Ruth Glenn on her Domestic Violence Advocacy

Air Dates: November 28-December 4, 2022

Nearly 20 people are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States every 60 seconds, more than ten million people every year. Ruth Glenn bravely shares her story of trauma, survival, and advocacy.

Glenn has dedicated her life to supporting survivors of domestic violence. She is the president and CEO of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), an organization dedicated to holding abusers accountable while protecting survivors and advocates. Before her work with the NCADV began, she worked in the Colorado Department of Human Services for 28 years and served as the director of the Domestic Violence Program in her last nine years there. Glenn is a survivor of domestic violence and has often shared her story to help enlighten others about the prevalence and development of domestic violence. She has advocated for many causes, including reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. The act “creates and supports comprehensive, cost-effective responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.” Glenn has also advocated for legislation involving firearms and domestic violence. This is clearly an important cause, given the 557 deaths due to gun-related domestic violence that have already occurred this year, according to the NCADV website’s count at the time of writing. Glenn has been a part of several domestic violence programs, provided her expertise on domestic violence survivor issues and testified before the Colorado State Legislature and the United States Congress. In October, she published her memoir “Everything I Never Dreamed: My Life Surviving and Standing Up to Domestic Violence.”

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Glenn discusses her journey to writing “Everything I Never Dreamed” and her decades of advocacy for other domestic violence survivors. She details her own experience in an abusive marriage, how she was eventually able to leave, and the support systems available to survivors. Glenn explains that domestic violence is a public health crisis, and in order to protect survivors effectively, we need to get to a place “where we hold abusive persons accountable, where we make it safer for victims and survivors to leave.”

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