Thursday, May 20, 2010

Abused Women in Maryland Aren’t Lying

Parenting News Network

by Elizabeth Black ·Ms.Magazine

This spring, the Maryland legislature killed a bill that would have brought Maryland’s restraining order policies into line with every other state in the union. Remarkably, in Maryland, a stalking victim seeking help is required to prove her case with “clear and convincing” evidence, a higher standard than “preponderance of the evidence,” which is the universal standard for civil dispute.

There can be only one reason for this absurd requirement: that the Maryland legislators who voted for the bill, listed here, believe that women who testify that they’ve been abused are less credible than men who deny being abusers. That’s not a level playing field, and it’s an absolutely unacceptable attitude for a legislator to hold.

But it’s no mystery where they’re getting this idea. Father’s and men’s rights activists have long promoted the myth that false allegations of domestic violence are rampant, especially in custody cases, and that women frequently file for protective orders in order to gain an upper hand in court. The group Fathers and Families in particular has promoted fathers’ rights propaganda around the country, and has directly targeted legislators. When Maryland Rep. Luis Simmons stated in an interview that he believed it only fair to expunge records of those who had been given a Temporary Restraining Order that didn’t lead to a final order (because a judge dismissed or denied it), Fathers and Families encouraged its supporters to contact Simmons to applaud his statement.

In fact, bona fide false allegations of domestic violence are rare. Dr. Michael Flood wrote in his paper “Fact Sheet #2: The Myth Of Women False Accusation Of Domestic Violence And Misuse Of Protective Orders” that most abused women are reluctant to take out restraining orders:

The risk of domestic violence increases at the time of separation … Women living with domestic violence often do not take out protection orders and do so only as a last resort … Protection orders provide an effective means of reducing women’s vulnerability to violence.

It is only when women experience more severe forms of violence, such as choking, beating, or being shot at, that they are more likely to take out a protective order.

As experts Rita Smith and Pamela Coukos of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence wrote in an article for the peer-reviewed Judges Journal:

Although both common sense and the prevailing legal standard dictate careful consideration of evidence in domestic or family violence when determining custody, allegations of domestic violence and/or child sexual abuse made during a divorce or custody proceeding are not always taken seriously. These allegations often are wrongly perceived as false because they are asserted in a contentious environment and because of the widespread myth that parents fabricate domestic violence and child abuse allegations in order to gain an advantage in court. When combined with the misuse of psychological syndrome evidence, the perception that a parent has fabricated the allegations often results in unfair retribution against the reporting protective parent.

Furthermore, obtaining a restraining order does not guarantee that an abused woman will be able to gain custody of her children or see her abuse taken seriously. According to Attorney Elizabeth Kates, citing Zorza, Dore, and Rosen:

Research does not substantiate this popular myth [that women frequently lie about domestic violence]. However, research does substantiate that there is no tactical advantage to making domestic violence claims. Fathers are more likely to get visitation when domestic violence is alleged, even in states with custody presumptions enacted to protect battered women. Abusive fathers are more likely to obtain primary custody when domestic violence is present, alleged or not.

More evidence that women don’t lie comes from a 1994 study of a Massachusetts database tracking restraining orders (RO’s):

[T]he high frequency with which RO’s are issued might lead some skeptics to assume that these orders are granted too easily for minor offenses and almost any man is at risk of being a defendant. The data from the new RO database in Massachusetts reflect otherwise. Men against whom RO’s have been used are clearly not a random draw from the population. They are likely to have a criminal history, often reflective of violent behavior toward others.

Thus, it simply isn’t true that women are likely to lodge false charges of child abuse or battering against their spouses in an effort to manipulate or retaliate–the rate of false reports in these circumstances is no greater than for other crimes.

This research and testimony needs to get out there to combat men’s and father’s rights group propaganda, so legislators are not influenced by untruths. To do anything less places an unfair burden of proof on abused women.

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Ms.Magazine: How Family Courts Punish Abused Women

by R. Dianne Bartlow ·

“The dirtiest little secret in America” is that family courts, in deciding custody, often wreak devastation upon mothers and children.

So argue Mo Therese Hannah and Barry Goldstein, editors of the new anthology Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody, which brings to light what many familiar with the family court system have long known: Designed to dispense justice, the system has become instead “an instrument of oppression,” particularly in cases involving domestic violence.

To find a chilling example of what the editors mean, we need look no further than the recent murder of infant Wyatt Garcia,reported in the Daily Beast:

Wyatt Garcia was born in April 2009. Nine months later, he was shot and killed by his father, who then turned the gun on himself.

It might have turned out differently—if a family-court judge had listened to Wyatt’s mother.

Wyatt’s mother, Katie Tagle, had previously filed three motions in family court for an order of protection against the baby’s father, Stephen Garcia, alleging that he had physically assaulted her and harassed her and her family. Garcia was apparently jealous that she was dating again. In the last motion, Tagle charged that Garcia “had threatened to kill her and their baby.”

The San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Robert Lemkau chose to believe Garcia’s denials over the evidence supplied by Tagle–which included emails, text messages, and voice messages, according to the Daily Beast. Tagle says she was treated like a “criminal” and “complaining woman.”

One goal of Hannah and Goldstein’s book is to convince judges, attorneys, and others who work in the court system that all forms of abusive behavior, whether physical, verbal, financial or legal, cause harm to women and children. On the legal side, men who abuse their female intimate partners have successfully used strategies such as false accusations, harassment, manipulation, and intimidation to win custody while often driving their victims into poverty. According to contributing author and lawyer Joan Zorza:

Abusive men not only harass their victims, many harass their partners’ lawyers and manipulate those in and connected with the court system who are supposed to insure that children are placed with their better parent in a safe, nurturing environment.

This makes it all the stranger that about half of the time batterers win custody in family courts. They are actually more likely to win custody than men who do not abuse their partners, according to Zorza. Over the past nine months, 75 children have been murdered by abusive fathers who used custody battles to get even with the mothers, according to the Daily Beast.

Yet Katie Tagle’s dismissive treatment by family courts is all-too-familiar. While there has been a growing awareness over the last 30 years of the harm domestic violence causes, courts are more and more ignoring women’s allegations of domestic violence and holding them responsible for their own abuse. This is largely due to courts’ reliance upon mental health experts who have inadequate training in intimate violence or child sexual abuse and who are easily manipulated by batterers.

Gender bias plays a large role in this backlash, according to the editors:

Compared to men, women are disbelieved more often, held to much higher standards, and judged far more punitively for failings such as drinking, use of drugs, adultery, or hostility to their partners. …Such behaviors are readily seen as grounds for giving the father custody.

