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| Chapter 6 — Domestic Violence And The Law |
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Aristotle (384 B.C. — 322 B.C.)
Tacitus, Annals III 27 (c. AD 56 - c. AD 117)
John Ramsey commenting on the police investigation
of the murder of his daughter, Jon Benet
In the councils and legislatures
Demand justice be served — File a discrimination complaint
Has this ever happened to you?
We pride ourselves that we are a nation that lives by the rule of law. But glaring problems now exist in our legal system.
There is an old saying that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. However, noted editor and author John W. Campbell observed that it wasn't power that corrupts, but immunity. Under that standard, the corruption in our courts results not from the judges wielding power, but the fact that they do so without being held accountable.
The rule of law is not the rule of judges and lawyers and such judicial imperialism threatens the very foundations of our society. The rule of law has been largely replaced by emotion, not to say hysteria. Reason has been corrupted to feelings. Jurists seem to have no concept of logic, and ad hominem is now interpreted to mean “attack all men,” but it is still the same fallacy.
Of course logic isn't a required course in law school in these enlightened times. Thus, comprehension of fallacies seems to escape the courts today. Arguments based on such basic logic are likely to lose due to incomprehension and emotions. And for the sake of your own sanity, don't ask a court to evaluate the validity of something as complex as a syllogism.
Personal prejudice, bias, and despotism dominate in family courts. Many judges combine arrogance with trivia and regard it as intelligence. Jurists have often convinced themselves that because they hold their opinions strongly that they therefore hold strong opinions.
Today a man accused of domestic violence or abuse will face a system that:
• Provides legal representation and support that is available free to all women, but not men.
• Does not allow recantation or withdrawal of charges.
• The physically “bigger” individual is virtually always the one taken to jail.
• Permits criminal charges that can be alleged and prosecuted via anonymous sources.
• Virtually automatically issues restraining orders against men on request in a secret tribunal.
• Throws men into the streets with nothing but the clothes on their back on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations and without a hearing.
• Routinely denies due process.
• Provides punishment, including imprisonment, that precedes a hearing or trial.
• Assumes he is guilty until he can prove his innocence, and then he is still considered guilty.
• Denies all parental rights on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations.
• Discards his Second Amendment (gun ownership) and all other Constitutional rights.
• Files criminal charges, and prosecutes them, on any pretext, including hearsay.
• Ignores perjury and condones the subornation of perjury.
• Encourages the elevation of misdemeanor to felony charges.
• Does not provide punitive awards for false allegations.
A man before the law today will be given the feeling that he can do no right and has no rights. Conversely, the law believes the “victim” so long as they are female, and anytime or anywhere a woman claims she is a “victim” she has every right to do whatever she wants no matter how contradictory her claims.
In most family courts a woman can literally do no wrong in the eyes of the law. This presumption of male guilt is against every tradition and basis for English law.
Attorneys profit hugely from the current system and the United States far outstrips the rest of the world in numbers of lawyers. That is not a statistic to be proud of.
Judicial supremacy in all things has long been taken as a given by many who think the law is whatever the judges say it is. What are we supposed to do when courts entrusted with insuring the rule of law betray that trust? When willful judges make up laws to suit their politics in the guise of interpretation?
When carried to extremes, this is the very definition of a constitutional crisis, for there is no way for other branches of government to respond that is free from danger. If they are cowed into acquiescence by court-worship, we drift toward illegitimate judicial tyranny. But if the executive or the legislature defy the judiciary, chaos ensues. That's why judicial self-restraint is far more than a cliché. It is a tattered but vital tradition in which we all have an enormous stake.
As might be imagined, the current laws are hardly the first attempts to accommodate women. Nearly 2,000 years ago the Roman Senate conferred upon women the privilege of going back on their word. That act, conveyed in Book 16, Senatus Consultum Velleianum , of the Digest decreed by Emperor Justinian in 533 A.D., apparently continues in Italian law today. Those Roman senators were aware of the fact that women were inclined to change their mind, and it would be unfair to hold them to the same consistency required of men. Of course, the “unintended consequences” were that very few people then wanted to do business with women. Thus, it became necessary to allow women to renounce their privilege under Senatus Consultum Velleianum .
As we have granted much the same privileges to women with regard to what is now called “domestic violence,” few men will want to contract with women under such terms. Thus, it will become necessary to allow women to renounce their current privileges in order to find a consort. That might nicely sidestep the law but does nothing to address the underlying problems.
There is the pervasive assumption in our society that if a few laws are good for order and prosperity then the more laws we have the more orderly and prosperous our society will be.
Society breaks down when the comprehension of such logical fallacies is lost.
