If you’re a victim of domestic violence living in South Carolina, guess what?! Cockfighting is a felony, while domestic abuse is just a misdemeanor! From the President-for-Life Sheelzebub of Pinko Feminist Hellcat…
The South Carolina Judiciary Committee passed legislation that turned cockfighting into a felony. The same committee tabled a bill to protect victims of domestic violence–beating up your spouse is still just a misdemeanor.
And if you question this logic, you’re obviously not very bright, at least according to SC State Rep. John Graham Altman III.
And here’s a little spat between Altman and a reporter named Kara Gormley who dared to do her job and ask why the fuck would anyone place more value on a rooster’s life over a domestic violence victim.
Rep. Altman responds to the comparison, “People who compare the two are not very smart and if you don’t understand the difference, Ms. Gormley, between trying to ban the savage practice of watching chickens trying to kill each other and protecting people rights in CDV statutes, I’ll never be able to explain it to you in a 100 years ma’am.”
News 10 reporter Kara Gormley asked Altman, “That’s fine if you feel you will never be able to explain it to me, but my question to you is: does that show that we are valuing a gamecock’s life over a woman’s life?”
Altman again, “You’re really not very bright and I realize you are not accustomed to this, but I’m accustomed to reporters having a better sense of depth of things and you’re asking this question to me would indicate you can’t understand the answer. To ask the question is to demonstrate an enormous amount of ignorance. I’m not trying to be rude or hostile, I’m telling you.”
Gormley, “It’s rude when you tell someone they are not very bright.”
Altman, “You’re not very bright and you’ll just have to live with that.”
In the follow-up interview, Rep. Altman commented, “I wanted to offend that snippy reporter who come in here on a mission. She already had the story and she came in with some dumb questions and I don’t mind telling people when they ask dumb questions.”
Oh and what dumb question was that? Why the SC Committee tabled a bill that would increase the penalties for domestic abusers, but readily passed a law that would make it a felony to hold cockfights?! Yeah, real stupid question.
Oh Amp, maybe we should add a “douchebag politician zaniness” category.
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Someone elsewhere where I posted this said that this probably isn’t even about the lives of chickens but about gambling in which the state has no involvement.
Apparently, the legislators were unaware that the legislation in question involved activities performed with roosters.
Wow. I just read Sheelzebub’s full post, and all I can say is, wow.
I’m with nolo. Wow. The depth of Altman’s zaniness is definitely worth a very deep wow.
I remember reading a NY Newsday article from the early 90’s that stated a man seen in public kicking a dog could face up to a year in jail while the maximum penalty for a man kicking his wife in public was a $500 fine.
Don’t know how much that’s changed, but at least NY scrapped arresting abused pregnant women for “neglecting to protect their child” when men hit them.
I believe that Altman’s state is one of the highest for domestic violence victims as well. Maybe they just don’t want to build new jails.
Sarcasm aside, I’m astounded.
I don’t know if I can go there with you on this one. If someone loses it in an argument and slaps their spouse, that should be a night in jail and a Class-A (in my state anyway) misdemeanor. If some psycho beats the living crap out of his wife, the DA has the authority to seek a conviction for “Assault with intent to commit grievous bodily injury” which is a felony. I have no idea, but I would hope that the laws in SC would be similar.
I think the chickens are a separate issue and the reporter was asking a stupid question, but I’m willing to listen to any ideas to the contrary.
The entire judiciary committee is apparently a confederacy of assmonkeys, since they thought domestic violence was funny.
Considering the attitude of these jerkoffs, I don’t think the reporter’s question was stupid. Especially in light of a cockfighting bill passing (that’s barbaric) but not a domestic violence bill. It’s not as if Altman said “Well, there were a few concerns we had with the bill and we are still working them out.” Nope, he went right on the attack with adhoms–anyone who disagrees with me is stupid!
Notice how he didn’t actually answer the question.
Is this guy married? ‘Cause somebody could marry him, and then beat the shit out of him, and it would only be a misdemeanor, instead of whatever large penalty they would mete out for attacking a State Representative, even if that State Representative is a blockhead. (And the anti-gay-marriage people would call that a better union than a real, loving one which is between two men or two women.)
Not that the jackass is worth marrying.
Actually, no, he thinks she isn’t very bright, and that’s all she’s going to have to live with. Which isn’t much of a problem, ’cause what he thinks isn’t worth much.
I don’t know what bodes worse for humanity: that somebody is capable of being this terrible of a person or that there are people stupid enough to elect him to public office !!!
Actually, I think I get it. Roosters, just like the unborn and the brain-dead, are incapable of thinking for theirselves and possibly questioning Their God’s Dominion Over The Universe. They’re the perfect little unquestioningly obedient creations who won’t threaten to not stay in Their Place.
They should remove this pathetic excuse for a human being from office and replace him with one of these roosters, all of which (even the dead ones) are better qualified to hold public office.
And, Mr. John Graham Altman the third? For the record, I am very bright.
A) He was blatantly insulting a reporter. I’m used to politicians being considerably more subtle. But he was telling a reporter, outright, that she was stupid. That’s outrageous in normal conversation, and you’d expect a politician to be extra polite to a reporter, given that reporters will convey your words to the world. So he wasn’t just being disrespectful, he was going out of his way to be disrespectful.
B) The reporter was a woman. Given that it was a question of whether laws were sexist, it’s hard to avoid concluding that Altman insulted Gormley because he despises women in general, and wanted to make that known.
C) If there was any reasonable (non-sexist) explanation for the disparity in sentencing, it should have been explicable in a sentence or two — especially if it was so obvious. Altman made no effort whatsoever to explain it.
The relation, gadfly, is that both bills were before the subcommittee. They apparently put more importance on banning cockfighting than on protecting victims of domestic violence. That’s the point of the question.
If Altman had not been a complete asshole, he could have said something like, “Well, no, there were particular problems with the bill in question like [insert technical legal excuse here] whereas the other bill was ready.” It might have been bullshit, but it would at least show a reporter a modicum of respect for doing her job.
But then, if he has so little respect for women anyway, why change that now?
I’ve read a couple of posts on this issue today, and I’ve gotta say, the tone of most of them puts me in an awkward spot. I’m not saying I’m not outraged that domestic abuse in SC isn’t a felony. I’m not saying that the legislature’s priorities aren’t massively screwed up. I’m certainly not defending Altman, who is a total psycho, as this post aptly demonstrates. But I can’t quite ignore the little voice in me that just wants to pipe up, “Um, why does it sound like roosters vs. women? Can’t we do something for both?”
