Biden: Domestic abuse ‘ugliest form of violence that exists’

Vice President Biden on Tuesday announced a summit on civil rights and the equal protection of women to address a part of the Violence Against Women Act that was struck down in 2000. 

Biden said the United States is not even close to being finished addressing domestic violence 20 years after the law was signed, calling it the “ugliest form of violence that exists.”

{mosads}”We are not going to succeed until America embraces the notion, my father’s notion, that under no circumstance does a man ever have a right to raise a hand to a woman other than in self defense,” he said during a speech at the National Archives. 

Biden has described the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 as his greatest legislative achievement. He drafted the proposal as a senator in 1990, four years before its passage.  

The summit Biden announced will address a portion of the law that allowed victims to pursue civil charges against those who committed domestic violence. However, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the provision was unconstitutional. 

Biden said he would “bring together the leading legal scholars, prosecutors and Department of Justice to revisit the civil rights remedy in Violence Against Women.”

During his speech, Biden said one of the most important things for a victim’s recovery “is an actual conviction.”

The vice president is slated to hold a reception at his residence later in the day to honor the anniversary. President Obama signed a proclamation to mark the date earlier Tuesday.

Biden has said the law is based on his father’s lesson that the “cardinal sin among [abuses of power] was a man to physically abuse a woman or a child.”

The vice president used an interview earlier in the day to address a recent instance of domestic violence. He applauded the Baltimore Ravens for doing the “right thing” in cutting running back Ray Rice from the team after video surfaced of him punching his now-wife in an elevator in February. 

The team had initially only suspended Rice for two games, but reversed course after the video surfaced. The NFL also indefinitely suspended Rice. 

“Now you can argue they should have done it sooner — they didn’t want it. Whatever the reason is, it’s happening,” Biden told NBC’s “Today.” 

In the proclamation signed to mark the anniversary, the White House pointed to the network of services the law established for victims that includes shelters, rape crisis centers, and specialized training for officers. 

Obama signed a reauthorization of the law in March 2013 after yearlong battle in Congress about some provisions of the law relating to the LGBT community and the jurisdiction of domestic abuse cases on tribal lands. 

Biden said the law has been strengthened each time it has been reauthorized. He said the country had come a long way since the days when domestic violence was considered the “dirty little national secret locked away in our closet.”