POV In The News

In the time of the #metoo movement and the heightened attention around sexual violence issues and violence against women, journalists play a large role in breaking the silence and giving a voice to survivors. Journalism is a vehicle for shared testimonies and elevating these and other pressing issues into the mainstream media. We have seen this with groundbreaking media pieces that have impacted industries, big and small, and sparked real change and activism. We will continue to work with local, national, and international media to advocate and elevate survivors’ truth. 

A few coverage highlights from the past year:

Los Angeles Times article 

In September of 2019, LA Times reporters Cruz and Lee published an eye-opening domestic violence investigation as part of The Homicide Report series, The Times’ effort to tell the story of every homicide victim in Los Angeles County. They wrote and reported: “As homicides drop in L.A., more women are being killed — often by intimate partners.” This piece sought to bring a gender-based violence focus to the analysis of gun violence in LA County. 

“It happens in the shadows; it happens in the home,” said Giggans. “And when we find out about it, we try to do something about it, but we have to do more prevention.”

- Patti Giggans, from As homicides drop in L.A., more women are being killed — often by intimate partners

Spectrum News interview

“Sexual assault and rape have not been taken seriously historically. There are a number of misconceptions and lies that still persist. We’ve been working in this field and we are seeing progress. Here in Los Angeles there we have actually gotten rid of our rape kit backlog… but the State of California does not have mandatory testing. This is the only way to alleviate the backlog and have a set of mandated protocol.”

- Patti Giggans and YWCA’s Vice President Sharon Shelton on In Focus: Taking Sexual Assault Seriously

Spectrum News Interview 

“We are teaching healthy relationships. Youth are coming to school from a domestic violence situation at home or in their family and bringing that into their own experience and their own relationships. So we focus on teen dating violence, and stopping teen dating violence. We know if you are in a violent relationship as a youth, you are more likely to be in one as an adult, and the violence in the future is more likely to increase and to be more extreme… When we educate, we start with the roots of violence, and show the intersectionality of violence. We teach consent. We teach unhealthy warning signs. We teach the 7 Cs of healthy relationships - communication, consent, conduct, commitment, compatibility, compromise, and consideration…. We believe violence is something that is learned, and it can be unlearned.”

- Prevention Division Manager Hannah Denyer on Inside the Issues: Domestic Violence Survivors File 21,000 Re-straining Orders in 2018

Pasadena News Now article

“We’re there to provide support and advocacy, to help [survivors] understand the process, and offer follow up services… Domestic violence is a pattern of behavior used to maintain power and control over another in a relationship. It can involve physical abuse, emotional abuse, economic abuse, coercion and threats, intimidation, isolation, minimizing, denying, blaming. And they can even use the children against the other partner. There is a crisis intervention aspect and when someone has experienced that type of trauma we then take the time to listen to the survivor. We don’t come in asking what happened, our purpose is to be there as a support person and educate them about their rights and what their options are.”

- COO Yvette Lozano, from After Domestic Abuse Reports Rose in Pasadena, A New Team Was Formed to Help Victims