It seems especially awkward to me to set up this dichotomy because as I see it, domestic violence and things like cockfighting (or dogfighting, or animal abuse in general) can stem from similar places: in my view, they are sadistic practices enjoyed by people who have a desire to exert power over beings with fewer defenses. That shouldn’t be condoned on any level, wherever the violence is directed.
This particular framework of looking at the issue also reminds me of the midst of the Terri Schiavo case, when many on the pro-feeding tube front used the argument that “animals in our society are treated better than this woman, because when we put dogs and cats to sleep at the pound, we don’t starve them, blah blah blah.” My reaction was always, “So, wait, are you saying we should starve dogs and cats at the pound? Would that make it better, somehow? Are they taking food away from Ms. Schiavo and giving it to pound puppies? Because I had no idea!”
I hate that my reaction to Pseudo-Adrienne’s post is similar, because she and I are in total agreement that, duh, of course domestic abuse should be a felony, and shame on this committee for treating it as a joke. But if the Judiciary Committee repealed its decision about cockfighting, or if it had never passed it in the first place, would that make the situation any different? Yes, the fact that they passed those two pieces of legislation, at the same time no less, shows that they have messed-up priorities, but the fact alone that they didn’t want to protect victims of domestic abuse shows that they have messed-up priorities, whatever else they were considering that day.
Whatever their motives (which I doubt were even remotely admirable), I’m glad they set up harsh punishments for a cruel practice like cockfighting. My disbelief at their cluelessness and callousness and general douchebag politician zaniness towards domestic violence is, for me, a separate issue.
The fact that women’s lives and safety are being so casually dismissed by SC’s Judiciary Committee is egregious enough in itself – I just don’t think it even needs the comparison presented here. And actually, I worry that emphasizing the roosters angle could even deflect attention and outrage away from the real problem, which is that these people don’t care about our mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends, or any of the women out there who could be victims of abuse.
That said, thank you for posting on this issue, Pseudo-Adrienne. It’s f***ing maddening that attitudes like Altman’s still exist. Also, thanks to Bean for linking to her post, including the point about why cockfighting may have been singled out in this case.
Wow. I am trying to imagine a politician saying something similar to a reporter here in Denmark. I can think of a politician saying that a question is stupid, an argument is stupid or even that a person hasn’t done his or her homework, but calling a reporter stupid? Goodbye political career!
Not only would the press be hounding the politician, the other politicians would disavow the politician in question, and I think there would be slim to no chance of the person getting re-elected.
I live in NC, and they’ve been playing a snippet of an interview with Altman, for the last couple of days, and I have a different take on this, altogether. In the interview he is arguing against making it a felony for a first time DV offense. He goes on to say that he has never understood why women keep going back to their abusers over and over again, and says that women want to have it both ways. Based on what I’ve heard him say, I believe he’s getting a bad rap.
Now I haven’t read the content of the legislation, and don’t know if repeat DV is a felony in NY. I personally believe that way too many crimes are classified as felonies – cockfighting included. I also believe that domestic violence is a family disease, and that if women are to be fully empowered, they have to stop playing the victim card.
I spent a year as a fulltime live-in volunteer at a woman’s shelter. The organization ran a separate shelter for men. Women came there for a variety of reasons, and multiple factors contributed to their situations – incarceration, domestic violence, mental illness, childhood abuse, and substance abuse. One the the greatest challenges for people coming out of prison – men and women – was getting jobs when they had a felony conviction on their records. When I was young, a felony meant that someone had been convicted of kidnapping, or murder, but that’s no longer the case. A whole host of crimes can now leave you with a felony record, and render you unemployable, in anything other than the fast food industry. In NY, getting licensed as a Certified Nursing Assistant, could be a good route out of poverty. The work was hard, but jobs were readily available, didn’t require a four-year degree, and paid a decent wage. People with felony convictions couldn’t be licensed as a CVA. One woman I worked with, articulate and college educated, who had served her time for a felony conviction, white collar crime ten years prior, was working as a housekeeper, because she couldn’t find work due to her conviction. Her daughter was a successful real estate agent in another state, and encouraged her mom to get her realtors license. At the last minute the school was forced to refund her tuition because they discovered she’d been convicted of a felony and was ineligible to be licensed in NY and most any state, as I remember.
A felony conviction can be a lifetime sentence, for many people. The children of convicted felons also serve a lifetime sentence, because their parent – mothers and fathers – are unable to make a living wage.
Second, we have to begin being honest about Domestic Violence. It is a family disease. Now many people do get out of the situation at the first sign of trouble, but most do not. I’ve known many women who have kept going back, even in the absence of children. More often than not, alcohol and drugs are involved. Even if they manage to leave, most without some good therapy, go on to recreate the same drama with another man. People tend to find those situations where they are comfortable, and sometimes staying in a violent, chaotic situation is less frightening than taking the risk of recreating a whole new life. Sometimes people derive meaning and purpose by being victims, and don’t want to do the hard work of unpacking their motivations.
In my book….
Domestic violence = felony.
Gambling = not a felony.
Cockfighting = not a felony either. We eat chickens, right?
Emmetropia:
Don’t care if the women keep going back to abusers. I don’t care. That does not, in my mind, give an abuser a right TO KEEP ABUSING THEM. If it’s a family disease, maybe the abuser needs to start looking at his motivations.
For the felony, maybe you’re right, and people are given lifetime sentences, which is not fair. You do your punishment, and then you get to move on with your life.
But a misdemenor for BEATING somone? That’s showing a disturbing lack of value on women’s lives.
Antigone-
I am not arguing that men (or women) have the right to abuse someone simply because they keep coming back. I am saying it shouldn’t be a felony for a first time offense, which is Altman’s position. In my experience, women’s groups push to make DV a felony because police don’t take the crime seriously enough, and perpetrators serve short sentences, only to commit the same offense again. I don’t believe that simply making it a felony will change the status quo. I believe, and more psychologists are taking this position, that domestic violence has to be treated within the dynamics of the family. Merely forcing people to serve longer sentences is not going to transform anyone’s behavior and is going to hurt the family further, if there are children involved.
A better approach would be to work locally to insure that law enforcement takes DV seriously and respond appropriately, and to work with the local courts to change sentencing guidelines and to insure that long term counseling is part of the package.
Great, I just knew someone would start victim blaming in this thread. Wonderful.
And by the way, that was what you were doing, Emmetropia . And your follow up was a lame way to try to backpeddle.
Family dynamics? It’s not a family if one of them is beating the other. Period.
And getting a freebie for the first offense? Let’s try that with bank robbery. I’ll go test that out tomorrow. What’s wrong with that.
“I believe, and more psychologists are taking this position, that domestic violence has to be treated within the dynamics of the family.”