Hannah and Goldstein hope to also expose two particularly harmful court practices that have evolved over the last several decades: Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), and “friendly parent” statutes. PAS provides a handy–and utterly without basis–refutation to incest and abuse claims by blaming mothers for any hostility that the children feel towards their fathers, maintaining that children love and respect their fathers unless a “poisonous” mother has convinced them otherwise. Even alleged incest and violence are not deemed reason enough for children to independently turn against their fathers.

Since PAS has been deemed by the American Psychological Association to have no scientific backing, at least 32 states have incorporated the milder sounding “friendly parent” concept into their custody laws. This gives custody to the parent who will encourage the child to have more contact and a better relationship with the other parent. Often mothers are hurt by the friendly parent concept, since they can be deemed “unfriendly” for saying anything against the father, including alleging abuse. Zorza says that, ironically enough:

The unfriendly behavior of noncustodial parents (usually the father), such as not paying child support, physically or verbally abusing the mother, or stalking her, is not considered as meeting the definition of unfriendly.

With such an approach, Zorza says, family violence is discounted, and abusers are empowered while battered women are disempowered. Ultimately, children are harmed.

Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody will be instructive for policymakers, those working in the family justice system, and members of the media–which the authors say has by-and-large failed to expose custody court scandals. But it is a must-read for any mother involved in a child custody battle, and especially for mothers trying get free from an abusive relationship.

Mrs. Kansas International will promote Kansas Coalition against Sexual and Domestic Violence (KCSDV)

Columbus Resident Named Mrs. Kansas International

Crista Murdock, 42, of Columbus was crowned Mrs. Kansas International this month and will go on to compete for the title of Mrs. International 2010 during the final competition in Chicago, July 13-17, 2010.

Crista Murdock, Mrs. Kansas International

Crista Murdock, Mrs. Kansas International

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PR Log (Press Release)May 19, 2010 – Columbus, Kan. – Crista Murdock, 42, of Columbus was crowned Mrs. Kansas International this month and will go on to compete for the title of Mrs. International 2010 during the final competition in Chicago, July 13-17, 2010.

Murdock is the mother of two children and works as a material planner for Eagle Picher Technologies.  She is also an active community volunteer with numerous organizations including the Kansas Coalition against Sexual and Domestic Violence (KCSDV), which is the platform she will promote during her reign as Mrs. Kansas International.

“I’m very honored to represent the state of Kansas in the Mrs. International 2010 pageant,” said Murdock.  “I look forward to spreading awareness of domestic violence and working with shelters across the state.  My goal is to make people aware of the destruction that domestic violence causes families and their communities and to aid in expanding services to rural areas.”

In addition to each contestant’s charitable platform, International Pageants, Inc. supports the National Heart Association’s Go Red for Women program through volunteer and financial support. The Go Red for Women movement is dedicated to fighting heart disease among women. 

The Mrs. International Pageant is owned and operated by International Pageants, Inc., which also operates Miss International and Miss Teen International pageants.  It is the only platform-based pageant system dedicated to highlighting women’s accomplishments through community support.

Mrs. International showcases married women 21 to 56 years old and features three categories of competition, including interview, evening gown and fitness wear.  For more information, visit  www.mrsinternational.com. 

Kansas News 13: Dedicated to the 1.3 million women who are the victims of domestic violence each year.

What is "Reach for Help?"

This page is dedicated to the 1.3 million women who are the victims of domestic violence each year.
KWCH 12 and reporter Denise Hnytka are working with organizations in the Wichita area to provide information about help that's available to Kansans.
You'll find important information on recognizing abusive relationships and resources to help you or someone you know get out of a domestic violence situation. More>>

Reach for Help: Ashley's Story Video included

A Kansas woman's story about her abusive relationship and what happened after she left. More>>

Reach for Help: Denise Brown's Awareness Campaign Video included

Denise Brown visits Wichita as a fundraiser for the Women's Initiative Network. Eyewitness News sat down with her exclusively. More>>

Reach for Help: Where the Women Are Now Video included

Ashley and Galina have left abusive relationships and started new lives. More>>

Wichita Domestic Violence Stats for 2008/2009

In 2008, Wichita police investigated 6,401 cases of domestic violence. More>>

WIN Fundraiser Hopes to Make Up for Budget Cuts Video included

Two years ago, WIN, a transitional program for domestic abuse victims lost a major funding source. It made up nearly half it's budget. More>>

Denise Brown to Speak in Wichita About Domestic Violence

Brown will speak Tuesday at a fundraiser for WIN, the Wichita Women's Initiative Network. More>>

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Sunday, May 16, 2010

Holy Fathers

http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/05/15/holy-fathers/

by: Harriet Fraad on May 15th, 2010

The global Catholic Church is confronting an extraordinary crisis not faced since the Reformation, which began with sharp criticisms of the Church and ended with a schism out of which emerged the establishment of a separate Protestant Church.

Today, sexual abuse allegations against priests are surging in a startling array of nations: the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil and Chile. New abuse scandals erupt daily. The John Jay School of Criminal Justice estimates that, in the U.S. alone between 1950 and 2002 hundreds of thousands of children have been sexually abused by Catholic Clergy.

In fact, the Catholic Church has a 2,000 year history of sex abuse. In their acclaimed book, Sex, Priests and Secret Codes (2006), Father Thomas Doyle, with former monks Richard Sipes and Patrick Wall, used its own documents to confirm the Church’s 2,000-year problem with clerical sex abuse.

Why has the Church been plagued by so much pedophilia – predominantly homosexual? And why has a scandal regarding this situation erupted only now?

Why Pedophilia?

As to the first question, the sheer extent of homosexual pedophilic abuse within the Church prompts my speculation that an extremely patriarchal institution, combined with the all-male hierarchy’s repudiation of women as equal partners in service and governance, perhaps engenders a homoerotic internal culture that attracts homosexual men to the priesthood. However, those factors alone cannot explain the predominance of homosexual pedophilia. After all, a high proportion of nuns operating in Catholic all-female environments tend to be lesbians — but not lesbian pedophiles (SeeLesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence by Rosemary Curb, LibraryThing).

A therapist who treats abuser priests, Leslie Lothstein, proffers another possible explanation. Lothstein implicates the sexual immaturity of priests, who by entering the seminary often as young as 14, miss a critical passage of maturation — first-time sexual experimentation — that is accessible to their non-seminarian peers. Caught in a bind of stunted sexual growth, such men may be driven emotionally to claim and possess their past unexplored adolescent territory that the rules of a celibate priesthood had placed out of bounds.

My own complementary explanation derives from working with two active priests, two former priests, and several ex-seminarians, who quit their studies partly out of disgust with the sexual abuse to which their teachers subjected them. My work demonstrated, sadly, that sexual abuse at the seminary can simultaneously initiate youngsters into homosexual pedophilia and impart the lesson that Catholic institutions tolerate pedophilia. Moreover, such abuse can also cause a victim to later appropriate his former abuser’s predatory/aggressive behavior as psychological compensation for the shame he had felt during the time he was being abused at the seminary.

