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The Invisible Epidemic: How Racism and COVID Changed Domestic Violence

• Genesis Women's Shelter & Support

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From the moment Dr. Carolyn West speaks, her passion for protecting Black women from intimate partner violence resonates with unmistakable urgency. As a professor of clinical psychology with over three decades dedicated to researching gender-based violence in marginalized communities, she brings profound insights into what she calls a "triple pandemic" that devastated Black women during 2020: COVID-19, domestic violence, and racial terrorism.

The statistics Dr. West shares are sobering: approximately 1,820 Black women murdered in a single year—four to five deaths daily that rarely made headlines. This invisibility isn't accidental. As she explains, "Domestic violence thrives on silence, secrecy, and shame," particularly when systems designed to protect women fail those at society's intersections.

Dr. West's Technical Assistance Guidance Series (TAGS) emerged from this crisis, offering a revolutionary framework for providing culturally responsive care to Black women survivors. Moving beyond one-size-fits-all approaches, she advocates for survivor-centered services that consider the full spectrum of a woman's identity and experience. Her "web of trauma" concept brilliantly illustrates how historical trauma, institutional violence, poverty, community dangers, and harmful cultural stereotypes compound the impact of intimate partner abuse.

Particularly illuminating is her discussion of reproductive coercion and non-fatal strangulation—dangerous forms of control that disproportionately affect Black women yet often go unrecognized. For medical professionals and advocates alike, understanding these specific vulnerabilities can mean the difference between life and death, especially during high-risk periods like pregnancy.

What makes Dr. West's approach transformative is her insistence on seeing survivors' strength alongside their trauma. By rejecting both "colorblind" approaches that ignore racial disparities and deficit-focused models that overlook resilience, she offers a pathway to healing that honors the whole person.

Whether you're a service provider seeking to improve your practice or someone concerned about violence in your community, this conversation provides invaluable insights into creating safer spaces for survivors. The TAGS resources, available for free download, represent Dr. West's gift to a field desperately needing her wisdom.

Ready to learn more about culturally responsive approaches to intimate partner violence? Visit drcarolynwest.com or contact Genesis Women's Shelter and Support at 214-946-HELP (4357).

Speaker 1:

Earlier this year, we met with presenters at the 2025 Conference on Crimes Against Women in Dallas, texas. In this episode, my guest, dr Carolyn West, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Washington, joined the show to discuss culturally responsive assessment and treatment for Black women survivors of domestic violence. I'm Maria McMullin and this is Genesis the podcast. Genesis the podcast. Carolyn West is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Washington. In addition to teaching courses on sex crimes, sexual violence and family violence, dr West is also an award-winning author, internationally recognized speaker, documentary filmmaker and expert witness. For more than three decades, dr West has been investigating gender-based violence in the lives of marginalized populations, with a focus on African-American women. Dr West has authored more than 100 academic publications, including Violence in the Lives of Black Women, battered Black and Blue and the Technical Assistance Guidance Series Serving Black Women Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence. She joins the show today to discuss that series. Carolyn West, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

I'm so happy to see you live together at the 2025 Conference on Crimes Against Women, and we have a specific topic here that we're going to talk about today, you and I, and it is about the impact of intimate partner violence on Black women, and you developed the Technical Assistance Guidance Series, or TAGS as we may refer to them, which are strategies on how practitioners can provide survivor-centered, culturally responsive, trauma-informed and strengths-based care to Black women survivors of intimate partner violence, and you began this work in 2020, when the world was experiencing what you refer to as three major public health crises. What are those three public health crises and how were Black women more significantly impacted by them?

Speaker 2:

You know, I've been really fortunate to have like this long career as a scholar, a professor, working in domestic violence, shelters, therapy with trauma survivors, expert witness and now moving into being a subject matter expert in documentaries. And it was January 2020, and COVID was declared this public health emergency and the shelter in place, orders were declared, but there were shadow pandemics that people didn't really talk about. Those were pandemics that happened before COVID and were made worse by COVID, and that was domestic violence and this racial terrorism involving African Americans. And then things really got very difficult during that time, during 2020. What happened when the world shut down? According to the hotline studies, there was uptick in domestic violence about 8%. And then we saw the George Floyd situation and that was very traumatic for the entire country and the African-American community as well as other communities, and I just realized that all those pandemics converged and they were even worse for African-American women.

Speaker 1:

For sure, and Black women already have an elevated risk and incidence rate of intimate partner violence and so compounding the stay-at-home orders with racial tension.

