Shortly before 8 p.m. last Halloween in New York City, a 6'7" tall man grabbed and choked his live-in girlfriend, stripped her clothing off and smashed her against a mirror. He then took two phones away from her, to prevent her calling police. When she finally fled and got police to help, she showed bruises and said, "I'm afraid he's going to come back."
About a year before that, a different man, in a different New York apartment, enraged with jealousy, slashed his girlfriend's face with a broken glass.
These are just two examples of the 4.8 million incidents of what the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control call "intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes" that occur annually in the United States.
They were relatively minor incidents: they didn't end in one of the three murders per day that are associated with domestic violence in America.
As mundane events, they would never make the papers, except that they were carried out by men who work within the New York State government apparatus. The Halloween attacker was David Johnson, 37, and he is New York Governor David Paterson's top personal assistant. His girlfriend appeared in court three times to press charges after the attack, but failed to appear for a fourth time after a personal call from the governor himself, according to the New York Times. Her case was dropped.
Paterson says she called him, and has asked for an investigation.
The second attacker was State Senator Hiram Monserrate, an elected Democrat from Queens. He was convicted last fall of misdemeanor domestic violence, after his girlfriend refused to testify. Senate Democrats then relieved him of his seat, and Monserrate went to court to try to get it back. A judge last week refused his plea.
Monserrate had reason to hope he could keep his post, as it wouldn't have been the first time a top political character in Albany has beat a girl and kept his job. A top Senate aide, serial date rapist Michael Boxley, was relieved of his job in 2008 only after a second woman accused him of rape. An investigation later revealed that his abusive habit dated back years and his boss, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had ignored complaints from at least one of the victims. Paterson's track record of concern for the claims of women is not new: in 2003, as Senate Minority Leader, a staff aide named Neysha Williams accused Sen. Kevin Parker of assaulting her. Paterson simply fired Williams, according to the New York Post.
In Illinois last month, a Chicago politician won the Democratic state primary for lieutenant Governor, despite a police record for assaulting a girlfriend with a knife in 2005, an assault severe enough to leave actual scars on the woman's neck. The victim never came to court. When the arrest record surfaced - after his election - Scott Lee Cohen's campaign strategist said: "He's been honest and up front from the beginning. It's just that nobody cared." Indeed.
Cohen stepped down after belated pressure from Illinois Democrats. He resigned in a tearful about-face announced during the Super Bowl Game. (Historically, this is a day when wife and girlfriend-beating is especially common, possibly because of the combination of alcohol consumption and in-home televised violent spectacle).
Governor Paterson's intervention, the effort of the devoted senator from Queens to keep his seat, the Illinois Democrats' failure to keep a man charged with assaulting a woman from winning a nomination on its statewide ticket - all are symptoms of a casual national attitude toward violence against women.
The attitude starts at the top, with these public servants, and trickles down. This week, the Center for Public Integrity released a study finding that sexual assaults on college campuses are rarely punished and that even the Office of Civil Rights of the federal Department of Education doesn't seems to be investigating charges.
Young, poor, minority women are at the greatest risk of domestic violence and rape. African American women face higher rates of domestic violence than white women, women in the lowest income category are six times more likely to be victims than women in the highest level.
From Albany to Chicago to Washington, the unstated message seems to be: Beat your girlfriend. Run for office. Work for the governor of a major state. And keep your job until someone bigger and more important than the cowed, abused woman - a cop, a newspaper reporter, a political enemy - finds out and calls you on it.
This whole "domestic violence" idea is wrong. Violence is violence, it should all be treated the same.
I think just the idea that this is different than violence on someone you don't know, is sexist against women.
Did you ever hear of one man beating another man he knew in a bar and it being called "friend violence"? They don't have a special set of laws for that. Assault is assault and rape is rape.
End the sexism.
The Lautenberg Amendement is a federal law that applies to ALL persons nationwide who have been convicted of domestic violence. It prevents anyone with a domestic violence conviction from owning or discharging a firearm of any kind...for life. If it was up to local courts to determine this level of protection it would not happen. It does not happen for stranger violence, but is automatic if the conviction is for any level (5th degree misdemeanor to felony) of domestic violence.
The distinctions and protections are necessary. Please reconsider your opinion that it is a sexist determination.
