As I reflect on my own experiences with domestic violence and the pretense of help our abuse system claims to offer, I find myself feeling most sorry for today’s victims. As the years pass, our domestic violence systems under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) offer less and less help to the most severely battered, but ever increasing rewards for those who operate the systems.
I encounter a frightening number of victims of severe battery with the same story to tell; they went through the courts and things got worse for them, almost immediately. I have experienced this myself, personally. An expansive annotated list of government and academic studies supporting these concerns is in the article “Domestic Violence Awareness Month” by Richard L. Davis.
For the past twelve years, the American taxpayers have supported VAWA and other domestic violence programs, which have grown to $1 billion a year. Why do we not only keep such a failure operating, but also expand its influences and funding year after year?
I believe it follows the same logic as our society’s affinity for fast food — instant gratification. It is quick, easy to get and satisfies an immediate personal desire. However, that satisfaction is hollow and short lived, and often creates unintended, unexpected problems for the consumer.
Meanwhile the sellers make a fortune selling their ineffective and often harmful product. In order to keep the money rolling in, they must actively promote it to keep people accepting it, wanting it, and believing it is a good thing for everyone, regardless of the facts.
To these ends, each year we dedicate a month to promote everything the Violence Against Women Act pretends to bring us, under the guise of protecting women from abuse and providing service to those that have suffered it.
Prior to the July 19, 2005 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for the reauthorization of VAWA, many people, including myself, tried to tell our side about the failures of VAWA. Several scientists with decades of experience studying the dynamics of intimate partner violence also requested to testify at this hearing. However, even after running full-page ads in the Washington D.C. based newspapers expressing our concerns, we were all denied time to speak at the hearing.
Who did testify? A retired NBA basketball legend, a movie star, and a vice president of a cosmetics company. If these are qualifications the U.S. Senate considers appropriate for someone to testify as an expert on the subject of VAWA, whom would they invite to testify about violence on prime time TV? A few Tibetan monks perhaps?
So what went wrong?
Any system polluted with ideological propaganda, whose operation is rife with fraud and real victims are nothing more than marketing tools is destined to failure. Unless, what it perceived as a failure was the intended, designed result.
If misery does love company, then maybe the one success of VAWA has been to make sure victims of extreme domestic brutalities have plenty of company.
The women of True Equality Network, most of who are themselves victims of severe domestic violence, have spent almost five years in the courthouses interviewing over 15,000 plaintiffs in domestic violence cases just before they entered the courtroom. The overwhelming number of those interviewed did not attempt to mask the real reasons they filed a domestic violence claim: control, money, and revenge — for everything you could possibly imagine — everything except acts of domestic violence.
Subsequently, True Equality Network asked prominent members of the counties in which the plaintiff surveys were conducted to interview the judges who heard these cases. Every single one of the judges interviewed corroborated the study’s findings of pervasive levels of false claims of domestic violence in their court.
These judges also state they know that the attorneys in these cases — including Legal Services Corporation Grantees — are suborning perjury by scripting the statements of the women in these cases. Moreover, they expressed concern that their District Attorneys were not prosecuting these acts of fraud.
Renowned professors and scientists who have reviewed this study series have said that the study was conducted using proper scientific methods and has produced “…significant findings that need to be widely published and cited.” Among those supporting this study is Dr. Don Dutton of the University of British Columbia, who is planning to duplicate this study in the Canadian court system.
Along with Dr. Dutton, numerous civil rights organizations requested True Equality Network to produce a training manual for conducting this study. With this tool, interviews of domestic violence plaintiffs are now being conducted in all 50 US states and starting soon in Canada.
Our abuse shelter investigation has discovered some disturbing activities. This includes shelters operating prostitution services, drug dealing, sheriff’s deputies working as “pimps,” and shelter staffers arranging to have the shelter clients provide sexual favors to law enforcement officers in exchange for the officers’ false testimony in court.
The existing system must be solving some concern or no one would support it. Then whom does it help and in what ways?
