According to Trudy W. Schuett’s “Betrayal of women - VAWA 2005”:
VAWA 2005 cannot help women much, if at all. Worse, it belittles their anguish, ignores their needs and insults their intelligence. In many cases, it makes a bad situation so much worse, it's a wonder this kind of approach has lasted a full decade with federal sustenance in partisan politics. At the heart of VAWA is the mistaken presumption that by removing women from their homes, jailing their husbands and indoctrinating their children, this will have a positive impact on intimate partner abuse.
With Father's Day now a month past, we need remember, again, that father absence seriously harms children, which makes father absence a well-known yet ignored variety of child abuse. According to both federally funded and private research, father absence is strongly correlated with every manner of suffering for their children from increased likelihood of rape and pregnancy to violence and drug abuse. The National Fatherhood Initiative has assembled volumes on the topic. Still, we remain unwilling to recognize the intentional excision of fathers from their children’s lives for what it is. It is domestic violence toward children. It is typically state approved. And legislation like VAWA creates a strong incentive for this variety of child abuse, by glorifying what is essentially archaic victim-feminist propaganda. VAWA is not likely to help either women or children, but it will certainly garner votes for politicians like Nancy Pelosi, who continue to be reelected by wooing votes from entrenched outdated women’s organizations like N.O.W.
Children not allowed access to their own fathers by VAWA are children who will pick father substitutes in the form of everything from extremist religions to gangs to raw self destructive licentiousness. So oppose domestic violence in all its forms; support father presence and help stop child abuse. Just say no to VAWA, where a woman who needs real help raising her children will, instead, as Shuett puts it, “[ be] bombarded with feminist ideology about being ‘empowered’ by her victimhood… helped to apply for an Order of Protection against her presumed offending spouse, [and told] Divorce is the ultimate solution to her problems.”
Edited: LI
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Lisa McKay
Under what circumstances is the presence of a physically or emotionally abusive husband/father in a household of benefit to a woman and her children? If the absence of a positive father figure is detrimental to the well-being of a child, certainly the presence of a bad father figure will have an equally negative effect, don't you think?
2 - Temple Stark
"abuse" is too far. Would it have been nice to have him around? Not sure. Abuse? No.
Of course we ran from him ...
If you're saying custody battles are unfair to men .. just say it.
3 - Lisa McKay
I'll take your last sentence another step further, Temple, because I realize that there is a movement afoot trying to make custody fairer to fathers (which I support in principle)and say that an abusive father doesn't deserve to have custody of or access to his children. Providing sperm does not a father make...
4 - Sister Ray
I will admit up front that I don't know all the details of the VAWA. But just by its name, I'm wary of all its ramifications because it sounds like one of those things that nobody wants to question. Who wants to be "for" violence against women? Sort of like laws named after a particular crime victim. If you express any doubts, it's like you're adding to the suffering.
I agree that fatherlessness (however it's caused) is a real problem in America today. It's a cold hard fact that children who live without a father in the house are more vulnerable to molesters. Some of them put on a "nice guy" act and pretend they just want to be a father figure to a lonely kid, but they have evil intentions.
I'm not saying that anyone should stay in an abusive relationship. Just warning that you have to be extra extra careful of who's around your children nowadays.
5 - Dana Blankenhorn
More blame the victim garbage. A lot of fathers aren't with their children because they are CRAP. They are crap as human beings, absolute human feces.
That's where you ought to be focusing your attention, not the victims taken out of a horrible situation (even if placed into one marginally less-so).
6 - RJ
Great points, SR...
7 - gonzo marx
what does being extra careful have to do with restraining orders against serial abuser?
if we are talking custody fights, that's one Issue...when we are talking about restraining orders against scumbags that abuse women and kids...no sympathy..
trash that would do harm to women and children should be tossed feet first into the wood chipper
nuff said?
Excelsior!
8 - RJ
"trash that would do harm to women and children should be tossed feet first into the wood chipper"
Oftentimes, it is a matter of he said/she said. You'd toss a fellow human being into a human shredder (just like the late Uday Hussein) over an accusation that may be baseless?
9 - Dave
"Still, we remain unwilling to recognize the intentional excision of fathers from their children’s lives for what it is. It is domestic violence toward children."
Bull. Don't even try to subvert the term "domestic violence" here.
If a mother shows up at a shelter bloodied and battered, she had damned well better be counseled to get away from the scumbag who did it.
10 - Dave
And wtf is up with the "No means NO" subject line? That's totally inappropriate.
11 - carmine
If a woman wants to be assured of winning child custody and all the benefits therin, her wisest option is to accuse the father of abuse. False abuse allegations can be made by women, by and large, without any fear of legal sanction. As abuse becomes defined more and more vaguely, virtually anything becomes abuse if the "victim" believes or pretends to believe it is abuse. Yes, No means NO to VAWA until some aspects of this legislation are cleaned up considerably. As of now VAWA is a policy that leads and has led to systematic child abuse. Father absence IS child abuse.
