violence abroad, violence at home

I wanted to take a moment to mention two other articles of note in this week's New York Times.

The first is a rather grim report on domestic violence by returning Iraq war vets--particularly the case of Sgt. Carlos Renteira, who, instead of receiving Army-mandated anger management and substance abuse counseling after beating up his wife...was redeployed to Iraq and promoted.

The article also mentions not one but *two* rashes of murders of women (both female soldiers and wives of soldiers) at North Carolina's Ft. Bragg--one that made headlines in 2002 when many troops returned from Afghanistan, and another that's happened in the past four months. Apparently babies aren't the only thing that come with the return of the 82nd Airborne.

The second article, I'd like to think, is a bit more hopeful. It describes a pilot program in New York's Washington Heights that trains hairstylists to identify signs of domestic abuse and offer basic counseling and sources of information for victims of violence--not unlike the work done by organizations like RAINN. Hairstylists might seem like a random choice, but as the article points out, they often end up serving as the "therapist of last resort," particularly for women who can't afford or are afraid to seek other counseling services. And "the salon might be one of the few places women might be without their abuser around." The program, modeled on the fairly large and successful Cut It Out initiative in Chicago, targets a neighborhood where people may be particularly mistrustful of police or city social service workers.