Keeping Up the Statistics: Holley Wimunc Murdered by Her Husband
July 14, 2008
“On the average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends every day” according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003.
According to AOL News, “the remains of Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc were found Sunday in a brush fire in North Carolina, three days after she disappeared. The 24-year-old nurse was reported missing after a fire at her apartment in Fayetteville, N.C. On Monday, her estranged husband was charged with killing her.”
Typing in “wife murdered july 2008” in Google yields information on men who have murdered their wives across the country and across the world. Holley, unfortunately, joins Nisha Patel-Nasri who was stabbed by her husband in England. And Ashley Guarino and her two children who were murdered by her husband in Pennsylvania. And Linda Singh who was murdered by her husband in Fiji. And Jenny Young Park and her cousin and two children who were murdered by her ex-husband in California. And Adalina Weber who was murdered by her husband in Illinois. Luckily, they are not joined by Lisa Meyer, since her husband was arrested for trying to hire someone to kill her.
I’m listening to “Love Hurts,” but this is not love, this is evil, this is about control and power and violence. A howl needs to go up every time a woman is killed by someone who professes to love her until there are no more howls. We need to howl in horror and shame that we live in a society that debases the concept of love to such an extreme degree. We need to howl until those who yell and hit and stab and murder can hear someone else’s cries and not cover over those sounds with anger and frustration, and stop in mid-shout and mid-slap and mid-thrust to hear themselves cry out in pain at the pain they have been causing. We need to howl until we raise generations of men who can respect themselves enough to know the difference between love and control. We need to howl until we don’t need a National Domestic Violence Hotline (www.ndv.org). And we need to howl until the only hurt that love causes is “to make you blue.”
(cross-posted at www.blogher.com)
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