Today we have uncountable and incomprehensible laws and regulations emanating from every imaginable government body and bureaucracy.
Pure speculation in the form of feminist ideology has been incorporated into state and federal statutes. Dangerous social engineering is undertaken by every government body in the land, with scarce a glance backwards at history, and no comprehension of biology.
Ignorance of the law is still claimed to be no excuse for not obeying the law. But, in sheer volume, the law has become unknowable. In the process our Constitution and the attached Bill of Rights have become hollow shells that most in government simply ignore, if they have read these hallowed documents at all.
In many cases existing laws simply go to far in their attempts to control crime without due regard for civil rights, or they are based on faulty information. We have compiled a growing list of those laws under Colorado Law Reform.
Under this runaway engine of legislation we have over two million citizens in jail in the United States, largely men, though women are making a valiant effort to catch up. 6.8 million citizens are presently under court control. This is the world's largest percentage of incarcerated citizens. The social and economic costs are enormous and growing without apparent bounds.
Inventing crimes has become a growth industry in which the “War on Drugs” is a leader. But the domestic violence, child abuse, and other family laws are not far behind.
Stalking is a prime example of the witch hunts presently underway.
A major failure of our system of government is that there is no accountability for legislators and regulators who pass the laws and regulations. They are, in essence, exempt from the consequences of their actions. Thus, there is no motivation for them to adhere to the limitations and requirements of our Constitution. The only recourse a citizen has then is the very expensive process of litigation in a court system that even its friends and supporters are critical of. A citizen initiative is thus proposed to add accountability to the legislative and executive system of making laws and regulations.
Far too often present laws make it financially rewarding for law enforcement to pursue the innocent. The Bill of Rights and due process are simply presumed not to exist in such cases.
In drug enforcement it has been repeatedly shown that no criminal charges are ever filed in ~80% of the cases where property is seized by government agencies. And the money from the seizures is given to the law enforcement agencies who take the citizen's property to encourage the agents in their activities.
Such actions are changing and degrading our perceptions of the police. It is not unusual, particularly among younger citizens, to find people more frightened of the police than any crime they may encounter. Even the blatantly pro-feminist National Violence Against Women survey (p. v) found “...that most victims of intimate partner violence do not consider the justice system an appropriate vehicle for resolving conflicts with intimates.”
The largest massacre of children in modern times in America wasn't at Columbine High School, but at Waco, Texas, and the killing was done by federal agents. More children were killed by our government at Waco than in all the school massacres to date combined.
It is very unlikely that men and women who go through the nightmare of the legislated domestic violence processing by the State will ever lead normal lives again. Nor will their children or mates. Women who have seen the results of calling the police because of an abusive mate fear the system even more because they often end up losing their children as well when the Department of Human Services (DHS) becomes involved. All this ensures that the police won't be called next time (see Table 74) until the violence has escalated far beyond what it should, or someone is killed.
Then there is the perception of police by the Black community. Such incidents as the one where a Black veteran was pulled over for driving without a license plate. During the traffic stop, officers claimed that they could smell marijuana in the car and attempted to arrest the driver. When he asked why he was being detained and declined to get out of the car, officers punched him in the head over twenty times before removing him from the vehicle and arresting him and charging him with two counts of second-degree assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, obstructing a peace officer, driving under the influence and driving without license plates [body cam video is shown in the article]. All charges were later dropped by the district attorney but the Black community remembers; and now fear the police and refuse to cooperate with them.
As a result of examples like this, officers are no longer viewed as peace keepers but more and more frequently as agents of an enemy state. For example, see Wendy McElroy's article The Thin Blue Lie. She states flatly that: “I' d rather take my chances with criminals than with the police. For one thing, criminals usually want your property, not control over your life.” Clearly in domestic conflicts the citizens of Colorado Springs have learned to avoid calling the police (Table 74).
Such views are often held by law enforcement officers as well, though usually not stated publicly. But according to the August 28, 2000, issue of the Denver Post (p. B1) the sheriff of San Miguel County, Bill Masters, has stated that “...the war on drugs is ludicrous, the criminal justice system is a farce and the law-making arm of government has run amok.”
Sheriff Masters is now in his fifth term of office and was re-elected to his present term in 1998 with 80% of the vote. Crime in his county is also far below the national average. That is attributed by the sheriff to the fact that his deputies “...didn't have to spend half their time chasing after drug dealers.” Nor does he “...allow them to spend time on 'touchy-feely' extra programs such as drug education in schools.”
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis also publicly shares the views of Sheriff Masters, stating that “...If you have a drug problem you should go to the doctor, not to jail.” Such moral courage is to be honored and admired.
