A few reasons WHY you must act today...VAWA

[FIRM]

The American Conservative, vol. 4, no 16 (August 29, 2005), pp. 23-25.
             
         Violence Against Families
Fathers fall victim to domestic-abuse laws.

By


Stephen Baskerville

FEMINISTS ARE PLAYING the victim card with a vengeance, mostly because it is the only card left, with sympathy for feminism's strident campaigns at a low point. Yet beneath the media radar, victimhood has helped feminism advance virtually unopposed to aggrandize power in realms few perceive.

Victim politics requires exploiting traditional gender roles. This does not mean feminism has moderated; simply that it has exchanged ideological purity for power. Much as Stalinism inherited the habits of czarist absolutism and nationalism, feminism now exploits the stereotype of helpless damsels in distress and the public's good intentions.

Today's foremost case in point is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), currently up for reauthorization in Congress. VAWA appeals to mom-and-apple-pie sentiments: what legislator can oppose protecting women? The bill commands bipartisan sponsorship, and its renewal in 2000 was mostly unopposed.

Yet VAWA illustrates a serious problem with political conservatism and demonstrates how the Left advances despite its unpopularity. More than a failure of nerve, VAWA exemplifies a trend not so much to discard traditional values as to politicize them. Politicians can posture as champions of motherhood and family while turning them over to the safekeeping of the state. Thus domestic-violence legislation is pitched as an appeal to male chivalry, and Republicans are quick to volunteer. In contrast to traditional chivalry, however, today's political version does not proceed from personal duty and requires no risk or heroism. The gallantry feminists demand is bureaucratic, exercised by functionaries who wield state power that they expand as a result.

"Domestic violence" is now a vast and growing government industry. Yet the term has never been clearly defined. Given that criminal statutes against violent assault already exist, precisely what purpose is served by laws creating special categories of crime of which only some people can be victims? Domestic violence designates criminals politically, in terms of their membership in a group rather than acts they have actually committed. It also creates crimes based on relationships rather than deeds. Conflict that is not criminal between strangers becomes a crime between "intimate partners."

Whereas criminal assault charges require due process of law, designating a matter "domestic violence" circumvents constitutional protections. Law-abiding citizens are issued "restraining orders" that do not punish them for illegal actions but prohibit them from otherwise legal ones. Because violent assault is already punishable, the only people effectively restrained are peaceful ones.

Men's groups complain that VAWA excludes male victims and point to research showing that men are equally likely to be victims of domestic assault. Yet something more than "gender bias" is at work. Though advertised to protect women, VAWA's provisions are better seen as weapons in divorce and custody battles. As Thomas Kasper writes in the Illinois Bar Journal, measures funded by VAWA readily "become part of the gamesmanship of divorce." Groups like the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence lobby strenuously on custody laws, using unverifiable assertions like "80% of fathers who desire shared custody of their children fit the profile of a batterer."

Restraining orders are routinely issued without any evidence of wrongdoing to criminalize fathers' contact with their own children. "Restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply," and "the facts have become irrelevant," writes Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women's Bar Association. "In virtually all cases, no notice, meaningful hearing, or impartial weighing of evidence is to be had."

Even feminists backhandedly acknowledge what the social-science literature clearly establishes: that domestic violence and child abuse are overwhelmingly phenomena not of intact families but of separated and separating families and that the safest environment for women and children is a two-parent home. By encouraging marital breakup, VAWA exacerbates the problem it ostensibly exists to solve.

VAWA also blurs the distinction between violent crime and ordinary disagreement. Federally funded groups like the National Victim Assistance Academy (NVAA) and the Justice Department itself use vague and subjective terms to define "violence" where none took place: "extreme jealousy and possessiveness," "name-calling and constant criticizing, insulting, and belittling the victim," "blaming the victim for everything," "ignoring, dismissing, or ridiculing the victim's needs."