I wouldn't argue that the punishment for domestic violence should be less severe. I would argue that the punishment for all other forms of violence should be more severe.
Let us understand the reality of the situation. Our prisons are largely populated by non-violent drug offenders. For the last 30 years, violent crime has not been the focus of our justice system - drug offenses have. This is because drug laws are easy convictions for a politically ambitious prosecutor, whereas real cases of violence (whether it be murder, battery, domestic violence, etc) are much more difficult to prosecute.
Why, then, would we ever expect politicians not to try to deal with domestic violence amongst their colleagues in any other way than to "sweep it under the rug"?
i sincerely hope the lautenberg amendment becomes law. it will be a very important step towards recognizing the depth of severity of domestic violence.
mr. biggles,
your latest post leaves me speechless. absolutely speechless.
"We, as a society, have to make it UNACCEPTABLE to go back to an abuser."
punishing and stigmatizing an abuse victim even more is the answer? you cannot be serious.
as i explained to you earlier, the time of planning and actually leaving is the MOST DANGEROUS time of all, the time that the woman is MOST LIKELY TO BE K1LLED. but not even that gets through to you.
you do nothing but hurl accusations and make false assumptions, but offer no real solutions to anything. and you seem utterly impervious to the REALITY of the situation.
"How far are you willing to go with it?"
how far are you? how many women are you willing to see d1e because rather than work for the resources to help them, a society of your making would blame and berate them for not making the right choice and simply leaving? as if it's just that easy?
personally, i am not willing to risk ANY life predicated on such a backwards set of priorities.
Thank You.
i appreciate you taking the time to read what i have to say. it is an area of conflict that has long been regarded as "taboo" to even discuss. but without understanding, no progress can be made to help those suffering within its confines.
i'd also like to thank you for reaching out to help your co-worker. that takes courage, especially when she finds herself as isolated as you describe. please don't give up on her. the fact that you are there is more important that you might imagine. a support network is absolutely crucial to healing.
I'm talking about changing her mindset. It used to be ok for men to hit their wives at parties (Johnny Carson) but we have changed the mindset of society.
If you pull someone out of a lake who just tried to drown themselves, we don't let them jump back into the lake, do we?
The moment of leaving is more dangerous than a lifetime of staying?
I'm asking questions...I'm sorry I've offended you for not agreeing with everything you have said and treating it as gospel. I understand you have personal experience, but that might skewer your perspective more than you know.
Treating women as victims....RATHER than as women who have been victimized...does not help.
"Most, if not all, men who are abusers are not EVIL. They were abused, too. Yet, we don't condone certain actions...namely, abusing others...as a result of that trauma."
you say this with a straight face, and then accuse ME of making excuses? please. what you are saying is that they are not to blame for abusing others. the decision to raise a hand against another is ENTIRELY their decision. no one else's. and NO ONE else is responsible for them making that VERY CONSCIOUS CHOICE but themselves.
i know FOR A FACT that the person who did it to me was NOT abused as a child. so how do you explain that one?
you truly do NOT have the first clue as to the psychology or dynamics of the situation AT ALL.
the men who do this have a sense of ENTITLEMENT to their actions. they are extreme narcissists, and so wrapped up in themselves that they are convinced the only reason the rest of the world even EXISTS is for their needs. if another person doesn't behave the way they want, they believe they have the RIGHT to FORCE them to.
I didn't make excuses for them. I explained their trauma and the reason they abuse...most likely, they were abused.
I did NOT make excuses for their behavior. I said, no matter their reason or trauma, we don't excuse their behavior.
So, why we do the same for women?
"the decision to raise a hand against another is ENTIRELY their decision. no one else's. and NO ONE else is responsible for them making that VERY CONSCIOUS CHOICE but themselves."
The decision to go back to a person who raises a hand against another is ENTIRELY their decision as well.
You can talk about how trauma, etc makes it hard for them to make a rational choice, but it's still their choice.
You can keep calling them narcissists, etc, but the fact remains, that most of the men who abuse WERE abused themselves.
SO, LET ME BE CLEAR....their abuse, their trauma, etc in no one way excuses their destructive behavior.
So, why does a woman's abuse and trauma excuse her destructive behavior.
I'm not trying to let men off the hook at all. You would think I was an Arab they way I would deal them, but...
