Jane Williamson (not her real name) suffered repeated blows to her head. She went to an abuse shelter and complained about ringing in her right ear and blurred vision in her eye. The shelter staff was unable to detect any visible signs of her partner’s assault. They told her the symptoms would soon clear up, then sent her off to see a psychiatrist.
Within a few days Jane became deaf in that ear and blind in one eye. She will never recover her senses. Her attacker never saw a single minute in jail, nor did he pay a cent toward her medical bills.
Sadly, cases like this are common. Indeed, the majority of the 10,000 women who work with the True Equality Network have been in Jane Williamson’s shoes themselves – beaten and forgotten. These women recount an eerily similar story. When they try to work through the courts, things actually get worse for them. Many of these women believe you are better off leaving town and changing your name, than dialing 911.
American taxpayers support the Violence Against Women Act and other domestic violence programs to the tune of $1 billion a year. So what’s gone wrong?
First, abuse shelters, operating under the guise of protecting victim confidentiality and thus unaccountable to the American taxpayer, have become more concerned about generating revenue than serving true victims. Shelters are constantly looking for ways to increase their caseload. So if they have open beds, they often will admit a woman who simply claims to be “battered” – no questions asked.
In recent months, True Equality Network has been conducting an investigation of abuse shelters in 21 states. This investigation involves the woman going to a shelter saying she needs help. In most states, policies permit women to stay in a shelter for 72 hours without filing a formal complaint of abuse.
Our investigation has uncovered a broad range of illegal operations, including shelters involved in drug dealing and call-girl services. In one state, our investigator made an anonymous tip to the local law enforcement agency, resulting in the arrest of two Sheriff Deputies working as “pimps” for a prostitution service.
In another case, shelter staffers were observed arranging for shelter clients to provide sexual favors to law enforcement officers in exchange for their false testimony in court.
Second, our domestic violence system has become flooded with trivial and false claims of abuse. Remember David Letterman who was hit with a restraining order last year because he allegedly sent mental telepathic messages to a woman in New Mexico he had never heard of? Those claims are making it impossible for the voices of true victims to be heard.
RADAR – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting — has recently released two reports that illuminate the problem. First, most statutory definitions of abuse are so broad that almost any action now qualifies as “violence.” Second, states have created a broad range of monetary and other perverse incentives for unscrupulous women who wish to play the abuse card.
Over the past 5 years, True Equality Network members interviewed over 15,000 women in 17 states at courthouses who were seeking domestic restraining orders. In the great majority of cases, these women were not suffering from true violence.
The judges who heard these cases were interviewed and corroborated that these women’s claims were false. These judges stated they knew that the attorneys were actually scripting the women’s statements, an offense legally known as suborning perjury.
And why would the ladies make false allegations?
Fake allegations of violence are known to be the tactical weapon of choice to gain advantage in contested custody cases. Divorce attorneys call them silver bullets, slam-dunks, or just “divorce planning,” thus entitling the woman to many years of tax-free child support money.
Persons who claim to be abuse victims are also entitled to a vast range of social services, including low-cost housing courtesy of HUD and welfare payments from TANF. These programs are subsidized by the federal government, so the states have as much incentive to continue the fraud as the women who are initiating it.
Persons who file trivial claims of domestic violence are accorded equal standing by the abuse shelters and courts as the most seriously battered women. In a system rife with fraudulent claims, it is easy to understand why the Jane Williamsons of the world are being silenced.
As I reflect on my own experiences as a survivor of domestic violence and the deceptive pretense of help our abuse system offers, it has become clear that the abuse shelters, law enforcement personnel, and social welfare programs are profiting handsomely.
And what about the severely abused? They have been abandoned.
Terri Lynn Tersak is a professional commercial photographer, the President and CEO of True Equality Networks, and a member of the Steering Committee and spokesperson of RADAR – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting.
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wheresmy40 said,
I am a retired police officer from a large city police department and I would like to share a common police scenario:
Dispatcher: Adam 12, will you respond to a domestic dispute at (location)… unknow if weapons or injuries.
Typically upon arrival we were met by a woman who then states she called and wants her husband removed because…well, because she has a restraining order.
The husband usually is not aware of the order or informs us that he is aware of the order but that his wife asked him for dinner and other activity.
We inform the man that the order dictates he must stay away (from HIS home) and that the police are to place him under arrest if he is in violation.
Yeah, but…..
Couldn’t have been much violence if he was invited back, hmmm?
I rathered getting shot at than violating a man’s constitutional rights.
Men:
Don’t marry!
Don’t have children!
Don’t feed the lawyers!
September 28, 2006 at 10:02 am
ggreen67 said,
Its a real shame VAWA is failing to protect the very people it was intended to protect, but please do not forget this is a law who’s very essence comes from the “men as abuser” mentality.
I do not see you, or anyone getting much sympathy here over VAWA as this is a law that completely strips innocent men of their 14th Amendment privileges and rights.
To put it more simply. We seem to be on the same side, but for very different reasons.
September 28, 2006 at 10:58 am
Ray Blumhorst said,
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0316blumhorst.html
“It is not surprising to hear domestic violence industry insiders fallaciously crying out about a plague of domestic violence in society, when we consider that they are the foxes guarding the chicken houses (battered women’s shelters), containing the eggs (statistics) that are needed to fuel (fund) their purpose (ideology). They allege that it’s far too dangerous to female victims to have domestic violence industry accountability from “outsiders” (like independent auditors). Yet the fact remains, that’s what’s truly needed to document ineffective practices, or outright fraud, in this unaccountable, taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
The numbers that exist, that the domestic violence industry has not been able to misrepresent or manipulate, female murder victims of domestic violence, indicate that the domestic violence industry is doing a terrible job of saving women’s lives.
