Calls to New York’s domestic violence hotline rose by 30% in April, compared to the same month last year.
New York is seeing a “frightening” increase in domestic violence calls during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“People who need help should reach out,” Cuomo said at his daily press conference Friday. “There is no shame in reaching out and saying, ‘I need help.’”
Calls to New York’s domestic violence hotline rose by 30% in April, compared to the same month last year. In March, when social distancing and isolation measures first started to ramp up in the state, reports to the hotline increased by 18%. That same month, state police also reported that they’d received 15% more domestic-violence incident calls than they had the previous March.
“That is a frightening rate and level of increase,” Cuomo said Friday during his daily press conference. The governor urged people to call the state’s domestic violence hotline, which can now be reached over text or online. All services are confidential.
The surge in domestic violence is no surprise to experts and advocates in the field, who’ve been warning for weeks that the frequency and severity of abuse will increase due to the pandemic. In interactions with the National Domestic Violence Hotline — which acts as a kind of barometer of domestic violence in the United States — people have said their abusers are cutting them off from tools they can use to ward off COVID-19, like hand sanitizer, antibacterial soap, and showers, according to Crystal Justice, the Hotline’s chief development and marketing officer…
To read the entire article from Vice News, click https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dmn8x/new-york-is-seeing-a-frightening-increase-in-domestic-violence-calls
