It was a cool fall night in 1966, approximately ten o'clock when the police dispatcher sent me on a "415-family," one of the most common, and potentially dangerous calls for cops, and for those involved.
I pulled up to the curb two or three houses down the block from the modest dwelling in San Diego's City Heights neighborhood, pocketed my jangling keys so they wouldn't announce my arrival, and crept up to the house and onto the porch. I paused a moment, listening for clues about what might be going on behind the closed door. It was quiet inside, no porcelain knickknacks or 90-decibel threats bouncing off walls. Just a low, moaning sound.
I knocked. "San Diego Police!" Seconds later, a short, shoeless man in khaki trousers and bloodied undershirt opened the door. His hand was wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. In the background, a woman in a housedress. More blood, a lot more of it. She stared blankly at me.
It's okay, I thought. I can see your old man beat you up. I'm here to help you.
Man, did I get that one wrong. It was the woman who went to jail that night. For cutting off her husband's pinky with a cleaver. They'd been arguing all night. He'd drunk himself to sleep. She'd had enough of his sloth and inattentiveness.
In three and a half decades as a cop I saw a lot of "family beefs," as we called them in those days. What about this particular one causes me to remember it after all these years? Hint: It was not merely the severed digit. No, it was that the woman was, in today's parlance, the "primary aggressor."
To that early point in my career, every single "415-family" I'd responded to -- there were many -- had a male suspect, female victim. I learned that night that women can be DV offenders, and I've not forgotten it.
In fact, a couple of years later I rolled on a DV homicide whose suspect, a white-haired, grandmotherly type, had stabbed her husband to death. On their anniversary. Which, her hubby, having spent the evening in a neighborhood bar, had forgotten. On one occasion I found myself in a knock-down/drag-out with a another woman DV offender, this one a 170-pound light heavyweight with the tenacity of a cobra and the strength of an ox.
So, yes, I know women can be physically violent DV offenders. Ignoring this reality in individual cases is not the answer, especially for those men who have been victimized by their women partners, and who have been disbelieved by the authorities, thrown out of their homes, convicted in court, lost their kids, their jobs, their freedom. It happens, and it's wrong.
However.
Numerous studies make clear that women are significantly more likely than men to be stalked, sexually assaulted, seriously injured or killed by their intimate partners.
Which is why it is critical that congress reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, including its new provisions that offer help to Native American women, the LGBT community and immigrants, groups that, to date, have been denied the full protection of VAWA.
The Senate has passed the new bill. But the men of the House, perhaps a majority, now threaten to defeat it. I don't think that will happen, but it is possible they will water it down. And that would be a tragic mistake.
Most police officers understand that family violence is a precursor to all other forms of violence, that children who grow up in a violent home are far more likely, as they move into adolescence and adulthood, to resort to fists, guns, knives, baseball bats or hammers to resolve differences. Cops know that early intervention can save a life. They also know that how they handle the call can have a tremendous impact on the future lives of any children present in the home.
If one of the reasons for House opposition is that the bill is unfair to men (a notion they'd most likely express only in secret), those opponents might want to look at VAWA's effect on police training.
It wasn't all that hard for me to ascertain the primary aggressor on that call in San Diego, but discerning legal culpability can be a tricky proposition. The more training officers have the more likely it is they'll make the right call. Throughout the country VAWA training grants have dramatically improved police and criminal justice effectiveness in combating sexual and domestic violence.
Listen to this kid, and you'll understand why that's so important.
Follow Norm Stamper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CopsSayLegalize
Rep. Louise Slaughter: Law & Order: The Army's SVU
http://hampton-northhampton.patch.com/articles/keeping-protection-in-place-renewing-the-violence-against-women-act
One study that measures false accusations of abuse during divorce is Brinig and Allen's review of some 125,000 Oregon divorces around the time the custody law changed in 1997 to promote shared parenting. Following the change in law, while the number of abuse allegations was unchanged, false accusations doubled. A proxy for a false accusation is defined as one in which a claim is made but no court order issued.
There was also a difference in the qualitative nature of the claims. The number of single-time claims increased compared with multiple claims. Women filed 80-90% of all claims. "Interestingly, false abuse claims by wives declined mostly because the plaintiff failed to appear at court, while most false claims by husbands are declined for lack of evidence."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=820104
Divorce researcher Robert Emery and legal scholar Elizabeth Scott call for raising the bar for evidence of IPV in divorce/custody cases.
"Raising the standard applied to evidence supporting claims of family violence will assist courts in separating legitimate allegations from those that are marginal. This reform would retain the presumption disfavoring for custody a parent who has engaged in domestic violence, but would limit its application to cases in which a parent’s allegation is supported by substantial corroborating evidence."
http://lsr.nellco.org/columbia_pllt/9200/
When little girls grow up, having learned from their parents, that it is ok to deal with their emotional issues by hitting, yelling, throwing, etc. It is quite possible that they may run into a male that isn't in control of his emotional response to conflict as well. Where society goes wrong at is when we hold men to a higher standard and we excuse female violence because they are smaller or weaker. This is wrong headed. Every person regardless of size and strength has a right to bodily autonomy and it should go without saying that DV can effect the way a person behaves or feels about themselves. Boys and girls. Men and women.
suibne
And now, refusing to resign the VAWA, republicans are clearly continuing the war on the middle class. I say war on the middle class because what affects us as women, affects the men in our lives. The top 1% can't compete with our numbers, so they disenfranchise us by removing legal steps we could take when we are exploited.
Add it all up, make two lists of what republicans have done for the middle class and what they are attempting to take away..........the middle class is being thrown under the bus in order for republicans to give more to their real constituents, those who want to control us with their money.
Accusations of false rape are mainly committed against men.
To give women special status as victim is to deny men the same freedom from violence.
What better services?
There are over 8,000 women's shelters in the country, but only three accept abused men.
Of the over 13 million restraining orders issued against men since VAWA was put into law, 90% have been dismissed as having "no merit". The vast majority are used simply as a divorce tactic to get the man out of the house and bestow a tactical advantage to the woman or by women eager to get revenge on their men.
And due to VAWA promoting the Duluth Model for handling DV, it is the man who is arrested automatically, even if he was the abused one who called for help.
VAWA does not offer any benefits to men, (you can pretty much tell that just from the title of the law) but it certainly give women a huge advantage over men.
Just ask them.
Doesn't it make more sense to pass VAWA with all it's added provisions, and then pass a bill to provide assistance to the smaller number of abused men as well?
So, no, it's NOT best handled locally.
This is NOT a new 'layer' of bureacracy, it's been around since the 90s, the Republicans are just obstructing it to now get the votes of violent men.
Crime in all aspects has retreated for about two decades, less murders, assault, rape, - and also DV. The trend had started well before VAWA was passed.
Abortions (unwanted children more likely to grow up disturbed), longer jail sentences, and new crime technology (DNA, video cameras) have all combined to help lower crime rates.
VAWA has reduced violence, and I begin to wonder why you're so against it?