Compassion, Support and Intervention for Male Victims: Zero
Compassion is the basis of all morality. –Arthur Schopenhauer
Many years ago as a law enforcement officer I became very much interested in the issue of domestic violence. It was obvious then that victims of violent and injurious domestic violence incidents were not being extended proper compassion, support and intervention by the criminal justice system. Today, it is crystal clear that many changes have been made concerning female victimization and almost none for male victims.
On page 21, of Male Victims of Domestic Violence Michael S. Kimmel writes:
We should be concerned about women’s violence for a variety of reasons. For one thing, compassion with the victims of violence is not a zero-sum game – reasonable people would naturally want to extend compassion, support and intervention to all victims of violence.
And if it is true, as Kimmel professes in his paper, that minor violence often escalates into more injurious and lethal violence, both public and private professionals concerned about the issue of domestic violence should be concerned about all offending and victimization regardless of severity.
If it is our intent to prevent domestic violence, it seems logical that education not arrest should be our first priority. Everyone involved with the criminal justice system understands that we can not arrest and incarcerate our way out of this enigma. I’m sure all interveners will agree that for far too many years the victims of domestic violence were minimized, marginalized and ignored
Compassion, Support and Intervention for Male Victims
The National Conference on Family Violence: Health and Justice convened in March 1994. This was 10 years after the first Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence. The 1994 conference noted that the problem of family violence in the United States is epidemic and estimated that the annual incidence of family members is at 2 to 4 million for children, nearly 4 million for women, and 1 to 2 million for elder adults.
This conference was co-sponsored by the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Justice. One need not be a National Institute of Justice researcher to note that the 400 professionals and 80 national experts that attended this conference estimated 4 million women were victims. The experts at this conference acknowledged zero men as victims of domestic violence.
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) works for major societal changes necessary to eliminate both personal and societal violence against all women and children. The total of males victims acknowledged in the mission statement by NCADV is zero.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline Decade for Change: Final Report notes, “Despite significant efforts over the past decade to address the problem of domestic violence in our country, 33 million American women continue to experience abuse every year. The total number of men who might experience domestic violence victimization appears to be zero .
The May 19, 2006, “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report †in the section titled “Physical Dating Violence Among High School Students – United States, 2003†notes, “Among adult women in the United States, an estimated 5.3 million IPV incidents occur each year, resulting in approximately 2 million injuries and 1,300 deaths. The number of IPV incidents, injuries and deaths for men is zero.
The above report noted that dating violence victimization can be a precursor for IPV. It notes that 8.9% of males and 8.8% of females reported experiencing physical dating violence. My home state is Massachusetts. Massachusetts is one of the most politically liberal of states and it is a state that is proud that it stands up the rights of all of its citizens. Jane Doe is the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.
The Jane Doe website notes that 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. The number of male high school students Jane Doe implies, by their absence, is zero .
The number of male victims that the authors of the Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey wanted to interview about IPV victimization was zero . Despite this obvious bias they were allowed to conduct the NVAWS. After reporting that 40% of surveyed women and 54% of surveyed men said they were physically assaulted as a child by an adult caretaker, the authors conclude that IPV is first and foremost a problem for women. Is it possible that the authors over looked another precursor for IPV?
The CDC report, “ Intimate Partner Violence Surveillance: Uniform Definitions and Recommended Data Elements †(IPVS), documents that the lack of an agreed upon definition of domestic violence limits the ability to properly identify victims at highest risk who need focused intervention and increased services. The victims at highest risk are not the only lost victims. The total times a male victim is mentioned in the IPVS is zero .
In criminal justice training, funded by the USDOJ, the NIJ and the OVW the offender is always referred to as “he†and the victims as “she.†This would seem to amount to zero male victimization. This “implicit association†– males are the offenders and females their victims – remains first and foremost in the minds of those who receive this training and remains when they respond to domestic violence incidents.
The 110 th Congress passed a resolution that purports Congress support October as being National Domestic Violence Awareness month. The resolution seems to want the general public that men abuse women and children and boys abuse their parents and teenage girls are hit by their dating partner. The number of times this resolution mentions men as being victims of IPV is zero .
It makes no sense to continue to argue about the issue of gender symmetry when there is no agreement on just what domestic violence is or is not. And it certainly is wrong if not unethical for the USDOJ, the NIJ, the OVW, interveners and our public policy makers to minimize, marginalize or ignore male victimization.
It appears that the USDOJ, the NIJ, the OVW, interveners and our public policy makers are not, as noted by Kimmel, reasonable people as they display little to no compassion, support or intervention concerning male victimization and female offending.
Male victimization is minimized or ignored on the websites of the nationally recognized domestic violence organizations and now the same is true, as their websites document, for many agencies of the federal government.
Richard L. Davis
Richard L. Davis is the Vice President of FamilyNonViolence.org. | More from Richard L. Davis
Stumble It!
October 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Thank you Richard for your diligence in pursuing the truth.