Hmong American Mutual Assistance Association

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Too often the pressures of day-to-day living lead to anger, exhaustion and fraying of the family. The husband is generally the major bread-winner in the family, but current Hmong education levels restrict the men to hourly wages insufficient to support the typical Hmong family of six to eight children. The wife must work -– often a 40 hour per week “temp job” -– to help make ends meet (even with financial assistance from the state). The problems of raising children fall heavily on both parents, who often lack sophistication in U.S. law and struggle with differences in culture and customs. Any one of a number of “escape routes” may come into play as the spouses seek a pressure release.

Domestic violence, sexual assault, and gang/youth violence is an issue that is of a great and growing concern in the Asian Pacific communities, particularly the Hmong. Recently, a number of violent events and tragedies occurred in our community that clearly were the results of domestic violence, sexual assault, and youth gang violence. Six children were senselessly murdered and their mother, Khoua Her, is in prison as the perpetrator. Friends and neighbors as well as police and court documents indicate that this family had a history of family discord and violence. Shortly after this tragic episode, a murder-suicide took the parents of 13 children. Yet another mother killed two of her children.

Another tragedy involved Bao Lor, a young mother of seven children long missing and considered killed by her husband who later took his own life. A lesser known incident occurred in Highland Park in September 1998, where a Hmong man in his 50's held his wife hostage using a gun, ending in an all night confrontation with the police. Fortunately, this woman's life was spared due to police intervention.

Sexual crimes are on the rise as well. In the past few years, a number of young Hmong girls in their early teens were the victims of gang-related sexual assaults. A thirteen-year-old Hmong girl in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who was recently charged with killing her newborn baby, was a victim of rape. Because of the lack of culturally appropriate services for victims of sexual assaults in the Asian Pacific community, these victims and their families were left on their own to cope with an incomprehensible evil. Not only were they not given support by their families, they were being shunned as "tainted" persons by the community following the old world value system in a new land.

To these horror stories must be added the unfortunate increase in everyday family strife caused by infidelity, generation and cultural conflict, and financial jealousies. At the least, if the husband “runs around” with another woman (or the wife enters into an adulterous affair at work, etc., change the following genders), the wife may seek assistance from a women’s support group. But this in turn creates the problem of “loss of face” within the Community as word travels that Mr. X cannot control Mrs. Y. These discords turn ugly, and the family shatters, with the children suffering the ultimate loss through dislocation, unstable home life and lost dreams.

The problem of youth gang violent activities remains a growing threat in the Asian Pacific community, including the traditionally pastoral Hmong. Being an immigrant community, there is a great generation gap between parents and children. Parents desperately try to maintain their culture and language at the same time they are trying to function in the new culture. Their children effortlessly adopt the American culture and language as their own, creating great misunderstandings and miscommunication between parents and children. Many children have run away from home and joined some of the gangs for support and acceptance. Never forgotten and always a fear, a runaway thirteen-year-old Hmong girl was brutally raped and killed in Brooklyn Park in October 1998.