Buffalo Grove, Illinois, village spokesperson Molly Gillespie announced at a news conference that there was no threat to the public from the domestic terrorist attack at a suburban home earlier this month. I beg to differ. It is precisely when we treat domestic violence as contained to the particular family in which it is occurring that we play a part in perpetuating it rather than doing what we can as friends, family, neighbors or law enforcement to stop it from escalating.
We need to treat domestic terrorism as the insidious threat that it is. We should not accept it as an inevitable or acceptable aspect of everyday life.
I call it domestic terrorism because if we call it domestic violence, we immediately think of it as contained within the walls of the family home. The village’s remarks reinforce that notion. But if we call it an active terrorist threat, we would expect law enforcement to use its full power to prevent that threat from materializing. Language matters. A terrorist threat is no less a threat when made by a man to his family members; it is actually more of a threat because of the power he wields over them and the access to them that he has.
