The following article on Domestic Violence statistics, laws, and information as it pertains to the Men’s Human Rights Movement, is intended to maintain a live document to which our community can continually add information.
The end goal is both practical and experimental; to maintain one core document that encompasses exhaustive information about domestic violence, and to use it to spread the truth.
At the end of this article is a contact form that you are encouraged to use to add relevant information as it relates to Domestic Violence, statistics, laws, and other information that is pertinent to our mission. Additionally, it is important to use the social sharing icons located at the end of this document to propagate this article on the many major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and others so that other Men and Women who are affected by bad Domestic Violence laws can learn, educate, and get involved in our movement.
A Voice For Men Statements on Domestic Violence
Domestic Violence is a serious issue facing all of humanity. Violence reduction against all humans requires a collaborative effort that is solution and evidence based; not grounded in governmental politics, sexual politics or gender ideology. Amelioration efforts must encompass proven interventions, both in treating victims and perpetrators and in providing legal remedies that serve the purpose of amelioration.
All these strategies must produce a sustained effort with informed sensitivities to men, women, and in particular, children, instead of using misdirection and other tactics that are designed to further ideological agendas and fund organizations.
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[tabs style=”default”] [tab title=”Laws”]When talking about Domestic Violence laws, the combination of how violence is defined in the Violence Against Women Act and how these matters are prosecuted collide to create an environment that is dangerous for men, women and children and for members of their extended families who have to endure the fallout.
Influential definitions of violence, put forth by politicized legal experts, include non-violent acts such as pointing a finger while speaking in an elevated voice and other perhaps uncomfortable, but essentially non-violent acts. Those definitions, as presented in VAWA are completely subjective.
Terms like “if you feel like…” are commonly used throughout this federal legislation and many use this to their advantage for revenge, to deflect attention from the fact of mutual violence and to put themselves in a better position in divorce and child custody matters. With regard to prosecution, domestic violence laws are usually decided on the legal concept of “preponderance of the evidence” rather than “innocent until proven guilty.”
This means without any forensic evidence, or indeed any evidence other than the accusations of a plaintiff, a Judge can still find guilt if he/she believes that violence “likely” occurred. The problem with this thinking is that judges are politically motivated and want to stay in the graces of the Domestic Violence Industry. Consequently many of them allow and enable false allegations or mutual combat to proceed to conviction for men only. [/tab] [tab title=”Statistics”]A Voice For Men believes that credible and verifiable domestic violence statistics are being ignored because the organizations responsible for gathering and reporting data have a vested financial and political interest in domestic violence being perceived in ways that fit with their requests for government funding. More specifically, many of the agencies tasked with ending domestic violence need for the issue to fit their worldview so that their organizations can continue to provide employment, fund programs and services, and garner political influence using government money.
When looking at domestic violence statistics, the numbers are all over the board with one organization reporting that men commit domestic violence 95% of the time, and another reporting that domestic violence occurs at even rates between men and women. Until governments get serious about ending all violence, instead of using violence to push gender specific agendas, we will likely never have true statistics on the problem. Currently, virtually all organizational methods for collecting statistics do not get counted as domestic violence when women hit men. Men often fear reporting violence perpetuated against them and few law enforcement agencies and judges want to talk about violence against men.[/tab] [tab title=”VAWA”]The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was first enacted into federal law on September 13, 1994. It was considered ground breaking legislation by then President Bill Clinton.
Unfortunately, it only addressed violence by men against women. It completely overlooks violence against men and children perpetrated by women, and violence in the LGBT community that we now know exists at equal rates to heterosexual relationships. In the past eight years, VAWA has transformed itself from domestic violence legislation to a massive industry that hinges on and supports the idea that there is a “War on Women” being waged by men and is routinely used to drum up support from targeted women voters. The Violence Against Women Act is frequently used in the United States to piggyback other controversial legislation. By attaching other laws to VAWA it is easier to deter objection on the grounds that if you object, you must support bruised and beaten women.
As we discussed in our section on Domestic Violence laws, there is very dangerous wording in VAWA that guarantees violence committed by Men and it has devastating effects on Men and Women in their families.[/tab] [tab title=”Funding and Industry”]When talking about Domestic Violence funding, it is important to note that federal money allocated to responding to domestic violence is currently at $460 billion dollars annually and is not distributed to victims of proven violence.