Let us take note, however, as we consider these issues, that, yes, homosexual pedophilia predominates behind the Church’s walls. Priests do have greater access to males than to females within Catholicism’s sex-segregated communities — there are no altar girls. Priests take boys, not girls, on retreats and camping trips. And yes, solid evidence invites speculation that the generational reproduction of homosexual pedophilia within the Church is partly attributable to a role-reversal syndrome playing out among officials — from priests to bishops — who themselves had been child victims of abuse. All that being as it may, equally solid documentation exists to show that female children, too, are sometimes the victims of sexual abuse within the Church. In fact girls are one quarter of the victims and they are disproportionately under eight years old.

Why Now?

The second and, I think, more crucial question, is why has this long history of a major church’s institutional practice of pedophilia been exposed only now? Why has silence about an explosive open secret persisted for millennia among a leading church’s Faithful, yet been fully exposed within a single decade? What is happening in the world that is prompting Catholics to expose the criminal behavior of numerous “Godly” and “infallible” custodians of their faith?

1. Feudal relationships under attack by the Reformation and capitalism
For an answer, we must return to Christianity’s last great rupture — the Reformation — which ensued as the economic system known as feudalism began to crumble. Under feudalism, serfs labored on the estates of lords, keeping no more than meager amounts of the food and goods needed for their subsistence and reproduction of the next serf generation. Lords of the Manor were entitled to appropriate almost all of the fruits of their serfs’ labor. Both lords and serfs swore love and fealty to each other, but the one party in power — the lords — determined the content of, and enforced, this commitment.

Medieval Catholicism justified this system, holding that God had decreed the lord/serf arrangement. Not coincidentally, the feudal model was compatible with the interests of the Church itself, which was in effect a feudal lordship that owned vast lands.

The Catholic monk, Martin Luther, counted himself among the many who saw and abhorred the extensive corruption existing within the Church. Particularly offensive were the Church’s sale of religious pardons, called “indulgences,” whereby a sinner could purchase exemption from specific penalties and, thus, gain entry into Heaven. Indulgences amounted to the proverbial last straw of corruption that inspired Martin Luther to nail his writ of protest and demands for reform on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Luther’s example spurred the mobilization of a Protestant movement, which grew in spite of the Pope’s excommunication of Luther and attempt to belittle and suppress his criticisms.

This rise of Protestantism was integral with the emergence of new capitalist formations that would spell the beginning of the end of feudalism. The Protestant Church dismissed the concept that salvation depended on obedience to a Catholic hierarchy. And it disdained the feudal laws of birth on which social position and the near enslavement of serfs were predicated.

Consonant with the needs of an ascendant capitalism and its emerging elite, whose status was based on making money, not on birth, an ideology of personal, individual communion with God arose to replace feudalism’s more cumbersome, hierarchical, and expensive constructs.

Historically, turbulence marks periods of momentous change, and the period under discussion here is no exception. As capitalism pressed its economic reorganization of the production of goods and services in the larger economy, pressure came to bear on the rigidly patriarchal extended families that still populated the feudal estates but would not remain there for much longer. As the lords converted to more profitable forms of production, such as sheepherding, evictions of serfs from the lands their families had farmed for centuries accelerated. Other serfs ran away and migrated to cities in search of employment.

The customs and laws of the past could not hold. Families were falling apart. Pregnant women were left unprotected in suddenly undefined and unproscribed circumstances. Children were abandoned. Faced with various social and economic dislocations, people organized and began to make revolutionary demands — demands that proved frightening to both the new elites and the old church.

2. Feudalism resurrected as a model for the family under capitalism
What happened in France just after the French Revolution illustrates the problem. The most radical and youngest elements among the rebels were demanding state assistance to families, including financial support for all children. The new capitalists strongly opposed such state support for the public since they, the remnants of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, were the only sectors of society wealthy enough to be taxed to pay the bill.

How, then, to lighten the burden of the commoners’ devastated lives and, thus, hold at bay the threat of more revolution? Ironically, feudalism would provide the solution. The French historian, Jacques Donzelot, documents the invention of the “nuclear” household: how a feudalism-inspired model for the organization of household labor and family relationships was facilitated and reinforced.

In the world of serfdom, the father was the autocratic head of the family, who controlled the lives of his wife, his children and his children’s families. The eldest son was second in command, heir to the father’s rigidly patriarchal role. Replication of this model in the world of nascent capitalism elevated the importance of every married man. It conferred upon an ex-serf the role of feudal lord, a wielder of absolute power over his own home — his castle — wife and children. Women enjoyed the “protection,” in pregnancy and child rearing, of a wage-earning male dictator.

The French nation born of the 1789 revolution reinforced “nuclear” families by giving employment and benefits exclusively to men with dependent wives and children. For eligible families, that state support spelled survival — but survival at a price. The new nuclear model reinforced lines of dominance and subordination, teaching children and women alike absolute obedience to a male paternal authority. Birth control in the 17- and early 1800s included abandoning or killing children one did not want. See The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance: By John Boswell. The children who survived learned absolute obedience, as well as many other strategies for pleasing their parents.

In sum, power elites forged, out of feudal concepts of domination, submission, authority and obedience, instruments of social control that have served them well to this day in sustaining their elite power and wealth. Largely ignoring people’s cries for help from the state, they shifted onto the nuclear family the cost of raising future generations. Men were disciplined to work until their last breath to support their wives and children. Women were disciplined to maintain homes and raise future obedient employees. (Child-rearing guides developed by religious right-wingers still emphasize absolute obedience; they also affirm women’s subordinate positions within churches: see Spare The Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment; and Does The Catholic Church Hate Women). Interestingly, at its inception the U.S. defined itself as a nation opposed to feudalism, yet it has continued the feudal organization of domestic and emotional labor in the household.

3. How household feudalism is breaking down today
How does all of this relate to the contemporary scandals that are rocking the Catholic Church? The “traditional” family idealized by the religious right and the Catholic Church is feudal in its economic organization. Notwithstanding the housekeeping aids found in most homes, housework is often organized along feudal lines. The wife, like the serf, provides use-value goods like cooked foods, order, cleanliness, and use-value services like food shopping, laundering, child care, low-tech nursing care, management of both children’s and adults’ social lives, elder care, etc. And like the serf, she holds back a portion of her goods and services for her personal use and sustenance. She cooks for herself, her husband and family; she makes the whole bed, including her husband’s side; in many and probably most homes, she cleans everyone’s dishes, etc.