If domestic violence were a major problem, one would expect limited resources to be reserved for serious cases and those concerned about true violence to resist this cheapening of the language whereby the stuff of lovers' quarrels becomes grounds for arrest. Instead, activists use vague terms to imply criminal violence where none has taken place. In The Battered Woman, psychologist Lenore Walker excuses a women who violently attacked her husband because he "had been battering her by ignoring her and by working late."

Though part of VAWA was declared unconstitutional on federalist grounds, the judiciary refuses to pass constitutional review. On the contrary, it is implemented by the very judiciary that is normally expected to protect constitutional rights. Strikingly, judges openly acknowledge the unconstitutionality and their own indifference to it. "Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order," New Jersey municipal court judge Richard Russell told fellow judges at a government-run training seminar in 1994. "Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, 'See ya around.'"

VAWA also funds special courts to administer not equal justice but feminist justice: ideological justice reminiscent of the French Revolution's political tribunals or Hitler's dreaded "people's courts." Some 300 "integrated domestic violence courts" now operate nationwide. In New York, Chief Judge Judith Kaye declares that the courts are created not to dispense impartial justice but to facilitate punishment: "to make batterers and abusers take responsibility for their actions."

These courts bear little relation to most Americans' understanding of due process. There is no presumption of innocence, hearsay evidence is admissible, and defendants have no right to confront their accusers. Even forced confessions are extracted. Warren County, Pennsylvania, requires fathers like Robert Pessia, on pain of incarceration, to sign prefabricated confessions stating, "I have physically and emotionally battered my partner." The father must then describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. The formulaic documents state, "I am responsible for the violence I used. My behavior was not provoked."

VAWA also subsidizes ideological advocacy of feminist organizations. Though Republicans in particular are feeding a mouth that bites them, the larger principle is whether taxpayers should ever sponsor political ideology. "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation," wrote Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, "it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."

Especially questionable is federal funding of lobbying by judges, who are professionally obligated to be apolitical. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) consisting of judges who sit on actual cases and are required to be impartial receives federal support to attack fathers' groups and fathers themselves for being "at odds with the safety needs of the rest of the family." Can fathers summoned before these judges expect equal justice? NCJFCJ advocates administrative termination of paternal rights, termination of fathers' rights to their see their children with no evidence of violence, ignoring officials who question abuse allegations, ignoring visitation orders, re-education of judges, and labeling law-abiding American citizens who criticize the government as "dangerous."

 They even seem to endorse the fabrication of evidence and a presumption of guilt. NVAA's Jacobin-style agenda is likewise endorsed and disseminated by the Justice Department: "establish a Family Violence Coordinating Council," "implement a massive community education program," "specialized domestic violence courts, and vertical prosecution," "fast track domestic violence prosecutions through priority docketing," "electronic monitoring," and "warrantless searches of their persons or homes."

The complaint that VAWA excludes the large percentage of male victims is not petty. Men are much more likely to experience violence that is premeditated or contracted and which may be excluded from categorization as domestic violence: shootings in the back, hired killers, midnight castrations, attacks with cars. Not only does this violence seldom elicit public sympathy; it is not foremost among the terrors of men themselves. "The most common theme among abused men is their tales not of physical anguish but of dispossession," writes Patricia Pearson in When She Was Bad, " losing custody of children due to accusations of physical and sexual abuse." "They may never see their children again," says Philip Cook, author of Abused Men. "They don't feel that they will get a fair shake in the courts regarding custody no matter what happens or what she does. And it's actually true. There are many cases...in which a woman who was actually arrested for domestic violence still receive[d] custody of the children." Losing custody is not the only danger: "A battered man knows that if his wife has been abusing him, she has often been abusing the children," writes Warren Farrell. "Leaving her means leaving his children unprotected from her abuse."

