ARE RIGHT-WING WOMEN DIVISIVE - OR IN TOUCH WITH AMERICA?
Deseret News, The (Salt Lake City, UT)
January 2, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Congress returns to work this month, with 47 women in the House and eight in the Senate. While the percentage of women in Congress has changed little, the philosophical bent of some new female members is markedly more conservative. What impact will women have in the next Congress?
BONNIE ERBE: Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the only new woman senator, is a welcome addition. In the House she was a moderating influence, pushing hard to cut government spending while fighting equally hard to advance women's rights. I fear the new right-wing women in the U.S. House will not follow her exemplary path.
Judging by the remarks of one new conservative woman member, they are a carnivorous, pugilistic bunch, salivating at the opportunity to set back women's advancements for partisan advantage.
Now, politics is politics. And in our two-party system, partisanship is encouraged and pitched battles are de rigeur. But that does not make it right to torpedo the positive contributions of the other side for the sake of selfish, individual gain.
It was heartwarming in the past Congress to see self-described conservative Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, join forces with liberal Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., to push tax breaks for full-time homemakers.
This new crop of conservative women seems to have little appetite for such cooperation. Their agenda is demolition derby-style, pure and simple. They are curiously furious at liberal and moderate women - whose work on women's equality made it possible for these conservatives to win political office - and want to bash them at every opportunity. Rescinding progress on civil rights and banning abortion - which even their male counterparts are backing away from - are high on their agendas. And when it comes to creating division, they will make Speaker Newt Gingrich look like a piker.
BETSY HART: Whoa - did my colleague get nothing but lemons in her Christmas stocking? In reality, the picture she paints is nothing but the typical kneejerk liberal caricature of conservatives.
The real reason for the sour invectives is that it drives my colleague crazy to admit that a huge percentage of women - even the professional educated women - are (gasp!) conservative.
That's lock-'em-up-throw-away-the-key, cut-my-taxes, don't-dare-give-my-kid-a-condom-or-an-abortion, no-handouts-to-people-who-won't-work, don't-tell-me-my-how-to-run-my-business, let-me-own-a-gun, raise-my-kids and live-my-life-according-to-my-values conservative.
Finally, the millions of women who hold such views are represented by several freshman congresswomen. And that means the false notion, promoted by feminists, that women are a liberal monolith has been exposed for a lie. Kind of like when the curtain is opened and the powerful Oz is revealed to be nothing more than a whiny shell of man. (But at least Oz was nice.)
So what to expect from these women? I'll focus on what these women won't do. They won't endorse more family and medical leave or civil rights (read: quota) bills, which only make hiring so expensive that women are underpaid or left without jobs altogether. They won't back another useless Violence Against Women Act, which filled the coffers of feminist ``victims'' groups but doesn't protect women against crime. And we've seen the last of ``gender equity in education'' bills which, based on false research, only foster a ``woman as victim'' mentality.
Abuse Policy Posts No Gain After Simpson
Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
January 15, 1995
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The woman listened to news accounts of Nicole Brown Simpson's plaintive call to 911. It reminded the woman of emergency calls she had made during the two years she lived with an abusive boyfriend.
Publicity regarding the O.J. Simpson murder trial made her wonder whether her own abusive relationship would one day end in her death. The woman called A Friend's Place, a battered women's center in Chicago. She left her boyfriend three months ago.
There are countless stories like this since Nicole Simpson was murdered, allegedly by her ex-husband. As predicted, calls to crisis centers and battered women's shelters surged in the days and weeks following Simpson's arrest.
But experts also had hoped for profound public policy changes. That has not happened.
The Simpson story exploded in June, at the height of most state legislative sessions. Lawmakers rushed to pass laws to prove they were sensitive to the plight of battered women. Same goes for Congress, which packed several million dollars' worth of domestic violence programs into the crime bill.
But the new Republican-led Congress already is considering a proposal to roll back the Violence Against Women Act. State legislators don't know what else to do.
