April 1, 2012

Rep. Gwen Moore Discusses the Violence Against Women Act on Jansing & Co. (Video courtesy of MSNBC) {qtube vid:=Yq-PA1MQPCQ w:=580 h:=360 b:=1 c1:=0b8241 c2:=16cc68 ap:=0 rel:=0}

Rep. Gwen Moore Discusses the Violence Against Women Act on CNN (Video courtesy of CNN) {qtube vid:=Gl9LKpe0O_g w:=580 h:=360 b:=1 c1:=0b8241 c2:=16cc68 ap:=0 rel:=0}

WQOW Story Featuring Rep. Gwen Moore on the Violence Against Women Act (Video Courtesy of WQOW {qtube vid:=Ju2YPqjcr_Q w:=580 h:=360 b:=1 c1:=0b8241 c2:=16cc68 ap:=0 rel:=0}

WDJT Story Featuring Rep. Gwen Moore on the Violence Against Women Act (Video Courtesy of WDJT) {qtube vid:=84Fpx1pb8kw w:=580 h:=360 b:=1 c1:=0b8241 c2:=16cc68 ap:=0 rel:=0}

Gwen Moore has never ducked being a victim of sexual assault and often credited a network of women with helping her escape domestic abuse. But she has never elaborated on her own lifelong experience with sexual assault and rape as she did in a House floor speech March 28 supporting the previously bipartisan Violence Against Women Act.

The fact that the act was being treated as a political football because it expanded to protect more women clearly angered her into speaking out that protection was needed by all women.

A day after recounting the story of her own rape and childhood sexual assaults on the House floor, Rep. Gwen Moore said Thursday that violence against women is as “American as apple pie.”

“Violence against women is as American as apple pie,” the Wisconsin Democrat said on CNN. “That man that feels he has a right to abuse his wife, to beat her – you know, ask the pastor, ‘Where I do find that passage ‘wives obey your husbands’ in the Bible.’”

Rep. Gwen Moore is a feisty, hard-charging, unapologetically liberal Democrat from Wisconsin. But as she told me during an interview in Washington, she is also a survivor of a lifetime of violence, including beatings, rapes, and abusive relationships.
Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wisc., speaks at a news conference on the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act to discuss the benefits the law has had for American women. , Tom Williams / Getty Images

“I have been a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault for as long as I can remember,” she said. “I think that men, boys, see it as a right of passage to have sex with girls. Lovers feel it is their right to dominate women in that way. That has been my experience.”

A Wisconsin congresswoman hoped to gain support for a domestic abuse law by sharing her own story of sexual abuse and rape.

During a House floor speech on Wednesday, Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat, told her tale as part of her party’s push to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, a federal law first passed in 1994 that provides protections for victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking.

Though the act has been reauthorized twice in the past 18 years, legislation to extend it a third time faces resistance from some Republicans. They have questioned provisions that would broaden protections for immigrants and abuse victims on Indian reservations.