One is left to wonder about the efficacy of domestic violence treatment for falsely accused, male, domestic violence arrestees. When a man is being brutalized by a violent female in his home, will further brutalization of that man with arrest, prosecution and batterer training, do anything to improve his life or the life of the violent woman in his life? Does that inhuman treatment of the castigated male eventually make things worse for the violent woman in his life? Many men who’ve been labeled batterers by misguided domestic violence ideology are not. Many women who’ve been labeled victims by misguided domestic violence ideology are not. It appears to me that excusing female batterers not only cheats and hurts real victims it cheats and hurts everyone. One can only wonder how many men have actually been driven to murder their wives or girlfriends by the bungling ineffectiveness that passes for domestic violence industry methodology.
One of the most insidious evils at work in America society today is the Domestic Violence movement. None of this is really new to people who have watched this virulently sexist, anti-male social service over the past ten years,”
and
“The domestic violence industry clings tenaciously to a belief that it must manufacture more and more female victims to get more and more money. To do that, more and more men are fed into the domestic violence arrest system to meet the goals of the industry. Thanks to laws like “primary aggressor,” and “mandatory arrest” the gender feminist trained police are coerced to manufacture, ignore, or destroy evidence to support their gender profiling prejudices. It appears from numerous sources the rate of false arrests is greater than one in three. False accusations can be just as devastating and occur much more frequently. In sum, it appears false accusations and perhaps false arrests exceed legitimate accusations and arrests, which are appalling by any measure.
Numerous scholarly studies have shown equal rates of violence between males and females, but that is ignored by gender feminist trained police when they are working hard to fulfill their “goals” for arresting men. Likewise, gender feminist trained prosecutors and judges ignore it when they are fulfilling their “goals” for convicting men. To this day, the Los Angeles Police Department promotes on its web site the gender feminist propaganda that 95% of domestic violence is committed by men. (See Disturbing Facts about Domestic Violence.)
In all fairness to the police, prosecutors and judges let’s not forget, that all the time police, prosecutors, and judges are manipulating the law to fulfill the goals of VAWA, gender feminist, domestic violence industry advocates are breathing down their necks and scrutinizing their actions.
In one of his columns, “Baseball Player’s Domestic Violence Arrest Demonstrates How Men are Presumed Guilty in Domestic Disputes,” Glenn Sacks writes,
“Part of the problem is the training that police officers receive from the domestic violence industry, which insists that 95% of domestic violence is committed by men. Southern California domestic violence consultant Anne O’Dell, who has conducted over 500 domestic violence trainings of police officers and commanders, judges, district attorneys, and victim advocates, tells her trainees that ‘if a police officer is arresting more than 8% women, you’ve got a real problem. When an officer arrests 12% or 15% women, I’m outraged.’ O’Dell says that dual arrests should occur in no more than 3% of incidents.”
Why, oh why, should that be the case? Shouldn’t the police be arresting people based on the evidence they find, and not on some arbitrary goal established by domestic violence industry trainers who advocate “arrest goals” for men?
In the same article Greg Schmidt, a police lieutenant who created the Seattle police department’s domestic violence investigation unit in 1994, says,
“The domestic violence industry–the trainers, the shelter directors, etc.–can spin things however they want,” he says, “but most street cops know that women are just as likely to start domestic disputes as men are. But arresting women puts you under lot of scrutiny. It’s bad for your career.’”
September 28, 2006 at 12:12 pm
David R. Usher said,
This causes tremendous abuses of American men, allows anchor babies to violate our borders, and can easily be used by terrorists to plan female operatives inside U.S. borders. Anyone interested in stopping terrorism needs to be very interested in reforming VAWA from the top down.
September 28, 2006 at 12:39 pm
DadWithGirls said,
His crime might be -
* ignoring her needs
* asking her not to spend the family into poverty
* making her feel bad
* asking her not to hang out with her skank girlfriends
* casting intimidating “looks” at her
* threatening to leave her
All of these (and many more) DV “crimes” are defined in the Duluth Model batterer’s treatment protocols adopted by every state in the nation.
Google “Dulth Model” and you’ll get an education.
Mao Tse Tung would be proud of what VAWA has achieved in refining the arts of propaganda and brainwashing. And the Duluth Model has added the genius of capitalism — making the victims pay thousands of dollars for their re-education!
The DV Industry is just one among many successful feminist efforts to “reconstruct-by-force” traditional masculinity, while destroying families, marriage, and (even remember it?)–romance.
I found David R. Usher’s point above about using VAWA laws to smuggle in female terrorists very insightful.
It may seem far-fetched, but when you research how Muslim females are being cultivated to be suicide bombers, it’s not that far out.
Though I’m not sure it’s necessary to physically exterminate men when the legal and cultural gender warfare has been so obviously successful at furthering the radical feminist agenda.
Recall with indignation that 95% of the Congresspersons who voted (unanimously) for VAWA 2005 are MEN?
September 28, 2006 at 3:10 pm
mruffolo said,
Sadly she knows this, and she has no problems with the possibilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_strike
September 29, 2006 at 12:26 am
MediWana.org - The Medical Resource » VAWA Fails To Protect Women Who Need It Most said,
October 30, 2006 at 9:34 pm