Here it is, late April, and so far this year we’ve had 11 women killed in Kansas City. Most of these women were killed at the hands of people they know -- boyfriends, baby daddies, husbands. Even family members are killing other family members.
I am beyond frustrated by this. It’s like, we’ve already allowed children to be killed. Now we’re becoming OK with women being murdered. Young women. These are women who would someday become mothers, aunts, grandmothers...women who would contribute to society and our community. We’ll never get the chance with them. It’s always at the hands of a man, and it’s almost always gun violence.
We know that people have issues. They have mental health issues, drug addiction, trauma. We see it and we tend to turn our head, because it’s not directly our problem. We need to stop doing that. If you look around your neighborhood and see that people are having issues, we need to start reporting it or try to reach out and get them some help in some way.
A few weeks ago another young woman was killed by her baby daddy. He just kills her, in broad daylight, around 10:30 in the morning. Were there any issues with this couple? As family members and as a community, we need to start finding out more about these young women and getting them some better help. People always say, “she should have left.” Well, I never think if I’m in a relationship that someone is going to kill me. You don’t think the person who says he loves you, that you have children with, is going to take your life.
At one of the murder scenes, I asked family members if they had seen warning signs. They said, yes, they did. They told her several times she should get away. But as women, we always make excuses for our lover, our family member, our child. We tend to try to fix things.
I was in an abusive relationship myself, some years ago. He beat me, he broke all my windows, he mentally tortured me. I got an order of protection and I did everything that the police department and the law told me to do and finally he went to prison for five years. So I can see the signs. I know the signs, because I’ve been there. That time of my life -- it was in the early 2000’s, I’ve just blocked out. But I’m afraid he’s doing the same thing to somebody else because prison does not rehabilitate men like that.
As far as domestic violence, the community response should be outraged. Children are seeing this. What do you think this is doing to them? And yet our response is to go on like nothing has happened. These children grow up to be young men and young women and they grow up with this trauma. We need to reach out to the children who have been affected by this madness and try to mentor them and guide them and let them know what normal life should be. Otherwise all this trauma, all this anger, it ends up being a homicide sometime later. That’s what it becomes -- another homicide.