14/10/04

The American Feminists' Abuse Industry 

Hunter Brooks

FatherMag

The geometry of our American moral pendulum is intriguing. At both ends of the journey are extremes. And in the middle--because of the speed and passion of the weight--there exists a vacuum. The pendulum of modern law, morality and political correctness has vast, dedicated support at the extremes and a dark, sinister center of forgotten promises.

The energy exerted at both ends is charged with righteousness but tragically lacks the fundamental doctrine of honesty. Divorce attorneys representing women may now be sued for malpractice if they don't raise the issue of domestic violence and suggest its value in a divorce action. Women´s shelter staffers know full well that a charge of domestic violence, real or otherwise is virtually indefensible in our politically correct courts. They also are aware that funding for their programs from federal and charitable sources is based on the number of “victim” females they process.

At the women´s shelter, alleged victims are questioned extensively but with virtually no attention to (or interest in) the authenticity of allegations of abuse. The feminist staffers instead focus on “profiling” the accused abuser. This is actually the process of making sure the politically correct and standardized details of “abusive conduct” are included in the victim´s statements, affidavits and petitions for a restraining order, also known as a personal protection order (PPO). The male partner must be made to fit the classic profile of a habitual abuser. The man charged may never have touched his wife, threatened her or used any emotional influence over her but once “profiled,” he becomes a legal target. “Abuse of process” best describes the coaching and fabrication efforts of the gender-feminist (vs the rational equity-feminist) during many shelter intake interviews.

Yet there are increasing signs that more judges are becoming aware of the imbalance between truth and consequences as it applies to male victims of VAWA and the political arm of the women´s resource machine. A Seattle area Family Court judge said, “The Domestic Violence issue has been politicized big time in our area. We judges are ordered to attend ‘consciousness raising´ seminars where we are harangued by feminist ‘experts.´”

He continued, “I am a member of the advisory committee for the local shelter. I was shocked at the anti-male bias of the ladies who ran the center. The only solution championed by the shelter was to get free from that big, malicious male. My committee expressed concern about the underlying anti-male bias which even showed up in the name of the shelter. We recommended that the name be changed to the Center for Victims of Abuse – rather than Women´s Strength.”

The bias that is present may have some basis in reality but it should never preclude the application of common sense and reason when processing women for services. That process may well result in either a violent male partner being brought to justice (and, it is to be hoped, treatment) or, an innocent man convicted in the eyes of the public, humiliated and perhaps jailed. In many cases the male loses contact with his children. In cases where sexual abuse of the children is alleged, the male will routinely be arrested, jailed and exposed to a battery of court ordered psychiatric examinations. All perfectly logical if there is probable cause to believe the male has in fact molested his children. Probable cause in today´s world is a simple statement by an angry female.

Statistics of false accusations can be handily manipulated by either end of the spectrum for their own political purposes. The National Organization for Women (NOW) claim studies indicate only a 2 per cent false allegation rate.

According to studies by Charles E. Corry, PhD., president of the Colorado-based Equal Justice Foundation, the actual figure of false allegations is nearly fifty per cent of all complaints. In certain counties in Colorado the rate may be as high as seventy-five per cent. “There are prominent civil rights violations inherent in each one of the court orders,” said Corry.

“ The law seems to encourage women to lie; to fabricate some sort of physical abuse in order to bootstrap ‘emotional harm´ or to demonize the man so that the claim of other forms of abuse could be more palpable.” Corry said.

There is not a unified voice in Michigan to advocate for male victims of false accusations or correlate Colorado statistics, but a State Bar of Michigan report for 2001 indicated there were a total of 112,000 PPOs filed in circuit and district courts. Using a general demographic comparison, that would mean 56,000 men a year are falsely accused of domestic violence or child sexual battery. The State Bar report means 1 out of every eighty males (not just adults but ALL males) in Michigan has been falsely accused of battery or abuse last year. This is a runaway train of judicial, legalized sexist persecution.

Family violence statistics from the Michigan State Police indicated 45,600 abuse cases involving spouses or partners were reported last year. Of those cases 44,220 had either no injuries, “possible” but undocumented injuries or injuries which were “unkown” to investigating officers. This means ninety-seven per cent of reported cases of spousal abuse--highly weighted to female victim numbers--produced no demonstrable physical injury to the “victim.” This brings into serious doubt the veracity of much of the platform of shelter advocates.

The Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women´s Network explains: “Battery is a fulfillment of cultural expectation, not a defiant or sick behavior.” This cynical view pervades the activist groups dealing with this issue, and the bureaucracies that fund them with federal dollars.

The gender-feminist politicization of the term “abuse” renders it almost meaningless. A typical check-list, in this case from the Westchester Coalition of Family Violence agencies, tells women that if their partner behaves in “an overprotective manner, turns minor incidents into arguments or insults you in any way – then you might be abused.” Based on that definition most adult Americans would at some point in their lives be subject to arrest or a PPO alleging abuse.