Actually, that is not the case. It USED to be that mental health workers sought to treat DV within the family dynamics. By the onset of the 1990s, that way of thinking was rightly debunked as inappropriate. Now, any therapist worth their weight in salt knows that unlike such family dynamics systems as codependency or other dysfunctional behaviors, domestic violence is NOT a typical systems dynamic that the victim can change by their own behavior. Plenty of victims do everything right, and are still victimized. Of course, the batterer can change the dynamic by changing behavior, but the victim does not have that power. Therefore, it would be wildly inappropriate to treat DV in the context of family dynamics.
I agree that DV victims need long term therapy, but not because they have low self esteem, or “play the victim card”, or other nonsense like that. They need therapy because they have been the victim of a traumatic crime, and most people would benefit from assistance in that situation.
Do I wish that I could convince every person in the world that at the first sign of abuse from their partner, they run and never look back? Of course I do. Ironically, it is people who blame domestic violence victims for not leaving that give them the shame that often prompts them not to leave.
I am saying it shouldn’t be a felony for a first time offense
Why not? Cockfighting is.
mythago, while I find Emmetropia’s arguments unconvicting, bordering on the offensive, let’s be fair. She did say that she found that too many crimes, including cockfighting, to be punished as felonies. So refering to something that she think should be categories as it is, as an argument, seems wrong to me.
What Morgan said, more or less. Emmet presented two arguments, a progressive one about how being convicted of a felony destroys people’s lives and a compassion-fatigued one about “playing the victim card.” Emmet’s first post’s last paragraph, IMO, confuses the important issue of how difficult it is to get some abuse-survivors out of abusive relationships with the unhelpful accusation that the abused have motives for staying in such relationships that make them somehow blameworthy. Saying “don’t want to do the hard work” of people whose problem is a lack of self-esteem, hope, or confidence helps to tip the rhetoric into the victim-blaming mode, as it equates demoralization and terror with laziness.
Although I find that approach unproductive, it seems rooted in a frustrated desire to see things improve, by contrast with a couple commentors on Majikthise’s blog who have begun to say, “What if the woman provoked it?”
I can’t understand how people who can’t understand why DV victims return to the abusers haven’t loooked into the wealth of literature explaining in great detail how the phenomenon can work.
I can understand how they then feel obliged to make up a reason like lazyness or “playing the victim card”. I have a feeling Amp would censor my opinion on that though, because it’s not polite. I will say this: Emmetropia, your opinion is coming from an uneducated and elitist point of view. I think you probably have a good deal more resources than the average DV victim, and I think you don’t know enough about DV to be passing judgement here. On the other hand, Amp, and many other feminists, have been studying the issue for quite some time. So, in stead of sounding off on a topic you’re not realy qualified to talk about, sit down, pay attention, and ask polite questions.
I think, after you educate yourself on the topic, you’ll understand why people act the way they do, and why the feminist groups aretrying to get certain laws passed. It’s not for the reasons you think.
Im hoping you’d rather be right later on, and admit your error than to be wrong and stick by some mysoginist dogma.
And now, to demonstrate, I’m going to ask a a question that I don’t know thee answer to: does anyone have data on recidivism in DV cases after qualified family therapy?
Emmetopia is correct in pointing out that DV is a very complicated issue. I don’t know anything about S Carolina, but I suspect that there are different degrees of assault and domestic violence, ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The first thing I thought when I read the post was: is all DV a misdemeanor in SC or only minor DV? The legal definition for assault can be any unwanted contact. A misdemeanor assault can be me shoving someone else and if I was yelling and making a big enough scene to get the poilice’ attention, I could be arrested for shoving someone. Most reasonable people wouldn’t want that to be a felony, a crime punishable by at least a year of detention, even though most reasonable people would be very concerned about a man who shoves his wife for any reason. That’s why DV sentences in many places also include classes and counseling, to give an ignorant but still not too serious aggresor a chance to change his ways. Altman’s treatment of the reporter does suggest some troubling attitudes down there in SC state government, but we all need more info before jumping to conclusions. Is it really possible that ALL DV in S Carolina is a misdemeanor? SC lawyers? Anyone?
The “first time” an abuser hits someone isn’t the first time they’ve been abusive to them (and chances are, the first time they are “caught” isn’t the first time they’ve hit). They are verbally, mentally, and emotionally abusive for a while; abuse builds. This is often quite subtle, and the target has no idea that it is abuse. It escalates slowly, and the abuser is charming enough to people on the “outside” to pass as normal. By the time it gets really bad, the abuser’s partners thinks its something with her. She’s been torn down, torn apart, and has no support because she’s isolated in sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant ways.
The abuser is normal in a mental health sense; he’s just overly entitled, manipulative, and cruel. He is not psychotic, he is not unaware of right and wrong. In fact, many are perfectly aware of what they are doing and the effect it has on their partners and children–and that’s why they do it. They do it to maintain power, power that outsiders enable by their incredulity when the abuser’s partner finally leaves, the outrage the abusers in-laws may demonstrate towards the woman who leaves, the skepticism of the police and courts who blather on and on about a “family dynamic” when the only dynamic that’s destructive here is the abuser’s need for power over other people.
Abusers are empowered by people who say that his mind-games and verbal abuse aren’t actually abuse, and that she’s overreacting to it. They are empowered by the myth that it’s not abuse unless he punches her (punching walls, putting her down constantly, humiliating her, destroying her things, etc. aren’t abuse according to this myth.) They are empowered by the idea that women never leave these situations, therefore they must like it or be in need of psychiatric help for their destructive tendencies.
Talk about demoralizing. Say some of that shit to someone trying to get out (BTW, the most dangerous time of a target of an abuser is WHEN SHE LEAVES). Woman who’s been abused wants to leave. She goes to someone for support who complains that “women never leave and if it was ME, I’d be out of there at the first sign of mistreatment.” Translation: You should have known you stupid bitch, and now you’re getting what you deserve.
The other thing that I would like to make a comment has to do with what we as a society value. One way of deciding what we value and what we condone is to make laws (or not make laws) in that context.
For example, cohabitation (and a WHOLE slew of other things) is illegal in my state, North Dakota. It is classified as a sex crime (of all things) and if you are convicted (which, mind you, is rare if never) It is a class C felony.
Domestic Violence, however, is a misdemenor. At the very worst, all they are going to get is 6 monthes in jail.
To me, this says they value marriage more than people’s lives and/or health. But I could be misinterpreting it.
Raznor: I agree with your assessment. The guy was a jerk and could have answered the question in a tactful manner, even though the juxtaposition of the issues was coincidental.
