Francine Garland Stark is the executive director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Regina Rooney is the organization’s programming director.

Domestic abuse so dominates our news feeds that it risks becoming background noise, rather than the urgent crisis that it is. In Maine and beyond, the stories are objectively horrifying.

A few recents:

• A Trenton man was arrested after police responding to a domestic violence call found him with multiple explosive devices.
• The former lieutenant governor of Virginia killed his wife and then himself in their family home, leaving their two teenage children to call for help.  
• An online academy instructing men worldwide how to drug and rape their female partners had 62 million visits in one month. CNN, which broke the story, describes the United States as the “core audience” for the site.  
• In the deadliest mass shooting in America since 2024, a Louisiana man wounded two adults and killed eight children — seven of whom were his own — days before he and one of the adult victims were to sign divorce papers.  
• In April, a young Maine man shot and killed his girlfriend, Makayla Rose Desantis. She was just 23 years old. 

The reporting often reveals clear danger signs. In these cases, several victims were in process of separating from the men who would kill them. The men issued threats to hurt or kill — some of which were witnessed by family members, co-workers and others.

They had access to guns. In some cases, the men were using substances or were suicidal. These are all recognized indicators of lethality when coming from someone who abuses their partner and family.

These stories could help the public understand how common it is for abusive men to have “mental health crises” as soon as they see that the person they are abusing has taken steps to leave them. They could explore what might make a man believe that choosing to kill is preferable to ceding control over his partner and family.

Instead our media, and by extension our mainstream conversations, continue to name substance use and mental health challenges as the drivers of abusive men’s homicidal actions without also making the cogent connections to domestic abuse. Again and again, we fail to recognize the long pattern of behavior that has led up to the moment in which he decided to pull the trigger — and the many opportunities we had to intervene before he got there. That failure perpetuates the narrative that lethal domestic violence is “an isolated incident.”

Abusing is a choice that people, mostly men, make. The online academy scandal can teach us something about that choice.

Enough men believe that they have the right to women’s bodies that in just one month they generated 62 million visits to a website dedicated to tranquilizing and sexually assaulting their partners. That figure is an object lesson in how deep and wide patriarchal entitlement and misogyny run. It is a reminder of how far we have to go, and how tenuous our progress is to date.  

We must not let domestic abuse become background noise. We cannot allow ourselves to shrug off each domestic violence assault in the police blotter, every headline about a new homicide, as unavoidable. We must not become numb.

Domestic abuse and violence are not inevitable. We can change the way we think about power in our relationships. We can end the beliefs that lead so many men, and sometimes others, to think they deserve to control and terrify their partners and families. And we can put resources behind the proven responses that interrupt violent behavior and keep victims safe.

Here is the truth: We know what to do about domestic violence. We just have to decide to do it.

MCEDV advocates for the right of all people to live free from domestic abuse and all forms of violence. If you or someone you know needs help, reach a local advocate in your area by calling the statewide Domestic Violence Helpline: 1-866-834-4357. Deaf or hard of hearing? Call 1-800-437-1220.