It is well known and reported that false allegations of domestic violence have long been the tactical weapon of choice to gain advantage in contested custody cases. This provides financial rewards not just to the women, but also to the states through a vast array of federal funding sources. Many of these sources have nothing to do with domestic violence, such as increased incentives from federal child support collection funding, TANF, HUD, and many others, giving the states as much incentive to perpetuate the fraud as those that are actually perpetrating it.
Two special reports from RADAR - Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting, are worthwhile reading: “Perverse Incentives, False Allegations, and Forgotten Children” outlines the monetary motivators for filing false allegations of domestic violence and “An Epidemic of Civil Rights Abuses: Ranking of States’ Domestic Violence Laws” covers which states provide the greatest incentives for perpetrating these acts of fraud.
The bottom line is: our abuse support system seems to be supporting everyone, except the severely abused. We are nothing more than media fodder used to foster sufficient public guilt to keep the fraud funded. By parading photos of our battered bodies before the public and Congress the domestic violence coalitions can keep the pork barrel full.
It doesn’t take a scholar to realize that if the beatings decrease so may the funding. This makes us acceptable and maybe even necessary losses.
Terri Lynn Tersak is a professional commercial photographer, the President and CEO of True Equality Network, and a member of the Steering and Legislative Committee of the Maryland based think-tank, RADAR – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting.
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DadWithGirls said,
Both are failures of tragic proportions which, if admitted, would lead to an irreversible rupture in the facade of democracy as we know and love it.
To look closely in a national debate about the realities of domestic violence would be the same as showing all the flag-drapped coffins of our heroic dead soldiers coming home every day.
(Our elected government has banned those photos. Did you or I VOTE for this censorship of reality?)
We cannot be permitted to see these things.
Let alone THINK about these matters.
Because we are sheeple.
Americans want simple answers for complicated questions.
We want to be innocent and powerful.
Most of all, we refuse to be inconvenienced, uncomfortable, or bored.
And, what foolish politician is going to vote against a “Violence Against Women Act?”
Just like no pol will vote to “cut and run!”
It’s truly time to re-read George Orwell.
Language is reality.
Errr — UN-speak-TRUE-false-life.
October 7, 2006 at 10:01 am
Roger Knight said,
http://www.antipeonage.0catch.com including the page
http://www.antipeonage.0catch.com/justicefilescountiesking.htm
I voted for Greg Schmidt, Seattle Police Officer, for Sheriff because I believe that an outsider is what you bring in to top management when there are problems within an organization that need to be fixed. It is why losing football teams bring in new head coaches. I just did not realize that Officer Schmidt was once arrested, prosecuted, and ACQUITTED of domestic violence against his first wife. That the experience was a real eye-opener for him is an understatement! He confirms what we all know, that in domestic relations and domestic violence cases, there is a profound gender bias in the law enforcement community, court system, and bureaucracy against men that leads to false accusations being believed and innocent men forced to defend themselves at trial or cop a plea to a crime they did not commit. Sergeant David Urquhart actually told a radio audience that he would “feel funny” arresting a woman in a DV case where the level of injuries were similar. So here is the message for us guys: Your wife or girlfriend attacks you with a knife. Indianapolis Colts cornerback Nick Harper has experienced this. No excuse for that! You successfully defend yourself and therefore live to be arrested for DV! Why? Because a successful self defense against an assault with a deadly weapon might involve actually hurting the assailant!
Imagine the uproar if Sergeant Urquhart admitted to “feeling funny” about arresting a white guy involved in a fight with a black guy where the injuries are similar. News flash to Sergeant Urquhart: The standard in assault cases is not the relative level of injuries or the relative size of the parties, the standard is who is the aggressor. Chapter 9A.16 RCW provides that private citizens may use force in self defense against a crime. Even big people when they are assaulted by little people, even big men who are assaulted by little women. It is not the size of the dog in the fight; it is the size of the fight in the dog. Adrenalin is an amazing strength enhancer. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. While there is no excuse for domestic violence, an angry person does not need an excuse! With gender bias in the system, an angry woman can force her man to choose between being taken to the emergency room (or morgue) or to the county jail.
Why is it we are not as willing to say that there is no excuse for violating the Constitution?