I’m curious. Do people in here really feel that if a woman slaps her husband in an argument that she should be convicted of a felony? I’m not saying it doesn’t need to be punished, it does. But to totally disenfranchise this woman for the rest of her life — she can’t vote again, ever. Does the punishment fit the crime? I’m of the opinion that different levels of abuse need to be punished differently.
The bill in question actually increases protection for people who are being abused by a partner, so they can be more empowered to get out. It also hamper’s the abuser’s attempts at legal game-playing.
Read the text of the bill.
Josh Jasper said what I was thinking, about the literature that exists on why women have such difficulty in leaving an abusive relationship. So my question is – is it a felony to assault someone, regardless of the situation (domestic or otherwise)? If a man was assaulted outside an ATM machine at night, would the assaulter be charged with a felony? And… does it even matter? Should domestic assault have its own standards? I tend to think so. Disease or not- alcoholism is a disease and someone who kills another after drunk driving, or just drunk, is held fully responsible, disease or not.
The “going back to the relationship so they deserved it” argument (which Altman seems to make) is not only ignorant and wrong, it is a slippery slope- a parallel could be drawn with the man assaulted outside the ATM machine at nighttime (“wasn’t he asking for it indicating he had money on him during the night?”) or the woman who wears a skirt and is raped (although I know in real situations, this woman’s guilt has been alluded to by media and people.)
My take on Emmetropia’s comment: yes, there are lots of things wrong with the criminal justice system, which does nothing to address the root causes of social problems, and which often hands out punishments that are exceedingly severe, when not outright sadistic.
But that doesn’t change the fact that punishing cockfighting more severely than domestic violence implies that those in power think cockfighting is a worse crime than beating a women. It’s profoundly sexist.
And when Altman was called on it, he started verbally abusing the reporter, a woman, calling her stupid.
The conclusion that this is about condoning sexism, of the most blatant and obvious and grotesque kind, is inescapable.
It’s moment’s like this that I reconsider hanging up my liberal hat and going to live in the woods…
When I initially responded to this thread, I was trying to suggest that based on the local news report, there might be more to the Altman story than was being heard through the national media. If liberals are going to taken seriously when they accuse the media of right-wing bias, we must also be willing to be critical of those instances when liberal bias sneaks into view. Now I hate being an apologist for Altman, or for the SC political system. He is a homophobe of the first degree, rants against “activist” judges, and the SC legislature is a festering cesspool of cronyism. I lived in SC for six years, and although I no longer live there, I still have a client there and based on my recent experience, little has changed since I jumped over the border.
But even the biggest idiot, sometimes say’s something that makes sense. In the portion of the interview I heard, he was arguing against a felony designation for a first-time DV charge , as well as suggesting that it’s a little unfair to charge someone with a felony for a first time offense, while not holding women accountable when they go back to the offender or recreate the situation with another man. I don’t know his feelings about charging offenders of multiple offenses. I was not speaking to what I believe his feelings would be in other instances, but on the content of what he actually said (however badly he framed it, or irregardless of what his unconscious motives may be).
Now I believe that extreme cases make bad laws. In NC, all people convicted of sexual offenses have to register as sexual offendors, and hence are barred for life from many professions. This includes underage teenagers who had sex with other underage partners. Now I don’t want some kid who had sex with his girlfriend when he was 15 , to carry a lifetime stigma. Nor do I want to automatically convict someone of a felony the first time they are charged with shoving or slapping their partner. When people talk about domestic violence, they are often referencing the most extreme cases, the kind that are made in Lifetime movies, where a man repeatedly hunts down a woman and assaults her over and over again. Now in my experience, domestic abuse occurs on a contiuum, ranging from emotional abuse, verbal abuse, controlling behavior, occasional pushing and shoving, sexual exploitation, to overt physical violence and ultimately murder. Sometimes it escalates, sometimes it’s more chronic. Given that a felony conviction in itself wouldn’t change a perpetrator’s behavior, that some women have been known to make false claims, and that a felony conviction carries lifelong consequences, I’m not in a big hurry to create an entire new class of felons, for first time offenders, but would, depending on the circumstances and severity, support mandatory long term treatment. Repeat offenders of assault resulting in injury are a different matter all together.
Personally, I would rather be slapped once, than live through 20 years of belittling, controlling behavior. Women can and do recover from all degrees of physical violence, but recovery from more insidious forms of emotional abuse, can be harder and longer. Shall we make it a felony for someone to belittle another?
ginmar writes-
getting a freebie for the first offense? Let’s try that with a bank robbery.
I don’t know where you live and what laws on your local books regarding DV, but most areas do consider DV to be a criminal offense. The laws might not be enforced, the police might not take them seriously, prosecutors might drop charges reflexively without looking at the facts, and judges may simply sentence perpetrators to a fine without counseling. But none of these are sufficient reasons to create a new class of felons.
I have worked in the nonprofit social services sector for over twenty years — most of that time with programs that worked with at-risk populations. I have both worked in the frontlines directly with clients, and in capacity-building for organizations that want to create more effective programming in order to improve their client’s outcomes. I’ve worked with and developed new programs for, at-risk children and youth, abused women, and female addicts; I’ve represented abused children as a Guardian ad litem in the family court system and in some instances advocated for the termination of parental rights, and have gone on to work with women who had lost their children because of abuse and neglect. Finally, I’ve served on a commission that evaluated the impact of unfair and mandatory sentencing guidelines.
When I was younger, I suffered from one-dimensional thinking and saw the world in terms of black and white, which unfortunately, is all too common in the social services field. The world was made up of villians and victims, predators and prey. Myself and my coworkers believed that dysfunctional families could be saved if we only threw enough money at their problems, and enacted enough laws. As I worked with more and more people, listened to their stories, and critically evaluated the issues confronting each of the various populations I worked with, my perspective began to change. I saw that my propensity for seeing people (especially women), as victims, in the end wasn’t helpful and didn’t help them to develop the skills they needed to truly transform their lives. I began to see people and families, not as dysfunctional, but as individuals who were trying to heal their wounds as best they could. I learned that punitive laws and social policies designed to force people to behave desired ways, in the end didn’t change people where they really lived, and diverted energy and resources that could be used in more productive ways.
When I was working at the women’s shelter I referenced above, I worked with about 150 women over the course of a year. Women could stay at the shelter for up to six weeks, once a year, although sometimes they were allowed to stay longer. I lived with them in common housing, 24 hours a day. I cooked and ate my meals with them, sat with them when they had a crisis in the middle of the night, tried to talk women out of returning to violent, demeaning and exploitive relationships, went to court appearances with them, and once acted as birth coach to a woman giving birth to her third child, a child that was rightfully taken from her 3 days later by social services. These were not the stories you hear on the Lifetimechannel. These were very low income women who didn’t have a lot going for them. I believe that their experiences with domestic abuse are far more representative of what’s actually happening.
