Trudy W. Schuett
Betrayal of women - - VAWA 2005
By Trudy W. Schuett
In Congress today, legislators of both sexes from many states are congratulating themselves and each other, feeling good about themselves and their concern for battered women.
Soon, if not already, the mainstream media will begin its litany of stats and facts, and human interest stories of women victimized by domestic violence, in stunning and graphic detail. They will talk about how VAWA 2005, the latest version of the law originally enacted in 1994, and recently introduced in Congress, will save lives and "break the cycle" of domestic violence.
They are wrong. They are badly misinformed and misguided.
VAWA 2005 cannot help women much, if at all. Worse, it belittles their anguish, ignores their needs and insults their intelligence. In many cases, it makes a bad situation so much worse, it's a wonder this kind of approach has lasted a full decade with federal sustenance in partisan politics. At the heart of VAWA is the mistaken presumption that by removing women from their homes, jailing their husbands and indoctrinating their children, this will have a positive impact on intimate partner abuse.
Unfortunately, since this is a complex human issue, it cannot be addressed by any political ideology or simplistic government program. Ten years out, there is no evidence that VAWA and its myriad programs has been of benefit to anyone beyond those municipalities, organizations and individuals who are recipients of VAWA funding, or employed by VAWA-funded agencies.
The newest incarnation represents expansion of the scope and penetration of the Federal government into state, local, tribal, and family affairs. It also introduces federally-approved bias against ethnic groups and Native Americans.
It is a bad law of dubious intent. It should not be allowed to continue as the law of the land.
The Reality
When a woman phones her local hotline or the national one, she is expected to immediately leave her home and report to a local shelter. Providing she has no male children over the age of 12 (more on that later) she will be presented with a residential program of anywhere from 3 to 120 days' duration. Some few locales have other kinds of programs, but the residential program is the norm.
If she is ambivalent about leaving her home and entering this program, knowing she may never be allowed to return home, programs have procedures in place to convince the woman she is in dire, immediate danger, and has no other recourse but to leave. Sometimes they resort to threatening the woman with removing her children from her care.
Once in the program, she is bombarded with feminist ideology about being "empowered" by her victimhood, signed up for whatever government programs are available, and helped to apply for an Order of Protection against her presumed offending spouse or significant other. Divorce is presented as the ultimate solution to her problems. If shelter personnel determine her situation is particularly desperate, they will also assist her in changing her identity and relocation to another state. They will assist her in finding a job, if she doesn't have one, but inexplicably will not assist her in finding child care so she may seek employment.
If she has the misfortune to have older boys, she is relegated to the same program offered for male victims, in a desultory attempt to comply with federal guidelines on equality. Some programs train volunteers to hang up when a man phones; others simply tell men they have no program for them. The National Domestic Violence Hotline website has a section devoted to explaining why men have no need for help, and should not ask.
Women with boys are given a hotel voucher for one to three days. Oddly, shelters claim this program is equal to the residential one, when in fact it cannot be possible. (When you begin to investigate and study these DV programs, you find mind-boggling amounts of inconsistency and misrepresentation, and I have been trying to make sense of these programs since 1999.)
I've come to the conclusion that maybe, those refused by these "helping" programs may be better off.
One Solution to a Complicated Human Problem?
While feminists would like to believe that what they call "gender violence" is aptly solved by female victims separating from their male abusers, the actual problem is far more intricate. There may be a case of mutual abuse, or an addiction to violence, or a dogged belief that the abuser will magically change someday. Not all cases of intimate partner abuse escalate to murder, or even serious physical harm. There simply isn't any evidence that this happens.
It's much easier for anyone to embrace a proffered solution to a human problem when a clear and apparently obvious solution is provided. It all seems very simple: men = abusers; women = victims. A number of people with initials behind their names support the idea that men are somehow devious, frightening creatures to be avoided, and jailed whenever possible. That's the feminist belief. It has nothing to do with the rest of the world. The rest of the world is made up of men and women who want to live together and raise children, because that's the way our society works.
Feminists have a terrible concept of men and families, as anyone can see by reading the works of such icons as Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan. Were their books and other things to be published today, they would have been relegated to the aluminum-foil-hat crowd. It's fairly clear they are working for nothing but gender division, with women coming out on the receiving end, in their view.
However, if a woman who loves her husband is not offered any choice but to leave him, and regard him as a criminal, and her boys if she has them are targeted as suspects in future crimes, that is an insult beyond measure. She does not come out ahead.
Yet this happens every single day in women's shelter programs.
Public Knowledge
Fueled by disinformation and misunderstanding of statistical data, the mainstream media has done its part to pander to the needs of bureaucrats and feminist ideologues. In my aggregation of stories on domestic violence last October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness month, I saw hundreds of newspaper, TV, and radio reports.
They were nearly all identical, except for local details. It was like everyone from Maine to Malaysia had used the same press release, but claimed it as their own local work. Only in a handful of cases had any reporter from any news outlet challenged the word of their local shelter advocates.
What wasn't reported much was the number of shelter programs in the US where somebody was facing litigation or criminal charges, the number of shelters losing funding due to the fact they were ineffectual or badly managed, or the shelters expanding for women only without question, despite the need otherwise..
