Massive Human Rights Abuses in the Name of Stopping Abuse
Remember Colleen Nester? She was the forlorn New Mexico woman who claimed she was being harassed by TV talk show host David Letterman, who was allegedly beaming mental telepathic messages and using televised facial gestures. Under New Mexico law, harassment is a form of domestic violence, so Ms. Nester was granted a restraining order.
Yes, really.
Domestic violence is defined so broadly these days that just raising your voice is now considered grounds for state invention. The mere allegation of abuse invites a draconian response, requiring the man to vacate his home and avoid any contact with the woman or even his own children.
Many believe protective orders do more harm than good. “Few lives, if any, have been saved, but much harm, and possibly loss of lives, has comes from the issuance of restraining orders,” writes Milton Raphaelson, retired judge from the Dudley, Mass. District Court.
But the somber voice of reason is drowned out by the shrill clatter of advocates who argue we must nip abusive situations in the bud, even if innocent men must be falsely accused and constitutional protections set aside.
In the United States, one million restraining orders are issued each year without even an allegation of violence – recall the David Letterman dust-up. [www.mediaradar.org/docs/RADARreport-VAWA-Restraining-Orders.pdf] State-sanctioned disdain of civil liberties has now spread to foreign lands.
Earlier this year Mexican lawmakers passed a new domestic violence law that allows authorities to issue emergency protective orders. Now a conviction of being jealous or sexually indifferent can land a hapless man in jail.
In Costa Rica, an American ex-patriate was recently put behind bars when he told his girlfriend’s son to stop painting satanic symbols on the wall. One police officer noted, “Women in Costa Rica are taking advantage of this new law. They throw out their boyfriend and then steal their things and leave.”
In Canada, “judges routinely hold five-minute hearings at the start of the day and make ex parte orders without any inquiries as to why the opposing party cannot be notified,” reveals Louise Malenfant of Parents Helping Parents.
In Israel, the Knesset recently appointed a committee to probe the extent of false claims of domestic violence. Last month Dr. Orli Iness of the University of Haifa revealed, “there have been reports that in some precincts the figure is as high as 50%.”
A 1999 survey of judicial magistrates in Australia concluded that “almost 90% believe domestic violence orders were used by applicants – often on the advice of a solicitor – as a tactic in family court proceedings to deprive their partners of access to their children.”
Libertarian Casandra Hewitt-Reid of New Zealand describes her country’s Domestic Violence Act in these terms: “it is possible for a perfectly innocent man, who has done nothing outside the law, to be sent to prison on one person’s unsubstantiated word.”
In Germany, Michael Bock, criminology professor at the University of Mainz, reveals that the so-called Force Law (Gewaltschutzgesetz) “gives an effective tool to the hands of mothers who want to separate children from their fathers. … It is not meant to start a constructive dialog between the parties, but to expropriate, disempower, lock out, and punish men.”
Last year Maria Sanahuja, chief justice in Barcelona, Spain issued a scathing commentary on her country’s Gender Violence Law. Sanahuja rebuked the law as representing a “repugnant violation of fundamental rights” that has caused “enormous pain to tens of thousands of men.” Sanahuja’s acid opinion concludes, “The massive detention of men for scarcely any reason is a characteristic of totalitarian countries.”
In India the situation has reached crisis proportions. Section 498a of the Cruelty Against Women Law has lead to widespread arrests of husbands with no evidence of wrong-doing. Because the law states the man’s relatives are likely accessories to the crime, many thousands of brothers, sisters, and elderly parents have also been wrongly imprisoned. In 2005 the Indian Supreme Court labeled the egregious abuses of Section 498a to be an “assassin’s weapon” and a form of “legal terrorism.”
Last April a group known as RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) sent a letter to Senator Joseph Biden, pleading that he not introduce a bill ominously called the International Violence Against Women Act. [www.mediaradar.org/docs/RADARletter-to-Biden-and-Lugar-against_IVAWA.pdf]
Earlier this month, Senator Biden shrugged off the concerns and introduced the Act. If passed, the law would send $175 million of taxpayer money to foreign governments to issue more restraining orders and to kick men out of their homes without evidence or proof.
| More from Carey Roberts
Stumble It!
November 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am
It looks as if the mens movement in Isreal are taking giant political strides in a direction mens movements across the world can learn from. They are doing things to stop the abberation of abusing humans rights of others to stop abuse.
