By Terri Lynn Tersak , Teri Stoddard and Dave Heleniak

When the United States Congress wants to let us know what they really think about the state of an issue (or what they want us to believe they think), what should be done about it, and what legislation should be promulgated to effect the needed changes, they do so through “ sense of ” resolutions. We can also learn by their actions what their sense of an issue really is.

Throughout this series we have been revealing how the programs developed within our “welfare reform” of the 1990’s served as the major funding sources used by the states to promote single-parent families. Clearly, the subsidizing of single parent households through private child support systems has had an even greater negative impact on marriage and children as our former publicly funded assistance programs had.

Through various frauds, abuses of funding systems, and blatant violations of the very federal laws that funded promises of marriage protection and incentives, responsible fatherhood, and safe families, our states unleashed a reign of terror on marriage and against parents in general. In “Part One” of this series we outlined how although the big money comes from the programs under welfare reform, abuses of our domestic violence laws allow for maximum returns on the states’ efforts, all done under the guise of protecting women from abuse and the “best interest of the child.” The revelation “Part Two” of the series brought us is that our state governments don’t care who pays child support as long as someone does, even if the responsibility was erroneously assigned to them.

This has now gone on unchecked for over a decade, and the states are not the only guilty parties. Given the state of family law today, maybe it is time to ask Congress what their “sense of” the results welfare reform has had on protecting marriage, the family and specifically fatherhood and what do they plan to do next?

We know the members of Congress are very busy people and most likely don’t have the time or the desire to answer this for us. So we will look at what they have been doing, and see by their actions what the sense of Congress has been about the state of the American family, marriage and fatherhood – they are just great buzz-words to use at election time.

Joan Arehart-Treichel’s reports in, ” Men Shouldn’t Be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence ,” findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding perpetration of partner violence. The 2001 study shows that half of partner violence is reciprocally violent and that more women than men were responsible for instigating nonreciprocal partner violence, 71 percent to 29 percent respectively.

The CDC study’s lead investigator, Daniel Whitaker, Ph.D., states, ” I think the most important is that a great deal of interpersonal violence is reciprocally perpetrated and that when it is reciprocally perpetrated, it is much more likely to result in injury than when perpetrated by only one partner. ”

The study’s conclusion is: “ The context of the violence (reciprocal vs nonreciprocal) is a strong predictor of reported injury. Prevention approaches that address the escalation of partner violence may be needed to address reciprocal violence .”

The 2001 CDC study concurs with other CDC studies on partner violence and three decades of scholarly studies . Despite overwhelming evidence that the majority of domestic violence is reciprocal (mutual in nature, meaning neither party is acting in self-defense) and that men comprise the larger victim group, there is not so much as one cent allocated for service and support for male victims of partner violence. Congress appears to have a sense that men are not entitled to equal protection under the laws they promulgate and further, deserve to be abused, or worse.

Among enforcement actions reported to members of Congress, the use of physical torture to coerce acquiescence to false claims of domestic violence is the most egregious. The term “torture” has sadly become all but a catch phrase in our culture. Because of this, we are required to be brutally specific in describing what we are calling torture today: genital electrocution and hypothermic shock.

Torture victims have described events during their imprisonment where they were stripped naked and doused with cold water, and then “stun-gun/tasers” were applied to their testicles by law enforcement agents. This was repeated until they confessed/agreed to the fraudulent complaint filed against them. The cold water is used to keep them awake during the process. This practice leaves permanent scaring with distinctive patterns that can be forensically verified. Indeed, the type of stun-gun/taser used in the assault can be identified. The residual scaring is the result of the testicular tissue in the current path between stun-gun’s prongs being completely cooked.

Other victims report being exposed to cold so extreme it caused them to experience hypothermic shock lasting as long as two days. For some individuals, this has resulted in permanent paralysis and mental deterioration. Once fit, healthy citizens are now disabled Americans solely because they refused to agree to a lie.

In a number of cases, the hypothermic shock resulted in the destruction of the muscles in their pelvic floor. These are the muscles that control your ability to evacuate your bowel (those we “push” with during a bowel movement). These victims must use mechanical means to remove the fecal material from their bowel for the remainder of their lives, or they will die a slow, excruciating death.

Some victims with this type of disability were provided with a medical device which resembles a parfait spoon to dig the material out of their bowel manually. Others are able to use high does of fiber and laxatives and then bounce on the toilet seat, causing the fecal material to be ejected. This process is similar shaking thick ketchup out of a bottle.

Over 800 cases of the prior listed types of torture have been reported to the victim’s representatives in the United States Congress. To date, only two members of Congress have made contact to inquire about these heinous acts against US citizens. One Senator and one Congressman stand alone among the entire US Congress.

Despite these atrocities, members of Congress are preparing to present the “International Violence Against Women” ( I-VAWA ), which will fund the international deployment of this disastrous system through programs such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women ( CEDAW ).

There must be serious concerns with a program when the sitting judges in these cases state that the filing of false claims of domestic violence in family court is pervasive. That’s without even mentioning the commentary from judges abroad, such as that of the Dean of Barcelona’s judges, Maria Sanahuja , who says the current domestic violence laws, “… has provoked a sort of madness in the law that generates abuse, the elimination of the requirement of proof during the legal process, and the absence of the presumption of innocence. ” She further condemns the domestic violence laws as “ characteristic of totalitarian countries ” and “ a repugnant violation of fundamental rights. ”

Given the above and the fact that there is not one cent in federal funding to aid male victims of abuse, there are numerous federal offices dealing with the health issues of women and not one for men, and in both of the prior matters men comprise the larger numbers of, we may want to forget about asking Congress for their “sense of” these issues and question whether there is any sense to the construct of the relevant laws.

Terri Lynn Tersak is the President and CEO of True Equality Network .

Teri Stoddard writes on issues affecting today’s families and serves as True Equality Network’s Senior Equal Parenting Analyst.

David Heleniak is a civil litigation attorney in New Jersey and Senior Legal Analyst for the True Equality Network.