I can forgive the mainstream media believing what they were told back in October, but I cannot forgive the MSM ignoring repeated pleas by numerous individuals to check their information and investigate further. They have not bothered.
The Sacred Cow
It's true that the social institution of the Domestic Violence shelter has become a sacred cow, never to be challenged or disputed.
It's really not OK to allow these programs to delineate the ways we may or may not define our families. It is not OK to give women and girls priority over men and boys, when there is a need for help across the board.
Yet we do it anyway. This sacred cow needs to be slain, and autopsied. There are far too many women and families running afoul of the shelter culture, and being destroyed as a result. The feminist ideal on which VAWA rests has long ago moved into the area of the dusty, best-forgotten archives. It is to me inexcusable that any local government or organization would continue to propagate the outdated ideal, to be funded to the detriment of the needs of the community.
Domestic violence services in this country do not need to be residential. They should not focus on divorce as any kind of solution, since divorce carries with it a separate set of problems. Why can there not be any realistic approach, that takes into account the intents and desires of quite real women, who are not seduced by the drama of court appearances and money in the form of child support payments that does not exist? And who would prefer to stay in their homes and preserve their marriages?
The answer to that question is easy — so many programs (and the people who run them) are simply dependent on VAWA and the self-perpetuating illogic entailed in the law. They do not do any outreach for male victims, already labeled as the enemy, so women are the only people they see. Hence they can easily claim 95% of all victims are female. Only the most desperate or manipulative women will enter a residential program and stay within the untenable options presented. So the women they see are in dire straits, and it's easily presumed all women are in need of this kind of program.
There is nothing in VAWA or shelter bylaws or rules that require any program to keep track of their successes or impact on the community. They don't know if they actually help any women maintain lives free of violence, and they don't seem to actually care if they do. What appears to be important to shelter advocates is the number of women who divorce or leave their communities. Some agencies count these women as "successes."
Smart Women Don't Go
In five years of high-profile advocacy for unserved victims of domestic violence, I have not once had e-mail or a phone call from a woman who was glad she turned to a shelter for help. I do get the occasional e-mail from women who regret ever having dealings with shelter programs.
The only people who advocate these programs are feminist writers, those who work at shelters, and government officials who don't know any better. Women are being given a raw deal if and when they turn to their local battered women's shelter for help. All these programs do is create another set of problems, and few emerge from them undamaged.
Anyone concerned about the fate of women in abusive relationships will be best served by contacting their legislator and asking them to vote against VAWA 2005. Only then will women be given practical help that does not destroy them or their families.
© Trudy W. Schuett
In Congress today, legislators of both sexes from many states are congratulating themselves and each other, feeling good about themselves and their concern for battered women.
Soon, if not already, the mainstream media will begin its litany of stats and facts, and human interest stories of women victimized by domestic violence, in stunning and graphic detail. They will talk about how VAWA 2005, the latest version of the law originally enacted in 1994, and recently introduced in Congress, will save lives and "break the cycle" of domestic violence.
They are wrong. They are badly misinformed and misguided.
VAWA 2005 cannot help women much, if at all. Worse, it belittles their anguish, ignores their needs and insults their intelligence. In many cases, it makes a bad situation so much worse, it's a wonder this kind of approach has lasted a full decade with federal sustenance in partisan politics. At the heart of VAWA is the mistaken presumption that by removing women from their homes, jailing their husbands and indoctrinating their children, this will have a positive impact on intimate partner abuse.
Unfortunately, since this is a complex human issue, it cannot be addressed by any political ideology or simplistic government program. Ten years out, there is no evidence that VAWA and its myriad programs has been of benefit to anyone beyond those municipalities, organizations and individuals who are recipients of VAWA funding, or employed by VAWA-funded agencies.
The newest incarnation represents expansion of the scope and penetration of the Federal government into state, local, tribal, and family affairs. It also introduces federally-approved bias against ethnic groups and Native Americans.
It is a bad law of dubious intent. It should not be allowed to continue as the law of the land.
The Reality
When a woman phones her local hotline or the national one, she is expected to immediately leave her home and report to a local shelter. Providing she has no male children over the age of 12 (more on that later) she will be presented with a residential program of anywhere from 3 to 120 days' duration. Some few locales have other kinds of programs, but the residential program is the norm.
If she is ambivalent about leaving her home and entering this program, knowing she may never be allowed to return home, programs have procedures in place to convince the woman she is in dire, immediate danger, and has no other recourse but to leave. Sometimes they resort to threatening the woman with removing her children from her care.
Once in the program, she is bombarded with feminist ideology about being "empowered" by her victimhood, signed up for whatever government programs are available, and helped to apply for an Order of Protection against her presumed offending spouse or significant other. Divorce is presented as the ultimate solution to her problems. If shelter personnel determine her situation is particularly desperate, they will also assist her in changing her identity and relocation to another state. They will assist her in finding a job, if she doesn't have one, but inexplicably will not assist her in finding child care so she may seek employment.