They literally have a political party machine to fight elections and parliamentarians voicing the legislative impact on males in various sub-committees.
Most jews having been subject to discrimination through the ages are very sensitive to not being instrumental in the creation of a descriminatory state. As that would be to defeat the object of their race and religion.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123940
(IsraelNN.com) A new Knesset subcommittee for fathers’ rights in divorce and child-custody proceedings held its first meeting Monday.
The Subcommittee on the Family Crisis in Israel was presided over by its chairman, MK Chaim Amsalem (Shas). Committee member and initiator Avraham Ravitz (UTJ) delivered the opening statement which ignited a stormy clash between government representatives and rights groups.
“This committee is dealing with the life and death issues faced by thousands of children, mothers and fathers in Israel,” MK Ravitz said. He expressed hopes that the committee will fix legislation that makes it too easy for false claims to be filed against divorced fathers resulting in their being cut off from visiting their children.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/134825
(IsraelNN.com) The Knesset’s Subcommittee for the Examination of Claims of Legal Severity Against Men in the Areas of Welfare and Family held a stormy meeting on Tuesday to discuss the gender disparity in custody arrangements granted to divorced parents. While 35 percent of divorced fathers have custody of their children in the United States and European countries, one men’s rights activist said, in Israel only 2.3 percent have custody. “Are Jewish men that bad?” he asked rhetorically.
Shouting broke out when female social services representatives said that family violence is more often directed against women, and again when male activists said violence against men was ignored. Several men said that divorced women could easily file false claims of violence in order to win full custody, with one man calling the legal system “feminist and fanatic.” Lawyers joined the fray as well, with one lawyer saying her male clients “sit across from me and cry like babies… they want to see their children but aren’t allowed to.”
http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections16/eng/lists/list_eng.asp?id=7
Below are the 7 candidates of the Men’s Rights in the Family (Ra-ash) list running for the 16th Knesset.
1. Jakov Schlosser
2. El-Hai Avikzar
3. Abraham Torati
4. Shmuel Grinberg
5. Haim Ariha
6. Oded Davidson
7. Sium Tadela
November 20th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
After a ten (10) minute discussion as a matter of routine, without due process, a county’s family judge granted my wife an Order of Protection against me. She lied about what I did, adding that she “felt” afraid. I had no record of violence or trouble with the government. The hearing cost me about $2,500.00 for her lawyer and mine.
The OPP is for two years. It gives the women unlimited control to throw a man (boyfriend, husband, roommate) in jail. Men told me that they were imprisoned for mailing emails from another state, for example.
Though I was in a custody battle (my wife wanted sole, I desired joint), I refused to speak with her for about a year, mostly because of the enormous power my government gave to her. I allowed time to pass and thousands of dollars spent, however, I avoided jail.
Beware I presented to the court documented history of my wife lying to the court and to the police, yet the judge still gave her the OPP (Judges practice “better save than sorry” doctrine – you will not find this doctrine in the law books or the Constitution).
At the end of the day, it is about my government allowing false witness against a man. No different than Duke student’s experience with the whore, the accusation, and government employees.
I pray Israel gains traction on family court legislation and “local rule” abuses against men, then maybe Hollywood will pick up the torch.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
“Making us [fathers] the enemy of the nation does not help anyone,”
poiuyt thank you for sharing your articles.
November 20th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
“It looks as if the mens movement in Isreal are taking giant political strides in a direction mens movements across the world can learn from.’
That is good news my friend. I can only hope American men will see and learn.
November 20th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Here are some messages I left with http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/soundoff/comment.asp?articleID=339871
The problem is that numerous domestic violence accusations are false. Sometimes they make as much sense as the Wenatchee Witch Hunt, where terrible things were alleged to have been done to children without the physical injuries and marks that such terrible acts would have left.
As an example, Support Enforcer Lamont Jackson’s wife alleges that he strangled her until she lost conciousness. Then she did not seek medical attention or contact police. She continued to live with him for almost a month, with their infant child, then there was another shouting match and this time she contacted the police and had him arrested. Get this: there is no evidence in the case file so far, that she ever sought medical attention for the injuries and brain hypoxia that would have occurred had she actually been strangled to uncounciousness.
King County Superior Court No. 07-1-06709-1 SEA.
Sometimes, the woman is the perpetrator. She gets the protection order, she gets the benefit of “emergency” provisions in the gun laws that allow her to pack heat with an immediately granted concealed weapons license, while the man in her relationship is prohibited from protecting himself with a firearm of his own.