Speaker 2:

So I just realized that the pandemic had an even more profound impact on Black women. They were losing their lives at record rates from COVID, and also losing their lives at record rates from interpersonal violence.

Speaker 1:

Right? Do you feel like there was or is long-term impacts to Black women because of the experience during the pandemic? So not just the COVID, but also the racial and systemic issues, and then, on top of that, perhaps escalated domestic violence.

Speaker 2:

All of those things are so connected. They are so connected. So, during COVID, african Americans died at higher rates for a variety of reasons, due to just racial disproportionality in health issues. And then they lost family members at record rates. And then, on top of that, the uptick of violence, interpersonal violence. The Centers for Disease Control in 2020 did a study and there were about 1,820 Black women who were murdered in 2020. And that averaged out to be four to five Black girls and women per day, and nobody seemed to be talking about that. Also, nobody was talking about the police violence against Black women and girls. It wasn't just George Floyd and others. Black women were being murdered too, and we weren't having that conversation, so they were very invisible. I just felt like all those pandemics coming together. I felt like I had to use that time when I was locked in my house to do something meaningful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure, and I think that you have that here and we're gonna talk about that in just a minute. But do you think that there are any lingering effects for black women because of what was experienced during the pandemic?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, I do. I think we will be living with what happened during those years of COVID and still grappling with that for generations.

Speaker 1:

I'd like to give people the opportunity, like thinking points from our conversation, to reflect back on their own experience during COVID with maybe they're not a victim or survivor of domestic violence, but maybe they intersect somewhere else with some of the issues that we're talking about, and so, using this episode and our time together and these facts as touch points, we're going to talk about the technical assistance guidance series or tags, and kind of walk through each one so that people can think about them in a way that maybe is meaningful to their own lives. Okay, so let's walk through the four parts of this series. We'll just start with part one. Why not Providing survivor-centered, culturally responsive, trauma-informed, strengths-based care Before?

Speaker 2:

we sort of get there. I just wanted to mention a little bit about how the tags came to be. So it wasn't just that public health crisis. Well, in the middle of that, I was sitting in my office and I realized I have a personal mission statement for my work and that is to be deeply devoted to creating inspirational material to empower domestic violence and sexual assault survivors during their healing journey, to deliver keynote addresses and to conduct workshops in innovative training material to educate and empower professionals with the skills to provide culturally sensitive care. And I knew that I needed to live that mission during this public health crisis. So I called up a colleague at the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and I said I have this ideal for these technical guidance reports. And it started off to be one report and then it just kept growing from there and it turned into a three-year project and I wanted to leave a gift for the field where I could put in their hands these guidance reports. That would include activities, videos, reports, toolkits, assessment tools so that they can more easily do the background for doing this.

Speaker 2:

So as I started to write the first technical guidance report, I knew I wanted to do a framework for how we do the work differently, and I felt like what was missing is at first, our work had to be survivor-centered.

Speaker 2:

Basically, we need to avoid this one size fits all service delivery model, where survivors come in and we say here's what we provide, rather than asking them what is it that you need, what are your goals, what are your priorities, what are your preferences, and so making it truly survivor centered. I knew that I wanted to see our movement be culturally responsive. How do we include awareness of cultural identities not only survivors, but staff and advocates who provide these services, making sure cultural awareness was a part of our policies, our structures, our environment, that we moved away from a colorblind approach. Three, I really felt like it needed to be trauma-informed. We needed to consider how trauma impacts not only individuals but the people who do the work, communities, organizations. And it needed to be strength-based. We needed to see survivors, not just with their victimization, but to understand that they were remarkably resilient and how could we honor that and build on the strengths that they had.

Speaker 1:

And who was the audience for all of this?

Speaker 2:

I really wanted the audience to be advocates and people who were providing direct services, but also maybe researchers and students and anybody who really wanted to do a better job of working with this population. Yeah, I think that's super smart.

Speaker 1:

So when you move into part two, you talk about taking an intersectional approach, and so just give us a baseline here for people who may not be familiar with intersectional approaches what is intersectionality? And then how is that applied in this particular tag?

Speaker 2:

Again, great question. I was inspired by the work of poet Audre Lorde who said there's no hierarchy of oppressions, and the legal scholar Kimberly Crenshaw said if we aren't intersectional, some of us the most vulnerable are going to fall between the cracks. And basically intersectionality is seeing all parts of a person's identity. We all have a race. Seeing all parts of a person's identity, we all have a race, a social class, a gender, a religion, a sexual orientation. Some of us are differently abled. We have a gender identity.