Although most of the women placed at the shelter, had experienced various degrees of domestic abuse throughout their lives, it was not a shelter for battered women, per se. We attempted to place women at immediate risk for physical harm, in another shelter dedicated to victims of domestic violence, but often the police or a priest would bring us someone in the middle of the night, and we’d take them until we could find a more secure shelter. While they were there, we helped them get set up with welfare and Medicaid benefits, assisted them with obtaining permanent housing, helped them find treatment and counseling programs, and facilitated their interactions with the court system.
Although women came to the shelter for a variety of reasons, there were some common threads to their stories. In general, our clients were over forty years old. Younger women tended to leave early on — either returning to the partner they left, or quickly taking up with a new man. In almost every single situation, the woman had a long history of unhealthy relationships with their romantic partners. They came to the shelter immediately or soon after leaving a partner. Many had committed crimes because of their involvement with men who used them. Probably 80% had a history of substance abuse, and 15% were “frequent fliers,” who had returned to the shelter over and over again throughout it’s 25 year history, usually through multiple romantic relationships. (Frankly I think it’s a crime that accounts of domestic violence do not address the incidence of substance abuse within the context of domestice violence. It’s a pivotal component of the DV scenerio. Women too often use their abusers as an excuse to drink or use. You have to treat all aspects of the disease.)
Now our mission was to provide a safe, nonjudgemental space for women, as they attempted to resolve the issues that brought them there in the first place. Our hope was that they would be able to slowly rebuild their lives. We didn’t offer a program per se, but a sanctuary staffed with advocates who helped them with various issues, counseling, referrals, financial support, food, clothing and home furnishings. We also ran a drop-in center for abused women who weren’t ready to leave, but wanted support while they prepared to make their exit.
The greatest challenge for the staff and volunteers, was protecting women from their own bad decisions. On the one hand we wanted to encourage self-determination, and to promote each woman’s strengths. We didn’t want to place unnecessary restrictions on women who really needed some practice in making decisions, even if they fell on their face, and had to try over again. But it was a balancing act. Sometimes they’d repeatedly place themselves and the other residents in danger by their actions, and we had to be more paternal in our approach, and to sanction women and restrict their activities. In some instances we kicked women out when they continually they repeatedly screwed up, but that was a difficult decision to make. I can’t tell you how many times we found that women who had left their abusers (husbands, boyfriends and pimps) were actually sneaking out to see them during the day, or being dropped off by them after they’d given the address out. Others hooked up with the first guy who gave them a kind word, and moved in with them right away, only to come back a few months later looking for a bed. Staff and volunteers were continually reminded that we couldn’t “save” anyone and that ultimately we had to give them the space to save themselves.
We didn’t “shame” people who went back to their abuser’s — our doors remained open– both while they remained with them and when they left them for the 20th time. But that doesn’t mean that we didn’t have some hard talks with women. Most women needed to see that there was a predictable pattern to their behaviors and choices. One woman who had left her abuser for the umpteenth time, hooked up with a guy she’d met on a chat line, in pretty short order. We kept hearing what a wonderful guy he was, and how supportive he was. The fact that he’d recruited her to pose for an internet porn site, didn’t register as dangerous or unhealthy to her. She was used to being treated like crap, so it was all pretty damn normal. She was was recreating her childhood in some fashion, and had a high tolerance, and even addiction to high-drama relationships, a common dominator among all the women.
The hardest thing was to get a woman to understand that in order to become the person she was meant to be, she had to take a leap of faith, and give up who she was, habitual victim of abuse, chance, and circumstances. That meant doing real work, and not simply jumping from one bad relationship to another, because that’s all they knew. This perspective honors a woman’s choices, and autonomy. If readers of this thread don’t get that, I don’t know what else to say.
And you have obviously missed what everyone has said here.
I suggest you check out the link about why women go back. It’s great you’ve worked in social services, many of us have. Many of us have worked with battered women, and many of us have experienced abuse. None of us have reduced the issues to black and white, nor have any of us reduced anyone in these situations to pure angelic victims and horrible evil villians. None of us reduced women to victims–and as someone who has been in a borderline abusive relationship, I deeply resent the implication that someone who has been victimized is somehow lesser, and acknowledging that someone has been victimized is a bad thing.
If I thought for one minute that I would have heard about women who kept going back to their abusers, I wouldn’t go to you for support. When women hear that over and over and over again, they tend to stay silent. They tend to not come forward. It’s isolating, and when they do leave, it’s demoralizing to hear over and over again how these other women are going back to their husbands and women do that anyway (the implication being that they deserve the abuse).
And really, the fact that some of your consumers didn’t make wise choices for men means what, legally? Last time I checked, beating someone is wrong. It amazes me that violence is never acceptable unless it’s perpetrated against a woman. Then we ask ourselves why she goes back. even though the question has been answered over and over.
Most people ask why women go back, or why they don’t leave, as a smokescreen. Gosh, why do these women stay? Even when they left and got attacked anyway (being separated is the most dangerous time for battered women) the question is asked; the facts are ignored.
But here’s the thing–Altman didn’t say “We have some concerns about the bill and want to ensure that there are different levels of sentencing for different levels of assault.” He didn’t say: “We are unsure of the constitutionality of the bill,” “There are a few issues we want to work out.”
No.
He said that if you didn’t agree with him, you were stupid, and proceeded to verbally abuse and degrade the female reporter who asked him a rather obvious question. He and his fellow committee members joked about domestic violence. They thought it was funny, and anyone who objected was “oversensitive”, the same way an abused woman is being “oversensitive” when her partner tears her down (I mean, that’s not abuse people say, and then when it escalates it’s her fault because she should have known and besides, women keep going back).
I mean, geez, we can take the cockfighting issue and ask why it wasn’t applied to dogfighting? If animals get into a fight, can we then throw someone in the clink for five years and disenfranchise them?
And I am so sick and tired of people throwing up the spectre of false allegations. You can falsely accuse people of all kinds of crimes. Stealing, drug possession, larceny, child abuse, oh, the list goes on. No one asks about the possiblity of false allegations then. No one asks about the possibility of a frameup or false allegations regarding cockfighting. Only when the crime targets a woman do we start to sweat false allegations, and then suddenly its supposedly easy for a a woman to point a finger and the poor, victimized man is thrown in jail for life.
Except that’s not the case, and that urban myth is getting moldy.
The bill is not a one-way ticket to jail for someone who slaps their partner (although slaps usually follow verbal and emotional abuse, they do not come out of the blue). Read the text of the bill (link posted further up in the thread) and you will see that it streamlines the process, makes things safter for the victim, and increases the penalty according to the number of offenses and the severity of the charge .
