http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-kaiser-greenland/the-other-side-of-mother_b_20992.html

The analogy is to your DV clients. Were you handling cases where the women suffered only insults and tomatoes?

Or do you think they’ll be more centered, evolved and respecting of others after a long prison term?

Do you think they’d be more centered, evolved and respecting of others if given a suspended sentence and probation? Because that, not getting sent to the woods to hang out with Mennonites for a couple of months, is likely what domestic-violence convicts in South Carolina are going to face. It’s only a misdemeanor.

I’m all for creative alternative sentencing that works. Is your state likely to fund Mennonite camps all over to take in all the domestic-violence perpetrators? Do you think those programs would work for adult males with substance-abuse or mental illness problems?

Jail is not a panacea (and here in California we’re strugging again with that whole rehabilitation thing), but it is a consequence and it gets the guy away from his victim for a while. If there is no real penalty for hitting your loved ones, why change?

You know I thought about that just as I hit the “submit” button. I’m referring here, to Methadone.

It sounds like you have a great program.

Although we didn’t publish our address, it’s location was easy to find. In it’s 25 history it had served, in various incarnations, as a drop-in center, food pantry, clothing closet and shelter. It was right in the middle of the worst area of the city, although the block it was on, was relatively tranquil, containing 2 churches and a school. But, it was not unusual to hear gunshots ringing out nearby. Women who had stayed there were considered to be part of an extended family, and so people came and went pretty frequently during daytime hours. After 5:00 we pretty much went into lockdown mode.

I would have liked to have had a five-mile rule, or something similar, but it really wasn’t possible, as most clients lived nearby, and so it’s location was well known. So we tried not to take women in immediate danger — we’d put them up overnight — but find a more secure placement in the morning.

I would like to see more money spent on developing long-term supportive housing for women and children, outside of the neighborhoods that spawn the problems in the first place.

Question: We didn’t get a lot of people on methadone, and there was a lot of controversy on whether or not people using meth were actually in recovery, particulary when the understanding was that people would be using meth for life. What’s your take on that situation?

For the record, for those who would blame me, “unruly” female behavior is usually nothing more than expressing dissatisfaction.

Emmetropia, absent in any way from your discussion is the consideration that violence (except in self-defense) is a criminal, harmful, immoral act. Yes, by all means, empower the battered women. But how odd that you do not consider what should be done about their batterers.

I’m not sure what you’re asking for here. Are you asking for a one-size-fits-all sentence for all batterers? I have yet to experience the perfect Platonic form floating in the ether, that represents all forms of violence, all perpetrators, or all victims, or all men, or all women. I’m not a big fan of mandatory sentencing requirements. If you wonder why, ask my friend who served a mandatory 15 year sentence under the Rockefeller Drug Law, for a stupid one-time mistake she made to make some quick cash.

Or maybe we should force everyone convicted of domestic violence, to fight each other in a cockring in SC?

It’s nice to talk about help, and choices, and not seeing the world in black and white. But I somehow can’t help but think that if we were talking about violence between strangers, you wouldn’t focus so fixedly on the victims. If we were discussing roving bands of neo-Nazi youth who were attacking black people on the street, would you be most worried about the environment that produced those youth? About whether jailing them was really the best option?

Again, without specifics, hard to say. Were they hurling angry words, tomatoes or bricks?

Actually, I’d probably recommend a more creative sentencing alternative. There’s a great Mennonite program in SC where kids live in the woods for a couple of years with Mennonite men, and build they own homes and kill their own food. Great outcomes. Especially good for boys needing father figures.

Or do you think they’ll be more centered, evolved and respecting of others after a long prison term?

In other words, a 15-year-old boy having non-forcible, consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend will NEVER be convicted of a sexual crime (regardless of how many MRA’s will try to convince you otherwise

Well, I don’t know what an MRA is. But they were profiling a case on the Greenville channel I believe,a couple of months ago, about such a case, that the parents were trying to get overturned.

If I was actually the Women’s League sycophant that Josh would like to imagine I am, I could perhaps, understand your repeated and condescending dismissals. I’ve worked with a number of such women, who stayed as long as the cameras were running, but being sure to escape the blighted neighborhood before darkness fell. Their support is necessary and vital to the maintenance of women’s shelters, but as a general rule they don’t have any depth of understanding as to the numerous and messy complications that infect the lives of the women who actually live there.