In reality, the majority of this money goes to non-profit organizations, political action committees, training, law enforcement, and other groups. This has set up what many call the Domestic Violence Industry that, as stated earlier, relies on federal money to complete their missions, often which have nothing to do with serving victims.
Of course, Congress is not going to continue this level of funding if domestic violence is eradicated, so this incentivizes violence reporting that finance these professional organizations. If domestic violence funding, complete with oversight and accountability went directly to victims, then it is quite possible we could start diminishing domestic violence levels across the board.
However, that would mean less need for government money on which political groups and other special interest groups feed themselves.[/tab][tab title=”DVPO’s”]Domestic Violence Protection Orders are actually exacerbating violence and research is now showing that they are highly ineffective and in many cases counter productive. Consider your typical Domestic Violence incident, which means two people arguing, yelling, possibly hitting walls and sometimes exchanging blows.
The police are called, and the man is taken to jail. Adding a DVPO to this mix, the man in jail is now faced with being severed from his children, losing his job, his home and freedom. While many may say “Good, he deserves it,” they tend to forget that this was a situation involving mutual combat, and that he may be the primary source of support for his wife and children. Additionally, some men, when unjustly cornered in this fashion, fall into rage and despair, becoming capable of much worse than the mutual combat that had already transpired. While protective orders may sound good and feel good, they are actually a lighting rod for increased levels of violence.
Additionally, Domestic Violence restraining/protective orders are usually handed out freely by magistrates and judges applying the “It’s better to be safe than sorry” mentality in these matters which has systemic and lasting consequences in future employment, constitutional rights, and reputation for, men, and their children, even if they are not found guilty.[/tab][tab title=”False Allegations”]A Voice For Men believes that false allegations of domestic violence are at epidemic levels. Over 1,000,000 restraining orders are issued each year in American Family Courts. They are “normal” part of divorce strategy. What fuels false allegations is clear.
By lowering the definition of violence so low and applying subjective criteria for having police over to your house to automatically arrest a man, and given that the courts do not require evidence to gain a conviction, and the fact that a lot of money hinges on these false allegation being adjudicated guilty, this sets the stage for a complainant to make this allegation without any fear of repercussions. We have many examples of women who were found guilty of making false allegations that routinely walk out of courtrooms with nothing more than a stern warning from a Judge.
These allegations are becoming quite ordinary and expected for the simple reason that they work. They provide the accuser a solid leg up strategically, enabling them to take control of a marriages assets and property with no evidence justifying it.[/tab][tab title=”Domestic Violence Analogy”]If you are reading this article and still compelled to demand that domestic violence laws remain centered around women because you believe that men far outnumber women abusers then I would like to provide this simple analogy to demonstrate how dangerous your thinking is.
If a woman walks into a daycare and harms eight children and a man walks into another daycare and hurts only three children then the woman has hurt far greater numbers of children. But if we suggested that new laws needed to be drafted to prevent women from entering daycare facilities on these grounds, then the mainstream media and women’s rights groups would be outraged that we are singling out the Woman only. And, they would be right in doing so. Not just because it is unfair to condemn all women based on the actions of a minority, but because the three children that were hurt also matter. It is not about who hurt more children, it is about all the children being hurt.
In virtually all social problems we face, none are as focused on gender as domestic violence. And that bias is clearly reflected in our laws and statistics.[/tab][tab title=”Mandatory Arrest”]Much like Protective Orders, while they may feel good and sound good on news reports, the reality is all they do is further compound the issue which escalates further hostility — especially when the situation revolves around mutual conflict and violence. As we see in Erin Pizzey’s video below, rarely are Domestic Violence situations one-sided involving a man just coming home from work one afternoon and deciding to beat his wife.
Taking a highly volatile situation and adding in a mandatory arrest which causes loss of employment, further financial problems, inflaming untreated emotional or psychological orders, and you have set the stage for greater violence. According to a Harvard University study, when states enact mandatory arrest policies, the intimate partner homicide rate increases by 57%. (Source: Iyengar R. Does the certainty of arrest reduce domestic violence? Evidence from mandatory and recommended arrest laws. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007.) This means that over 600 persons a year, most of them women, are murdered as a result of these polices.
