Shat terd

Men 

The hidden half of domestic violence

How to have eternal life

Men are Presumed Guilty in Domestic Disputes

http://www.glennsacks.com/baseball_players_domestic.htm

Baseball Player's Domestic Violence Arrest Demonstrates How Men are
Presumed Guilty in Domestic Disputes
By Glenn Sacks




Baltimore Orioles pitcher Scott Erickson was arrested after an
altercation with his girlfriend last week--the latest example of how
police often arrest men who have been attacked by their female
partners.

According to the Associated Press, the Baltimore police concluded
that Erickson's girlfriend Lisa Ortiz: initiated the fight by hurling
objects; decided to come back twice after Erickson carried her out of
the apartment; repeatedly kicked the apartment door; caused Erickson
two minor injuries, one of them to his pitching arm; and herself
suffered no injuries.

Nonetheless the police, who were operating under Maryland's mandatory
arrest law, interpreted Erickson's actions as excessive and are
charging him with second-degree assault. Ortiz states that Erickson,
who did not pursue her either time after carrying her out, "has never
been physically abusive toward me, and in no way do I feel threatened
or felt fear from Scott." Ortiz was not arrested.

Domestic violence activist Greg Schmidt, a police lieutenant who
created the Seattle police department's domestic violence
investigation unit in 1994, says that cases like Erickson's
demonstrate the way men are often presumed guilty in domestic
disputes. He notes that mandatory arrest laws, such as California's,
frustrate police officers because they are "expected to make arrests
in petty incidents, often where the woman is the aggressor, the abuse
is mutual, or it is unclear who the aggressor was."

"The domestic violence industry--the trainers, the shelter directors,
etc.--can spin things however they want," he says, "but most street
cops know that women are just as likely to start domestic disputes as
men are. But arresting women puts you under lot of scrutiny. It's
bad for your career."

Schmidt also criticizes the dominant aggressor doctrine which
discourages dual arrests (which are often an appropriate measure) and
instructs police to downplay who struck the first blow. Instead,
police are asked to focus on who is (supposedly) in control of the
situation and who is more fearful--often code words for "arrest the
man."

Part of the problem is the training that police officers receive from
the domestic violence industry, which insists that 95% of domestic
violence is committed by men. Southern California domestic violence
consultant Anne O'Dell, who has conducted over 500 domestic violence
trainings of police officers and commanders, judges, district
attorneys, and victim advocates, tells her trainees that "if a police
officer is arresting more than 8% women, you've got a real problem.
When an officer arrests 12% or 15% women, I'm outraged." O'Dell says
that dual arrests should occur in no more than 3% of incidents.

There is virtually no current data which supports the "95%" myth.
According to the US Department of Justice's 1998 Report on the
National Violence Against Women Survey, men comprise nearly 40% of
all domestic violence victims. California State Long Beach University
professor Martin Fiebert has compiled an on-line bibliography
(www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm) which examines 130 scholarly
investigations (104 empirical studies and 26 reviews and/or analyses)
which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more
aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or
male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies
exceeds 77,000.

Domestic violence researchers Susan Steinmetz, Richard Gelles, and
Murray Straus, early advocates for battered women and authors of the
influential and groundbreaking Behind Closed Doors: Violence in
American Families, conducted two major studies for the Family
Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, both of which
found similar rates of abuse between husbands and wives.

As Gelles explained in "The Missing Persons of Domestic Violence:
Male Victims," "Contrary to the claim that women only hit in self-
defense, we found that women were as likely to initiate the violence
as were men."

In addition, studies by researchers R.L. McNeeley and Coramae Richey
Mann show that women compensate for their lesser physical strength by
their greater use of weapons and the element of surprise. According
to Phil Cook, author of Abused Men the Hidden Side of Domestic
Violence, while abused women tend to be seriously injured more than
abused men, often it is men who receive the most serious injuries,
because of the weapons factor.

Once a man is arrested for domestic violence it can be difficult (and
expensive) for him to extricate himself. Family law attorney Lisa
Scott, founder of the domestic violence activist group Taking Action
Against Bias in the System, says that district attorneys are rarely
willing to drop domestic violence cases against men, even when the
evidence is scant and the female "victims" themselves ask that
charges be dropped.

Many women's advocates correctly note that these drop requests can at
times be motivated by economic dependency or because women are
unfairly made to feel guilty for nonviolently "provoking" violent
men. However, Scott explains that it is much more common that women
request drops because they know that they initiated the violence, or
that they participated equally in it, and they do not want their male
partners to be prosecuted unfairly.

Men in Erickson's position often face an agonizing choice. If they
do nothing, they allow the abuse to continue and possibly escalate.
If they attempt to defend themselves, they take the chance that
someone will call the police and they will be arrested. If they call
the police, they are in danger of being arrested and prosecuted for
what is really their female partners' violence.

According to Gay Kennedy, formerly the domestic violence adviser on
the LAPD Harbor Division advisory board, "the system has become very
unfair to men."

"Studies show that there are many male victims of domestic violence
but that they don't report it," she notes. "It's not hard to see why.
Anyone who is attacked by their partner should call the police, but
male victims don't want to risk being sucked into a system which is
hopelessly stacked against them. And the domestic violence industry,
which is rife with anti-male prejudice, is part of the problem."



This column first appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the
San Francisco Daily Journal (8/8/02)

Glenn Sacks writes about gender issues from the male perspective. He
can be reached at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.

 

(please click above to vote for this site)

JUNE is Domestic Violence Against Men Awareness Month