Why you constantly make women into helpless victims that are not responsible for themselves....I will never know...
you could not be more wrong about your thinking in this situation, i will not allow you to further victimize and traumatize those involved in it, and i would suggest that you stay as far away from it as possible.
i've tried very hard and been very patient in trying to explain the TRUTH of the matter to you. i no longer believe you that you think abusers should be punished, and i no longer believe that you would really want to help.
i will repeat. there is no point in continuing to go around in circles about this until you read the book i suggested. you are wrong in your assessments.
this conversation is over.
If no, then why do you keep telling them that they are and it's ok.
yes or no?
it's pretty clear to me now that you view the VICTIM as the one who is weak, and that as long as she stays in the situation, she has no right to complain because it's her own fault she's getting hit. i find that totally unacceptable, and 100% antithetical to any practical solution. the women i know who have been through this are some of the strongest, most resilient women i have ever known. they and their families only survive through their STRENGTH, even though it may take YEARS for them to finally make their escape SAFELY.
the ONLY person who is 100% responsible for the situation is the ABUSER, and absolutely no one else. you attempts to excuse their behavior and place all the blame on the victim is just mind boggling.
one more time, i would urge to read lundy bancroft's book "why does he do that?" until you do, there is no point in continuing to go around in circles about this issue.
is the abuser responsible for making the choice to abuse? yes or no?
btw, these are rhetorical questions on my part, designed to show you the absurdity of your statements.
this discussion is at an end.
"If a man hits you once, he'll hit you again. There are no second chances for this kind of man. You must either leave him, or kill him. There's no in-between when it gets violent between a man and a woman."
They also said, "If a man can't hit you, then you can't hit him. It's not fair".
My parents were married 50 years, and they never hit each other.
I've never been hit by my husband, nor boyfriends (though I think one was working up to it, I left him before it went that far) Probably the main reason--other than my tendency to select decent male companions--- is because they all knew I'd make sure they'd only did it once.
What we really need is non-violent conflict resolution, violence prevention, and self-defense for all women and girls.
You describe a family background that instilled values of respect between genders. I come from a similar family. We are the lucky ones. Your last sentence absolutely captures the goals I believe in but I would argue that we need some immediate additions to your list:
1) Free shelters where DV/rape victims know they will be safe. 2) Free counselling in order that victims can become survivors. I know that will play as socialist to some but I cannot think why a society would not invest in its future.
The article infers that men in power should be role models and should not be granted special treatment when they violate this trust. I both concur with the article and your vision of a more egalitarian solution of truly empowered women.
I am emotionally invested in a recent incident of alleged rape within premises where I sometimes work. The woman's family ostracised her for laying a charge and her employers distanced themselves from responsibility. I have tried together with trusted people to find and provide a low-key but effective support structure. It is elusive;(
Whilst the ideal is for individual empowerment I am not as a male prepared to wash my hands of an issue that affects our entire society. We need to step up individually and collectively to become our sisters' keepers.
you might also consider contacting a shelter in your area, and perhaps setting aside a time to discuss with the professionals there what it is you can do to best help your co-worker, and any other woman you may come across that you wish to help.
you are so right. we must be each other's keepers. no one gets through life alone. not very well anyway.
-------------------------------
Thank you.
I simply don't see the need to trivialize ....................
(snip)
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please don't misunderstand. i'm not defending returning to an abuser. not by any stretch.
but in order to change that mindset, people who want to help need to UNDERSTAND it first. perhaps it is coming across to you as defense, but it isn't.
psychologically, abuse victims have much more in common with soldiers who have been in combat and suffer from PTSD. the biggest difference is the duration of the abuse is often much longer than a tour of duty in combat. the end result is the same though. even after the traumatic situation is no longer occurring, the suffering continues. it can take years, if ever, to ameliorate. it can take a long time to gain the strength to say "never again." and sad to say, some never find themselves able, even with help.
i have seen men who have attended counseling groups for abuse victims. even that situation has changed though, because it used to be that "couples counseling" was the approach. after finding it was not effective, because the abuser and their victim were treated as though they were on equal footing, when clearly they are NOT, the focus has changed to more confidential one on one counseling.
abuse of any kind is a tragic situation. but the psychology of the victim changes depending on who it is. the one commonality is fear, which can do unspeakable things to the human
mr. biggles,
at no time did i say we should ignore that 5%. that is YOUR defensiveness speaking. i have merely stated FACTS in my posts, and the conclusions of experts in the field.
if you had ANY earthly idea the amount of experience i have had with this subject, you would, and SHOULD be thoroughly ashamed of yourself for your subsequent condescension to me.
you put words in my mouth i never said, and then berate me for them. i would appreciate it if you would refrain from doing that.