Perhaps it is the training. The current King County Publication, Domestic and Dating Violence, an information and resource handbook adopted by the Metropolitan King County Council in April 2002, includes on its page i this amazing whopper:
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1998), 85% of domestic violence victims are women. This statistic does not suggest that all men are batterers, but that most batterers are men. Therefore though we recognize that there are female batterers and male victims, for statistical accuracy and ease of reading, we refer to batterers as men and victims as women in this handbook.
First of all, statistics on domestic violence prevalence range from 45% to 95% of the victims being female. Whom do we believe? It is like generating a statistic as to what varieties of sex people fantasize about. We cannot know the numbers because most people do not reveal all of their fantasies, even to (especially to) their intimate partners! As many incidents of domestic violence are not reported, for the extremely good reason that inviting government into one’s private life is not always the wisest policy, we cannot know the precise percentage of which incidents are female aggressive and which are male aggressive! Or a combination of both, which is what most people believe, political correctness notwithstanding! Second, and this is quite obvious and self explanatory, referring to batterers as men and victims as women is EXTREMELY PREJUDICIAL! When such presumption is infused into the criminal justice system, those male victims of female batterers are likely to be the ones arrested and charged, and they have good reason not to seek help! Once arrested and charged, we all know that police and prosecutors are loathe to admit they’re wrong and will force such defendants to either go to trial and take their chances with the jury (with the prosecutor peremptorily challenging all prospective jurors who indicate that they have brains) or cop a plea to a crime they did not commit.
One page 1 is the highly criticized Power and Control Wheel
However, there is one part that does have the ring of truth: The entire Child Support Crusade is one big Power and Control Trip!
But then you already know that!
The primary problem with the Power and Control Wheel is that it can only apply to those few situations where one party to a relationship really is trying to dominate and control the other party! Even then, it cannot be all that accurate. It does not apply to those situations where the domestic violence arises in the context of an addiction to gambling, alcohol, or drugs. It does not apply to those situations where the domestic violence is a two-way street, which is what most people think most domestic violence situations are. (Based on their own life experience, believing their lying eyes, and not subscribing to political correctness or taking training seminars.) It does not apply to the situation where the parties had a tranquil relationship but blew up in each other’s faces based on a sudden acute situation. Such as adultery or suspected adultery. Nor does it apply to the common situation where the parties simply get on each other’s nerves. (You left the toilet seat up, again! You are always watching football! You are always watching crummy soap operas! Honey, can you please do something with all of this stuff? There is no place on the floor to put my feet.)
And in those few situations where the Power and Control Wheel can apply, any domestic violence might be on the part of the party defending himself or herself from being controlled! As Lorena Bobbit claimed.
Of course, the Power and Control Wheel contains a strong gender bias in that it asserts it is the man who is using “male privilege” and is also using economic abuse, coercion and threats, emotional abuse, isolation, intimidation, children, and sexual abuse to impose his power and control over her. It also claims that men minimize, deny, and blame. So if you are one of those male victims of female batterers, your claim to be such is covered by the part of the Power and Control Wheel about minimizing, denying, and blaming!
But then again, what is the Child Support Crusade if not the use of economic abuse, coercion and threats, emotional abuse, isolation, intimidation, children, and female privilege to gain power and control over a vast number of previously free Americans?
On page 3 of Domestic and Dating Violence is this assertion:
Fact: In domestic violence assaults one partner is beating, intimidating, and terrorizing the other. It is not mutual combat. It is about one person dominating and controlling the other.
Sometimes this is true, and sometimes this is not. Sometimes it is mutual combat. And sometimes it is a one time blow-up. And sometimes alcohol, drugs, gambling and spending addictions, and/or psychological problems are the cause of domestic violence. There are lots of things that can cause it!
Page 3 goes on to say:
Without intervention the violent behavior targeted and focused toward the victim may escalate.
Or it may subside. Like the price of a share of stock, it will go up, unless it remains the same or goes down.
More from page 3:
It is useful that victims, batterers, and witnesses to domestic violence are aware of the continuums that distinguish abuse: psychological, physical, sexual, and social/environmental. Though they have varying consequences, each form of abuse stems from the desire to dominate a partner or other household members.
