October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and Tara Aguilar, an advo­cate for WISE (Women’s Information Service, Inc.) said calls about dis­putes are on the rise.

WISE, a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion that offers ser­vices to indi­vid­u­als who have expe­ri­enced domes­tic vio­lence and adult sex­ual assault, pro­vides resources and ser­vices to res­i­dents of Mecosta, Newaygo and Osceola coun­ties. Aguilar said they have been get­ting calls from areas out­side of these pri­mary coun­ties, such as Grand Rapids. Other coun­ties will refer indi­vid­u­als to WISE.

“Right now, we see a lot of younger women,” said Aguilar in ref­er­ence to the increase in calls. She said they see sin­gle moms, young women who are preg­nant, and teens/young adults who deal­ing with dat­ing vio­lence. She said the age group that has increased the most among women is 18–26.

“That age group is nor­mally our high­est group,” said Aguilar.

Aguilar said WISE also gets calls from Ferris stu­dents involv­ing domes­tic vio­lence and assault. Ferris State University Department of Public Safety (DPS) han­dles the dis­patch calls dur­ing such dis­putes. Aguilar said, “It seems like we have had more iden­ti­fied on cam­pus calls.”

She noted that sex­ual assaults are under­re­ported and the pri­mary calls they receive are in rela­tion to domes­tic violence.

“The thing is, a lot of women will tell you they would rather be hit than deal with that ver­bal and emo­tional abuse,” said Aguilar.

According to the Michigan Resource Center on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, 25 per­cent of women who were sur­veyed and 7.6 per­cent of men said they were raped and/or phys­i­cally assaulted by a cur­rent or for­mer spouse, cohab­it­ing part­ner, or date at some time in their life­time. In addi­tion, such esti­mates indi­cate approx­i­mately 1.5 mil­lion women are raped and/or phys­i­cally assaulted by an inti­mate part­ner annually.

Ferris Chief of Police Marty Bledsoe said domes­tic assault num­bers on cam­pus are some­where in fig­ures of half to three quarters.

He said the best guess to say on the num­bers is 50 to 75 per­cent of domes­tic occur­rences. Bledsoe added, “There has been a real effort across the uni­ver­sity and over­all to get peo­ple to report domes­tics, not just to sit on the information.”

“We’re encour­ag­ing peo­ple in a domes­tic sit­u­a­tion to report any prob­lems they’re hav­ing,” said Bledsoe. He also said peo­ple are asked to be “bolder about report­ing them.”

Individuals who find them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where domes­tic vio­lence and assault is involved can call WISE and start a safety plan, said Aguilar. She said they will make sure they are safe and have some­where to go. If it’s a plan to escape, they make sure there is some­body the per­son can check in with and who knows where his/her where­abouts are.

Aguilar said there are many excuses for domes­tic vio­lence episodes and that it’s a “power and con­trol” issue. She said the increase can’t be blamed on any­thing except for peo­ple who have these issues and want power and control.

“You’re going to find stats that say it’s the econ­omy and alco­hol, but it’s excuses,” said Aguilar. Otherwise, the rise “really can’t be explained,” Aguilar added. n