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Across America and particularly across California, women are beaten again and again. They run to the police but are lucky if they don't wind up in jail for their opposition to being beaten. Even after women are victorious in obtaining domestic violence restraining orders, they lose everything. Judges, who gave wives the restraining orders against their brutal husbands, turn around and eagerly give batterers all the property rights they want -- even when those actually owning the property are not part of the proceedings.
After a victim gets a restraining order, there is nobody to stop the batterer from living in the crawl space above his victim's living quarters and nobody to prevent him from coming back and killing his victim. "Restrained" batterers can critically injure their victims and then cut the health insurance of those victims, leaving the victims to die horrible deaths.
The government has policies in place that are used by batterers to stalk or kill their victims or their families. Batterers are allowed by governmental agencies and judges to imprison relatives of the victims and endanger the lives of their children. There is no help for victims, but there is a lot of state and federal assistance available to help batterers succeed in killing their victims. Domestic violence is the number one killer of young women in the United States. Our government and its leaders have made it so. It is time for a change or for a revolution.
PUBLIC LEADERSHIP THAT ENCOURAGES MISTREATMENT OF WOMEN
From John Edwards to George W. Bush, our leaders have shown that it is OK to trash the lives of women and gain in popularity as they do so. Even at the local level in Orange County, neither party has any respect for women. Republican District Attorney Tony Rackauckas (who was put in office by an alliance of the Democratic and Republican Party leadership in Orange County), will not prosecute the most terrifying cases of domestic violence. If he goes after anyone in a domestic violence situation, he goes after the victim. Frank Barbaro, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County, also seems to feel that victims are responsible for the violent beatings they incur. At the March 28th meeting of the Democratic Party of Orange County, Barbaro showed no hesitation in launching an orchestrated attack, blaming domestic violence victims for the actions of their assailants.
FEDERAL LAWS THAT HELP BATTERERS KILL THEIR VICTIMS
Under federal law,
(1) A batterer may suspend or cancel the phone service of his victim.
(2) A batterer may get full disability for injuring his hand as he knives or kills his victim while the victim, if she survives fully disabled, is frequently only entitled to the same benefits as an ILLEGAL ALIEN,
(3) There is no program in place that will allow a domestic violence victim to gain a job or keep her home or often even get food for her children. In fact, the laws are mostly to the contrary.
In most families, the husband has his name as the lead on the phone bill. Under federal law, this gives him the power to suspend the cell phone of every member of his family. Without a phone, the wife cannot call for help when her "restrained" husband comes back to kill her.
Of the single-income families, the vast majority involve the male as the sole bread-winner. This means that women in those situations, even if they worked to put their husband through college, often have not paid enough quarters into Social Security to get full Social Security Disability when their husbands beat them into a disability. The husbands on the other hand could collect full disability as a result of injuring themselves while killing or nearly killing their wives.
It is the single-income situation where women are most often imprisoned in relationships without recourse. They know that, if they leave, they will take food and shelter away from their children and probably end any chance that their kids could get into college. No loving mother would leave and subject her children to that if she saw what was coming.
Often batterers lure professional women into this situation by having them stay at home to raise and/or homeschool the kids until they are no longer employable due to the long absence from the workforce. It is about control and disrespect. Often the batterers wait until they have their victims right where the want them and then the beatings start
Two years ago, I spoke to a homeschooling mother who had left after violent beatings. Her daughter was about to graduate from homeschool but could not even get a ride to the California Homeschool Network graduation ceremony. Friends often wash their hands of domestic violence victims, saying that they brought it upon themselves or it's not their lives. The mother related that her daughter's brilliant future as a concert pianist was destroyed by the mother's decision to leave the violence. She said that any chance of her daughter attending college had ended when she walked out. She felt sad about her daughter's situation and was tempted to return for more beatings for the sake of her daughter. This story is the norm among stay-at-home moms who have to decide whether their own life is worth more than their children's health and careers. Most mothers love their children so much that the answer is unequivocally that they would stay and gladly die to protect their children's futures. Such loyalty is never rewarded. If they live long enough to get their kids into college, loving mothers are treated as if they are little better than moldy trash.
A lot of times, society blames women for their situation but domestic violence expert, Dr. Lundy Bancroft explains in Why Does He Do That that victims of domestic violence are never enablers and that they really do not have choices. Enablers are people outside the relationship who accept the batterers with open arms when the violence becomes apparent.