But do let’s go on and on about how we are painting women has helpless victims and how women don’t leave/always go back. Because that’s what the law is about, after all.
That may be the longest comment post I have seen in the history of the internet.
Some information for Emmetropia;
1. I understand the point you’re trying to make regarding creating another class of felons but there is another dimension to consider. Research in the UK has clearly shown that a robust response to a first time offence of domestic violence has a remarkable (positive!) effect on recidivism – no small achievement on a crime (which in the UK) is accepted as the most likely to be repeated. Details of this ‘experiement’ can be found here:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/fprs104.pdf
2. I don’t know where you are in the world but the issue of the connections and overlap between substance abuse and domestic violence is being addressed in some areas. This toolkit:
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/campaigns&research/health%20and%20dv%20campaign/Stella%
was produced in the UK last year and I know the author utilised some American materials in its production.
(apologies – I don’t know the formula for posting better links)
3. Again, I am drawing on Uk research which may differ in the States but data here shows that by the time domestic violence comes to police attention, on *average* it is the 36th assault. In this context, a felony charge for a ‘first time offence’ takes on a different light – no?
Emmetropia,
If you think that the majority of DV victims are substance abusers, you are quite mistaken. There is no statistical basis to that. I suspect that you are drawing on your experience at your shelter, which as you say, is not a battered women’s shelter.
Also, if you think that the majority of DV consists of women getting slapped or pushed, you are again mistaken. Despite the experience of the women that you worked with, statistics show that the majority of physical abuse is far more serious.
Your shelter experiences were colored by the fact that you worked with women that had multiple challenges. That does not mean that most DV victims have multiple challenges. Again, anyone in the social work/therapy field worth their weight in salt knows that DV victims can do everything right, and still be abused. Even some of the most non- feminist professionals acknowledge this.
I totally agree. I spent 6 years married to a very physically and mentally abusive man. He outwardly seemed like a great guy. There were no red flags for me or anyone in my family while we dated. However, three days into our marriage as we sat at an expensive B&B enjoying a seemingly lovely breakfast, he slapped me for no reason. There was no argument, nothing, just his hand across my face. I was shocked, confused, hurt, I knew it was wrong, yet I could not understand it or believe that such a thing could be happening to me. Yet, I did not want to leave, I did not want to face my family who had just spent so much time and money on our wedding, I simply did not want to believe that I could have made such a poor decision. So, I stayed and I stayed silent.
I never mentioned the abuse to anyone because as time went on, I knew I wasn’t ready to leave so I didn’t want to create worry for my family and hatred towards my husband. So, I did what I felt I could do for myself given my state of mind, I was obsessive with taking my BC after the first child, I went back to school, and I plotted on how to get out.
The breaking point for me came when my then 3 year old daughter casually mentioned to my parents that “daddy threw mommy down the stairs”. Once I heard that, I knew that if I wasn’t going to save myself, I had to save her from ever thinking this was normal or ok, so I said I was leaving and after a while, we were able to separate and divorce without any further physical harm. I was lucky.
In reading all of these posts, I have identified with so many of the points. I have often felt at fault for letting it go on as long as I did or for provoking fights (yes, I really did provoke things at times) when I had to know the outcome. I am not uneducated, poor, a minority, or a substance abuser (which is completely irrelevant to DV), but others have mentioned these aspects of the abuse.
In the end I have come to realize that no one can control another person’s actions/reactions and blaming me or any victim for the abuse is wrong under any circumstances.
Richard, I can’t believe I missed your first comment. *ubersnerk*
She did say that she found that too many crimes, including cockfighting, to be punished as felonies
The point you’re missing is that South Carolina decided “too many crimes are punished as felonies, we should give people a chance, don’t lock them up and throw away the key on a first offense” was an argument that DID apply to beating your spouse, but DID NOT apply to cockfighting.
Emmetropia, absent in any way from your discussion is the consideration that violence (except in self-defense) is a criminal, harmful, immoral act. Yes, by all means, empower the battered women. But how odd that you do not consider what should be done about their batterers.
It’s nice to talk about help, and choices, and not seeing the world in black and white. But I somehow can’t help but think that if we were talking about violence between strangers, you wouldn’t focus so fixedly on the victims. If we were discussing roving bands of neo-Nazi youth who were attacking black people on the street, would you be most worried about the environment that produced those youth? About whether jailing them was really the best option?
mythago, I don’t get your answer to me. However, it’s not important.
I was trying to give Emmet the benifit of the doubt, but after having read the later reply, I think I won’t try to do that again.
Well said Bean.
I have a friend who was in an emotional abusessive relationship – she was, and is, among the smartest people I’ve ever known, and certainly knows how to make her opinions clear.
However through the years she was together with the guy, he managed to drain her of her self-confidence, and made her feel stupid. I didn’t get to know her until the last two years she was together with him, and only during the last year did I know her well enough to see there was a problem.
I did my part in rebuilding her self-confidence (together with others), and something much have worked, because he broke up with her, in a way that was ment to break her, but instead she managed to see how f*cked up the relationship had been, and get over it.
It took an additional year to get her to actually be confident in herself, and she still some times has her doubts, yet the woman I know now, is much different from the woman I knew back then. And a very close friend.
It was worth every single second I used, and I will do everthing to avoid that ever happening again (unlikely as it is).
Some would blame her for being in the situation, and thus help break her even more, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there were only one guilty party – the guy who did it. And the whole idea that someone might blame her, or people in similar situations (be it emotional or physicial abuse), makes me incredible angry.
Oh, and bean, thank you for looking up the relevant laws.
Josh Jasper writes: I think you probably have a good deal more resources than the average DV victim, and I think you don’t know enough about DV to be passing judgement here. On the other hand, Amp, and many other feminists, have been studying the issue for quite some time. So, in stead of sounding off on a topic you’re not realy qualified to talk about, sit down, pay attention, and ask polite questions.
If I was actually the Women’s League sycophant that Josh would like to imagine I am, I could perhaps, understand your repeated and condescending dismissals. I’ve worked with a number of such women, who stayed as long as the cameras were running, but being sure to escape the blighted neighborhood before darkness fell. Their support is necessary and vital to the maintenance of women’s shelters, but as a general rule they don’t have any depth of understanding as to the numerous and messy complications that infect the lives of the women who actually live there.
