“While some municipal court judges acknowledge that the domestic violence law can create injustices—one calls it ‘probably the most abused piece of legislation that comes to my mind’—there are counterpoints. Melanie Griffin, executive director of the Commission to Study Sex Discrimination in the Statutes, a legislative commission that drafted much of the 1991 law, says that for every individual who files a false report, ‘there are 100 women who don’t come in at all and stay there and get beaten.’”
—“N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs”
This quotation comes from a nearly 20-year-old journalistic exposé, yet you’ll find the same starkly meretricious apology for restraining order abuse routinely voiced today.
This quotation from the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) means that all people should be treated equally under the law, not that women should be privileged. Anyone who’s for women’s being afforded special treatment by the authorities and the courts opposes the message of the ERA, as do proponents of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
The argument, basically, is that it doesn’t matter if restraining order defendants’ rights are ignored, and it doesn’t matter if defendants are falsely accused, because there are many more victims of abuse who suffer in silence than there are false accusers.
The argument equates apples with orangutans. Its reasoning is partisan and purely emotion-based—and betrays ignorance of the fact that women, too, are falsely accused of domestic violence. Its thesis is that since there may be multitudes of unacknowledged victims of domestic violence, the state’s creating victims by abetting false prosecutions is of no statistical significance.
While everyone should feel for women who are “beaten” at home, no one should be forced by the state to endure “sympathy pains.” The falsely accused man or woman whose life is upturned or undone by hyped allegations or gross lies credited by careless judges is absolutely blameless for the suffering of strangers.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights guaranteed to all citizens under the Constitution, and equality and fair treatment under the law are among its mandates that brook no compromise. Denying the latter to anyone, ever—even if the motive is a sympathetic one—is categorically wrong.
The statement in the epigraph says: It’s okay if you, Mr. or Ms. Doe, are falsely accused and battered by the system, and it’s okay if it deprives you of your kids and home and livelihood and dignity and sanity, because some people you don’t know and never will know are reportedly “beaten” by some other people you don’t know and never will know.
It says there are women who suffer unjustly, so never mind if we make you suffer unjustly, too.
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