12 - carmine
See ifeminist Wendy McElroy's excellent article on the VAWA: http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0705/0705vawa.htm
13 - Sister Ray
Gonzo Marx, I was talking about children in female-headed households being vulnerable to abuse from someone besides their biological father. Mom's new boyfriend could just as likely be abusive as a biological father. Maybe more likely if you don't know the guy that well.
14 - gonzo marx
i understand that, nd the points carmine was making..
read what i wrote please
what YOU two don't seem to get is that all that is being doen to protect the women and children
are errors made?..of course
are they worth it if they spare one woman or child abuse?
yes
is that clear enough?
Excelsior!
15 - Sister Ray
Men's and women's lives have been ruined by false allegations of child abuse. Remember the McMartin preschool case in the 1980s?
Sometimes we respond before all the facts are in. A few years ago there were reports that wife-beating increased on Super Bowl Sunday. They said women's visits to emergency rooms went up because men got testosterone-crazed watching the game. There were all kinds of warnings to women and the NFL made public-service announcements.
It turned out to be flat not true. The emergency-room scenario was based on faulty data. But people got paranoid before they knew the facts.
16 - gonzo marx
i understand your point, and postulated exactly that in my earlier comments..
i do NOT want to see any false allegations enforced...
that being said..i would rather see the System err on the side of caution, protecting those women and children, than the many cases we see regularily of an abusive male violating a restraining order and causing harm to the unprotected women and kids
which is worse to you...an instance where a father has been wrongly accused, and thus needs to have only closely supervised visitation...or a case where a real abuser has the chance to do so over and over again?
i will always side with the defenseless women and kids...and while i would want the system to work better for all concerned...protecting innocents from abuse is the top priority, bar none
Excelsior!
17 - Dave
I'm sorry, but I don't trust anything "men's rights activists" claim. I've seen examples of their intellectual dishonesty too many times.
For that matter, McElroy's claim of being a feminist is nonsense as well.
Alas, A Blog has a bit on her.
18 - Sister Ray
Gonzo, I have an honest question in which I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.
How does VAWA apply when a woman abuses children? Can the man get any help in getting his children away from her?
19 - carmine
I read the "Alas, A Blog" bit. That is exactly the sort of fallacious silliness I would, Alas, have expected. When ad hominem is raised to the level of research and nick picking elevated to insight you know a movement is falling into despair. Alas, that is exactly the sort of feminism declared dead but a few years back and it is easy to see why. Thank you McElroy, you are a voice of reason to help feminism pull forward While the great Titanic "gender feminism" slowly, tragically, sinks. Many lives will have been lost in this wreck too.
20 - Dave
So McElroy and her ilk's penchant for dishonest nonsense that's easily debunked and "nitpicked" is what passes for serious research in your eyes?
21 - gonzo marx
Sister Ray,
there are other , legal , avenues for that type of abuse..
but if you check the statistics, the mumerical difference is so vast that the type of instituted guidelines for such don't seem to be warranted..
add to this the fact that even in those instances, it is much easier for the male spouse to physically stop the female from such actions...as opposed to the reverse
as i stated previously..custody battles and false allegations are one thing..and a battle fought in the legal system...
but in NO way should anything be done to make abuse of women and children one iota easier or more prevalent
any decent Father will understand this, and while i can readily agree there are times when this system penalizes a good father over a selfish mother...i still stand by that statement that i would rather see this happen many times than a single instance of a woman or child suffer abuse or killed
Excelsior!
22 - Temple Stark
Gonzo, you're overlooking the fact that even allegations of child abuse can ruin a man's career.
This is one of the most dicey areas of law and one of the areas I would advocate, as a journalist, that records be sealed until the trial is complete.
Then the guilty will be found so in the eyes of the law and in the public eye and the innocent will be found so - in the law and in the public eye.
In my first job, during the interview process, this was one of the questions asked of me: If you heard that a man or woman was accused of child abuse, how would you handle it?
23 - carmine
Dave,
"nitpicked" quod erat demonstrandum
24 - gonzo marx
Temple..i am all for keeping those records sealed until the trial is completed...
but then again, i think that all family court matters should be sealed
my whole point is to err on the side of caution when it comes to women and kids..NOT that any problems within the system shoudl not be corrected
but the current system has come a long way in keeping women and kids protected...
start from there, and work out the rest..
nuff said?
Excelsior!
25 - Sister Ray
Unfounded allegations can put people in prison as well as ruin their careers.
Gonzo, I will stipulate that men, overall, commit more violence than women. I am against violence to women and children. I *am* a women and I used to be a child.
I think the original poster was saying that a side effect of divorce and single parenthood is that children are at greater risk of abuse. Families are not just a husband and wife and their biological children anymore. There's divorce, stepfamilies, live-in partners, dates, etc. Children are every bit as vulnerable to abuse by a custodial parent's partner as by their biological parents. Maybe more so. A local newspaper looked at shaken-baby cases over a period of time and found that most were commited by the mother's partner who was not the biological father of the child.
A live-in boyfriend can beat a woman and children just as easily as a husband can. And then he can skip out the door. He doesn't have to worry about custody or child support. They're not his kids.