Cleaveland: Tennessee 3rd in nation for domestic violence deaths [View all]

Times Free Press
Cleaveland: Tennessee 3rd in nation for domestic violence deaths
By Dr. Clif Cleaveland
published Thursday, October 2nd, 2014

The scene is etched into my memory.

The young mother of three came to the Appalachian clinic where I temporarily worked. She had been beaten by her husband a day earlier when he learned that she had been taking birth control pills without his knowledge.

Both her eyes were blackened. Her face was bruised and her lips swollen. She was toothless. One of the blows had dislodged her full dentures, which her husband then stomped to bits. She wanted a referral to a dental clinic for replacement dentures.

Over her protests, I called the solitary social worker for the clinic, and she expertly took charge of this tragic situation. I learned subsequently that the brutalized woman had declined to press charges of assault against her husband.

This was the saddest of the various instances of domestic abuse which I encountered in my years of clinical practice. Recent stories of violence against women and children perpetrated by players in the National Football League may suggest that this is infrequent, aberrant behavior in our society. This is not true....

MORE at http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2014/oct/02/tennessee-3rd-in-nation-for-domestic-violence/