Here we arrive at the most insidious consequence of the moral grandstanding by VAWA's champions. Though advocates rhetorically intermingle child abuse with domestic violence, natural fathers commit a small fraction of child abuse; the overwhelming bulk is committed in single-parent homes. "Contrary to public perception," write Patrick Fagan and Dorothy Hanks of the Heritage Foundation, "the most likely physical abuser of a young child will be that child's mother, not a male in the household." Fathers commit 6.5 percent of child murders, according to a Justice Department study. The Department of Health and Human Services found that "women (the majority of whom are natural mothers) murder children 31.6 times more often than do natural fathers." A study by the Family Education Trust found children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused in a home without a father.

This is precisely the home environment VAWA subsidizes. Judges claim they remove fathers, even without evidence of abuse, to "err on the side of caution." In fact, they are erring on the side of danger, and it is difficult to believe they do not realize it. Recalling Dickens's observation that "the one great principle of the...law is to make business for itself," the domestic-violence industry appears to be making business for itself by creating the environment conducive to child abuse.

Appalling as this sounds, this proceeds from the logic inherent in all bureaucracies: to perpetuate the problem they ostensibly exist to address. It gains plausibility from the verbal smoke-and-mirrors domestic-violence activists employ. "Adult domestic violence and child maltreatment often occur together," says Meredith Hofford of the NCJFCJ, "with the same assailant responsible for both." Hofford provides no documentation, but to the extent it is true, the "assailant" is likely to be not the father but the single mother. Hofford herself wants more money to "support" what she describes as "battered women who maltreat their children." This spiral of more funding to address the "needs" created by the previous funding illustrates how the domestic-violence juggernaut, and with it the crisis of family dissolution and fatherless children, will continue to expand indefinitely until we learn to ignore hysterical people whom the government pays to cry wolf.

Stephen Baskerville is a political scientist and president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.
 
ACFC Washington Office 1718 M St. NW. #187 Washington, DC 20036
Telephone: 800-978-3237 Email: [email protected]

 
 
 

[FIRM]

"Despite enormous pressure by VAWA advocates, the Senate failed to
vote on the Violence Against Women Act... We believe the
reason for the delay is that bill contains a number of contentious
issues. The Senate has now adjourned, and will come back into
session...Wednesday."

"You can reach any senator through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121."

=========================================
Senate Jud. Com. Home Office CONTACT LIST
=========================================

Judiciary Committee
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-5225
Fax: 202-224-9102

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Main District Office:
600 Arch St., #9400
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-597-7200
Fax: 215-597-0406

Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT)
Main District Office:
8402 Fed. Bldg., 125 South State St.
Salt Lake City, UT 84138
Phone: 801-524-4380
Fax: 801-524-4379

Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA)
Main District Office:
210 Walnut St., Rm. 721
Des Moines, IA 50309
Phone: 515-288-1145
Fax: 515-288-5097

Senator Jon L. Kyl (R-AZ)
Main District Office:
2200 East Camelback Rd., #120
Phoenix, AZ 85016
Phone: 602-840-1891
Fax: 602-957-6838

Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH)
Main District Office:
37 West Broad St., Ste. 300
Columbus, OH 43215
Phone: 614-469-5186
Fax: 614-469-2982

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Main District Office:
7550 Halcyon Summit Dr., Ste. 150
Montgomery, AL 36117
Phone: 334-244-7017
Fax: 334-244-7091

Senator Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC)
Main District Office:
101 East Washington St., Ste. 220
Greenville, SC 29601
Phone: 864-250-1417
Fax: 864-250-4322

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)
Main District Office:
221 West 6th St., Ste. 1530
Austin, TX 78701
Phone: 512-469-6034
Fax: 512-469-6020

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Main District Office:
612 South Kansas Ave.
Topeka, KS 66603
Phone: 785-233-2503
Fax: 785-233-2616

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Main District Office:
401 South Boston, 3310 Mid-Continent Tower
Tulsa, OK 74103-4007
Phone: 918-581-7651
Fax: 918-581-7195

Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
Main Office has no listed Fax Number Use Montpelier numbers
Montpelier Office
87 State St., Rm. 338
Montpelier, VT 05602
Phone: 802-229-0569
Fax: 802-229-1915

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
Main District Office:
2400 John F. Kennedy Fed. Bldg.
Boston, MA 02203
Phone: 617-565-3170
Fax: 617-565-3183

Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE)
Main District Office:
1105 North Market St., Ste. 2000
Wilmington, DE 19801-1233
Phone: 302-573-6345
Fax: 302-573-6351

Senator Herbert H. Kohl (D-WI)
Main District Office:
310 West Wisconsin Ave., #950
Milwaukee, WI 53203
Phone: 414-297-4451
Fax: 414-297-4455

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Main District Office:
One Post St., #2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: 415-393-0707
Fax: 415-393-0710

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Main District Office:
1600 Aspen Commons, Rm. 100
Middleton, WI 53562
Phone: 608-828-1200
Fax: 608-828-1203

Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY)
Main District Office:
757 Third Ave., Ste. 17-02
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212-486-4430
Fax: 212-486-7693

Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)
Main District Office:
230 South Dearborn St., Ste. 3892
Chicago, IL 60604
Phone: 312-353-4952
Fax: 312-353-0150

======================
Email Addresses:
======================


[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]


=============================================================
SAMPLE TEXT to Senators
=============================================================

Subject: or Re:


I oppose the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Please VOTE NO on H.R. 3402. It includes VAWA which punishes the innocent and frees the guilty.



Email Body:


I oppose the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Please VOTE NO on H.R. 3402 or any other attempt to reauthorize VAWA. Help restore morals, values, and dignity to the daily lives of American families and our children.

Renewal of VAWA will expand the level of civil rights violations unequaled since the abolition of slavery.


VAWA punishes the innocent and frees the guilty. Nothing in VAWA 2005 or HR 3402 will change this. If anything it is going to make it worse. HR 3402, the draft of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization is an unconstitutional travesty. A system of Justice hanging on bare threads of morality and truth cannot withstand the influences of the rage and spite that plague our society today.

Again I ask you to please VOTE NO on VAWA or any other attempt to reauthorize the "Violence Against Women Act" (VAWA), it is not in the best interest of America, our children, or families.

VAWA has promoted, funded, or mandated:

Mandatory arrests without a warrant, often based on nothing more than hearsay;
A standard under which the accused is guilty until proven innocent and mere allegations now suffice as proof;
Forced citizens from their homes and children with nothing more than the clothes on their back without any pretense of due process;
Endorsed searches of homes without a warrant;
Allowed seizures of property without redress;
Denied defendants the assistance of counsel, the right to confront their accuser and obtain witnesses in their defense;
Punishment and imprisonment that occurs before a trial or without one;
Invoked public censure for crimes men have not committed.
The needed reforms are:

Domestic violence is a state matter. Existing Federal laws should be repealed or allowed to expire.
Domestic violence laws must be gender neutral in all respects and practice.
Domestic violence and abuse laws must not violate the rights to due process and equal protection under the law.
False allegations of domestic violence and suborning perjury must be dealt with as criminal acts.
Domestic violence laws at all levels of government must exist solely in the criminal codes.
Please VOTE NO on VAWA for the good of all Americans. Renewal of this law will expand a level of civil rights violations unequaled since the abolition of slavery. The rework suggested in VAWA 2005 only promises to provide more funding to the current fraud-ridden system riddled with advocacy research studies and government propaganda.

Our domestic violence laws and their operation throughout the country need reviewing under the highest level of scrutiny possible. Qualified scientists must conduct a comprehensive, well-funded study of domestic violence rather than ideologues in order to establish how pervasive this problem is and what methods are most effective in reducing it.

Yours truly,
Your Name
Street Address
City, State,Zip Code +4
Phone Number with area code


"Equal Protection Under the Law is True Equality"