Her labor was, and is today, not considered work worthy of acknowledgment. Rather, it is often viewed as an aspect of her biological makeup and destiny by the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions, according to each of their Gods’ law. Not only is she not regarded as a wage laborer, she is not seen as a laborer at all, but rather as a person whose DNA compels her to produce use-values consumed in the household. Like her medieval counterpart, she swears love and fidelity to her husband. See Class Struggle on the Homefront: Work, Conflict, and Exploitation .Until recently, the terms of this oath were subject to enforcement by her husband without recourse. But even though ongoing struggles for women’s rights have won passage of laws against abuse in the home, domestic violence is still a leading cause of death for women aged 15-44. Women are often killed after leaving a relationship with a spouse or lover who felt entitled to enforce his terms on her departure.

Children have also been accorded some rights, owing again to feminist activism. However, murdered children are still overwhelmingly the victims of their own families in their own homes (see here and here). Certain prevalent circumstances of the past appeared to rationalize the existence of household feudalism: a family wage for men; unreliable birth control methods; unavailable legal abortion, and the widespread belief in biologically determined sex roles. Let’s consider these factors:

  • The family wage paid to North American white men between 1820 and 1970 enabled the recipients to support a wife whose full time job was cleaning, cooking and providing emotional service to the male head-of-household and the couple’s children. An ideological rationale for that arrangement was the belief that biology is a God-decreed destiny: Women must work at home providing use value services to husbands and children. Women in such feudal households are subordinate to the authority of a male-in-chief. However, this patriarchal, feudal family structure, so enthusiastically celebrated by the Catholic Church, is now eroding, in large part because men’s real wages, i.e. what they can actually buy, have been flat since 1970. Women must work outside of the home for the survival of their families.
  • Birth control is now widely available.
  • Abortion, though often difficult to obtain, is accessible nonetheless.
  • Gender ideology is changing, which means economic conditions supportive of the feudal marriage paradigm are no longer guaranteed. The three quarters of US women who now hold outside jobs are less likely to accept doing all the domestic and emotional labor after a long day’s work in the marketplace. Catholicism’s gender ideology no longer makes sense in modern family life, as evidenced by the faithfuls’ overwhelming disregard for their Church’s prohibition against birth control. More and more people choose not to marry, even when they bear children. A majority of marriages end in separation or divorce, usually initiated by overworked women. Meanwhile, the unquestioned authority of men is eroding along with the feudal family structure. See again Class Struggle on the Home Front . Yet The Catholic Church still bans divorce.

4. A mass movement of Catholics once again challenges the Church’s support of a feudal ideology
The Reformation challenged Catholic Church authority, in part, because its ideology was a class-based justification of feudal exploitation. Today, Catholic Church authority can reasonably be taken to task for being an ideology that justifies the exploitation of women in the household. Today, the feudal “nuclear” family is under scrutiny in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and among educated people in South America — where gender roles are transforming. Those are the places where Catholics are breaking the silence and speaking out about sexual abuse committed by Church fathers.

Just as in the Reformation the feudal economic structure of society at large was breaking down, opening the way for a corrupt religious institution to be exposed and fought, today feudalism’s gradual breakdown within the family is proceeding parallel to a sharp decline in tolerance for the perpetration of sexual abuse by priests and other Catholic clergy.

  • Feudal lords were privileged to demand sex from their serfs, while fathers of the feudal “nuclear” family have had the privilege of committing incest with their children.
  • Although incest among biological fathers has never been legally sanctioned, it has long existed as a devastating secret shame until being exposed by the women’s movement. Similarly, “incestuous” abuse by the Church’s Holy Fathers was an open secret that left its victims ashamed and devastated. Now, Catholic clergy, like other fathers, are increasingly seen as men who must be held accountable to the laws of the land and the laws of their professed morality.
  • Just as during the Reformation, a mass movement arose to expose the corruption of a Church that hid its own criminal sin, in our own time a mass movement of Catholics is again forming to demand transparency, change and punishment of sex crimes.

The Church’s efforts to respond

The Catholic Church’s rigid controls are breaking down. Some priests are demanding the right to marry. Women aredemanding the right to be priests. A whopping 59,000 nuns defied their bishops’ orders and supported the Obama health Care plan.

Pope Benedict the XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul, had insisted on his “infallible” authority to use his personal discretion in handling internal Church matters, despite the protection that approach has extended to sex offenders in Church officialdom at the expense of children. In one reported instance, Benedict and John Paul explicitly praised a French Bishop for accepting imprisonment rather than handing over a French pedophile priest to legal authorities: Memo From Vatican City – In Abuse Crisis, a Church Is Pitted ... Benedict and the Vatican hierarchy tried to silence critics by reasserting the absolute authority of the Church hierarchy.

In recent weeks, the Pope and his closest deputies tried to silence critics and restore faith in the Church’s upper echelons with contradictory pronouncements. Their statements gave the impression that they were testing the effects of possible excuses for the Pope’s tolerance of sex crimes in his former position as the Church’s enforcer of doctrine, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and as Pope. Clearly, Church leaders are feeling the urgency of needing to deflect attacks on the Pope, in light of evidence that throughout his career he has consistently failed to defrock, or even strongly condemn, pedophiles: Sex abuse reports spread in Europe; focus on pope | National … The Pope, Pedophilia and the Class Struggle, Voice from the Desert » Blog Archive » Piercing a papal shroud …, Under attack, Pope says faith will give courage to fight …. The Pope’s spokesmen dismissed the revelations of rampant sex abuse as “Petty Gossip” Pope dismisses ‘petty gossip’ of sexual abuse allegations | World … They attributed the accusations to U.S. media bias Catholic Culture : Latest Headlines : Cardinal Levada decries …. They then equated the Pope’s having to suffer accusations with Jesus’ suffering for humanity Archbishop says Pope is just like Jesus Christ « True Discernment.. They equated accusations of pedophilia to anti-Semitism Vatican slams New York Times “attack” on Pope Benedict in sex … Vatican Official Compares Attacks On Pope Benedict To Anti-Semitism. Jewish groups protested, particularly in light of the Pope’s former membership in the Hitler Youth and his move to sanctify his endorser, Pope John Paul, who had a record of condoning fascism (see here, here and here ). [For commentary on Tikkun, see David Sylvester's "The Deepest Wound: Why the Catholic Church Needs to Heal its Anti-Jewish Legacy - Now!" Ed.]

Church spokesmen tried to blame the problem of pedophile sex abuse on homosexuals, implying that homosexuality is synonymous with pedophilia — that too caused outrage. Next, they stressed the need for forgiveness and repentance, without taking any steps to discipline either abusive priests and bishops or their enablers Pope breaks silence on abuse, urges repentance – Yahoo! News.. The issue was not silenced. Finally on May 12, 2010 the Pope declared that sex abuse is a sin and sickness within the Catholic Church.

