The previous post was a response to research conclusions published this year by Dr. Kelly Behre, director of the UC Davis Law School’s Family Protection and Legal Assistance Clinic.
In a paper titled, “Digging beneath the Equality Language: The Influence of the Fathers’ Rights Movement on Intimate Partner Violence Public Policy Debates and Family Law Reform,” Dr. Behre asserts there’s an absence of empirical evidence to support various arguments and statistical estimates published by men’s rights advocates respecting false restraining orders, false allegations of domestic violence, and judicial bias against men in family courts.
Ironic is that Dr. Behre’s denial of men’s groups’ position that men aren’t treated fairly is itself unfair.
When Dr. Behre says there’s no “empirical support” for estimates like 60 to 80% of restraining orders are unnecessary or based on falsehood, she means there are no formal audits of the process to back them up. She further examines studies that have been pointed to and finds those studies “problematic.”
Dr. Behre may well be right that empirical support for the claims of men’s groups is scant, shaky, or at best anecdotal. It’s disturbing, though, that Dr. Behre doesn’t find the dearth of studies that could be cited as empirical support a source of concern.
Clearly she has interests in both justice and human welfare.
A truism in law is that those with no money have no voice. Men’s rights groups are not lavishly funded teams of crack Ph.D.’s (they may in fact represent ragtag groups of man-on-the-street volunteers), and many if not most of those represented by such groups are themselves on the outside of the system looking in.
In contrast, consider these facts from the chart “Comparison of VAWA 1994, VAWA 2000, and VAWA 2005 Reauthorization Bill” compiled by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) eight years ago.
- Grand total of [federal] money allocated [under the Violence Against Women Act] from 1994 to 2011: $9.43 billion, including:
- STOP (Services and Training for Officers and Prosecutors) Grants: $2.85 billion
- Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies: $886 million
- Rural Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Enforcement Grants: $555 million
- Civil Legal Assistance for Victims of Violence: $588 million
- Sexual Assault Services: $250 million
- Education and Training for Judges and Court Personnel: $35 million
If battered women’s advocates like Dr. Behre find little empirical support for the plaints of men’s groups, they might at least find ample motive in these figures for systemic prejudice against men—and by extension all defendants who find themselves the targets of allegations of abuse (male and female).
While it’s noteworthy that comparatively little federal money has been approved for allocation to research studies, the magnitude of investment toward countering domestic violence is a clear pronouncement of priority, and this investment alone should suggest to a mind as trained and astute as Dr. Behre’s that allegations like “family courts discriminate against men and…mothers frequently and successfully make false allegations against men to obtain custody of children” entirely plausible.
Dr. Behre would call this observation a “commonsense argument” (“implying that the truth…is intuitively evident”).
Fair enough.
Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com
TALKING BACK to restraining orders 
It’s all a voodoo workshop and fraud. The government should be held accountable for its fraud and embezzelment of tax-payer money. Whatever the statistics are on restraining orders, such as domestic violence restraining orders, there’s also the argument that treatment is not effective, such as court-mandated court therapy. There are plenty of articles out there. I’ve already made my arguments about what the therapeutic answer is: It’s all fate, so stay away from people as much as possible.
There really isn’t a justification for any court to give out a restraining order, if but to consider the recklessness of not giving out a restraining order. But if a court is going to consider giving out restraining orders in support of the idea of separating people from each other in order to prevent the potential of a conflict, then I’m givent he belief they’d hand out restraining orders to anyone for fear that the Universe have it pre-determined that a conflict occur if the piece of paper wasn’t handed out. It comes off very totalitarian.
The embezzlement lies within the fact that handing out restraining orders doesn’t really solve the issue. However, I think the government feels justified in its actions due to a philosophy of legal compatibilism. As long as there is a person to blame as a proximate cause and adjudicate, it’s not engaging in fraud. Otherwise, the government would have to blame fate, God, or the Universe. But since the system of legal compatibilism is present, the government holds people accountable as proximate causes, whether or not that is an errorenous judgement. With that said, legal compatibilism is fraudulent IF you make an automatism argument and hold fate, God, or the Universe responsible.
With that said, it’s like all of these restraining order cases are just a form of therapy. The magic man (Judge) gives the illusion and impression through his authority that there is a right and wrong, that someone can be held responsible for actions, and then blames and adjudicates. It ends up being a form of therapy in a confusing world where there may be no free-will, and only the naive come off believing that something was accomplished and justice was served: People are given the illusion if not belief that one can be justified in adjudicating blame. However, that belief is misguided by the argument from authority fallacy, whereby people believe in a judge and the judge’s actions because the judge is an authority figure. That doesn’t make the judge into God or anything of that sort.
So, what’s happening is that naive people are going to court to seek restraining orders as a form of therapy. The judges are granting restraining orders, because they perceive human beings are better off being away from each other as much as possible due to humans, nature, and the Universe being unpredictable. Of course, I’m sure the legal system has already figured out that people are unpredictable, hence why so many people are put into jail.
In a lot of ways, it all ends out working for the judges. As long as the judges watch each other and don’t break the law, well, they get to stay out of jail and live their lives on Planet Earth without experiencing the horrors of jail or losing a loved one because of a piece of paper.
LikeLike
I think, too, that restraining orders are frauds because they’re represented, as you say, as “fixes” (which they never are) that work because they separate parties in conflict when in fact they’re intend to fix by punishing. Restraining orders don’t do anything. The orders themselves are just warnings. That’s it. The shaming that’s done with the documents, with how the documents are delivered, with how the documents are justified in the courtroom, with how the documents are publically recorded and preserved, etc. is the point of restraining orders. They’re punitive, and they don’t even punish people for anything they’ve actually done, necessarily; they punish people to ensure they don’t do anything (or anything else). They’re instruments of abusive coercion. The basic judicial position is, “We don’t know what you’ve done, you sick (son of a) bitch, but there are going to be serious consequences to whatever you do in the future.” Judges don’t know that anything that’s been reported is certainly true. Restraining orders are issued “just in case.” They punish ahead of time. Their only “restraint value” is humiliation and terrorism.
I recently read about a case in Oregon where the petitioner of a restraining order was murdered. In Oregon, violating a restraining order is a misdemeanor. Violating a restraining order 1,000 times will only amount to 1,000 misdemeanor charges. Restraining orders are literally, totally worthless as “instruments of protection.” They don’t protect; they only humiliate and terrorize. That’s the so-called protection.
Put another way, against a violent person who’s only going to be incensed by being issued a restraining order, a restraining order offers no protection. Worse, it may be the catalyst that inspires a violent person to shoot the petitioner. Restraining orders, then, are not only useless against violence but may be the reasons why people are attacked—and possibly killed.
Restraining orders’ only value to actual victims of violence is that they may improve police response in the event of a further act of violence (assuming it’s nonfatal) and may make it easier to prosecute the perpetrator of that further act of violence (assuming it’s nonfatal).
Restraining orders, then, are basically good PR. They’re justified on the basis that they prevent violence despite their being useless to stop it.
Another reason, why, like you say, there really is no justification.
LikeLike