Subject
title
Proclamation Declaring October 2025, as Domestic Violence Awareness Month in Rockville, Maryland
end
Department
City Clerk/Director of Council Operations Office
Recommendation
Staff recommends the Mayor and Council read and approve the proclamation and present it to Ms. Judith Clark, CEO, Women Who Care Ministries.
Discussion
Domestic violence is an intentional pattern of controlled and dominant behavior exhibited by one partner in an intimate relationship over another. It can also include violence or abuse from a family member. Domestic Violence Awareness Month reminds us of the many people who experience the fear, emotional stress, and physical and financial hardship of abusive relationships, and courageous survivors who work to regain peace, hope, safety, and trust.
The 2025 Team for Domestic Violence Awareness Month is: “With Survivors, Always.”
Nearly half of all women and men in the United States will experience psychologically violent behavior by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Domestic violence is not limited to the boundaries of race, age, gender identity, or ethnicity. Its impact is widespread, including the partners in the relationship, children, friends, and family. Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by a partner and reported it having a related impact on their functioning.
Domestic violence is a violent crime or abuse in a domestic setting, such as in cohabitation or marriage. Domestic violence is often used as a synonym for intimate partner violence, which involves a spouse or intimate partner in an intimate partner relationship.
Domestic violence can happen to anyone of any age and can occur in both heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Domestic violence can also include violence against children, parents, or the elderly and can take on several forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse.
• Survivors deserve safety - When we advocate for survivors’ safety, we must consider all that safety encompasses: physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial. Survivors have a right to live in homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and institutions that are free of violence.
• Survivors deserve support - Living through and healing from trauma can be a lifelong journey. And new threats to their safety can resurface trauma reactions in profound ways. Survivors are deserving of support and care at all stages of their lives as they navigate both these echoes and emerging new threats.
• Survivors deserve solidarity - Nobody should have to stand alone in the face of hardship. Community connectedness is critical to effective advocacy. We must continue to show up for survivors, no matter what.
The abuser often believes that the abuse is an entitlement, acceptable, justified, or unlikely to be reported. Victims often feel trapped by the abuser in domestic violence situations through isolation by their abuser from family and friends, lack of finances, fear, shame, cultural acceptance, and power and control. Victims can develop physical disabilities and chronic health problems as well as severe psychological disorders.
In the United States, an estimated 10 million people experience domestic violence every year. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, about 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner. As identified above, about 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, sexual violence, and/or partner stalking with injury, PTSD, contraction of STDS, etc.
The state of Maryland is below the lower half of state statistics regarding Domestic Violence, but No Domestic Violence is a goal we would all like to achieve. Domestic Violence Awareness Month is a time to celebrate survivors and for organizations to collaborate for action and change.
Source for some of this information: <https://www.thehotline.org/stakeholders/domestic-violence-statistics/>
Source: <https://www.dvawareness.org/blog/DVAM2025>
Mayor and Council History
The Mayor and Council present this proclamation annually.
Public Notification and Engagement
For anonymous and confidential help, available 24/7, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 and TTY 800-787-3224. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.