It seems significant that the Pope did not declare pedophilia a “crime,” in other words a legal, civil crime, for the justice system to punish.[1]

For the first time, on April 13, 2010 Pope Benedict XVI ordered priests to report their allegations of crimes against children directly to the police, in those states where relevant laws are in effect (New Vatican Guide: Clergy Must Report Sex Abuse – CBS News). One wonders why this order merely references a single specific law which may or may not be on the books, and not a general body of laws against rape, molestation and child abuse?

In addressing those aspects of public outrage aimed directly at himself, Benedict finally took control of The Legionaries of Christ, whose longtime international leader, The Reverend Marcial Maciel Degollado, was the subject of a huge scandal (Vatican Set To Rule On Legionaries Of Christ : NPR). He was known as Father Maciel. Pedophilic sex abuse charges made against Father Maciel by eight priests, along with charges that he fathered several children, had been pending for half a century and noted periodically during that time-span. In 1998, more than four decades after the first reports, the current pope, who was then Cardinal Ratzinger, finally accepted the Maciel case. Within a year, however, he halted the inquiry on the ground that “it isn’t prudent.” Maciel was a hugely successful fund raiser for the Catholic Church which may had had something to do with the Pope’s decision. Eight years later, with Church sex abuse scandals raging in the news media, Pope Benedict banished Father Maciel to a life of prayer with no public statement on The Reverend’s half century of crime (Vatican Set To Rule On Legionaries Of Christ : NPR). The Pope’s takeover of the Legionaries of Christ failed to deflect public outrage and demands for change.

The Church’s crimes

The Catholic Church hierarchy (priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope himself) has not yet been held accountable, publically and appropriately, for the crimes committed on their watch over several decades: crimes of molestation, rape, assault, and yes, torture of children.

What have been the effects of these crimes on their child victims? A small sample of the Church’s record in this matter conveys the monumentality of this history. The first eruption of accusations occurred in Boston, 2002. Case in point: Father Paul Richard Shanley of Greater Boston.

Example: Shanley
Father Shanley abused scores of children in eight locations, six of those locations in Massachusetts. When reports of the rapes and molestations he had committed[2] came to Church officials’ attention, they simply transferred him to a new post. His male victims ranged in age from six to 21. For example, he raped Kevin Ford in Newton, Massachusetts beginning when Kevin was six years old and continuing for six consecutive years. In other cases, he made proposals of sado-masochistic sex to a young Massachusetts mental patient, and he raped a 15-year-old at the Warwick House for “alienated youth” in Roxbury. Each time the Archdiocese received reports of these crimes, they moved Shanley to another parish with a glowing testament to the competence of his youth ministry. Father Shanley’s final posting was in San Bernardino, California, where Cardinal Law recommended him to Saint Anne’s and Saint John’s Churches as “a priest in good standing.” When more reports of his sex crimes were submitted, he spent a brief time in therapy, paid for by the Church, at Hartford, Connecticut’s Institute for Living. Finally, in 1994, the Boston Archdiocese under Cardinal Law suggested that Shanley be put on medical leave, with full pay, to remove him from sight. At that point, he took up residence at the California resort of his choice: Whispering Palms, a facility owned by a fellow priest named Father White. The Catholic Church financed Shanley’s stay at Whispering Palms which was a clothing optional homosexual resort where sex was practiced around the pool. Father Shanley’s tenure as a priest known by the Church to be a pedophile dated from 1965 to 1994 — almost 30 years. In 1996, citing Father Shanley’s “impressive record,” Cardinal Law of Boston recommended him for retirement-with-full-benefits as a senior priest. In 2002, as scandal consumed the Diocese and dominated news headlines, the police arrested Father Shanley for sex crimes. He was sentenced to 12 to 15 years for rape of a child. He was defrocked in 2004. See a timeline here.

By the time of Shanley’s arrest, Cardinal Law was wanted for questioning in numerous priest-related sex abuse cases. He left Boston for the Vatican (evading media requests for public comment), where he received a salaried Church position and a rent-free apartment in Rome (Vatican Appoints Law Head of Basilica).

Example: Murphy
Another U.S. case is that of Father Lawrence Murphy, who sexually abused 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin over a 24-year period strewn with reports sent to the Vatican about his crimes. Pope Benedict X!V permitted Father Murphy to retire as a paid priest, with full benefits, and exempted him from any investigative proceedings so he could die “with honor” (For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse – NYTimes.com, CNS STORY: Vatican defends action in case of Wisconsin priest abuser). No assistance or compensation was provided to the hundreds of Father Murphy’s deaf victims. Those who had not committed suicide or withdrawn in shame from society, tried valiantly to bring Father Murphy to justice. They reported him to the bishop repeatedly. They contacted the police and the district attorney’s office, which referred their case back to the Church. They picketed the Church. Their only success was in triggering his retirement to his parent’s country home, where he went on to volunteer at a boy’s prison, free to molest others (Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys – NYTimes.com, For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse – NYTimes.com …. The priest who abused deaf boys for 24 years).

Example: Irish beatings of children
Sex abuse was not the only crime perpetrated against children inside the Catholic Church. Severe beatings often accompanied sex abuse or were administered separately. In these instances, priests were sometimes joined by nuns. The most well-documented recent case involved 35,000 children, who suffered ritual beatings over a period of 60 years at Catholic residential schools in Ireland (Revealed, six decades of ‘ritual’ child abuse: Catholic schools …).

Examples worldwide
Similar examples, far too numerous to cite, exist wherever officials of the Catholic Church have had unfettered access to children, whether in orphanages, programs for troubled youngsters, small group homes, parochial schools, choir academies, etc. Currently, there are cases of sexual abuse in Ireland, Malta, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, France, Belgium, Italy, Chile, Mexico and Spain. These cases are marked by the same sordid program of protection for the abusing Church official, and lifelong torment for the victims.

Holy Fathers have appropriated unto themselves the rights of lords in a feudal world, a world of their — not God’s — creation. As in olden days, the rights of serf-children in their custody within this world are non-existent.

What are the effects on children of crimes committed against them by “men of the cloth”? Priests tend to elicit from the faithful the love, trust and respect one associates with family. And like family, they have special access to children, including the opportunity to influence children’s development. In residential facilities, authorized by the state, they are substitute parents. Perceived as messengers of God whose duties supposedly include hearing confessions, giving advice, giving comfort, moral support and a hand of friendship — priests enjoy power rivaling that of biological fathers. And priests, too, are called “father.”