Speaker 2:

So all of those things, all of those parts of your identity, shape how you experience intimate partner violence and I think sometimes people think it's a very scary concept for some reason. And I think sometimes people think it's a very scary concept for some reason. But it just basically means you get a chance to show up as all of who you are in, whatever space you're in, and advocates can see that and honor that and how those things intersect for you. Because the more multiple intersecting identities you have, the more likely you are to experience violence and the more difficult it is to access services. So if we can see all of what people bring, we can tailor our services to meet their needs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's genius and it just kind of extends on the work that's been done. Now, do all the parts one through four, do these all kind of work together, or is it somewhere like where you can take pieces of each one, or do you believe this all needs to be together?

Speaker 2:

I think they can all work as individual. Each guide is individual, but they all are seamlessly connected. Because when I talk about intersectionality, I talk about how can you be survivor-centered in that work, how can you be trauma-informed, how can you be culturally responsive. So each technical guidance report informs the next.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so it's layers. Yeah, let's just move forward and then we'll come back to all of these ideas again. So part three is understanding reproductive coercion, non-fatal strangulation and intimate partner homicide. And you were really intentional.

Speaker 2:

I was really intentional because oftentimes people ask well, isn't just domestic violence the same for everybody, regardless of your background? And there is an element of truth. But there's also a reality that Black women experience higher rates of some types of violence, in particular ones of reproductive coercion, and so that is when the person who's causing harm intentionally attempts to control, like a survivor's ability to make decisions about her reproductive health care. So maybe a pressure to become pregnant or either terminate a pregnancy that's wanted or will interfere with birth control methods. And Black women are higher rates of non-fatal strangulation and they are more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence. And pregnant Black women are especially likely to be murdered by an intimate partner. So I was very intentional about wanting to emphasize those types of violence and making sure that advocates had the ability to assess for those so that they could be aware.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that you brought up pregnant women, because there are two times in a woman's life when she is at most danger of domestic violence, and one of them is when she leaves an abusive partner, and the second one is when she leaves an abusive partner, and the second one is when she's pregnant. Pregnancy is a highly dangerous time for women. Especially postpartum is extremely dangerous, when, if there's going to be abuse, it usually is a time where everyone's at their breaking point and the abuse occurs right. So how can this information be brought to women who are pregnant so that they can learn from it and possibly, if they need, to apply it to their own situation or make a plan for themselves?

Speaker 2:

I think that is going to be crucial, particularly in the time that we're living in right now, where just basic access to women's reproductive care can vary from state to state and our laws are in flux in terms of whether people can access certain services, and so I was really intentional in technical guidance, report three, about wanting advocates to think very deeply about what to do when survivors showed up and, if they were pregnant or were being coerced into a pregnancy, making sure that we were educating survivors about that particular danger and making sure that domestic violence advocates were talking to medical providers who provide services for pregnant women so that they understood the dangers of domestic violence. It seemed like we weren't having conversations around that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure, and I know that at Genesis Women's Shelter and Support we do talk about the effects of nonfatal strangulation. I mean traumatic brain injuries, strokes, all kinds of other health conditions that may have never been apparent. The strangulation may have never had any signs outwardly that it occurred, and yet down the road there are all of these medical diagnoses that she may experience.

Speaker 2:

And not making the link between those and the strangulation. And it can be more challenging for Black women because those injuries may not show up right away. Right, right?

Speaker 1:

Of course there is that point. You're exactly right. Skin tone can have a lot to do with the observation of any scarring or marking of the body post non-fatal strangulation, and it takes an astute medical professional to acknowledge and point out that these marks may occur on the victim's neck, face or even her chest.

Speaker 2:

Black women in particular. Because of that strong Black woman image of we can resist, we can fight back, we're not somehow damaged by strangulation, survivors may actually minimize the extent of that and say, well, but I'm not being punched, I'm not being struck in that way, and minimize the strangulation so they may not be aware that this is potentially lethal violence that they're experiencing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's a very important point that you raise, because we want people to be aware of the dangers of non-fatal strangulation and there are a lot of resources out there that we can name and, at the end of the show, that can give you information about what it means. When someone puts their hands around your neck, it takes less than two pounds of pressure to have an impact on your brain, your life and your health. In part four, you talk about using a web of trauma to understand Black women survivors of intimate partner violence.