Not that it’s any of your business Josh, but my upbringing was strictly blue collar. I discovered libraries early in life — a social good I’m profoundly grateful for. I was the first in my family to go to college and I’ll be paying student loans at the same time I’m receiving social security. My profoundly damaged mother, believed that my interest in education meant I was turning my back on god and my biological destiny as a woman, and that I was possessed by the devil. She threw me out of the house over 20 years ago, an hour before my final exam on Immanuel Kant — an exam I sobbed through. This precipitated a deep depression, and I ended up in a women’s shelter, where I lived side by side with heroin addicts and DV victims for about 8 weeks, until I could secure on-campus housing with the start of the fall semester. I was grateful for that place, too. It gave me the space and time to critically unpack the belief systems I was raised with, and to find a new way for myself.
So you see, my interest is not merely academic. I try to keep a hand in the shelter community, when I can, and why I agreed to join a Catholic Worker community for a year, when I was exploring what road to next take. Although I haven’t been a Catholic in many years, I believed in their commitment to living and working with the poor. It was an enriching experience, that continues to yield fruit. It is sad that many people here choose to believe that my experiences there with women who did not have the options afforded by your enlighted advocacy, masks a deep contempt for women. Acknowledging the realities of people’s lives — women and men — honors them, I think. Prior to my experience there, I really believed in the concept of individual self-determination. I came away, however, understanding that the notion of freewill could be an illusory concept, if an individual as a child, was conditioned to accept that violence, emotional and physical pain, degradation, and hopelessness was simply the stuff of existence. Understanding that, enabled me to be compassionate to the woman who had left for the 20th time, swearing once again, that she wouldn’t return. There is a huge difference between blaming a woman for her situation, and acknowledging that in her worldview, there is no a real choice to be made, when al choices are essentially the same.
But it’s very interesting that rather than engaging in honest and critical dialogue, you feel the need to “put me in my place” by suggesting that I can’t be a real feminist or have a real informed opinion here, simply because I offer an alternative perspective. That says something about you, not me.
News flash, Josh: that’s no different, nor any less offensive, than claiming an educated black man isn’t a “real” African-American because he doesn’t use ghetto language.
So you see, I believe I’ve qualified my experience here. I don’t know many Womens Leaguer’s who’ve actually lived 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with these women — lived in the fullness of community, with all that entails. Yet my experiences are dismissed as unmeaningful and not representative of the DV population.
Now even someone with the most rudimentary of sociological skills, has to at least be a little curious when a group exhibits strong tendencies outside the accepted cultural norm. It is the blip in the data-set that is meaningful. At least it is if you’re truly interested in making your services available to those who fall between the cracks….
emma writes:
bean writes:
(BTW, bean, I’m a woman.)
Hmmm, is it just possible that women living in shelters, but not living in DV shelters, are not included in these surveys? I’ve seen more good studies recently on DV and the disabled, than I have on the deeply impoverished. It’s hard to track down and survey women who are busy scurrying from one DSS appointment to another, in order to meet the qualifications for their $360 dollar housing subsidy, and $140 dollar food stamp card. If they’re not lucky enough to score a bus token or pass from their worker, or shelter they’re staying at, they’re hoofing it from one end of the city to another, trying to make their appointments, and to score enough signatures on the job card, to prove they’re actively seeking employment.
These women aren’t captured in national datasets, evaluating the incidence and risk factors related to DV. But just because you don’t count them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.
And guess what? Most women who frequent shelters because of chronic homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness, even though they regularly experience violence at the hands of men, don’t identify themselves as abused or as having experienced domestic violence. When we would do an intake with a new guest, we would try to get as much background as possible. Rarely would they describe themselves as victims of abuse. Only after spending time with these women and hearing the details of their lives, would the existence of violence come into play. One day a 45 year old guest took off her shoe to show me her foot. I had made a joke about her small feet. All that remained was her heel and about two inches of foot in front of that. She explained that when she was 18, her boyfriend had shot her foot off with a shotgun. This was a man she would later marry, entering into a chaotic, on- again, off-again relationship, that centered around their use of heroin and most recently methodone.
She was surprised and perplexed when we asked her to talk a little more about the violence in their relationship. Domestic abuse? Sure he had shot her foot off, but he didn’t mean to; he was only trying to scare her and misaimed the gun. Her and the “old man,” just always had a very passionate relationship.
And that’s what people on this list don’t get. Violence is so much a part of their lives, and has been since childhood, that it’s not domestic abuse. It’s life. And the early co-mingling of parental love and pain, creates for some people, a type of addiction, that they are powerless to escape, without some very deep work. Not simply counseling because the most recent man or men abused them, but counseling that helps them see how they first began to chase after the feeling they had as children, when the mother or father who was unprepared to meet their needs, first conditioned them for their later lives. You may wish to dismiss their experiences because they’re not in a “Domestic Violence Shelter,” or because they’re addicts, or mentally ill, but their experiences are just as real as the middle-class women you all purport to advocate for. And don’t kid yourself. You’re not advocating for the very desparately poor woman who has never had safety net, and never had a positive experience they could really own. They wouldn’t seek out a DV shelter.
And it’s this specific group of people I am referring to when I am describing my experiences with women who repeatedly return to abusive relationships — be that abuse physical , mental or, often sexual.
I think a reality check is in order for everyone here who base their arguments on experiences at shelters that limit their services to self-professed domestic violence victims.
Dedicated DV shelters, due to their nature of their grant funding and defined outcome objectives contained within their funding proposals, must consistently demonstrate that their services result in successful outcomes for their clients, if they are to be funded year after year. I know, I write those applications for agencies all the time. As a result they must screen out women who present with additional risk factors that will tend to skew their desired outcomes. While I understand the need to keep the money coming in, it’s more than a little unfair to make sweeping generalizations about all women who suffer from domestic violence, when you are in fact, excluding half the population that experiences it from your service population.
Messy complications like crack addiction, mental illness, and chronic homelessness, make a successful outcome less likely. The DV shelter in the town where I worked, was well-funded by grants, and planned giving programs funded through wealthy benefactors, and billed the county for the care provided to women. While they would admit some women with a dependency on alcohol and prescription drug problems, they wouldn’t admit women whose substance abuse problems were chronic, unremitting, and whose drugs of choice were illegal. As far as mental illness — depression was okay — but let a women be diagnosed with a more severe problem, and they were out of the running altogether.
I can’t actually ever remember be able to get a bed for anyone I referred there. They did evaluate and accept three women that I recall, for admission when a longterm bed opened up. They were referred to us to house them in the interim. The DV shelter would call for updates on the clients, but after a time dropped them from their waiting list. Why? In the first instance, the middle-aged nurse wearing an arm and shoulder brace, was shown to have visited several women’s shelters across the country specifically so that they would pay for the demoral she had been obtaining using a forged doctor’s evaluation. We quickly determined that the second woman was hearing voices and needed to be evaluated for medication and outpatient treatment through the psych center. In the last instance, a young girl who had traveled by bus from California with her clearly controlling and paranoid boyfriend, was found to be under guardianship of the court, and suffering from severe psychological and behavioral problems had walked away from a daytime outpatient treatment program.
