahead.

We have seen some small movements against the worst of the pay-disparity offenders. Usually, though? Solutions are offered in areas with a long-term payoff - such as teaching women and girls better bargaining skills. Which doesn't address the current ever-deepening hole, and it places the burden on the victim in this situation!

What do you think?

how could we have missed...

Equal Pay Day on April 22!

Take a look at this article on fair pay issues that relates to the Supreme Court case Ledbetter v. Goodyear (2007). which prompted the (recently failed-to-pass-Senate) Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. If you're not familiar with the case, Lilly Ledbetter lost out on approximately 1/4 million dollars over her career due to unequal pay for equal work. Dahlia Lithwick, of Slate.com, writes that

So, 42 members of the U.S. Senate blocked a bill that would allow victims of gender discrimination to learn of and prove discrimination in those rare cases in which their employers don't cheerfully discuss it with them at the office Christmas party. And the reasons for blocking it include the fact that women are not smart enough to file timely lawsuits, not smart enough to avoid being manipulated by vile plaintiffs' lawyers, not smart enough to know when they are being stiffed....

Be an educated advocate. What do you think?

• Do you know how your Senators voted?
• Do you think the stated arguments against this legislation are fair and reasonable? Or do you disagree?
• Do you have an opinion about whether more females elected to legislative positions would have an impact on the passage of anti-discrimination legislation?
• Is a legislative remedy to unequal pay necessary?
• What questions does this bring up for you?

Weekend Thoughts

consider this...

A shooting. A story on women and eating. A book about body images. A debate about posters in our local high school. Prom and dating violence. There's a lot to think about this weekend. Share your thoughts on one or all of these topics!

Be sure to check back Monday for Part 3 in our series on Economic Inequality: Blame the Victim.

NY Police acquitted in shooting of unarmed man on his wedding day
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24305660/

Alarming Eating Habits (65% of American women are disordered eaters) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24295957/
Raises the issues of who defines “disordered” (framing of article) in addition to wider health & body image concerns

More on body image –
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/celebrity/la-ca-plasticsurgery13apr13,1,338362.story
Plastic surgery on TV

http://www.bodyimagebook.com/
This is who I am “Our bodies in all shapes and sizes”– essays and photographs about how women feel about their bodies. Cool quotations there.

Hushing a day of silence – debate over posters in school
http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2008/apr/23/hushing-day-silence/

Deputies and YWCA prepare for proms
http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2008/apr/24/deputies-ywca-preparing-proms/
also visit www.ywca.org/rockcounty to download a prom tip poster!

Economic Inequality, part 2: Retirement Impact

Pay inequities would be unacceptable even if they ended where we did in my last post.

It gets worse. The shortage in compensation follows women into retirement.

Did you know:

• Women receive a third less social security than men receive.
• Three fourths of women receive a benefit of less than $1000 per month, while nearly the same percentage of men receive payments over $1000 per month.
  
• Over half of all unmarried women rely on social security as their only income after 65, while only thirty eight percent of unmarried men do.

Add to that the fact that women live longer than men, and lower lifelong earnings combined with lower social security leads to an economic crisis for senior women.

We cannot have gender equality without economic equality.

-Martha Pearson, YWCA staff and empowerment advocate

(Editor's note: more on this topic to follow. Martha has a lot to share! Here's a question for you - the title of this blog is "Catalyst". What does this knowledge about economic inequalities inspire you to do?

Weekend Thoughts

consider this...


Social Action and advocacy are the cornerstones of the YWCA. Since our inception almost 150 years ago, “service” has been linked to “action.” In communities across the United States, YWCAs continue to work to improve social and economic conditions for all people by providing services, taking action and using our voices. Participate in the discussion. Here are some links to get you started...


For a chilling photo-journal of abuse, visit http://www.abuseaware.com/

April 22 Marks Equal Pay Day! www.pay-equity.org/day.html

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month http://gazettextra.com/news/2008/apr/12/place-full-care/ www.preventchildabuse.org;

What can you do to make a difference? How can you help? Should you help?
Let us know what you think.

Be sure to check back Monday for Part 2 in our series on Economic Inequality: Retirement Impact.

Q: Gender Equality without Economic Equality?

A: Not equality.

The women’s movement has advanced our opportunities greatly and then seemed to go right out of style, leaving women in a working world with inherent inequalities that left alone, may never be resolved. These opportunities for women have only led us to the false impression of equality because equality without economic compensation is not equality.

Women are powerful. Just look at what we have done with opportunity. Nearly half of all workers are women. More women enter into the work place each year than men. More mothers of young children work than don’t. Almost half of all Americans working multiple jobs are women. We earn more professional degree’s than men, more bachelor degrees, more master degrees, and close enough to be called half of all the doctoral degree’s. The woman’s movement punched a small hole in the glass ceiling and since then we have been marching through in ever increasing numbers.

Yet here in Wisconsin, college educated, full time, year round, working women only earn 74% of the wages when compared to the same group of men. No matter what group of workers you compare, once women and men achieve adulthood, equality in pay for labor disappears. When working in traditional female occupations our jobs are economically under valued and when women work the same jobs as men we are just plain cheated. Female social workers earn less than male social workers, female teachers earn less than male teachers, female retail clerks, female computer operators, female doctors, female surgeons, female professors, and female lawyers all earn less than their male coworkers. If this were just a phase that as women we must endure before achieving equality than we would stand equal to other developed nations in our gender gap, but we are not. The United States of America in a 2007 study stands 31st in the world in gender disparity in earnings (World Economic Forum, Gender Gap, 2007)

American families can no longer afford to be cheated out of their fair compensation then blamed for the situation they find themselves in. Thirty percent of all American families are raised by a single parent. Of single parent families women raise over eighty percent, and thirty three percent of these families exist below the poverty level. (America’s families and living arrangements, 2006) Almost ten thousand dollars per year are lost to families with working women as members—and American working families lose 200 billion per year because of the gender earning gap.

We cannot have gender equality without equality in economic opportunity.

- MP, YWCA staff member & empowerment advocate

(Editor's Note: Want to learn more about this issue? Keep reading later this week for a series of posts on retirement impact, pay equity links, and some local solutions.)