Not exactly what the 39th Congress meant with the phrase “equal protection of the law” in its 14th Amendment.
Every non-celibate heterosexual police officer is one false accusation, indeed one bad date, away from losing his career because of this.
Yet we expect to them to serve search warrants that are automatically created with a protection order petition or accusation without the traditional 4th Amendment requirements for a search warrant?
If even one accusation of DV against a man is false, what the PI suggests is further destruction of our constitutional protections that can lead to a serious miscarriage of justice.
Oftentimes, DV really is a two way street. They deserve each other!
Do women ever throw screaming fits complete with flying objects and physical assault?
Or is that just a myth? Jennifer Jean Worley was convicted of doing exactly that. King County Superior Court No. 96-1-05422-1. And yet she got a restraining order against the man she was CONVICTED of assaulting. King County Superior Court No. 97-2-09519-1.
Please see http://www.antipeonage.0catch.com/gourley.htm for further details on DV and protection order practice.
There is one sure fire way a man can avoid ever being the perpetrator (or victim) of DV: celibacy.
The disadvantage of celibacy is that it can leave one open to suggestion!
Here is a little trick: You go to http://dw.courts.wa.gov/index.cfm?fa=home.home
and click “Name Search” Feed in your new girlfriend’s name. Include middle initial if you know it. Take into account where her name is common, but if it is unusual, well, that helps.
Is she listed as the petitioner, or even respondent in civil cases classified as “domestic violence”? Those would be protection order cases. Very low standard of proof. Unlawful harrassment is also a classification for protection order cases in the county district courts.
If a woman is a repeat protection order petitioner, you might not want to continue dating her. Either she is lying or telling the truth. If she’s lying, you don’t want to date her. If she’s telling the truth, she may have the ability to enrage a man, and does so repeatedly.
Not an excuse to punch her, but why continue dating her?
Drop her like a hand grenade with the pin pulled out and avoid her like the plague.
And that way, you avoid committing DV because you avoid the PROVOCATION that can force you to either CONTROL YOURSELF AND THUS SUFFER STRESS, HEART ATTACKS, STROKES ETC., or to whack her, for which you have no excuse.
Of course there is also no excuse for violating the Constitution, but since when has that stopped our judges, politicians, and the Main Stream Media when on a crusade?
Jenaia responded by asking me what about the women who has been in a violent relationship. I responded:
Jenaia, I hope you and your current guy have a wonderful life together. I really mean that.
The problem I address, is the risk he is taking, and the consequences to him should your relationship go south.
The man and family who were violent with you had a reason to be angry with you. What you did might be legitimate and well within your rights, or it might be inexcuseable. I don’t know, and unless you leveled with your current guy about all of this, he doesn’t know either.
It is like after 9-11, people suggested we consider what we did to make them so angry. It turns out that it was because we fought a war to liberate Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia. Then we placed non-Muslim troops on Saudi soil to protect these two nations from further aggression by Saddam Hussein. It might be also that we created a monster in our covert assistance to the mujahadeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. They are always angry about our defense of Israel and the prevention of the Second Holocaust.
Now if we suffered the hijacking of our planes and the destruction of our office buildings, that is the price we sometimes pay for doing the right thing.
Whatever the source of your ex’s anger, we who might be your future dates have to protect ourselves. We wish not to be either perpetrator or victim of domestic violence. We certainly do not wish to be falsely accused of DV, or be provoked into either DV or the stress that results from constantly controlling our anger. Therefore, we are wise to avoid those women who are involved in such, however unfair that might be.
thezorg made some indignatn posts in response to my common sense approach.
My new response:
zorg, please.
As a lawyer, you have a limited objective in a DV case: Either you seek to punish the accused for the DV, or to keep him from being punished.
But I am educated as an engineer. An engineer looks to solve a problem or to prevent the problem from happening. From an engineer’s standpoint, the phrase “there is no excuse for domestic violence” is used to shut off a line of inquiry.
Like the diesel mechanic trying to figure out why an engine won’t start, the engineer follows all reasonable lines of inquiry.
If we wish to reduce the incidence of DV, as opposed to punishing a particular individual after he or she commits it, then it is reasonable to ask the question why did the person do it?
The obvious answer: they were angry!
Why were they angry? That is the question the politically correct gang does not want us asking!
That is the question Jenaia refuses to answer.
zorg, feel free to date someone like Jenaia. Marry her, have children with her. Be my guest.
