The crisis of domestic violence against mothers, daughters and sisters should be treated with the level of seriousness it fully deserves. Outrageously, this is far from the case and part of the reason lies in attitudes fostered in households and throughout communities.

A glance at some staggering statistics from local organizations and government agencies:

- Across the nation, more women are victims of domestic violence than of burglary, muggings and other violent crime combined.

- In New York, approximately 450,000 domestic incidents are reported annually to police departments throughout the state. State courts issued a total of 221,000 orders of protection, of which 172,000 were recorded in a domestic violence registry. This was in 2008 alone.

- In New York City, Black and Hispanic women have higher rates of intimate partner homicide, hospitalizations and emergency department visits compared to women in other racial and ethnic groups.

The recent political scandals involving New York state officials have brought attention to how people in power attempt to cover up the crime of domestic violence. Sadly, this is nothing new. The closing of ranks around abuse is rooted in a culture of male privilege, one that crosses lines of class and race. It is enabled by men and women who internalize male control as a norm and who blame victims, not the abusers. Because of these attitudes and behavior, abusers are too often allowed to elude accountability until the worst happens. And it does.

Great strides have been made locally and nationally in how domestic violence is treated by law enforcement. But the crime of domestic violence remains minimized and excused unlike any other crime. This especially matters for Latinas. In New York City, Black and Hispanic women were more than twice as likely as women of other racial and ethnic groups to be killed or injured by an intimate partner. For undocumented immigrant victims or those who depend on their spouse for their legal status, the vulnerability to domestic violence is even more pronounced.

Latinos and Latinas must recognize how we subtly and overtly perpetuate silence around domestic violence. This means a commitment to rupturing attitudes that prevent victims from reporting this crime and enable perpetrators to continue abuse.

One aspect we must challenge as a community is the misperception that a victim has to be battered to a pulp for it to be considered domestic abuse. Here is a definition provided by New York State's Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence:

"Domestic violence is when one person does a variety of things to control another person in an intimate relationship. The shift in power can happen very slowly, over a period of time, so that the other person cannot even remember when it happened."

Once upon a time, when it came to domestic violence, it was routine for police officers to show up and tell a perpetrator to take a walk and cool off. It took decades for the women's rights movement to finally get law enforcement and society to recognize this violence for what it is – a prosecutable crime and a crisis for families.