I do have a debating style where if someone will not give me an answer...I will put words in their mouth in order to force them to correct me and thus provide the real answer...
I don't recall doing it to you, but I apologize if you took it as condescension. It was not meant as such.
what allows abuse to go unchecked is things like your unwillingness to see that the situations for men are VASTLY different than they are for women, that the psychology of the situation is enormously complex regardless of WHO the victim is, and the simplistic belief that persists that "women/men" should just leave. but in BOTH circumstances, the victim would be taken more seriously had they been assaulted by a total stranger. somehow, the situation is not as difficult to understand when there is no emotional connection between the victim and the perpetrator. the laws for things like assault and attempted murder are RARELY applied, unless the victim dies or is near death, and the penalties are nowhere near appropriate for spousal/significant other abuse. and what that leads to in BOTH cases is the thought on the part of the victim of "why bother?" because the perpetrator will be quickly released, angrier than ever, and much more likely to continue the abuse even more severely than before.
here where i live, in the state of california, the last budget of governor schwarzenegger cut the funding for battered womens' shelters to ZERO. these shelters are already bursting at the seams, and it cannot be overstated what a devastating blow this was.
Personally, I would consider domestic violence far more serious than a random attack. This is why DV is a hate crime squared.
Conservatives have a good talking point when they say that ALL crimes are hate crimes. It's true...but...
A robbery or mugging or whatever is random...hate crime victims are singled out...the robber doesn't rob because he hates the person...he wants the money...
DV is like a hate crime, except instead of a group being singled out, it's a lone individual (or family).
The fact that you speak of how under-punished these crimes are speaks to an obvious solution.
Here is the thing you have to understand about me, I'm to the right of EVERYONE when it comes to violent crime (and to the left of everyone when it comes to victimless crime). If you point a gun in a 7-11 clerks face, I would never let you out of jail. If you hit another person, I'd give you 5 years minimum.
i also agree that the laws MUST be changed. in the meantime, however, there are still women who must be helped NOW and with the meager resources at hand.
learning to understand why someone does something contrary to their interests doesn't mean you are condoning or enabling it. that understanding is a vital weapon to help break the cycle and get the abuse victim to safety. you can't simply give up on a victim who won't do what YOU want them to do when YOU want them to do it. that's a generic "you" btw. the solution may seem perfectly logical to someone who is not in the middle of it, but to help them, you MUST learn to see through their eyes as well as your own. that's much more easily accomplished with compassion rather than browbeating or "ordering" someone to do something, because the unspoken overtones of that come across EXACTLY like the abuse they seek to escape.
I consider the idea of sending a woman back into the same home as an abusive husband JUST AS ABSURD as the idea of sending her home with a total stranger who randomly attacked her on the street.
I see no difference.
you sound like you are generally pointed in the right direction. PLEASE, PLEASE take the time to educate yourself a bit more on this situation for BOTH sides. i can assure you i too used to have the simple belief that "just leave" was the answer. ultimately that is what MUST happen, but you have to understand that before it can, there is a very, very, complicated, delicate and extremely painful set of emotions that must be dealt with, and the victim cannot simply be left to his/her fate alone. they need care, counseling, compassion and time. the physical scars heal MUCH faster than the psychological ones, and neither can be neglected. please consider volunteering at your local shelter, read some books like the one i suggested, and ask questions of the professionals at the shelter.
the casual acceptance of intimate abuse will only be changed through KNOWLEDGE. that having been said, this story is about the way SEVERAL men colluded to abuse their power to intimidate a woman out of the justice due her, who had been abused by one of them. she has every right to pursue it, regardless of WHO her abuser is, and ALL the men involved in this cover-up, including governor paterson, should be brought to answer for what they did to her.
I'm not interested in protecting her emotions...they can heal later. Your physical, personal safety has to be paramount.
IF the law will not punish him or protect her, what I recommend is the equivalent of FBI-Witness Protection.
Leave, flee, run, hide...leaving your parents, friends, everything if that is what you need to do to stay alive.
