RADAR ALERT:
VAWA 4 All: This is the Week to Deliver

This week the VAWA4All Campaign has good news and bad news to share.

The good news is, our people in Washington are meeting with some key elected officials who are extremely supportive of our cause. That's very encouraging.

The bad news is, these elected officials say they have not seen or heard anything that resembles an outpouring of mass discontent with the current version of VAWA.

That worries us, because next week on July 19th, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding hearings on VAWA. As things stand right now, the VAWA bill will sail through the hearings without even a peep of concern.

It's crucial that the Judiciary Committee hear the truth about VAWA.

So RADAR has just unveiled an analysis that identifies the 12 major flaws with VAWA. This analysis is found at the end of this Alert, and copy suitable for printing can be downloaded from the internet at: http://www.mediaradar.org/RADAR_Analysis_of_VAWA.pdf. We encourage you to carefully review this analysis and share it with others as appropriate.

So for the July 19 hearings, it's absolutely vital that the Senators hear from all sides, not just the people who willingly abuse the truth and discriminate against men.

So for Week 2 of our Shock and Awe campaign, we're going to pick up where we left off last week.

Since this is the critical week leading up the hearings, we are asking that each person who reads this Alert telephone and/or fax the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and politely insist that the hearings include:

1. A recognized expert on the topic of family violence such as:
   • Murray Straus, Ph.D., founder of the University of New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory
   • Richard Gelles, Ph.D., Dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania
2. A male victim of domestic violence who has been discriminated against by VAWA-funded services.

"Don't let the July 19 hearings become a rubber-stamp for VAWA. Invite Drs. Murray Straus or Richard Gelles to testify. And be sure to invite a male victim of DV who has been turned away by a VAWA-funded program."

The voice and FAX phone numbers of the Judiciary Committee members are listed below.

Threats like "If you don't get VAWA changed, I'm going to get you defeated in the next election" will only hurt our cause. Remember to make your points respectfully.

The US Senate and House of Representatives are currently debating the Violence Against Women Act. RADAR has identified 12 serious flaws with the proposed bill:

1. Abuses the truth. A recent VAWA-funded report documented that 1.5% of women and 0.9% of men were physically or sexually assaulted by a partner in the previous year. The report further notes that one-fifth of these men - as well as two-fifths of the women -- were injured as a result of the assault. But VAWA simply ignores the facts about domestic violence. [Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/181867.pdf, p. iii-iv]
2. Blatantly discriminates against men. The title, findings, and programs of VAWA violate men's constitutional right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. None of the billions of VAWA dollars have been spent to help heterosexual male victims of DV. Imagine a federal law designed to protect white victims from criminal acts, while ignoring black victims.
3. Takes children away from their fathers. VAWA allows women to make false allegations of domestic violence, and then petition for divorce and custody of the children. In some states, a father who has ever had a restraining order filed against him is automatically rendered ineligible for joint custody of his children.
4. Blurs the distinction between violent crime and a verbal argument. The National Research Council notes that "Rigorous inquiry into violence against women is precluded when scholars fail to distinguish among what constitutes an act of violence, abuse, or battering." [Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women, http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10849.html, p. 26]
5. Allows unrestrained use of restraining orders. Judges typically issue restraining orders based only on the word of the woman, without obtaining hard evidence or even allowing the man to present his side of the story. And many state laws define "violence" so broadly as to allow restraining orders to be issued on the flimsiest pretext.
6. Provides perverse incentives for law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. VAWA encourages local authorities to implement policies for mandatory reporting, mandatory arrest, and "no-drop" prosecutions. A Feminist Majority Foundation report recommends that domestic violence programs should abandon such rigid and unfair practices because they often end up harming families [Safety & Justice for All: Examining the Relationship between the Women's Anti-Violence Movement and the Criminal Legal System, http://www.ms.foundation.org/user-assets/PDF/Program/safety_justice.pdf, pp. 12-16]
7. Pre-empts existing law enforcement programs. States currently have strong partner assault laws. And the federal Violence of Crime Act already addresses the issue of domestic violence. VAWA spends $1 billion a year to duplicate existing programs.
8. Politicizes the judiciary. VAWA provides funding for judicial education which in practice amounts to ideologically-loaded rants. At one such training session judges were instructed: "Your job is not to become concerned about all the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order. Thrown him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, 'See ya' around.'" [http://www.ejfi.org/DV/dv-10.htm]
9. Funds ideologically-based treatment programs. The National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that domestic violence programs are frequently "driven by ideology and stakeholder interests rather than by plausible theories and scientific evidence of cause." [Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women, http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10849.html, p. 6]
10. Represents an over-reaching of federal power. VAWA represents unwarranted government interference into the personal relationships of intimate partners. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has condemned parts of VAWA as representing federal intrusion into an area of law that falls squarely within the domain of the states (United States v. Morrison, 2000). [http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/1261]
11. Corrupts family violence research. VAWA-funded researchers often seek to bias the outcome of their research by interviewing only women, by slanting the wording of questions, or by selectively reporting research findings. [The Controversy over Domestic Violence by Women: A Methodological, Theoretical, and Sociology of Science Analysis. http://www.menweb.org/straus21.htm]
12. Unfairly stereotypes men. VAWA funds educational programs that consistently depict men as perpetrators and women as victims of domestic violence. Most educational programs refer to the perpetrator as "him" and the victim as "her."

VAWA tramples on persons' basic human rights, undermines the family, and makes a mockery of fairness and justice. Our elected officials have a responsibility to make sure VAWA helps all victims of domestic violence.

Date of RADAR Release: July 10, 2005

Want to improve the chance that they'll pay attention to your letter? Click here.

To track the current status of VAWA, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and enter the bill number: Senate bill S. 1197; House of Representatives bill H.R. 2876.

Come to Washington DC on July 15 and join the national effort to lobby your elected officials about VAWA. See http://www.trueequality.com/index2.php for more details.

To receive RADAR Alerts, press releases, and other special announcements, sign up for the RADAR E-lert. You can sign up for the E-lert on the RADAR home page at http://www.mediaradar.org

R.A.D.A.R. – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting – is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of men and women working to improve the effectiveness of our nation's approach to solving domestic violence. http://mediaradar.org