If she has the misfortune to have older boys, she is relegated to the same program offered for male victims, in a desultory attempt to comply with federal guidelines on equality. Some programs train volunteers to hang up when a man phones; others simply tell men they have no program for them. The National Domestic Violence Hotline website has a section devoted to explaining why men have no need for help, and should not ask.
Women with boys are given a hotel voucher for one to three days. Oddly, shelters claim this program is equal to the residential one, when in fact it cannot be possible. (When you begin to investigate and study these DV programs, you find mind-boggling amounts of inconsistency and misrepresentation, and I have been trying to make sense of these programs since 1999.)
I've come to the conclusion that maybe, those refused by these "helping" programs may be better off.
One Solution to a Complicated Human Problem?
While feminists would like to believe that what they call "gender violence" is aptly solved by female victims separating from their male abusers, the actual problem is far more intricate. There may be a case of mutual abuse, or an addiction to violence, or a dogged belief that the abuser will magically change someday. Not all cases of intimate partner abuse escalate to murder, or even serious physical harm. There simply isn't any evidence that this happens.
It's much easier for anyone to embrace a proffered solution to a human problem when a clear and apparently obvious solution is provided. It all seems very simple: men = abusers; women = victims. A number of people with initials behind their names support the idea that men are somehow devious, frightening creatures to be avoided, and jailed whenever possible. That's the feminist belief. It has nothing to do with the rest of the world. The rest of the world is made up of men and women who want to live together and raise children, because that's the way our society works.
Feminists have a terrible concept of men and families, as anyone can see by reading the works of such icons as Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan. Were their books and other things to be published today, they would have been relegated to the aluminum-foil-hat crowd. It's fairly clear they are working for nothing but gender division, with women coming out on the receiving end, in their view.
However, if a woman who loves her husband is not offered any choice but to leave him, and regard him as a criminal, and her boys if she has them are targeted as suspects in future crimes, that is an insult beyond measure. She does not come out ahead.
Yet this happens every single day in women's shelter programs.
Public Knowledge
Fueled by disinformation and misunderstanding of statistical data, the mainstream media has done its part to pander to the needs of bureaucrats and feminist ideologues. In my aggregation of stories on domestic violence last October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness month, I saw hundreds of newspaper, TV, and radio reports.
They were nearly all identical, except for local details. It was like everyone from Maine to Malaysia had used the same press release, but claimed it as their own local work. Only in a handful of cases had any reporter from any news outlet challenged the word of their local shelter advocates.
What wasn't reported much was the number of shelter programs in the US where somebody was facing litigation or criminal charges, the number of shelters losing funding due to the fact they were ineffectual or badly managed, or the shelters expanding for women only without question, despite the need otherwise..
I can forgive the mainstream media believing what they were told back in October, but I cannot forgive the MSM ignoring repeated pleas by numerous individuals to check their information and investigate further. They have not bothered.
The Sacred Cow
It's true that the social institution of the Domestic Violence shelter has become a sacred cow, never to be challenged or disputed.
It's really not OK to allow these programs to delineate the ways we may or may not define our families. It is not OK to give women and girls priority over men and boys, when there is a need for help across the board.
Yet we do it anyway. This sacred cow needs to be slain, and autopsied. There are far too many women and families running afoul of the shelter culture, and being destroyed as a result. The feminist ideal on which VAWA rests has long ago moved into the area of the dusty, best-forgotten archives. It is to me inexcusable that any local government or organization would continue to propagate the outdated ideal, to be funded to the detriment of the needs of the community.
Domestic violence services in this country do not need to be residential. They should not focus on divorce as any kind of solution, since divorce carries with it a separate set of problems. Why can there not be any realistic approach, that takes into account the intents and desires of quite real women, who are not seduced by the drama of court appearances and money in the form of child support payments that does not exist? And who would prefer to stay in their homes and preserve their marriages?
The answer to that question is easy — so many programs (and the people who run them) are simply dependent on VAWA and the self-perpetuating illogic entailed in the law. They do not do any outreach for male victims, already labeled as the enemy, so women are the only people they see. Hence they can easily claim 95% of all victims are female. Only the most desperate or manipulative women will enter a residential program and stay within the untenable options presented. So the women they see are in dire straits, and it's easily presumed all women are in need of this kind of program.
There is nothing in VAWA or shelter bylaws or rules that require any program to keep track of their successes or impact on the community. They don't know if they actually help any women maintain lives free of violence, and they don't seem to actually care if they do. What appears to be important to shelter advocates is the number of women who divorce or leave their communities. Some agencies count these women as "successes."
Smart Women Don't Go
In five years of high-profile advocacy for unserved victims of domestic violence, I have not once had e-mail or a phone call from a woman who was glad she turned to a shelter for help. I do get the occasional e-mail from women who regret ever having dealings with shelter programs.
The only people who advocate these programs are feminist writers, those who work at shelters, and government officials who don't know any better. Women are being given a raw deal if and when they turn to their local battered women's shelter for help. All these programs do is create another set of problems, and few emerge from them undamaged.
Anyone concerned about the fate of women in abusive relationships will be best served by contacting their legislator and asking them to vote against VAWA 2005. Only then will women be given practical help that does not destroy them or their families.
© Trudy W. Schuett
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