Speaker 2:

Tell us about that Too often times as service providers we just deal with the intimate partner violence and we don't recognize that some communities that's not the only type of trauma or violence that they experience. So we're not talking as much about historical trauma, rape, slavery, lynching, segregation and that intergenerational impact that it has on contemporary survivors. It determines how you process the victimization that you've experienced. It determines how or if you will seek help in the first place. We don't talk about institutional violence. What happens when you're afraid to call the police because of that long history of mistreatment, or you're afraid to go to the hospital, or you're not trusting of social service agencies? That's institutional violence if you're mistreated in those settings.

Speaker 2:

We don't talk about structural violence. Poverty, homelessness, racism those are forms of structural violence that makes intimate partner violence worse. We don't talk about community violence. How do you live with violence in your home and you're fearful in your community of being robbed, or high rates of homicide there, or even family violence.

Speaker 2:

Many survivors have family violence in their families. Growing up they witnessed intimate partner violence. They were victims of child abuse or sexual abuse. And there's also cultural violence, and by cultural violence I mean those images of Black women that are throughout the media that suggest that we are inherently violent, that we're deserving of our victimization. I think, just as an aside, victimization, I think, just as an aside, what we're seeing with the Diddy trial and all the horrific things that are being said about the victims there, the victim blaming, that's a type of violence that just is throughout our culture and then if you're dealing with that in your own life, it's very difficult to process that. So we can't be effective doing this work if we just say tell me about the intimate partner violence in your relationship right now and not considering all the other forms of violence that that survivor is dealing with.

Speaker 1:

That's such a big topic, web of trauma. You presented a lot for us to consider there. What are some ways not to diminish it but boil down a couple of ways a counselor or therapist can talk to someone about the web of trauma when they come in for maybe first visit.

Speaker 2:

So that's the purpose of tag number four. I actually put in suggestions about how to do that. That is a lot to unpack, but just keeping it in your mind and maybe one interview it's not going to be enough to do that. But I think if the advocate can be aware of that, just simply if it's safe to ask do you have a safe place to live? Do you have a place where you can go in and lock the door and be safe? What is your neighborhood like? What is your community like? Can you read and write? Do you have access to money and how do you get that money?

Speaker 2:

So that's a way of assessing for structural violence that they may. How have your interactions been with various institutions that you're interacting with the police, the medical service, that kind of thing? So to just be aware and asking and realizing that those types of violence impact the violence within her relationship. If you're living in a community without transportation, that's going to make it a lot difficult for you to access resources. But at least if you're just aware of that, you can assess for it and make plans to deal with those types of challenges.

Speaker 1:

That makes sense. Let's change gears for a minute. You note in your work that when Black women are murdered by an intimate partner or in another form of homicide, or even when they go missing, the media does not cover these cases as frequently or as widely as when, say, it's a white woman who has these experiences. How is this contributing to the epidemic of intimate partner violence for Black women?

Speaker 2:

There's a really great book called no Humans Involved the Serial Murder of Black Women and Girls and the Deadly Cost of Police Indifference. And what that does is it renders the violence in their lives invisible, which allows perpetrators to operate with impunity. So then nobody's looking for these young women and girls when they go missing, some of them are sometimes trafficked or murdered. So again that goes back to the web of trauma, not only within your household but within your community, and so it renders that violence invisible. It implies that we don't need to look for these women, that they're not going to be legal consequences if you victimize this population. So that goes back to cultural violence, where perpetrators know that and they're going to target populations that they know there will not be much in the way of consequences if they murder these women or traffic these women.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean. You see that throughout history, the most vulnerable are those who typically go missing, are enslaved or otherwise experiencing some form of harm or crime or violence. Let's talk about the detriments of what you call the colorblind approach to intimate partner violence services.

Speaker 2:

That really was inspired for me by several things, having been in this movement for more than 30 years, attending so many trainings and workshops where presenters will stand up and they will say well, intimate partner violence is colorblind.

Speaker 2:

It occurs across race and social class and it can happen to anyone, and I think we did that to really help people understand how pervasive the problem is, and that totally made sense.

Speaker 2:

I get why that became a familiar tagline of our movement, that's true. But we also fail to understand that some groups are just disproportionately impacted and if we take such a colorblind approach, we won't structure and tailor our services to meet the needs of the most marginalized, and so they then get overlooked and they don't get the services they need. So if you're setting up services that work really well for white middle class women who are in the suburbs, who have maybe access to financial resources or transportation to be able to escape the violence, we are not going to be effectively serving those who that's not their reality. So I guess what I would say about that is there's an African proverb that says you know, the rain falls on all roofs equally, but the impact still isn't the same. So, yes, everybody could be potentially a victim of intimate partner violence, but the impact is going to be different if you don't have a roof.