Professor Susan Sarnoff of Ohio University, in her essay “The Institutionalization of Misinformation: VAWA II,” cites ‘training initiatives´ by women´s resource personnel as further increasing the perception that domestic violence is widespread. They are not only reaching real victims, but encouraging service providers, attorneys and others with vested interests in gaining clients to broadly define female victimization. High-school, college and immigrant aliens often get the impression that virtually any unpleasant interaction with a male can be construed as sexual or domestic violence, absolving the 'victim' of any responsibility by implying that a woman has no control over their bodies or their lives.”

VAWA bears much of the blame for the great disruption of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in recent years, having lead to the development of what is termed by INS fraud investigators as a “cottage industry.” There are literally thousands of cases pending that involve female aliens married to an American males who allege abuse and instantly become a “protected status” immigrant. It's a scam with a heavy price, as it keeps INS workers busy doing things besides protecting the US.

But the VAWA scam is too good to pass up, as abuse claims streamline the residency application process and automatically award accusers the advantages of social services, housing and advocacy benefits. Immigrant women in Texas and other border states pay for the “use” of a willing male whom she then marries and promptly charges with abuse. She cuts the normal two year wait for residency down to a couple of weeks. Lacking any objection to her claims of abuse, she will be a lawful permanent resident in about the time it takes to get financing for a new car.

In a noteworthy paradox to the VAWA mandate to reduce domestic violence toward women, scientific studies on abuse fly directly into the turbines of the gender-feminist machine of abuse advocacy. Studies reveal that women, not men, are more likely to use violence in the home.

In “Family Violence,” a report from the Family Resources and Research Center of Naples, FL, “much of the women´s shelter movement is seriously misinformed about the causes and scope of family violence.” The statistics indicate women strike the first blow in fifty-three per cent and “can´t remember” in another 5 per cent of incidents of family violence. Women are three times more likely to use weapons in spousal violence. Women commit most child abuse and the greatest percentage of elder abuse. Women commit fifty-two per cent of spousal killings. Eighty-two per cent of the general population had their first experience of violence at the hands of women.

Women commit most child murders and sixty-four per cent of their victims are male children.

And NOW lends moral support to the slaughter by rushing in to defend female child-murderers, as it recently did in a prominent Texas case. NOW's action gives new meaning to the slogan "A Woman's Right to Choose."

When women murder adults, the majority of their victims are men. Not so the reverse. This is a long way from the abuse industry claim that “men are responsible for ninety per cent of family violence.”

“The misinformation of the family violence issue is so pervasive that city and county governments, the courts, law enforcement, prosecutors, mental health clinics and other tax supported agencies are now funding programs based on gender-feminist propaganda rather than responsible scientific studies” state the Revs. Samuel and B. Sewell, directors of Family Resources and Research Center, the Florida-based agency that embraces a gender-neutral and family preservation approach to domestic violence.

Domestic violence is an equal opportunity provider of embarrassment, harm and humiliation for both genders.

“We need to recognize that women are violent and we need a nationwide educational program that portrays women as perpetrators . Any family violence program which accepts the “male abuser - female victim” paradigm is based on a false premise,“ according to the Sewells.

In the Family Violence Report the Sewells conclude, “Abuse shelter advocates and gender-feminists have severely distorted the picture and deliberately produce fraudulent statistics and disinformation. One of the favorite statistics quoted by abuse shelter advocates is that a woman is the victim of spousal violence every 15 seconds. This is deduced from a solid piece of research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, a journal for marriage and family therapists.

“The abuse shelter advocates arrived at this figure by using a conclusion of the study--1.8 million women suffer an assault from a husband or boyfriend each year. What shelter advocates always fail to report is another finding of the study--2 million men are assaulted by wives or girlfriends each year, which translates as, a man is a victim of spousal violence every 14 seconds.”

The national problem of false or unsubstantiated claims of spousal abuse is widely known but seldom discussed due in part to a political correctness which has us frozen in an unnatural state of self-deception. Elaine Epstein, past president of the Massachusetts Bar Association warned “that the frenzy surrounding domestic violence,” was leading to disturbing excesses: restraining orders (personal protection orders in Michigan) are granted to virtually all who apply, in many divorce cases, allegations of abuse are now commonly used for tactical advantage.”

“This is typical of the widespread deception practiced by abuse shelter advocates. America´s press establishment is a party to this deception, and shares the blame for exacerbating the problem by helping to perpetuate a false diagnosis.”

Cathy Young, a Boston reporter and author of “Cease Fire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces for Equality,” writes about the explosion of restraining orders and false prosecutions,

“This attitude bodes ill for civil rights - and it may not do victims much good. Several studies indicate that restraining orders have little, if any, protective effect. Indeed, a system bogged down in trivial pursuit may fail to single out cases of real danger.”

Aretha Franklin, the American blues icon, challenged males of our species to “do right by your woman” in her classic “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” But in the crystal palace of our modern reality with a floor of eggshells, the American male may be damned if he does.