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Is the Super Bowl the most dangerous day for domestic abuse victims? No, experts say

Miami Herald - 1/27/2020

Maybe it's the relentless tackling on the way to a touchdown, an opponent's forceful body slam, a solid head bump or spontaneous punching. Maybe it's how badly a team lost or the euphoria of a dramatic win.

That is how the lore's logic runs like a game of telephone, year after year, linking a major sports event with a significant spike in domestic violence incidents, overwhelming shelters and law enforcement throughout the country.

But once again, as Miami prepares to host the 54th Super Bowl game, experts and advocates want to dispel a myth that has been linked to football's biggest event for nearly two decades: that Super Bowl Sunday is the most dangerous day of the year for victims of domestic violence.

"There are spikes, but the fact is that [domestic violence] is pervasive and growing at all times, so it is not limited to one segment of our society, it is not limited to one time of year," said Mary Riedel, president and CEO of Women in Distress of Broward County. "It is pervasive. It happens every seven seconds."

Riedel, who said her shelter gets more than 25,000 hotline calls a year, said shelter staff members are prepared to deal with a spike in calls every day of the year. One in four women and one in seven men in the U.S. have been victims of severe physical violence in their lifetime, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

However, it is well-known among advocates for survivors of domestic violence that shelters experience spikes in hotline calls after a tragic event like a mass shooting, during big sporting events and on most major holidays, including New Year's Eve, Thanksgiving, and Valentine's Day.

Many experts agree that there's a close correlation between substance abuse, like binge drinking, and domestic violence. But this is just one factor in the larger picture of abuse. Also within this frame are abusers who grew up in abusive households, lacking models of healthy relationships, and an escalation of emotional abuse or financial pressures.

"We see it more as an escalation of a pattern of behavior," Riedel said. "It is a little bit naive to say, 'Well, people have had a few drinks ... So then it happens.' It's much deeper."

Broward's Women in Distress shelter is the largest of 42 state-certified domestic violence shelters in Florida, with 132 beds that are almost always at capacity year-round. In the last fiscal year, the Broward shelter housed over 4,000 adults and children, 48 percent of whom were children.

"There is violence in our society, it's not just in the sporting arenas," Riedel added.

The Super Bowl myth that became a 'giant problem'

Where did this myth begin? What was once a minor miscommunication between researchers and journalists has become cemented into the general consciousness as fact.

In 1993, according to the myth-busting website Snopes, a group of advocates in California cited a study that had allegedly found a higher number of domestic violence police reports in Virginia during games won by the Redskins during the 1988-1989 season.

The disturbing statistic seeped into news segments and mailers, but the study itself was ignored. The study had in fact concluded a spike in emergency room admissions "was not associated with the occurrence of football games in general," one of the authors later told the Washington Post.

"It became a giant problem," said Beth Adubato, a criminal justice professor at Saint Peter's University in New Jersey. "They did one study and they weren't even really talking about the Super Bowl. So what they said got completely misconstrued."

Adubato, who is also a former television reporter, has spent nearly a decade studying the relationship between televised football games and incidents of domestic violence.

"Most people are not going to become violent just by being exposed to violence on television or even video games," said Adubato. "But if they are predisposed to being violent, then it does have an effect and that's what studies have shown."

But while she said her studies undermine the legend that the Super Bowl on its own is the worst day of the year, incidents could vary by their proximity to a game. In 2011, Adubato led a study to see if there was a link between the Philadelphia Eagles' games and a spike in domestic violence police reports in the Philadelphia area.

Among its findings, the study concluded that while there was no significant difference between home and away games, game days generally had more incidents than other days.

"It won't be Miami that really gets the spike," Adubato said. "It's more likely to be the fans of the [winning] team, as opposed to general people watching the Super Bowl. ... just because they don't have as much of a stake."

Fighting misconceptions

Elizabeth Baker, co-founder of Safespace Foundation Miami, said she believes a lot of the spikes can also stem from personal or professional failures, and being forced into a confined space for an extended period of time.

"Thanksgiving is a nightmare and so is Christmas," Baker said of the spikes in calls. "It was also terrible in 1992 [after Hurricane Andrew], when nobody had power and they were kind of confined to their houses by the hurricane."

Meanwhile, Riedel admitted her shelter in Broward did receive a spike in calls during the weeks before and after the Super Bowl game in 2019. Compared to a normal week, she said, the Women in Distress shelter received about 30 percent more calls. But Riedel attributed this uptick to an expected rise in hotline calls during major holidays and events, and increased public awareness, and not to the belief that the Super Bowl is an outlier.

"The big thing that has changed is there are remedies, there are systems. That's a good progress story," said Baker, who has been working for almost 50 years with survivors of domestic violence. "One of the things that we have not changed is how often it happens."

Wanda Gomez, a Miami advocate and survivor of domestic violence, said the hardest thing to realize as a victim is that abuse is part of a cycle and not just one isolated event caused by high stress. Among other incidents, Gomez survived being stabbed seven times by a former partner.

"I became so accustomed to it, that it was going to happen and that everything was going to be fine," said Gomez, now a minister for Ministerio Ayudando a Nuestra Comunidad. "As a victim, at that moment, you think it was just a fit of rage ... that it will just be that one day because he was drinking and didn't know what he was doing."

If you or a loved one needs help or additional resources on domestic violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline number is 800-799-7233.

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