The sexual crimes committed against children by men addressed officially as “father” are crimes of incest, betrayal, emotional and physical harm. When a child is confronted with the invisibility of his suffering to the protector/abuser, or the man’s indifference to that suffering, the wounds inflicted are as deep as the ocean. The scars left — emotional, relational and sexual scars — never heal completely in the victim’s lifetime. Because children’s egos, intellects and personalities are still in formation, they tend to feel they have perpetrated the crimes of which they are actually the victims. They feel guilty, ashamed, unprotected and helpless, especially if and when they summon the courage to report the abuse and nothing is done. They are vulnerable to repeated abuse because they’re afraid to recognize what happened to them. Feeling powerless to stop it, they dissociate if and when the abuse repeats. They psychologically refuse conscious knowledge of their own experience. Their sex abuse remains as an unconscious, guilty wound. They are prone to depression. They are disproportionately dysfunctional and, as they grow up, may not be able to enjoy their sexuality. They are disproportionately suicidal The Dark Life-Altering Effects of Incest – Associated Content…Impact of child sexual abuse: A review of the research.

The Church long ago ceded to secular government the realms of foreign policy and corporate business practices. The Church has no comment on the practice of usury with regard to credit card bills, or on the fact that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” exempts governments from its reach. The Church’s influence has noticeably shrunk. The last, bastion it can claim is a personal/family life paradigm of medieval design. But even in that realm, although feudalism lives with the blessing and encouragement of the Holy Fathers, the days of their rule may be numbered.

An end in sight

The oppressed faithful — male and female — have found their voices, which are blending with voices outside the walls of institutional Catholicism. For example, a new generation of reflexively feminist women, who seem to have come by their self-assurance and determination via a different route than the feminist movement of yesterday, are challenging their partners to renegotiate domestic contracts — and a lot of partners are “getting it.”

Perhaps when more people in the U.S. recognize that their “American dream” has been robbed; that vast wealth is accumulating every minute at their expense; that they are being used and abused; that they are not personally to blame for the disintegration of life in their homeland …. perhaps, they too, will lose their shame and call for justice. The men and women whose adolescence and human rights were violated by callous and hypocritical men may show us the way.

_______________________________


[1] I am indebted to Jean Bond for this point.

[2] I recognize that this man has not been tried in a court of law and, thus, not legally been found guilty. However, since there are multiple accusations and the Church and state colluded in keeping these cases within the secret sanctum of the Catholic Church, I presume guilt on the basis of evidence rather than the legal conviction.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

“Mr. President, How long must women wait for liberty?" Quotes from Iron Jawed Angels

 

Senator Leighton: I don't know a judge in this district that will
give you custody right now.

Emily Leighton: You wont take my children.
Senator Leighton: And how are you going to stop me? Can you afford an
attorney?

Emily Leighton: An attorney? To prove what? That I'm their mother?
What will your judge say? That this is your house and your
children? What am I to you, Tom, in your house? Chattel? This is
how you punish me? I am their mother! They are not your children to
take!


http://www.allsubs.org/search-movie-quotes/Iron+Jawed+Angels/







The Entire Movie is in 12 parts on the above you tube link.






Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)



Quote:



Mabel Vernon: We are called the Iron Jawed Angels. Is that supposed
to be an insult? Oh, and Carrie Catt told the Times that we were no
better than anarchists and draft dodgers.






Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)



Quote:



Dr. White: In oranges and women courage is often mistaken for
insanity.


Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Emily Leighton: They are the only reason I am here.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: Were legitimate citizens. Were taxed without
representation. Were not allowed to serve on juries so were not
tried by our peers. Its unconscionable, not to mention
unconstitutional. We dont make the laws but we have to obey them
like children.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: Its warm in here. Can you open a window?
Matron Herndon: Get to work.
Alice Paul: Cant you see she looks faint? All I ask is that you open
a window.
Lucy Burns: Matron, my needle broke. Can I have another?
[Alice takes off her shoe and throws it at the window, breaking it]
Alice Paul: Thats better, isnt it?
Matron Herndon: Put her in solitary.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: [crying] Tell me what you did! If you do anything to hurt
that girl! Do you hear me?



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Carrie Chapman Catt: This will get out to the foreign press. You can
tell the President that he can look like a damn fool or he can deal
me in.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: I found someone who designs parade floats.
Lucy Burns: Whoa, I thought we were going to keep this small.
Alice Paul: Why?
Lucy Burns: Because youve never organized a parade before. Neither
have I. Its not like giving a dinner party.
Alice Paul: Have you ever given a dinner party?
Lucy Burns: No.
Alice Paul: Then what are you worried about?



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: Dont argue with me! Youre mama duck, we follow you. If
you go down, theyll scatter. Use your head.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: Im not a man.
Inez Mulholland: Ever wish you were?
Alice Paul: Once, when I saw my brother peeing his name in the snow.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: [talking about Carrie] I dont think she is a woman.
Seriously, has anyone seen her naked?


 


Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: Were political prisoners. We wear our own clothes.
Matron Herndon: Youll wear what they all wear.
Lucy Burns: I want to see the warden.
Matron Herndon: You want to see him naked?



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Senator Leighton: I don't know a judge in this district that will
give you custody right now.
Emily Leighton: You wont take my children.
Senator Leighton: And how are you going to stop me? Can you afford an
attorney?
Emily Leighton: An attorney? To prove what? That I'm their mother?
What will your judge say? That this is your house and your
children? What am I to you, Tom, in your house? Chattel? This is
how you punish me? I am their mother! They are not your children to
take!



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: When your alone, you can make any choice you want. But
when someone loves you, you lose that right. I wont give anything
away till we have it all. I cant.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: To pay the fine would be admitting guilt. We haven't
broken a law. Not one dollar!



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: I was put in a straight jacket and taken to the
psychopathic ward. I could not see my family or friends, counsel
was denied me. I saw no other prisoners and heard nothing of them.
I could see no papers. Today I was force fed for the third time, I
refused to open my mouth. My left nostril, throat, and muscles of
my neck are very sore. I vomit continuously during the process.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: Dont you ever want to get married?
Alice Paul: Im busy that day.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Emily Leighton: I really don't follow politics, Ms. Burns. I haven't
the head for it.
Lucy Burns: Were citizens or were chattel: you don't really need a
degree from Harvard to figure that out.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Movie patron: Would you please be quiet?
Alice Paul: My sister is blind; I have to read her the subtitles.
[Inez starts flailing her arms in front of her when she stands up,
pretending to be blind]



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Lucy Burns: I can see it now. Im gonna end up back in Brooklyn with
a hairless cat. Called Lester.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: [on the phone] Helen Kellers in town. Arrange for me to
meet her. [pause] No I dont know what hotel. [pause] Well shes
deaf and blind. If she found it, Im sure you can.



Movie Name: Iron Jawed Angels (2004)
Quote:


Alice Paul: Im having dinner with Helen Keller.
Ben Weissman: Dont stare, she hates that.