I just recommend against it.
When you find out why her previous man got angry with her, you will have three choices:
1) leave her, and everything you worked for since high school if you have kids with her and she gets a mean divorce attorney with whom to go before the anti-male divorce courts.
2) stay with her and control your temper. Good for your body and soul in all sorts of ways. High blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes are so much fun!
3) slam her face into a wall.
Of course, no sane man wishes to be forced into these three choices. All of them are bad.
Avoid the problem in the first place by not dating women who have DV, either as perpetrators, victims, or false accusers, in their background.
zorg gets upset at being called zorg and not thezorg!
Finally Jenaia tells what her previous man’s problem was, he is a mean drunk.
So I wrote:
Jenaia, you finally answered the question.
The good news about substance addiction is that it is possible to get rehabbed from the addiction. Former alcoholics always tell me they are recovering alcoholics, meaning that if they are not careful, they can relapse. They cannot even take the risk of a cough syrup that contains alcohol.
I had a landlady who was a recovering alcoholic. No drinks for many years. Yet she was fearful of a relapse and I respected her and the addiction enough to never keep anything with alcohol in my room.
The bad news is that sometimes formerly addicted people relapse.
So even if Mr. Angry Alcoholic is successful with rehabilitation, you are wise to not let him back into your life.
I have always cautioned that if a woman has only one petition for a protection order to her name, she might have met a Mr. Wrong and would do fine with a Mr. Right. It is the repeat protection order petitioners we guys need to avoid like the plague. The new boyfriend of a single protection order petitioner stills needs to find out why the previous man got angry.
If only to reassure himself that it is something, such as being a bad drunk, that he would never do or get angry about.
Some women are perfectly capable of enraging even the gentlist men.
I am not even a woman, and look at how thezorg is going bananas, even for the slight offense of calling him merely “zorg”.
It is one of my little personality tests.
Unfortunately, because of the gender bias in the legal system and because of the numerous men who are not violent being clobbered with protection orders, often brought by women who are themselves violent or malicious, we men have to protect ourselves.
zorg throws another tantrum but then SRM contributes:
Roger, I personally know of 6 guys that had protection orders against them for DV. In each case allegations and /or charges were dropped. Of course the DV orders were used in each case to for legal leverage in gaining custody or assets or both.
In each case, lawyers used DV allegations with restraning orders as legal leverage, and then dropped both when the need for the leverage was over. This is because if they persued the DV charges until the men were in jail, then the money maker in each case, the men, would be in jail thus stopping the money train for lawyers, judges, counselors, parenting evaluators, Ex spouses etc.
Because of this money train, stats that reflect accurately falsely accused men of DV or wrongly given restraining orders will never be kept.
When we have the opportunity to talk back, that is what we need to do!
November 21st, 2007 at 9:03 am
I want the names and contact info for important foreign men’s rights activists.
I especially want to meet those who have access to lots of money.
We can win against VAWA and IMBRA with less than $1M.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
to understand all this … ie Bull Shit.. it is the only word that seem to fit. You have to understand that ALL THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD are after money, power and control. This DO mestic V I O lence( said in whiny contemtous voice) thing is nothing be a government created fraud for them to get more money, power and control. They don’t really give a rats ass about people at all, they are just using women, who are prone to be flightly, emotional, irrational and just plain selfish as their pawns. You see in an intact family where the man is the head, the woman is the heart and the children are the fruit of that union. the state has no money making potential in that. They have to create a “rebellion” and the women are the perfect candidates, for the previously mentioned reasons. Men wouldn’t not be good candidates for this, since men have a tendency to recognize a fraud and a racket and would reject them. They would be quickly put out of business and be facing charges of high treason.( you know what the penalty for treason is?)
What these evil criminals and yes they are criminals , no matter what ” authority” they claim, have not figured out , is that attacking the family, most notably , the man. Is that they are attacking Almighty God’s most prizes creation. When God gets enough and has allowed these foolish bastards enough rope to hang themselves with, he will take action. They will then beg to be tried in a human court, beg to to be sentence to death and beg to be hung by the neck until dead, because that is all we can do to them. God has no such limitations, he can punish them for eternity and that is far worse. So don’t fret, their days are numbered.
WE, the men, will outlast these bastards and it will be they that bow in the end.
We will then have a safe and sane world, women will go back to being women and men will be men again.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
…The lace curtain…
“Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotions. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.”
—E. S. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent:1