Perhaps a similar approach that concentrated the efforts of peace officers on real violence in domestic relations rather than serving restraining orders and mandatory arrests even when the officer believes the allegations are false might actually help to keep the peace and solve the problem.
When everything is a crime then nothing will be punished.
In a decade of ever more draconian efforts to stem or ameliorate the effects of domestic violence it seems self evident that current laws have done very little. In fact, by destroying families and tearing fathers from their children by the tens of thousands, such laws have demonstrably attacked the underpinnings of our civilization.
More laws, broader definitions of what constitutes a crime, ignoring blatant perjury, and allowing the admissibility of ever more dubious hearsay evidence, are not the answer we seek for domestic abuse and violence. The law must not be available as a tool for personal vengeance by any citizen regardless of their sex.
And despite mandatory arrest laws, when 911 is called in a domestic disturbance, officers make an arrest only about 10% of the time. The reasons for the low arrest rate by officers who respond to such calls are twofold:
In many cases the “offender” is gone when officers arrive. Hence, there is no one to arrest. An “offender” is defined, of course, as a male who isn't there when the police arrive. For this reason many women go to the emergency room at a hospital, or to the police station to report the violence. In those situations the police are generally required to make an arrest even though the male is absent and may have injuries far in excess of any evident on the woman. Women are also known to inflict injuries on themselves and then go to the emergency room or police station.
Often when both people are present when police arrive, neither can provide any evidence, or probable cause for an officer to make the arrest. As a working definition, probable cause is less than proof but more than a hunch or an accusation by one person against another. In the majority of DV calls police officers respond to there simply are no smoking guns, bruises, destroyed property, etc. More often than not it is “he said/she said,” or only one person with one side of a story.
Mere accusations may be enough to obtain a restraining order but are not sufficient to make an arrest. That accounts, in part, for the popularity of restraining orders.
Each and every statistical report ever produced shows that the great majority of “domestic” calls police respond to are not the severe, violent wife beatings represented by radical feminists as the typical call to 911.
Thus, despite mandatory arrest laws, in the end society still depends on an officer using his best judgement in such situations. Our position is that is where responsibility should reside. However, the officer should have more options and flexibility in dealing with domestic calls than simply arrest or not arrest as presently mandated by law.
With regard to domestic violence we need to re-examine our objectives.
• Is it our intent to solve, or at least ameliorate the problem of domestic violence?
• Or is the intent to wreck hundreds of thousands of families and children's lives?
• Called a domestic violence hotline for help, only to have them laugh at your problem?
• Requested police assistance regarding a physically abusive partner, and then been told you must have provoked her or otherwise been blamed based on her word?
• Asked for VAWA-funded counseling services, legal help, housing assistance, or other help, and been turned down (or received less help) because you were a man?
• Been openly taunted in court for claiming to be an abused man?
If so, then you have experienced sex discrimination. Federally-funded domestic violence programs that discriminate against males are violating the law.
Note: Please contact Harry Crouch immediately (619-231-1909) if you have experienced such sex discrimination, particularly if you experienced the discrimination in California. We are particularly interested in cases in which abused men have been denied services through publicly funded organizations.
1. Fill out the complaint form, which can be found here: http://www.ojp.gov/ocr/cvi.pdf. When filling out the form, follow the instructions at http://mediaradar.org/docs/DiscriminationComplaintExample.pdf
2. Fill out a short Identity Release Statement: http://www.ojp.gov/ocr/consent.pdf
3. Send the completed forms to:
4. If the problem is not resolved to your satisfaction within 6 months, send a note to RADAR to let us know.
RADAR will summarize all the complaints on an on-going basis and present these summaries to lawmakers and the media. RADAR will not release your individual complaint to the public or the media unless you first give us your approval.
RADAR is not able to legally represent you on your specific complaint or assist you to resolve the problem.
• Have other questions about your complaint? Here's the DoJ web site: http://www.ojp.gov/ocr/crc.htm
• Want to see the laws that prohibit sex-based discrimination for domestic violence services funded by the Department of Justice? http://mediaradar.org/vawa_must_help_men_too.php
• Want to see a listing of the VAWA grants awarded to organizations in your state?
For 2006: http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/grant2006.htm
For 2007: http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/grant2007.htm
• Want to find out more about the RADAR Civil Rights Project? Send your question to: civilrights@mediaradar.org.
| EJF Home | Join the EJF | Comments? | Get EJF newsletter | Newsletters |
| DV Home | Abstract | Contents | Tables | Index | Bibliography |
| Chapter 6 — Domestic Violence And The Law |
| Next — Domestic violence versus civil rights |
This site is supported and maintained by the Equal Justice Foundation.