Not that it’s any of your business Josh, but my upbringing was strictly blue collar. I discovered libraries early in life — a social good I’m profoundly grateful for. I was the first in my family to go to college and I’ll be paying student loans at the same time I’m receiving social security. My profoundly damaged mother, believed that my interest in education meant I was turning my back on god and my biological destiny as a woman, and that I was possessed by the devil. She threw me out of the house over 20 years ago, an hour before my final exam on Immanuel Kant — an exam I sobbed through. This precipitated a deep depression, and I ended up in a women’s shelter, where I lived side by side with heroin addicts and DV victims for about 8 weeks, until I could secure on-campus housing with the start of the fall semester. I was grateful for that place, too. It gave me the space and time to critically unpack the belief systems I was raised with, and to find a new way for myself.

So you see, my interest is not merely academic. I try to keep a hand in the shelter community, when I can, and why I agreed to join a Catholic Worker community for a year, when I was exploring what road to next take. Although I haven’t been a Catholic in many years, I believed in their commitment to living and working with the poor. It was an enriching experience, that continues to yield fruit. It is sad that many people here choose to believe that my experiences there with women who did not have the options afforded by your enlighted advocacy, masks a deep contempt for women. Acknowledging the realities of people’s lives — women and men — honors them, I think. Prior to my experience there, I really believed in the concept of individual self-determination. I came away, however, understanding that the notion of freewill could be an illusory concept, if an individual as a child, was conditioned to accept that violence, emotional and physical pain, degradation, and hopelessness was simply the stuff of existence. Understanding that, enabled me to be compassionate to the woman who had left for the 20th time, swearing once again, that she wouldn’t return. There is a huge difference between blaming a woman for her situation, and acknowledging that in her worldview, there is no a real choice to be made, when al choices are essentially the same.

But it’s very interesting that rather than engaging in honest and critical dialogue, you feel the need to “put me in my place” by suggesting that I can’t be a real feminist or have a real informed opinion here, simply because I offer an alternative perspective. That says something about you, not me.

News flash, Josh: that’s no different, nor any less offensive, than claiming an educated black man isn’t a “real” African-American because he doesn’t use ghetto language.

So you see, I believe I’ve qualified my experience here. I don’t know many Womens Leaguer’s who’ve actually lived 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with these women — lived in the fullness of community, with all that entails. Yet my experiences are dismissed as unmeaningful and not representative of the DV population.

Now even someone with the most rudimentary of sociological skills, has to at least be a little curious when a group exhibits strong tendencies outside the accepted cultural norm. It is the blip in the data-set that is meaningful. At least it is if you’re truly interested in making your services available to those who fall between the cracks….

emma writes:

If you think that the majority of DV victims are substance abusers, you are quite mistaken. There is no statisical basis to that. I suspect that you are drawing on your experience at your shelter, which as you say, is not a battered women’s shelter…Your shelter expriences were colored by the fact that you worked with women that had multiple challenges. That does not mean that most DV victims have multiple challenges. Again, anyone in the social work/therapy field worth their weight in salt know that DV victims can do everything right, and still be abused. Even some of the most non-feminist professionals acknowledge this.

bean writes:

Well, as someone who works in a DV shelter (yes, specifically set up as a shelter to help women escaping DV, and in which women will have to work damn hard every single day while there on getting out of DV relationships, for good), I have to say that I strongly disagree with most of what Emmet claims is true of DV victims. While there is some similarity in his story in what I experience at work every day, most of it is not even close. the demographics of women are vastly (VASTLY) different, for one thing. While we’ve sheltered women ranging in age from 15 -60, the average age is about 25. Yes, many have dealt with issue like drug abuse (and poverty and homelessness), but not even close to the numbers Emmett claims were true in his shelter.

(BTW, bean, I’m a woman.)

Hmmm, is it just possible that women living in shelters, but not living in DV shelters, are not included in these surveys? I’ve seen more good studies recently on DV and the disabled, than I have on the deeply impoverished. It’s hard to track down and survey women who are busy scurrying from one DSS appointment to another, in order to meet the qualifications for their $360 dollar housing subsidy, and $140 dollar food stamp card. If they’re not lucky enough to score a bus token or pass from their worker, or shelter they’re staying at, they’re hoofing it from one end of the city to another, trying to make their appointments, and to score enough signatures on the job card, to prove they’re actively seeking employment.

These women aren’t captured in national datasets, evaluating the incidence and risk factors related to DV. But just because you don’t count them, doesn’t mean they’re not there.