Speaker 1:

Right. Yeah, I kind of felt where you were going with that one, like if your roof is damaged, well, it's going to leak, right? So, yes, you can get the visual and the whole idea behind just that one proverb, because I know, at Genesis, instead of saying you know, domestic violence is colorblind, we typically say it does not discriminate. So it reaches across all types of individuals around the world, and in this case we're talking about women. So anyone who identifies as a woman is at a higher risk just by her gender.

Speaker 2:

And that's going to look different depending on if you're a trans woman, or if you're a woman of color, or if you're a poor woman.

Speaker 1:

Right, absolutely, and that goes back to the intersectionality of the experience. So I picked up on something that you wrote and I wanted to ask you to help us understand it. Here's a quote An intersectional framework provides an ideal lens to examine and center the epidemic of intimate partner violence against Black women. Help me understand that.

Speaker 2:

What that really just means is, if we want to be effective in doing this work and we want to reach the most vulnerable, we need to take an intersectional approach, that you're not just a black woman but you have a sexual orientation. So if you're in a same sex relationship, how does the violence show up differently for you? We can't assume all black women trace their history to the trans Atlantic slave trade. Maybe you're an African immigrant, maybe you're from the Caribbean, so how does that violence show up for you? Maybe you're a low income woman or you're a woman of faith, and so if we can look at those multiple, marginalized identities, how they intersect, we can more effectively tailor our treatment to help them. But here's what's important too we can't make assumptions. We have to talk to that survivor, going back to being survivor-centered.

Speaker 2:

What's the most important part of your identity for you? It may not be what we think as an advocate, so really asking and clarifying that for them, maybe the mental health care isn't the thing If you're facing homelessness and unstable housing. Maybe it's finding a place to live in, transportation. Maybe your faith community is a great place for you to get help. But a woman who is a lesbian or trans. Maybe the faith community hasn't been so great for her. So understanding that, understanding those intersectionalities, is how we provide the best services.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate those references. Now, returning to solutions for a minute. What are the most effective approaches to supporting and educating the community about gender-based violence?

Speaker 2:

I really like the ideal of using the media. When I was in graduate school and Mike Tyson was convicted of raping a beauty contestant, what we did is we took out a full page ad in the black newspaper in St Louis where we broke down rape myths and explained how it disproportionately impacts black women, and that was a creative way of educating the community. That was brilliant. We can do that around these high profile cases that we're facing now using social media, having young women use all forms of social media to talk about how violence has impacted them and to break down those misconceptions.

Speaker 2:

Do bystander treatment, people will oftentimes turn to family or friends. We need to educate everybody in the survivor social support network so they understand risk factors, so that they can then intervene and not say things that will be harmful to the survivor. We have to get into faith communities. We have to go where survivors are barbershop, beauty salons, nail salons and, I think, when you're in a different kind of setting where people are just talking and sharing information anyway, educating those people around the survivor who can say, hey, here are where the resources are in our community to get help. That is one way and, I think, really educating advocates and service providers and anybody, everybody who may have contact with survivors to know what to look for, be trauma informed and see that maybe what you're seeing, this person, is maybe not acting out, maybe they have some trauma or victimization and they really need assistance. That's what we have to do, because domestic violence just thrives on silence, secrecy and shame. So if we can have conversations where there's less of a stigma of talking about it, it can be really impactful.

Speaker 1:

That's an excellent point and I love what you just said about how domestic violence thrives on silence, secrecy and shame. Thank you for all of that information. Where can people access the tags?

Speaker 2:

They can find them at the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, and I've also posted them on my personal website, drcarolynwestcom, because I wanted to make sure that they were just readily available and free for download, so that people can click on them and find the resources that they need if they want to learn more.

Speaker 1:

I can attest to this because I've been on your website and they're really easy to navigate and to read and I found it very meaningful. I really value your work and I thank you for talking with me today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. My hope is during that pandemic, when I was processing everything. I hope that I've created a resource that advocates can freely use, freely share and that we can move forward and continue this work going forward. I hope so.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Genesis Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence, and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at GenesisShelterorg and when you follow us on social media on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter, and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by call or text at 214-946-HELP 214-946-4357.