Prosecution, jail, and causing someone to lose their job, reputation, and adding to further financial difficulty is never going to work, and pretending that all domestic violence incidents are men’s fault only contributes to the problem. The only way to effectively address domestic violence is by addressing the underlying issues that lead to ineffective coping skills. Of course, I am sure the radical feminist love seeing Men carted off to jail and losing everything thing they own, but in retrospect all they are doing is creating an environment that assures future violence. Mandatory arrests are simply not working.[/tab][/tabs]
Women Supporting Reforming Domestic Violence Laws And The Violence Against Women Act
When discussing Domestic Violence, laws surrounding violence, and statistics, it is easy to imagine that a casual reader of this article will dismiss it as ramblings from Men who are upset that they can no longer beat women and get away with it. Therefore, this section of the article is devoted to the many women from A Voice For Men who have plenty to say about Domestic Violence. Additionally, we are going to provide links and commentary from other well established Women’s group who oppose VAWA and the current ways in which Domestic Violence laws are actually increasing violence, encouraging false allegations, creating false statistics, encouraging fraud, and which are centered around gender and sexual politics rather than ending ALL violence.
Meet Erin Pizzey. Never heard of her? Well if you have done your research on Domestic Violence you would know that she is a Woman who actually started the first Women’s shelter in the United Kingdom and is considered an expert on Domestic Violence worldwide. What we learn from Erin is that in order to end all violence stemming from domestic partnerships and marriages, we must do so equally and absent ideologies that Women are the only ones abused and that Men exclusively commit violence. To learn more about Erin Pizzey CLICK HERE.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfwJ55hKgE?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
From Concerned Women For America:
“VAWA has created a vast bureaucracy with an annual price tag of $455 million. Instead of addressing the root problems of violence and ending battering, the broad definitions of violence in VAWA mean that husbands are thrown in jail based on flimsy allegations of causing “emotional distress” or “unpleasant speech.” Meanwhile, drug-addicted boyfriends and alcoholic cohabitors continue to batter, and all men are assumed to be capable of violence.”
“The end result is that a bill that supposedly addresses domestic violence is, instead, a thinly veiled means of promoting feminist ideology, and anyone who dares to raise questions is accused of waging a “war against women.” In such a climate, rational disagreement is virtually impossible.”
From Women Against VAWA Excess, we learn how radical feminist groups are actually suppressing domestic violence statistics in order to bring to light “Patriarchal Dominance”, are publicizing articles that only show male perpetration of violence against women, and are obstructing evidenced based research that attempts to shed truth on the fact that women are equally responsible for domestic violence.
Phyllis Schlafly, an American constitutional lawyer, activist, and author states that “For 30 years, the feminists have been pretending that their goal is to abolish all sex discrimination, eliminating all gender differences no matter how reasonable. When it comes to domestic violence, however, feminist dogma preaches that there is an innate gender difference: Men are naturally batterers, and women are naturally victims (i.e., gender profiling).”
SAVE Services, a non-profit devoted to evidenced based and real solutions to ending domestic violence across all genders, is one of the top organizations worldwide that has an advanced legislative network that talks with Congress daily on ways to bring rational and humanistic laws on violence that have far greater outcomes than the Violence Against Women Act does. And, the board and legislative team consist of many women.
But there is another group of women who should be concerned about domestic violence reform that we rarely hear about. These women have a tremendous reason to see new laws and consciousness regarding violence change from our current thinking that “Men are Bad” and “Women are Good” ideology pushed by thousands of organizations and non-profits across the world. They are the second wives who’s husband are unable to see their children because of a false allegation, grandmothers who have not seen their grandchildren in a decade because of protective orders brought from custodial mothers who wanted to gain tactical advantage in child custody matters, sisters of men who have witnessed mutual combat between her brother and wife/ex-wife where he was the only one held accountable, and daughters of fathers who learned at 18 that her father was actually wanting to be involved in her life, but was either moved 5 states away, or prevented from contacting her because he yelled one night and the police were called.
