Contact: Teri Stoddard, 301-801-0608, tstoddard@saveservices.org
WASHINGTON / February 4, 2011 – A victim rights group is calling on the National Football League to denounce the myth that Super Bowl Sunday is a “day of dread” for victims of abuse. Stop Abusive and Violent Environments – SAVE – believes such claims foster hysteria and trivialize the problem of domestic violence.
The myth dates back to 1993 when a group of activists charged Super Bowl Sunday was “biggest day of the year for violence against women.” The myth was later refuted by the Washington Post: http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp
Still, groups like the Crisis Control Center in Texas are using the falsehood to promote its fund-raising efforts. According to a recent Crisis Control Center statement, Super Bowl weekend has “one of the highest incidences of domestic violence and sexual assault than any other weekend during the year.”
But Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute doubts that view. “Women who are at risk for domestic violence are going to be helped by state of the art research and good information. They are not going to be helped by hyperbole and manufactured data,” she explained in a recent interview with The Daily Caller.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has recently joined the 15th anniversary team of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, along with other sports figures.
“While we appreciate Commissioner Goodell’s efforts to bring attention to the issue of domestic violence, he should also refuse to allow this persistent lie to stereotype NFL players as abusers or to tarnish the family appeal of the annual Super Bowl event,” according to SAVE spokesman Philip Cook. “We call on Mr. Goodell to repudiate the Super Bowl Myth as a spurious and blatant distortion of the truth.”
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments has recently released a video, “Seven Key Facts about Domestic Violence,” that documents how partner abuse is an equal opportunity problem of men and women: http://www.saveservices.org/key-facts/ . SAVE sponsors the TEPA (Training, Education, and Public Awareness) Accreditation program, a quality-assurance initiative: http://www.saveservices.org/service-providers/ .
And SAVE will be holding a conference February 24 in Washington DC. Persons who wish to attend “Hoax: The Continuing Distortions of Domestic Abuse” should pre-register here: tstoddard@saveservices.org .
SAVE is a 501(c)3 victim advocacy organization working for evidence-based solutions to domestic violence: www.saveservices.org .