Iron+Jawed+Angels - search for more results




 


Iron Jawed Angels



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Iron Jawed Angels (2004) is a highly acclaimed film about the American women's rights movement during the early 1900s produced by HBO Films.


Writen by Jennifer Friedes Sally Robinson. Directed by Katja von Garnier.


Votes for women.



Contents



[hide]





[edit] Alice Paul




  • "A vote is a fire escape"




  • "When you're alone you can make any choice you want. But when someone loves you, you lose that right. I won't give anything away until we have it all. I can't"




  • "We're legitimate citizens. We're taxed without representation. We're not allowed to serve on juries so we're not tried by our peers. It's unconscionable, not to mention unconstitutional. We don't make the laws but we have to obey them like children."




  • "You ask me to explain myself. I'm just wondering, what needs to be explained? It should be very clear. Look into your own heart—I swear to you, mine is no different. You want a place in trade and profession where you can earn your bread; so do I. You want the means of self-expression; so do I. You want to satisfy your own personal ambitions; so do I. You want a voice in the government in which you live; so do I. So what is there to explain?"




  • " 'I believe the might of America is the love of its people for the Freedom of Mankind' Woodrow Wilson, March 6, 1915.


  • 'We have forgotten the history of the country when we have forgotten to agitate when it is necessary' Woodrow Wilson, September 8, 1916.


  • "Liberty is a retractable thing to which no bounds ought to be set' Woodrow Wilson, A Message to Congress.



'There is nothing in liberty unless it is translated into definite action.' July 4th, 1914, Woodrow Wilson"



[edit] Lucy Burns




  • "To pay the fine would be admitting guilt . We haven't broken a law. Not one dollar!"



[edit] Woodrow Wilson




  • "This war could not be fought by America if it had not been for the services of women. We have made partners of the women in the war. Shall we make them partners of only suffering and sacrifice and toil, and not a partnership of privilege and right? I know the magic it will work in their thoughts and their spirits if you give this thing to them that is mere justice. We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and what is fine and worthy in our system of life. Be assured that the voices of the radicals who agitate and disrupt have no influence here today. The task of woman lies at the very heart of the war and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them, as much as you in fact depend on them. We shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement as it is now certain the other free and great nations will enfranchise theirs. Have I said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally necessary war measure? And do you need further proof?"



[edit] Dialogue


Alice Paul: I'm not a man.
Inez Mulholland: Ever wish you were?
Alice Paul: Once, when I saw my brother peeing his name in the snow.


[edit] Quotations on Banners




  • "Mr. President, How long must women wait for liberty?"




  • "We demand an am




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Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Myth of the "Battered Husband Syndrome

NOMAS | National Organization for Men Against Sexismiled under Ending Men's Violence, Paper.

By Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.

The most recurrent backlash against women's safety is the myth that men are battered as often as women. Suzanne Steinmetz [1] created this myth with her 1977 study of 57 couples, in which four wives were seriously beaten but no husbands were beaten. By a convoluted thought process [2] she concluded that her finding of zero battered husbands implied that men just don't report abuse and therefore 250,000 American husbands [3] are battered each year by their wives[4], a figure that exploded to 12million in the subsequent media feeding frenzy [5].

Men have never before been shy in making their needs known, so it is peculiar that in 17 years, this supposedly huge contingent of "battered men" has never revealed itself in the flesh. Could it be that it simply does not exist? Indeed, a careful analysis of domestic violence, using everything from common experience to medical studies to U.S. National Crime Survey data, shows that only three [6]to four [7] percent of inter-spousal violence involves attacks on men by their female partners.

In the myth's latest incarnation, Katherine Dunn (The New Republic, 8/1/94) is unable to counter these hard scientific data so she turns to disputed sociological studies by Murray Straus and Richard Gelles [8,9] for "proof" that violence rates are almost equal. She first implies that these studies are unassailable by calling the authors "two of the most respected researchers in the field of domestic violence." Then she cynically attempts to undercut Straus' critics by labeling them as" advocacy groups." In fact Straus' critics are unimpeachable scientists of both genders, such as Emerson and Russell Dobash [10,11] and Edward Gondolf [12], who say his studies are bad science, with findings and conclusions that are contradictory, inconsistent, and unwarranted [13,14,15].

There are three major flaws in Straus' work. The first is that he used a set of questions that cannot discriminate between intent and effect [16]. This socalled Conflict Tactics Scale (or CTS) equates a woman pushing a man in self-defense to a man pushing a woman down the stairs [17]. It labels a mother as violent if she defends her daughter from the father's sexual molestation. It combines categories
such as "hitting" and "trying to hit" despite the important difference between them [18].

Because it looks at only one year, this study equates a single slap by a woman to a man's 15 year history of domestic terrorism. Even Steinmetz herself says the CTS studies ignore the difference between a slap that stings and a punch that causes permanent injury [19]. Indeed, after analyzing the results of the U.S. National Crime Surveys, sociologist Martin Schwartz concluded that 92% of those seeking medical care from a private physician for injuries received in a spousal assault are women [20]. The NCS study shows that one man is hospitalized for injuries received in a spousal assault for every 46 women hospitalized [21].

Even if we ignore all of the reviously mentioned flaws in Straus' CTS studies, they are bad science on a second set of grounds. Straus interviewed only one partner, but other studies [22,23] that independently interviewed both partners found that their accounts of the violence did not match. Also a study by Richard Gelles and John Harrop [24] using the CTS failed to find any difference in self-reporting of violence against children by step-parents versus birth-parents — in vivid contrast to the actual findings that a step-parent is up to 100 times more likely to assault a small child
than is a birth parent [25,26]. Any research technique that contains a 10,000 percent systematic error is totally unreliable.

In fact a third independent case can be made against Straus' study. It excluded incidents of violence that occur after separation and divorce, yet these account for 75.9 percent of spouse-on-spouse assaults, with a male perpetrator 93.3 percent of the time, according to the U.S. Department of Justice [27]. The Straus study relied on self-reports of violence by one member of each household, yet men who batter typically under-report their violence by 50 percent [28]. Finally, the CTS does not include sexual assault as a category although more women are raped by their husbands than beaten only [29]. Adjusting Straus' own statistics to include this reality makes the ratio of male to female spousal violence more than 16 to one.

Police and court records persistently indicate that women are 90 to 95 percent of the victims of reported assaults [30]. Promoters of the idea that women are just as abusive as men suggest that these results may be biased because the victims were selfreporting. But Schwartz's analysis of the1973-1982 U.S. National Crime Surveys shows that men who are assaulted by their spouses actually call the police more often than women who were assaulted by their spouses [31].