Or maybe it does not. Rather than view the facts of a domestic violence situation as an intelligent, rational, and thoughtful person with your own view of the world, you should look at it through a government mandated prism, especially if you are a government employee such as cop, social worker, deputy prosecutor, public defender, court commissioner, or judge.
I suppose one reason so many domestic violence prosecutions end in acquittal is that those damn jurors did not read the Handbook!
Notice how “Sexual jokes and demeaning gender remarks” are listed in the same continuum as “Rape with murder”.
Please. I refuse to rank Jay Leno with Ted Bundy!
Read the rest of Domestic and Dating Violence for the propaganda YOUR taxes are paying for.
While there is no excuse for domestic violence, neither is there any excuse for what http://www.fireyourwife.com lists as advice being given to wives!
Over at http://www.antipeonage.0catch.com/justicefilesdshsseattle.htm I report this amazing set of facts about one of our support enforcers:
Jennifer Jean Worley, Auburn, Washington 98001, white female, 5′5″ 180 pounds, green eyes brown hair DOB June 17, 1971 Voted on November 2, 2004 Has not voted since. King County No. 96-1-05422-1 defendant criminal; King County No. 97-2-09519-1 petitioner domestic violence; King County No. 96-9-27919-1 judgment debtor criminal paid;
Here is the scooperoo on this lady: In No. 96-1-05422-1 she was initially charged with Assault 2, a felony, assault with a deadly weapon, specifically a knife, and she copped a plea to the reduced charge of Assault 4, domestic violence, a misdemeanor. 12 month suspended sentence. 3 days of imprisonment already served. She keeps her right to vote, but as this case is post Brady Bill and after Washington’s incredibly multi-subject Violence Reduction Act of 1994, her right to keep and bear arms is gone. The Certificate of Probable Cause filed with the Information alleges: She was living with the father of her child and the child, a nice evening at home. Started screaming at the father, accusing him of neglecting their child. The father suggested that she was setting a poor example for the child by yelling at him. This prompted the more appropriate behavior of physically assaulting the father while he sat on the couch, hitting and scratching him. The father, faced with a choice between risking the county jail or the county morgue, chose to risk the morgue. Rather than counter-attack in self defense, he retreated through the kitchen and dining room, whereupon dear sweet Jennifer Jean made use of the kitchen utensils. She threw several knives at the father screaming: “I’m gonna kill ya!” One knife punctured the father’s left forearm. Jenny Jean picked up a kitchen pot and swung it at her man, then threw it at him hitting his left elbow, bruising it. The father continued his retreat and Jenny followed him ripping his shirt. This father tried to calm Jenny Jean by handing her their now screaming child. As this did not work, he handed the child off to his brother, the kid’s uncle. Upon contact with the police, Jenny Jean admitted throwing the knives but denied stabbing her man with them. She admitted the scratching and the throwing of the pot at him. Deputy Prosecutor summed up by declaring that Jenny Jean poses a threat to the community as evidenced by her lack of control in the presence of her child and her use of multiple weapons.
While still under probation for her Assault 4 conviction, Jenny Jean had the AUDACITY to petition for a restraining order against this same man she was CONVICTED of ASSAULTING!! In her petition in No. 97-2-09519-1 she alleged that he was arrested for domestic violence by the Kent Police Department. We can see how this happens: she throws a temper tantrum and he gets arrested for it! The other really TERRIBLE thing he did was that he kept visiting his child at the daycare center!!! Imagine that!! A father looking after his child at the daycare center!!! Next thing you know he will be taking the kid fishing and to ball games and be wanting to talk to his school teachers. He might get in their faces if they try to make the kid take Ritalin! We can’t have that! The temporary order imposed a 300 foot exclusion radius, including his child’s day care center. The matter came to hearing before Commissioner Harry Richard Slusher, both parties present and examined by Commissioner Slusher. It is impossible for me to believe that the man completely forgot about the violent incident and the resulting conviction of this woman for assaulting him. Nevertheless, Commissioner Slusher imposed a one year restraining order, increasing the exclusion radius to 500 feet, with no visitation with his child!! The only redeeming quality of this order is that there is a notation that it is subject to change in a pending divorce or paternity action. While most paternity actions are brought with intent to nail the guy for child support, sometimes the father winds up with custody or at least visitation or shared parenting rights. Unfortunately such results are too few and too far between.