Other Women who have an interest in seeing domestic violence reform, and who should be concerned about men’s right in general are the many hundreds of millions of custodial mothers all over the world who have male children that will one day face a system where he is likely to be alienated and marginalized in his child’s life because of a family court system that allows false allegations of domestic violence to proceed to conviction, or who will find himself on the wrong side of a judge who has been trained (thanks to VAWA) that his yelling is considered domestic violence under the law.
You think this does not happen? You think that evidence will exonerate him? That’s how the erroneous idea that false allegations only represent a fraction of all domestic violence cases is perpetuated Please do research on “preponderance of the evidence” vs. “innocent until proven guilty” and how these legal definitions influence domestic violence laws that are alienating tens of millions of paternal grandmothers (former custodial mothers no less) from their grandchildren each year.
The Future of Domestic Violence Laws, The Violence Against Women Act, and The Family Courts
Domestic violence laws and complaints have always been used in the family courts worldwide as a tactical tool to put the opposing party in a bad situation in divorce and in child custody matters. Although, I’m not sure why given the century old history of marginalizing men in the family court process whether they had any history of violence or not.
What is clear is that there is a massive push by many father’s rights groups, some psychologists and others around the idea that equally shared parenting is the best approach after a divorce or separation. And, there are many US States stating to take a close look at shared parenting. We are even starting to see this take place in the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries (although unfortunately to a lesser degree).
A Voice For Men believes that shared parenting scares organizations that advocate on behalf of women who have become accustomed to the control, access to social services, and the freedom to relocate after a divorce that custody has afforded them historically. In 2012, the National Organization For Women’s foundation released their annual report on Family Law in the Fall of 2012 which began with the opening sentence:
This Special Report of the NOW Family Law Ad Hoc Advisory Committee focuses on the destructive ability of abusive parents (usually the father) – aided by fathers’ advocacy groups or fathers’ rights groups – to deny the protective parent (usually the mother) custody of minor children. Discussed in this issue is how abusers deny custody, and the damage it causes to a half million or more children exposed to continuing physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
Clearly, battle lines have been drawn by major women’s advocacy groups outlining that the domestic violence issue will be how the National Organization For Women plans on attacking shared parenting initiatives when they arise. And it’s working. Virtually all shared parenting initiatives have legislative language attached to it mandating that if domestic violence is a “concern,” then equal parenting can not be considered — thus another incentive for false accusation and the issue of a restraining order.
This will be beneficial to those that benefit financially and politically from the manufactured rise in domestic violence statistics, lawyers who make tremendous amounts of money from two parents fighting for 18 years, rather than equally parenting, and Judges who use bad fathers as election props. And, the behemoth of all lobbying organization known as the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA) will sit idle and watch this unfold knowing that if shared parenting is realized, there will be fewer men paying child support which justifies their existence and political stature.
The combined power of the National Organization For Women, Bar Association/Lawyers Groups, the Child Support Enforcement Lobby, and other groups have always used domestic violence as a reason why it’s best to have a “mother take all” family law system. Because you, your sons, your brothers, your fathers, and your new husbands are natural abusers, which of course maintains their agendas.
Having said all this, I want to make it very clear to women in paternal families that you are equally devastated by this ideology and we are looking to you to join in this fight to oppose these groups because your presence in your grandchildren, step-children, and nieces and nephews lives are at stake.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks?rel=0&w=420&h=315]
A Voice For Men Supporter Comments on Domestic Violence Laws and Statistics From The United States, Canada, Australia, The United Kingdom, India and Others
Perhaps the most important part of this article on domestic violence laws, statistics, and other information as it relates to the Men’s Human Rights Movement is for others reading this document to hear your stories; be it as a father, paternal grandmother, step-mother, aunt/uncle, or other family member.
Using the form below we encourage you to submit well thought out, succinct, and hard hitting examples of how bad domestic violence laws have affected you. Once received, we will add your thoughts to this section so we ask that you be as brief as possible so that this document does not become so big that it’s loses it’s readability.
Furthermore, you will not be identified in the post. Lastly, I can not begin to convey how important it is to share this article on the major social networking sites with the hundreds of millions of Men and Women worldwide who have an interest in Men’s Rights, and who see bad Domestic Violence laws and statistics hurting innocent alleged perpetrators.