And guess what? Most women who frequent shelters because of chronic homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness, even though they regularly experience violence at the hands of men, don’t identify themselves as abused or as having experienced domestic violence. When we would do an intake with a new guest, we would try to get as much background as possible. Rarely would they describe themselves as victims of abuse. Only after spending time with these women and hearing the details of their lives, would the existence of violence come into play. One day a 45 year old guest took off her shoe to show me her foot. I had made a joke about her small feet. All that remained was her heel and about two inches of foot in front of that. She explained that when she was 18, her boyfriend had shot her foot off with a shotgun. This was a man she would later marry, entering into a chaotic, on- again, off-again relationship, that centered around their use of heroin and most recently methodone.

She was surprised and perplexed when we asked her to talk a little more about the violence in their relationship. Domestic abuse? Sure he had shot her foot off, but he didn’t mean to; he was only trying to scare her and misaimed the gun. Her and the “old man,” just always had a very passionate relationship.

And that’s what people on this list don’t get. Violence is so much a part of their lives, and has been since childhood, that it’s not domestic abuse. It’s life. And the early co-mingling of parental love and pain, creates for some people, a type of addiction, that they are powerless to escape, without some very deep work. Not simply counseling because the most recent man or men abused them, but counseling that helps them see how they first began to chase after the feeling they had as children, when the mother or father who was unprepared to meet their needs, first conditioned them for their later lives. You may wish to dismiss their experiences because they’re not in a “Domestic Violence Shelter,” or because they’re addicts, or mentally ill, but their experiences are just as real as the middle-class women you all purport to advocate for. And don’t kid yourself. You’re not advocating for the very desparately poor woman who has never had safety net, and never had a positive experience they could really own. They wouldn’t seek out a DV shelter.

And it’s this specific group of people I am referring to when I am describing my experiences with women who repeatedly return to abusive relationships — be that abuse physical , mental or, often sexual.

I think a reality check is in order for everyone here who base their arguments on experiences at shelters that limit their services to self-professed domestic violence victims.

Dedicated DV shelters, due to their nature of their grant funding and defined outcome objectives contained within their funding proposals, must consistently demonstrate that their services result in successful outcomes for their clients, if they are to be funded year after year. I know, I write those applications for agencies all the time. As a result they must screen out women who present with additional risk factors that will tend to skew their desired outcomes. While I understand the need to keep the money coming in, it’s more than a little unfair to make sweeping generalizations about all women who suffer from domestic violence, when you are in fact, excluding half the population that experiences it from your service population.

Messy complications like crack addiction, mental illness, and chronic homelessness, make a successful outcome less likely. The DV shelter in the town where I worked, was well-funded by grants, and planned giving programs funded through wealthy benefactors, and billed the county for the care provided to women. While they would admit some women with a dependency on alcohol and prescription drug problems, they wouldn’t admit women whose substance abuse problems were chronic, unremitting, and whose drugs of choice were illegal. As far as mental illness — depression was okay — but let a women be diagnosed with a more severe problem, and they were out of the running altogether.

I can’t actually ever remember be able to get a bed for anyone I referred there. They did evaluate and accept three women that I recall, for admission when a longterm bed opened up. They were referred to us to house them in the interim. The DV shelter would call for updates on the clients, but after a time dropped them from their waiting list. Why? In the first instance, the middle-aged nurse wearing an arm and shoulder brace, was shown to have visited several women’s shelters across the country specifically so that they would pay for the demoral she had been obtaining using a forged doctor’s evaluation. We quickly determined that the second woman was hearing voices and needed to be evaluated for medication and outpatient treatment through the psych center. In the last instance, a young girl who had traveled by bus from California with her clearly controlling and paranoid boyfriend, was found to be under guardianship of the court, and suffering from severe psychological and behavioral problems had walked away from a daytime outpatient treatment program.

In each instance we turned to the DV shelter for assistance in obtaining the needed services prior to their admissions at their shelter. We did not accept county funding for our clients because of the unrealistic expectations they placed on the clients, and supported ourselves exclusively through small, individual contributions. Would they use one cent of their funding for those women, or even facilitate getting them on their books, so they could bill for them? NO. The moment it was clear that these women suffered from issues that would screw up their outcome reports, they dropped them like hot potatoes, especially if they exhibited any propensity to violence themselves, and they became our wards.

It is meaningless to

Blaming the victim is blaming the victim. There is no justification for that.