It's awful that I even have to type that, but if the law will not save you...you have to save yourself.
You have to get out of New Orleans or else you will end up on the rooftops waiting for Bush to save you...if I can analogize it...
until you understand that you cannot separate the two, you are not going to be able to help anyone.
and please, if you think i don't take this issue seriously enough, i cannot tell you how sorely mistaken you are. it's a process i have lived through myself. if you honestly think that women will leave other lives that they are responsible for behind to suffer the wrath of the perpetrator who will lash out because of their leaving, you are also very much mistaken.
it is not a matter of "if you want to live, you'll do it." it is so much more complicated than that. so very much more. you also need to understand that one of the things abusers do is cut their victim off from their support network, so even when they have had enough, they feel so isolated that they feel they have nowhere to turn.
the resources for this problem are desperately limited. shelters all over the country have waiting lists miles long, and once a woman makes it to a shelter, she only has a limited time she can stay, which is nowhere near enough to get on her feet safely.
i think you mean well, but again, please educate yourself more. although it would be a vast improvement over the way things are now, even a five year jail sentence isn't enough to guarantee the safety of a woman and the family she takes with her. and as things stand, she doesn't qualify for something like "witness protection" because of the type of crime it is considered in the eyes of the law.
i am impressed with your understanding of abuse. i'm also aware of how difficult it is to explain the psychological carnage it causes.
soldiers (pstd was referred to as "soldiers heart" during the civil war, "shell shock" ww1, "battle fatigue" wwII...), women who've been abused, and CHILDREN...the most vulnerable of all of us, many of whom are physically, sexually, emotionally abused on an ongoing basis.
who grow up to be the victims and abusers of the next generation.
sometimes i think the entire human race suffers from post traumatic stress disorder.
you are fanned
it's hard to be human.
WEHAVETOSTOPHURTINGEACHOTHER
and you are right.
we do have to stop hurting each other, emotionally and physically.
In fairness, women should keep in mind that men really CANNOT grasp what it is like to live with the endless knowledge that we are vulnerable and considered fair game. We do live with fear, and often are so used to it that we no longer even realize we are frightened.
The difference in cultural attitudes is that when women abuse men...
No one believes it...or cares...or they think it's funny.
Women CHEERED when they thought Tiger's wife hit him in the face with a golf club.
I have never even thought about hitting a woman, none of the men I know would and I would put abuser away for such a long time you'd call me a fascist, but...
When I hear women minimize these abuses...or worse in the case of the rape example I discuss below, some women are ok with 2% of the men in jail for rape being innocent...because they can live with 2%, etc....
You lose me and lots of men like me.
Your absolute lack of concern for anything that doesn't involve women it makes me care less about something I care about, violence against women. You are saying that since you don't care about men, it's up to men like me who do...so NOW instead of all of us working together toward a world without domestic violence...you will work on this and we'll go over there and I don't see how this helps ANYONE.
i am not trying to minimize violence against men because statistically, women are more likely to use a weapon due to the physical disparity in strength.
i didn't cheer when it was reported that tiger's wife supposedly hit him with a golf club. i also don't applaud ANY innocent person being imprisoned. to correct that injustice is why barry scheck formed his project innocence, in order to help work to free those people.
i do think you are missing the boat on the psychology of the situation. women, and men, stay with their abusers out of FEAR. it is not so simple as to think that the first time a hand is raised in anger, that the victim will simply leave.
i'm glad you care about the situation. sad to say, it is on the rise in our country. i hope you will take the time to learn more about it so you can truly be useful in the fight against it.
Violence against women is an enormous problem in this society. It begins in the home with wives and daughters ordered around and treated like slaves, accused of being promiscuous, told what they can do and where they can and what to wear, and in all way treated like second class citizens.
It is reinforced in the schools where women are still confined to lower grade classes with less pay and status, and tenured university chairs are still labeled Male Only. Our courts continue to have mostly men as judges, and most of the good paying jobs in our country continue to be reserved for men with the assumption and understanding that women are less.
Attacking violence against women must start by admitting the underlying belief in our country that women are less. Because they are less, it is okay to hit them.
I suggest a national commitment to ending sexism and violence against women. And a computer-based national Violent Men website that shows the photo and identifying information of every man convicted or violence against any woman.