Angelina Jolie has her biggest role in real life: attending the US Congress to defend victims of gender-based violence

The voice of Angelina Jolie trembled several times when he appeared Wednesday alongside US senators to talk about how victims of gender-based violence have been waiting for years for Congress to deign to give them the help they so richly deserve.

“Standing here in the center of power in the nation, I can only think of all those who were made to feel powerless,” Jolie told a packed Capitol room.

Standing here in the center of power in the nation, I can only think of all those who were made to feel powerless.

Angelina Jolie

The actress alluded to how Four years ago, Congress let a law known as VAWA expire.which for decades served to finance aid programs for victims of mistreatment and sexual abuse, in addition to giving them a way to seek justice in the courts.

That law first went into effect in 1994, and from time to time, Congress reapproved funds to keep it alive and used it to include protections for certain groups, such as same-sex couples.

However, in 2019, under the government of Donald Trump (2017-2021), the rule is no longer in force because Republicans refused to include protections for transgender people.

This Wednesday, Democratic and Republican senators announced that they had reached an agreement so that a “modernized” version of VAWA can go back into effect.

With your presence, Jolie backed that proposal and urged Congress to approve the law as soon as possible. He admitted, however, that the renewal of the law was late for many people.

“Most of all,” he said, “I want to recognize the children who are scared and suffering right now and the people for whom this legislation comes too late. Women who have suffered through this system with little or no support and who still bear the pain of their abuse. Young adults who have survived abuse and come out stronger, not because of the system but in spite of the system. And the women and children who have died, but could have been saved”.

Most of all I want to acknowledge the children who are scared and suffering right now and the people for whom this legislation comes too late.

Angelina Jolie

Saying those words, Jolie was overwhelmed with emotion: she had to stop several times to breathe and continue talking. The room meanwhile sank into silence and only the noise of the flashes.

The actress has been involved for months in the negotiations within Congress for VAWA to come back into force and has succeeded in including provisions aimed at adapting judicial procedures to child victims of violence.

It has also managed to add a clause that will serve to finance a technology designed to recognize bruises on different types of skin, something crucial for African Americans, Hispanics and indigenous people.

The final text, however, does not include a provision that was key to the Democrats and is known as the “boyfriend loophole”.

Nowadays, federal law prohibits those convicted of a gender-based violence crime from having firearms in the home, but it only applies to people who are married to or have a child with the victim, so Democrats wanted to expand it to those not in a marriage.

The powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) he campaigned against that idea and managed to drag down a good part of the Republicans in the Senate. (I)