Inside Angelina Jolie's Domestic Violence Advocacy Since Filing for Divorce and How Her Kids Got Involved

Mar. 15, 2025

Angelina Jolie on Oct. 25, 2021.Photo: Marco Ravagli/Barcroft Media via Getty

A source close to Jolie tells PEOPLE that she wanted to “focus on changing laws over telling public stories” about her experience.

After 20 years working with the UN Refugee Agency, Jolie, 49,departed her role as UNHCR’s Special Envoyin December 2022 to focus on other humanitarian endeavors.

Her advocacy work has included areas of domestic violence, including the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which seeks to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking.

Jolie said in a March 2022 interview with NBC News' Kate Snow thatthe cause should be “personal to everyone— everyone who cares about family, everyone who cares about children, everyone who cares about their own safety and the health of their community.”

“This country doesn’t recognize what a serious domestic violence and child abuse problem it really has,” the actress added at the time.

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She wrote about this in a July 2023op-edpublished in the American Journal of Nursing.

“Medical research, imagery and training continue to center on white skin, not on how injuries present differently in patients with darker skin tone. As a result, medical professionals — including nurses and forensic examiners — often miss injuries depending on race and ethnicity,” she wrote, sharing that Zahara, who is from Ethiopia, had a medical procedure where she was told to look for “pink near her incisions” to check for improper healing.

“As the mother of children of multiple races, Ihave seen my children of color be misdiagnosed, at times in ways that endangered their health.”

Angelina Jolie on Oct. 26, 2024.Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

In a September 2021 interview withThe Guardian, Jolie was asked about dealing with alleged abuse in her own home after years of humanitarian work for the rights of others. “Often you cannot recognize something in a personal way, especially if your focus is on the greatest global injustices, because everything else seems smaller. It’s so hard,” she said at the time.

Jolie’s lawyers alleged in a previous filing in that legal battle that Pitt’s “history ofphysical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s September 2016 plane trip” and that the flight “marked the first time he turned his physical abuse on the children as well.”

Brad Pitt on Feb. 24, 2023.Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty

A divorce lawyer for Pitt has also previously said that the actor accepted responsibility for some things in his past but that he would not accept responsibility for things he did not do.

In a wide-ranging 2017GQinterview, Pitt revealed that he was sober and “just started therapy.” The actor said at the time, “For me this period has really been about looking at my weaknesses and failures and owning my side of the street.

Together Pitt and Jolie share six kids: Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 16. As a source indicated in July 2024, Pitthas “virtually no contact” with their adult children, however, per an agreement with Jolie, “he has visitation with the younger kids.”

The distance from his kids “pains him,” asource previously told PEOPLE. “He loves his children and misses them. It’s very sad.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go tothehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

source: people.com