Well said Bean.
I have a friend who was in an emotional abusessive relationship - she was, and is, among the smartest people I’ve ever known, and certainly knows how to make her opinions clear.
However through the years she was together with the guy, he managed to drain her of her self-confidence, and made her feel stupid. I didn’t get to know her until the last two years she was together with him, and only during the last year did I know her well enough to see there was a problem.

I did my part in rebuilding her self-confidence (together with others), and something much have worked, because he broke up with her, in a way that was ment to break her, but instead she managed to see how f*cked up the relationship had been, and get over it.
It took an additional year to get her to actually be confident in herself, and she still some times has her doubts, yet the woman I know now, is much different from the woman I knew back then. And a very close friend.
It was worth every single second I used, and I will do everthing to avoid that ever happening again (unlikely as it is).
Some would blame her for being in the situation, and thus help break her even more, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there were only one guilty party - the guy who did it. And the whole idea that someone might blame her, or people in similar situations (be it emotional or physicial abuse), makes me incredible angry.

She did say that she found that too many crimes, including cockfighting, to be punished as felonies

The point you’re missing is that South Carolina decided “too many crimes are punished as felonies, we should give people a chance, don’t lock them up and throw away the key on a first offense” was an argument that DID apply to beating your spouse, but DID NOT apply to cockfighting.

Emmetropia, absent in any way from your discussion is the consideration that violence (except in self-defense) is a criminal, harmful, immoral act. Yes, by all means, empower the battered women. But how odd that you do not consider what should be done about their batterers.

It’s nice to talk about help, and choices, and not seeing the world in black and white. But I somehow can’t help but think that if we were talking about violence between strangers, you wouldn’t focus so fixedly on the victims. If we were discussing roving bands of neo-Nazi youth who were attacking black people on the street, would you be most worried about the environment that produced those youth? About whether jailing them was really the best option?

Blaming the victim is blaming the victim. There is no justification for that.

I totally agree. I spent 6 years married to a very physically and mentally abusive man. He outwardly seemed like a great guy. There were no red flags for me or anyone in my family while we dated. However, three days into our marriage as we sat at an expensive B&B enjoying a seemingly lovely breakfast, he slapped me for no reason. There was no argument, nothing, just his hand across my face. I was shocked, confused, hurt, I knew it was wrong, yet I could not understand it or believe that such a thing could be happening to me. Yet, I did not want to leave, I did not want to face my family who had just spent so much time and money on our wedding, I simply did not want to believe that I could have made such a poor decision. So, I stayed and I stayed silent.
I never mentioned the abuse to anyone because as time went on, I knew I wasn’t ready to leave so I didn’t want to create worry for my family and hatred towards my husband. So, I did what I felt I could do for myself given my state of mind, I was obsessive with taking my BC after the first child, I went back to school, and I plotted on how to get out.
The breaking point for me came when my then 3 year old daughter casually mentioned to my parents that “daddy threw mommy down the stairs”. Once I heard that, I knew that if I wasn’t going to save myself, I had to save her from ever thinking this was normal or ok, so I said I was leaving and after a while, we were able to separate and divorce without any further physical harm. I was lucky.
In reading all of these posts, I have identified with so many of the points. I have often felt at fault for letting it go on as long as I did or for provoking fights (yes, I really did provoke things at times) when I had to know the outcome. I am not uneducated, poor, a minority, or a substance abuser (which is completely irrelevant to DV), but others have mentioned these aspects of the abuse.
In the end I have come to realize that no one can control another person’s actions/reactions and blaming me or any victim for the abuse is wrong under any circumstances.

1. I understand the point you’re trying to make regarding creating another class of felons but there is another dimension to consider. Research in the UK has clearly shown that a robust response to a first time offence of domestic violence has a remarkable (positive!) effect on recidivism - no small achievement on a crime (which in the UK) is accepted as the most likely to be repeated. Details of this ‘experiement’ can be found here:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/fprs104.pdf

2. I don’t know where you are in the world but the issue of the connections and overlap between substance abuse and domestic violence is being addressed in some areas. This toolkit:

http://www.womensaid.org.uk/campaigns&research/health%20and%20dv%20campaign/Stella%

was produced in the UK last year and I know the author utilised some American materials in its production.

(apologies - I don’t know the formula for posting better links)

3. Again, I am drawing on Uk research which may differ in the States but data here shows that by the time domestic violence comes to police attention, on *average* it is the 36th assault. In this context, a felony charge for a ‘first time offence’ takes on a different light - no?