Amid the death, sickness, mental health challenges, and economic upheaval wrought by the pandemic, another threat to public health has reached new heights. Intimate partner violence—which can include physical abuse, sexual violence, stalking, or psychological aggression within a romantic relationship—has escalated over the past two years. Research points to economic distress, increased time indoors with abusive partners, and worsening mental health issues as major exacerbating factors.

I wanted to better understand this crisis, which too often flies under the radar. So I reached out to several advocates and practitioners in California to find out more about intimate partner violence, the public sector response to it, and how some organizations are leveraging community healing practices to help address the problem.

My first phone call was to my longtime colleague Marc Philpart, managing director at PolicyLink and a leader in the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, a nationwide network dedicated to promoting policies that support boys and men of color. Intimate partner violence is not new, he said, but the pandemic has brought a newfound awareness of the problem.

Unfortunately, its prevalence is not equally shared. While intimate partner violence can occur among people from all walks of life, those with lifelong exposure to violence, economic instability, and marginalization are at greater risk. Many perpetrators of intimate partner violence are themselves victims of trauma, sometimes intergenerational, Philpart said. In communities of color, much of this stems from structural racism, he said.

“We are more often coming from communities with concentrated poverty where redlining, segregation, and economic inequities are so prevalent,” Philpart told me. “Our marginalization is really an accelerant for some of the patriarchal and misogynistic norms that are so prevalent in our society.”

Read the full article about restorative justice and intimate partner violence by Denzel Tongue at YES! Magazine.