NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the reason many women do not report rapes or domestic abuse is because they are afraid they will be “raped again by the system.”

“Why do you think women who get raped, so many don’t report it? They don’t want to get raped again by the system. They don’t want to be put through what they had to be put through,” he said at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Biden’s remarks came at a benefit for the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project, an organization for which his daughter-in-law Kathleen Biden, wife to Hunter Biden, serves as vice president. Biden thanked attorneys for volunteering their time to help women who are in crisis, and expressed gratitude for those who helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act earlier this year.

The vice president said that domestic abuse cases can be “God-awful expensive. It’s intimidating. It’s difficult,” and that organizations like the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project help ensure that women speak out when they experience abuse, regardless of their circumstances.

“What you’re doing really matters,” he said. “Thank you because there are so many more women that need your help and children that need your help.”

Quoting his mother, he later added, “God love ya. You’re doing God’s work. This is as close as you can come to doing God’s work. People who are abused, because of the excess of power, physical or economical, that is the cardinal sin in my view.”

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