Our founder Carrie Goldberg attended the White House today at the invitation of President Biden to celebrate the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act!
“Thank you to everyone in this room,” President Biden told those in the room at the VAWA reauthorization event. “Thank you for standing up for thousands of women.”
Biden talked about how advocates and lawmakers in the room had “changed the culture, not just the law,” and emphasized that “This law [VAWA] has always been about abuse of power, we need to shine a big bright light on it and call it by its’ name.”
VAWA 2022 does so much that we want you, our clients and friends, to know about including:
- Establishing a federal civil cause of action for individuals whose intimate visual images are disclosed without their consent, allowing a victim to recover damages and legal fees*
- Creating a new National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals
- Supporting State, Tribal, and local government efforts to prevent and prosecute cybercrimes, including cyberstalking and the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images
- Improving prevention and response to sexual violence, including through increased support for the Rape Prevention and Education Program and Sexual Assault Services Program; expansion of prevention education for students in institutions of higher education; and enactment of the Fairness for Rape Kit Backlog Survivors Act, which requires state victim compensation programs to allow sexual assault survivors to file for compensation without being unfairly penalized due to rape kit backlogs
- Updating the SMART Prevention Program and the CHOOSE Youth Program to reduce dating violence, help children who have been exposed to domestic violence, and engage men in preventing violence
- Enacting the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Denial Notification Act to help state law enforcement investigate and prosecute cases against individuals legally prohibited from purchasing firearms who try to do so
- Improving the healthcare system’s response to domestic violence and sexual assault, including through enhanced training for sexual assault forensic examiners.
*This section reads: an individual whose intimate visual depiction is disclosed, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce, without the consent of the individual, where such disclosure was made by a person who knows that, or recklessly disregards whether, the individual has not consented to such disclosure, may bring a civil action against that person in an appropriate district court of the United States for relief as set forth in paragraph (3).
It goes on to explain that in the case of an individual who is under 18 years of age, incompetent, incapacitated, or deceased, the legal guardian of the individual or representative of the identifiable individual’s estate, another family member, or any other person appointed as suitable by the court, may assume the identifiable individual’s’ rights under this section.
Today recommitted us to giving our ALL to lawyering our clients to safety.
If you would like to talk about becoming a client of C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, get in touch here.