Tag money

Big Money v. No Money: VAWA and the Men’s Rights Movement

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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

Restraining Orders and Bureaucracy Don’t Mix

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Restraining orders were designed to be easily obtained so that at-risk women could quickly and conveniently gain relief from dicey situations.

Conceptually, the motive behind their legislative enactment is pretty hard to fault.

Common sense, however, should warn us (and should have warned lawmakers from the start) that a government process that’s quick and convenient is one that’s going to be abused.

And when there’s money to be made from that process, moreover—in this case by everyone from attorneys, police departments, and courts to social workers, feminist advocacy groups, and psychotherapists—it’s one to be doubly dubious of.

Over the three decades since restraining orders were instituted, both their breadth of applicability and punitive force have steadily magnified.

If the standards that determine when a restraining order is warranted have changed at all, however, those standards have only slackened.

Practice has outstripped principle.

Restraining orders may now be issued to arrest any minor conflict—including, for example, Facebook annoyances—but still retain their original implications: violence, predatory stalking, and other extreme misconduct.

Even the paper applications remain the same. Restraining orders are one-size-fits-all documents.

And their residue never just evaporates. Restraining order recipients may be denied employment even years later, because the issuance of these instruments remains a matter of public record. They may even be recorded in registries for convenient public access. Some job applications, what is more, explicitly ask if a potential employee has “been the subject of a restraining order.” Doctrinaire advocates of restraining orders still perpetuate the illusion that they’re only issued to domestic abusers and other social malefactors, so the public presumption is that if you’ve received a restraining order, you’re a batterer, stalker, or some other form of sexual or criminal deviant—and clearly not a great candidate for employment anywhere. Nor a great candidate, for that matter, to adopt a child or share someone else’s life.

The law applies a double-standard. On the one hand, it regards restraining orders as civil misdemeanors and no big deal. Recipients of restraining orders are supposed to mind them for their duration and then shrug them off: c’est la vie. On the other hand, it won’t hesitate to judge a person for his or her having received a restraining order, and may regard and treat a restraining order recipient like a criminal.

As one respondent to this blog points out, the safeguards against criminalizing someone unjustly have been entirely circumvented:

Before these restraining order injunctions came about, it was up to the police and the district attorney to move forth prosecution. The police investigate crimes, and the district attorney helps prosecute crimes. If something did not appear to be severe, deserving punishment, and a problem to society or its individuals, it was brushed off.

In comes restraining orders.

Yes, restraining orders can help an individual develop criminal allegations against another individual in civil court. However, a judge generally has the power to rule over simple things, such as harassment, whereby a bench trial can occur. Many other things, such as assault, are criminal allegations, whereby a person is granted a right to a jury.

It is the right to a jury that has become degenerated throughout these proceedings. As such, members of society have been allowed to attack one another without any observation of a “reasonable person” standard. The judge, no longer impartial, becomes the reasonable person.

Restraining order legislation all but automates the process of saddling a person indefinitely with criminal imputations that are legitimated by a judge based solely on a brief interview with the restraining order applicant alone and that need never be proven at all, let alone to a jury of the restraining order recipient’s peers.

Restraining orders have made determining who’s a criminal and who isn’t a completely bureaucratic process. What should demand extreme deliberation has become an arbitrary call.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Order Administration and Money, Money, Money, Money, Money

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“The restraining order law is perhaps the second most unconstitutional abomination in our legal system, after our so-called child protection (DSS) laws. The restraining order process is designed to allow an order to be issued very easily, and to be appealed, stopped, or vacated only with the utmost difficulty….

“The motives for this law are legion. First, it makes the Commonwealth a bunch of money by allowing it to leverage massive Federal grants. It makes feminist victim groups a lot of money by providing millions in state and federal grants to stop ‘domestic violence.’ It makes lawyers and court personnel a lot money as they administer the Godzilla-sized system they have built to deal with these orders. It makes police a lot of money, as they are able to leverage huge grants for arrests of violators. It makes mental health professionals a lot of money dealing with the mandatory therapy always required in these situations. It makes thousands of social workers a lot of money providing social services for all the families that the law destroys. It makes dozens of men’s batterers programs a lot of money providing anger management treatment ordered by courts in these proceedings.”

—Attorney Gregory Hession

The aggregation of money is not only the dirty little secret behind the perpetuation of constitutionally insupportable restraining order laws that are a firmly rooted institution in this country and in many others across the globe; money is also what ensures that very few mainstream public figures ever voice dissenting views on the legitimacy and justice of restraining orders.

Lawyers and judges I’ve talked to readily own their disenchantment with restraining order policy and don’t hesitate to acknowledge its malodor. It’s very rare, though, to find a quotation in print from an officer of the court that says as much. Job security is as important to them as it is to the next guy, and restraining orders are a political hot potato, because the feminist lobby is a powerful one and one that’s not distinguished for its temperateness or receptiveness to compromise or criticism.

I’m not employed as an investigative journalist. I’m a would-be kids’ humorist who earns his crust as a manual laborer and sometime editor of student essays and flier copy. My available research tools are a beater laptop and Google.

What a casual search engine query returned to me in terms of numbers and government rhetoric that substantiate the arguments made in this post’s epigraph is this (emphases in the excerpts below are added):

Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies and Enforcement of Protection Orders Program

Number: 16.590
Agency: Department of Justice
Office: Violence Against Women Office

Program Information

Authorization:

Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005, Title I, Section 102, Public Law 109-162; Violence Against Women Act of 2000, Public Law 106-386; Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. 3796hh, as amended.

Objectives:

To encourage States, Indian tribal governments, State and local courts (including juvenile courts), tribal courts, and units of local government to treat domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking as serious violations of criminal law.

