Recognizing this economic reality and the various traumas of domestic or intimate abuse, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) instructed federal agencies “to provide enhanced support to federal workers seeking safety and recovering from domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and other related forms of abuse or harassment, including technological abuse.” (Wikimedia Commons)
The revolting video of Sean “Diddy” Combs hurling Cassie Ventura, his former girlfriend, to the floor, then kicking, and dragging her, brutally demonstrates the need to protect domestic abuse victims.
There are far too many Venturas, including in the federal service.
Their pain can be more than physical and psychological. The financial hit could be as severe as Combs’s kicks, not just for the person, but also for the public. After CNN released a video of the beating last week, Combs acknowledged his actions, saying in a statement that he was “truly sorry.” But apologies, such as his, do not make any pain disappear.
Recognizing this economic reality and the various traumas of domestic or intimate abuse, two days before the video was released the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) instructed federal agencies “to provide enhanced support to federal workers seeking safety and recovering from domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and other related forms of abuse or harassment, including technological abuse.”
In a memorandum to government leaders, Robert H. Shriver, III, OPM’s acting director, said the Biden administration “is committed to supporting the safety of our employees and providing them flexibility to recover from trauma, helping employees remain in good standing in their jobs to safeguard their financial independence, rebuild, and heal.”
The leave may be used for a variety of purposes, according to OPM, including:
● Seeking medical and mental health treatment
● Obtaining housing
● Securing services for domestic abuse survivors
● Attending court hearings related to domestic violence, including protective orders and child custody.
OPM declined requests to interview Shriver and other OPM officials. By email, the agency said “safe leave,” its term for time off for domestic abuse issues, “is not a new type of leave entitlement” for federal workers. Instead, it uses existing leave programs. The time off feds take because of domestic abuse could be paid or unpaid depending, in OPM’s terms, on policies “available to them that may apply in situations involving safe leave purposes.” Shriver’s memo said OPM’s directive was needed because “the leave system for Federal employees was not constructed with concepts of safe leave in mind.”
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) welcomed the administration’s action, saying in an interview that intimate abuse leave for federal workers “should have been granted some time ago.” Citing the trauma of domestic violence, she added “the least that can be done, it seems to me for federal employees, is to allow them to take time off … to address their own safety and even the safety of their family members.”
That leave, she said, should be “of course with pay. Otherwise, it seems to me that it would be very difficult to take time off.” Last year, a White House report on a “U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence” (GBV) endorsed forms of paid leave as “important work-related policies that may help prevent abuse and assist survivors to address and recover from GBV.”
Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline (which is funded by the U.S. government) praised the new policy. “I think it sets a really good role model for the rest of our country,” she said.
While “more and more” business and organizations, even small ones, are developing policies to support domestic violence victims, intimate abuse leave is “not incredibly common,” she added, and even less so for paid leave.
Yet, “the needs are vast,” Ray-Jones continued. “So, it’s important that employers have opportunities in place to just really ensure that victims don’t have a financial impact. Financial abuse is present in almost 98 percent of abusive relationships.” Examples of financial abuse are taking a partner’s money and sabotaging their employment by disturbing their workplaces, she said.
The financial impact on individuals compounds a national, macroeconomic impact of domestic violence.
In 2014 “the estimated intimate partner violence lifetime cost” was $103,767 for female victims and $23,414 for male victims, according to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. That amounts to “a population economic burden of nearly $3.6 trillion … over victims’ lifetimes.”
Other statistics demonstrate the breadth of the problem. Almost one-third of women and nearly 25 percent of men have experienced “severe physical violence” by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, according to the 2022 “National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey” published by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2023, about 10 percent of the 431,213 people who contacted the Hotline were male.
While the OPM guidance to agencies is new, the groundwork was laid well in advance. Last year’s 150-page White House document says paid leave policies “foster an inclusive workforce and support survivors who need to take time away from work to seek safety or recover from GBV.”
Introducing the report, President Biden said “no one - no one, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, should experience abuse. Period. And if they do, they should have the services and support they need to get through it.”
The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and its subcommittee on the federal workforce, Reps. James Comer (Ky.) and Pete Sessions (Tex.), respectively, did not respond to a request for comment.
“Federal employees should feel fully supported to take time off and address their safety or a member of their family’s safety,” said a statement by Shriver. “Domestic violence, stalking, and other forms of abuse and harassment have no place in the workplace.”