· In any case, criminal victimization surveyusing random national samples are free of any reporting bias. They give similar results
· The 1973-81 U.S. National Crime Survey, including over a million interviews, found that only 3 to 4 percent of marital assaults involved attacks on men by their female partners [32,33].
· The 1981 and 1987 Canadian surveys [34,35] found that the number of assaults of males was too low to provide reliable estimates.
· The 1982 and 1984 British surveys found that women accounted for all of the victims of marital assaults [36].

This is not to say that men are not harmed in our society, but most often men are harmed by other men. Eighty-seven percent of men murdered in the U.S. are killed by other men [37]. Those doing the killing in
every major and minor war in this and previous centuries have mostly been men! Instead of attempting to undercut services for the enormous number of women who are terrorized by their mates, those who claim to care for men had better address our real enemies; ourselves.

Of course we must have compassion for those relative few men who are harmed by their wives and partners, but it makes logical sense to focus our attention and work on the vast problem of male violence (96 percent of domestic violence) and not get side-tracked by the relatively tiny (4 percent)problem of male victimization. The biggest concern, though, is not the wasted effort on a false issue, it is the fact that batterers, like O.J. Simpson, who think they are the abused spouses are very dangerous during separation and divorce. In one study of spousal homicide, over half of the male defendants were separated from their victims [38]. Arming these men with warped statistics to fuel their already warped world view is unethical, irresponsible, and quite simply lethal.

References
[1] Suzanne Steinmetz, "The battered husband syndrome," Victimology 2, 499-509 (1978).
[2] Mildred Daley Pagelow's comprehensive history, "The 'battered husband syndrome': social problem or much ado about little," in Marital Violence, Norman Johnson,
ed., Sociological review Monograph 31 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1985), pp. 172-195.
[3] Suzanne Steinmetz, "Wife beating, husband beating – a comparison of the use of physical violence to resolve marital fights," in M. Roy (ed.), Battered Women, (Van
Nostrand Reinhold, New York,1977), p.33.
[4] Time Magazine, "The battered husbands," March 20, 1978, p. 69.
[5] G. Storch, "Claim of 12 million battered husbands takes a beating," Miami Herald, August 7,1978, p. 16.
[6] Deirdre A. Gaquin "Spouse abuse: data from the National Crime Survey," Victimology 2,632-643 (1977/78).
[7] Martin D. Schwartz, "Gender and injury in spousal assaults," Sociological Focus 20, 61-75(1987).
[8] M.A. Straus, R. J. Gelles, and S. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, (Doubleday, 1980), p. 36.
[9] Murray A. Straus, Richard J. Gelles, J of Marriage and the Family 48, 465-479 (1986).
[10] R.E. Dobash and R.P. Dobash, "A context specific approach to researching violence," in N.Johnson (ed.), Marital Violence, Sociological review Monograph
(Newcastle, England, 1981).
[1]1 R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash, "The Case of Wife Beating," J of Family Issues 2,439-470 (1981).
[12] Edward G. Gondolf, Social Work 32, 190 (1988).
[13] Elizabeth Pleck, Joseph H. Pleck, Marlyn Grossman, and Pauline B. Bart, Victimology 2, 680-684 (1978).
[14] M. Pagelow, "Double Victimization of battered women." Presented at the meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Francisco, November, 1980.
[15] Daniel G. Saunders, "Other 'Truths' about Domestic Violence: A Reply to McNeely and Robinson-Simpson," Social Work 32, 179-183 (1988).
[16] P. Newton and G. Gildrnan, "Defining Domestic Violence: Violent Episode or Violent Act?" Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Conference,
Detroit, Illinois, 1983.
[17] Jann Jackson, Social Work 32, 189-190 (1988).
[18] Mildred Daley Pagelow, "The 'battered husband syndrome': social problem or much ado about little," in Marital Violence, Norman Johnson, ed., Sociological review
Monograph 31 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1985), pp. 172-195 (see p. 178).
[19] Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Am. J. of Psychotherapy 34, 334-350 (1980).
[20] Martin D. Schwartz, "Gender and injury in spousal assaults," Sociological Focus 20, 61-75 (1987).
[21] Daniel G. Saunders, "Other 'Truths' about Domes tic Violence: A Reply to McNeely and Robinson-Simpson," Social Work 32, 179-183 (1988).
[22] Maximiliane E. Szinovacz, "Using couple data as a methodological tool: The case of marital violence," Journal of Marriage and the Family 45, 633-644 (1983).
[23] Ernest N. Jouriles and K. Daniel O'Leary, "Interspousal reliability of marital violence," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 53, 419-421 (1985), as
analyzed in R. Emerson Dobash, Russell P. Dobash, Margo Wilson, and Martin Daly, "The Myth of Sexual Symmetry in Marital Violence," Social Problems 39, 71-91 (1992).
[24] Richard J. Gelles and John W. Harrop, "The Risk of Abusive Violence Among Children with Nongenetic Caretakers," Family Relations 40, 78-83 (1991).
[25] Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, "Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide," Science 242, 5219-524 (1988).
[26] R. Emerson Dobash, Russell P. Dobash, Margo Wilson, and Martin Daly, "The Myth of Sexual Symmetry in Marital Violence," Social Problems 39, 71-91 (1992).
[27] U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Family Violence April 1984, p. 4.
[28] J. Edleson and M. Brygger, "Gender Differences in Reporting of Battering Incidences," Family Relations 35, 377-382 (1986).
[29] Diana E. H. Russell, Rape in Marriage (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 19990), p. 90.
[30] R. Emerson Dobash, Russell P. Dobash, Margo Wilson, and Martin Daly, "The Myth of Sexual Symmetry in Marital Violence," Social Problems 39, 71-91 (1992).
[31] Martin D. Schwartz, "Gender and injury in spousal assaults," Sociological Focus 20, 61-75 (1987).
[32] Deirdre A. Gaquin "Spouse abuse: data from the National Crime Survey," Victimology 2, 632-643 (1977/78).
[33] Martin D. Schwartz, "Gender and injury in spousal assaults," Sociological Focus 20, 61-75 (1987).
[34] Solicitor General of Canada, "Female victims of crime." Canadian Urban Victimization Survey Bulletin No. 4. (Programs Branch/Research and statistics Group, Ottawa, 1985).
[35] Vincent F. Sacco and Holly Johnson, Patterns of Criminal Victimization (Statistics Canada, Ottawa, 1990).
[36] A. Worrall and Ken Pease, Patterns in Criminal Homicide: Evidence from the 1982 British crime Survey (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1986).
[37] U.S. Department of Justice, Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports, 1991, pp. 17.
[38] G.W. Bernard, H. Vera, M.I. Vera, and G. Newman, "Till Death Do Us Part: A Study of Spouse Murder," Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 10 (1982).

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