To those who do not believe there is gender bias in the system, please explain these results. The criminal prosecutors did the right thing, holding a violent woman accountable for her behavior in the presence of her child and against the child’s father. But Court Commissioner Slusher ignored these facts and stomped on the father’s constitutional rights! And now this violent woman works for the support enforcers.
Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen! And the politicians think you don’t know this stuff.
October 7, 2006 at 12:52 pm
DadWithGirls said,
The “power-and-control wheel” you have so ably described is mandated as part of court-ordered “psycho-dynamic education” counseling for all men convicted of a DV misdemeanor.
(In most states this means 6 - 24 months of feminist indoctrination for which men pay on average $60 per week.)
The Power & Control Wheel curriculum is straight out of Maoist/Stalinist re-education camp handbooks, revised for the war against men.
There is even a “lesson” that states — “Nothing a woman can do can be used as a provocation for a man’s anger or violence.”
That means, even if she is sticking a knife into your chest, she is not provoking you in any way…
This is the dementia of feminist “logic” at its finest.
Moral of the story — do not marry. Do not cohabit with females. Do not become prey.
October 7, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Roger Knight said,
Your name indicates you have daughters and you have to be concerned what this insanity is doing to the world they are living in and how it affects them.
Most of us are heterosexual and we have to have a next generation. Thus it is insanity for society to be discouraging and punishing marriage and family responsiblity.
October 7, 2006 at 5:24 pm
snootfish said,
In an initimate relationship, each party holds the keys to the other’s heart. Unfortunately, they also hold the keyss to other emotions like anger, misery, despair, etc. This is why these relationships are relationships of trust.
I think better analogy than knife in the chest is the common real world situation of an affair often combined with ridicule, scorn, and threatened theft of home, children, and life. Often, there is a systematic effort to destroy — professional careers, finances, etc. There is often a flaunting of the affair before friends and associates and lover may be someone particularly embarrassing. Again, to say that women should not be responsible for this is insanel. It is absolutely insane.
You can go at this from the end of the man who “loses it.” Or, you can go at it from the end of the woman who provokes him without mercy.
Which makes more sense. Obviously, it is good if a man is strong enough to avoid losing it even when severely provoked, but it is also good to if the woman never severely provokes him.
You often have a woman who engages in extreme provocation and she is not blamed at all. Meanwhile here husband who raises his voice or engages in a “shove” or whatever goes to jail.
He is told there is no excuse whatsoever.
I say bullshit.
October 8, 2006 at 3:24 am
Major said,
I was engaged to a beautiful woman until this January. We ended the engagement on a mutual agreement. We co-habitated which I admit was a big mistake. While I was trying to get her moved out of my apartment and to the airport to fly her home, she turned into a completely different person. She attempted to use extortion on me by saying if I didn’t give her money, she would lie to the police and say I hit her. I immediately called 9-1-1 and when I did she physically attacked me. I managed to keep my distance from her and not hit her back because if I did, she would have been seriously hurt and I would go to jail. The police showed up and she immediately told them I hit her. I told them she was lying and she attacked me (showed them the bruise on my leg). The police checked her for injuries and found none and did not believe her (thank God).
I was very lucky that day. I could have gone to jail for no reason. My ex-fiance was tipped off by her girlfriends about the Violence Against Women Act. She was led to believe that according to this Act, a woman’s word is truth no matter how deranged or how much lack of integrity she has. Furthermore, she thought it gave her a license to do anything in order to achieve her goal which was to rip me off. I almost lost my career and my freedom.
The Violence Against Women Act is highly unconstitutional and should be abolished. Don’t worry about being called a sexist or a chavunist pig. This is about protecting our rights as men. This Act degrades men to a status similar to cattle, which have no thought or perception. This is what the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot did to his own people during the late 1970’s.
October 9, 2006 at 6:36 am
mruffolo said,
http://www.supportthemovie.com
Watch the trailers. Help spread the word.
October 9, 2006 at 11:48 pm