Thirty women died last year in South Carolina at the hands of a 'loved one'

October 2, 2003

A report from the Violence Policy Center gives South Carolina yet another dubious distinction. Deaths among women at the hands of men they know was 3.15 per 100,000 in 2001, more than twice the national average. That means for that year, we were No. 1 among the 50 states.

It’s a standing we should not stand for any longer.

That year, 51 percent of the women among the 1,899 cases that occurred were married to or had an intimate relationship with their killers.

Forty-six of those cases involved women in South Carolina.

In 2002, 30 women lost their lives in South Carolina as a result of domestic violence. Among those 30 were one woman in Anderson County, one in Oconee County, three in Greenville County and four in Spartanburg County.

The most recent victim was also close to home. Maranda Williams’ one-time boyfriend has been charged with her Sept. 3 murder. She was at work in the deli department of an Upstate grocery store when he entered and shot her. It was not the couple’s first violent encounter.

It was just the one that ended Ms. Williams’ life.

Earlier, Charles Williams was charged with assault and battery with intent to kill after he beat his former girlfriend to unconsciousness in the parking lot of the same store. It was only a matter of hours after that arrest that he was released on bond.

It’s easy for those in a secure and normal relationship to shake their heads and wonder why women stay with men who abuse them. Poverty can play a major role. Despite any number of shelters in the state, there is only so much room. There are women who simply don’t feel they have anywhere else to turn when a relationship turns violent.

Sometimes they are just ashamed and believe that the violence they suffer is somehow their fault.

A ceremony in Columbia on Wednesday, the first day of Domestic Violence Month, featured the friends and family of some of those women who either felt they had nowhere to turn or tried to escape the violence too late. While a ceremony may bring more attention to the problem, it will be education and enforcement of laws that will really address domestic violence. It will mean getting involved and not turning a deaf ear to the problem.

Some cell phone companies are accepting old phones they will reconfigure to dial 9-1-1 and giving them to victims and volunteer organizations that help them. Verizon is going one better. If you believe someone is being abused, dial #HOPE on one of their phones and it will connect immediately with the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Otherwise the number is 1-800-799-SAFE.

Not all domestic violence is against women. Not all ends in death. And not all is physical; emotional abuse can have a devastating effect.

But most of it is. Too much of it does. And physical harm is too often the result. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that one in three women will experience domestic or sexual abuse at some point in her lifetime.

A state law making the penalties for domestic violence harsher will go into effect in January. A first offense of criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature, along with a third offense of criminal domestic violence will finally be felonies under South Carolina law. That might mean offenders stay behind bars longer, that restraining orders are upheld, and that one less case of domestic violence will end up as a homicide statistic.

Domestic violence can be defeated if more people are made aware they are not alone.
It won’t save Maranda Williams.

But it could save someone else. Perhaps somehow Maranda will know what happened to her might have helped.

Copyright 2003, Anderson Independent Mail. All Rights Reserved.