Types of Assistance:

PROJECT GRANTS

Uses and Use Restrictions:

Grants may be used for the following statutory program purposes: (1) To implement proarrest programs and policies in police departments, including policies for protection order violations. (2) To develop policies, educational programs, protection order registries, and training in police departments to improve tracking of cases involving domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Policies, educational programs, protection order registries, and training described in this paragraph shall incorporate confidentiality, and privacy protections for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. (3) To centralize and coordinate police enforcement, prosecution, or judicial responsibility for domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking cases in teams or units of police officers, prosecutors, parole and probation officers, or judges. (4) To coordinate computer tracking systems to ensure communication between police, prosecutors, parole and probation officers, and both criminal and family courts. (5) To strengthen legal advocacy service programs for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, including strengthening assistance to such victims in immigration matters. (6) To educate judges in criminal and civil courts (including juvenile courts) about domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking and to improve judicial handling of such cases. (7) To provide technical assistance and computer and other equipment to police departments, prosecutors, courts, and tribal jurisdictions to facilitate the widespread enforcement of protection orders, including interstate enforcement, enforcement between States and tribal jurisdictions, and enforcement between tribal jurisdictions. (8) To develop or strengthen policies and training for police, prosecutors, and the judiciary in recognizing, investigating, and prosecuting instances of domestic violence and sexual assault against older individuals (as defined in section 3002 of this title) and individuals with disabilities (as defined in section 12102(2) of this title). (9) To develop State, tribal, territorial, or local policies, procedures, and protocols for preventing dual arrests and prosecutions in cases of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, and to develop effective methods for identifying the pattern and history of abuse that indicates which party is the actual perpetrator of abuse. (10) To plan, develop and establish comprehensive victim service and support centers, such as family justice centers, designed to bring together victim advocates from non-profit, non-governmental victim services organizations, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, probation officers, governmental victim assistants, forensic medical professionals, civil legal attorneys, chaplains, legal advocates, representatives from community-based organizations and other relevant public or private agencies or organizations into one centralized location, in order to improve safety, access to services, and confidentiality for victims and families. Although funds may be used to support the colocation of project partners under this paragraph, funds may not support construction or major renovation expenses or activities that fall outside of the scope of the other statutory purpose areas. (11) To develop and implement policies and training for police, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, and the judiciary in recognizing, investigating, and prosecuting instances of sexual assault, with an emphasis on recognizing the threat to the community for repeat crime perpetration by such individuals. (12) To develop, enhance, and maintain protection order registries. (13) To develop human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing programs for sexual assault perpetrators and notification and counseling protocols.

Applicant Eligibility:

Grants are available to States, Indian tribal governments, units of local government, and State, tribal, territorial, and local courts.

Beneficiary Eligibility:

Beneficiaries include criminal and tribal justice practitioners, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking victim advocates, and other service providers who respond to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

Credentials/Documentation:

According to 42 U.S.C. § 3796hh(c), to be eligible to receive funding through this Program, applicants must:
(1) certify that their laws or official policies–
(A) encourage or mandate arrests of domestic violence offenders based on probable cause that an offense has been committed; and
(B) encourage or mandate arrest of domestic violence offenders who violate the terms of a valid and outstanding protection order;
(2) demonstrate that their laws, policies, or practices and their training programs
discourage dual arrests of offender and victim;
(3) certify that their laws, policies, or practices prohibit issuance of mutual restraining orders of protection except in cases where both spouses file a claim and the court makes detailed findings of fact indicating that both spouses acted primarily as aggressors and that neither spouse acted primarily in self-defense; and
(4) certify that their laws, policies, and practices do not require, in connection with the prosecution of any misdemeanor or felony domestic violence offense, or in connection with the filing, issuance, registration, or service of a protection order, or a petition for a protection order, to protect a victim of sexual assault, domestic violence, or stalking, that the victim bear the costs associated with the filing of criminal charges against the offender, or the costs associated with the filing, issuance, registration, or service of a warrant, protection order, petition for a protection order, or witness subpoena, whether issued inside or outside the State, Tribal or local jurisdiction; and
(5) certify that their laws, policies, or practices ensure that—
(A) no law enforcement officer, prosecuting officer or other government official shall ask or require an adult, youth, or child victim of a sex offense as defined under Federal, Tribal, State, Territorial, or local law to submit to a polygraph examination or other truth telling device as a condition for proceeding with the investigation of such an offense; and
(B) the refusal of a victim to submit to an examination described in subparagraph (A) shall not prevent the investigation of the offense.

Range and Average of Financial Assistance:

Range: $176,735–$1,167,713
Average: $571,816.

That’s a pretty fair lump of dough, and what it’s for—among other things as you’ll notice if you read between the lines—is to “educate” our police officers and judges about what their priorities should be.

Note that eligibility requirements for receiving grants through this program include (1) the prohibition of counter-injunctions, that is, restraining orders counter-filed by people who have had restraining orders issued against them; (2) the issuance of restraining orders at no cost to their applicants; and (3) the acceptance of plaintiffs’ allegations on faith. Note, also, that one of the objectives of this program is to promote the establishment of registries that make the names of restraining order recipients conveniently available to the general public.

The legitimacy of these grants (“grants” having a more benevolent resonance to it than “inducements”) goes largely uncontested, because who’s going to say they’re “for” crimes against women and children?

The rhetorical design of all things related to the administration of restraining orders and the laws that authorize them is ingenious and, on its surface, unimpeachable.

By everyone, that is, except the victims of a process that is as manifestly and multifariously crooked as a papier-mâché flagpole.

Paying authorities and the judiciary to assume a preferential disposition toward restraining order applicants completely undermines the principles of impartiality and fair and equal treatment that our system of laws was established upon.

It isn’t cash this process needs. It’s change.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com