In each instance we turned to the DV shelter for assistance in obtaining the needed services prior to their admissions at their shelter. We did not accept county funding for our clients because of the unrealistic expectations they placed on the clients, and supported ourselves exclusively through small, individual contributions. Would they use one cent of their funding for those women, or even facilitate getting them on their books, so they could bill for them? NO. The moment it was clear that these women suffered from issues that would screw up their outcome reports, they dropped them like hot potatoes, especially if they exhibited any propensity to violence themselves, and they became our wards.
It is meaningless to
bean writes-
In other words, a 15-year-old boy having non-forcible, consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend will NEVER be convicted of a sexual crime (regardless of how many MRA’s will try to convince you otherwise
Well, I don’t know what an MRA is. But they were profiling a case on the Greenville channel I believe,a couple of months ago, about such a case, that the parents were trying to get overturned.
mythagos writes:
Again, without specifics, hard to say. Were they hurling angry words, tomatoes or bricks?
Actually, I’d probably recommend a more creative sentencing alternative. There’s a great Mennonite program in SC where kids live in the woods for a couple of years with Mennonite men, and build they own homes and kill their own food. Great outcomes. Especially good for boys needing father figures.
Or do you think they’ll be more centered, evolved and respecting of others after a long prison term?
As someone who left an abusive relationship but has never set foot inside a shelter, I can say that I stand strongly against the issue being treated as “family dynamic” issue. It took me years to get over feeling that it was my fault for “provoking”–that if somehow I was more feminine, more quiet, less opinionated, just generally more submissive I would stop attracting men who feel the urge to put me in my place. I don’t know if that is a factor–I’m sure it is–but if sexism creates a situation where I face violence for being an “unruly” woman, than that is not my fault, but the fault of those who won’t relax and instead react violently.
For the record, for those who would blame me, “unruly” female behavior is usually nothing more than expressing dissatisfaction.
Amanda, that’s appailing that anyone would think, much less say, such things. There is never any excuse for domestic violence.
Hmm…. I couldhave been more clear in what I said. What I was reacting to is the things that Amanda said other people said/thought – I am not in some twisted way saying that Amanda tries to excuse DV.
Well Amanda, it could have been that hysterical uterus of yours, when it hops up on your shoulder; all you’d have to do is turn your head once and wham, it’s heckling those poor abusers! ;)
bean,
It sounds like you have a great program.
Although we didn’t publish our address, it’s location was easy to find. In it’s 25 history it had served, in various incarnations, as a drop-in center, food pantry, clothing closet and shelter. It was right in the middle of the worst area of the city, although the block it was on, was relatively tranquil, containing 2 churches and a school. But, it was not unusual to hear gunshots ringing out nearby. Women who had stayed there were considered to be part of an extended family, and so people came and went pretty frequently during daytime hours. After 5:00 we pretty much went into lockdown mode.
I would have liked to have had a five-mile rule, or something similar, but it really wasn’t possible, as most clients lived nearby, and so it’s location was well known. So we tried not to take women in immediate danger — we’d put them up overnight — but find a more secure placement in the morning.
I would like to see more money spent on developing long-term supportive housing for women and children, outside of the neighborhoods that spawn the problems in the first place.
Question: We didn’t get a lot of people on methadone, and there was a lot of controversy on whether or not people using meth were actually in recovery, particulary when the understanding was that people would be using meth for life. What’s your take on that situation?
query: I’m seeing Methadone and “meth” being used interchangably in recent posts.
typically, the term “meth” refers to methamphetamines, not methadone.
is this a confusion, fruedian slip kind of thing, or are the users here actually intending meth here to be used as a shorthand for methadone?
karpad-
You know I thought about that just as I hit the “submit” button. I’m referring here, to Methadone.
Again, without specifics, hard to say. Were they hurling angry words, tomatoes or bricks?
The analogy is to your DV clients. Were you handling cases where the women suffered only insults and tomatoes?
Or do you think they’ll be more centered, evolved and respecting of others after a long prison term?
Do you think they’d be more centered, evolved and respecting of others if given a suspended sentence and probation? Because that, not getting sent to the woods to hang out with Mennonites for a couple of months, is likely what domestic-violence convicts in South Carolina are going to face. It’s only a misdemeanor.
I’m all for creative alternative sentencing that works. Is your state likely to fund Mennonite camps all over to take in all the domestic-violence perpetrators? Do you think those programs would work for adult males with substance-abuse or mental illness problems?
Jail is not a panacea (and here in California we’re strugging again with that whole rehabilitation thing), but it is a consequence and it gets the guy away from his victim for a while. If there is no real penalty for hitting your loved ones, why change?
You can blatantly see why this man is making the desicions he is in the way he talks to the female reporter. He him self is using emotional abuse to belittle her and what she is trying to say. I would not be suprised if this man beats his wife. Someone should let him know what an ignorant peice of trash he is. And people in SC need to check who they let into office. This sexist MF is not doing a good job!!!
Check out the blog on the Huffigton Post for mother’s day – they actually posted a blog by someone about domestic violence rather than about all the rich moms enjoying the perfect family unit. The link is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-kaiser-greenland/the-other-side-of-mother_b_20992.html
I have just completed a book titled Family Terror that is available at http://www.FamilyTerror.com. The name of the book is significant. By calling this abusive behavior domestic violence or a domestic dispute we give permission for the violence not to be taken seriously. If a fight happened in a fast food restaurant we would not call it a hamburger dispute. It would be a crime. Also, Family Terror is a crime.
And there lies the ultimate solution. We don’t need more conventional shelters. In fact we will need fewer conventional shelters if only we treat “Family Terror” as a crime. The abuser is the criminal. It is not a logical solution to hide the victim and let the abuser run free. There are technical methods to guarantee protective orders are enforced.
If we continue down the path we are currently on, this violence and its results will multiply with each generation. Stop and think about one abuser and victim and their children. How many lives will be impacted in the next generation or next 50 years because of these people? Keep in mind that most children grow up to be either a victim or an abuser if they were raised in that environment. It is also important to note that 80% of the people who are incarcerated today grew up in abusive homes. So each of these crimes causing the incarceration, also had victims as well.
The most prudent use of funds is stopping the abuser. If the abuser is stopped, many things will change for the better. This abuse is the TRUE SILENT EPIDEMIC in our country.
Anytime there is a great deal of money being passed around, there is going to be issues embraced that are selfish and not wholesome to the good of the cause.
The big question is how can we the proper solutions started and cease the improper band aid expenses that are just plain wasteful of our tax money.