"No real big change has happened," said Richard Gelles, director of the family Violence Research Program at the University of Rhode Island. "One reason is that people don't really know what they're supposed to be doing."
Battered women's advocates had hoped the Simpson case would become a watershed event in the fight against domestic violence. Instead it "has done nothing but create a national debate on `Did he or didn't he?' " said Susan Murphy-Milano, executive director of Project Protect.
In some ways, the case may actually do more harm than good because it reinforces negative stereotypes about battered women, said Lynda Jones, executive director On Our Own; Hear Our Cries.
Nicole Simpson called for help, but refused to press charges. She stayed in the abusive relationship. The abuse allegedly continued after they were divorced and may have resulted in her murder.
Those facts may lead to an increase in the number of calls to crisis centers, but they make it tough to change the mindset of police, prosecutors and victims themselves.
The Simpson case, certainly, has raised the public consciousness about domestic violence. Maybe that's all we can expect of it. Maybe that's a good first step, but it is disappointing.
"How is society taking this? With confusion at best," said Juanita Dougherty, executive director of Friends of Battered Women and Children. "Domestic violence has been going on for hundreds of years. Why do we think that with O.J. . . . things would change?"
Cindy Richards is a member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board.
Hurray for non-feminist women
Sun, The (Baltimore, MD)
EDITORAL
January 16, 1995
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THIS IS MY kind of women's magazine! Spare, at only 20 pages, the Women's Quarterly nevertheless manages to deal stunning blows to establishment pieties like day care, violence against women, the mommy track, sexual harassment and the ``right to die.''
With humor and sarcasm -- but also doses of warmth and passion -- these women offer an intelligent refutation of the leading feminist nonsense that is swallowed so uncritically by the mainstream press.
The lead story takes apart the Violence Against Women Act, a $1.5 billion goody buried in last year's crime bill. The law purports to respond to the nationwide epidemic of violence against women with training programs, new hot lines, funding for counseling services, sensitivity training for judges and court personnel in domestic violence, and even a pilot program to teach elementary school children about ``domestic violence and violence among intimate partners.''
Where did Congress get the idea that such interventions were necessary? The bill was the special project of Sen. Joseph Biden, who was educated on these issues by advocacy groups like the Battered Women's Justice Project and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The latter group was dissected very effectively by Christina Hoff Sommers in her book ``Who Stole Feminism?'' The NCADV circulates shocking, and utterly unsubstantiated, statistics. One of its fund-raising brochures claims that ``more than 50 percent of all women will experience some form of violence from their spouses during marriage. More than one-third are battered repeatedly every year.'' Those statistics are false. They are based on a tortured interpretation of a survey that asked women whether they or their spouses had ever ``stomped out of a room'' or ``insulted or swore.'' If that counts as ``violence,'' then a plum is a pumpkin.
Betsy Hart, who titled her piece ``Violence Against Taxpayers,'' turned to federal data and discovered that women are 40 percent less likely than men to be the victims of violent crime, and that domestic violence is quite low on the list of threats women face. Lovers, husbands and ex-husbands together commit about 18 percent of violent crimes against women. Husbands account for just 2 percent. Total strangers commit 44 percent of violent acts against women. A married woman who lives with her husband is actually about one-fifth as likely as a single, separated or divorced woman to be a victim of violent crime, and she is one-tenth as likely to be raped.
But the feminists who run advocacy groups are in the business of convincing the rest of us that normal relationships between men and women -- which we may think are mutually satisfying -- are actually the settings for abuse and misery. Gloria Steinem said, ``The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their own home.''
Interesting word, ``isolation.'' It is not the married people of my acquaintance who feel isolated -- it is those who are still single.
From pseudo-violence, the Women's Quarterly ventures into even more politically incorrect territory -- an essay in favor of the wolf whistle. Anne Roche Muggeridge writes, ``It's not the kind of thing one wants to admit to these days, but I liked being whistled at. I liked it very much. I wish I were still in the being-whistled-at age bracket.''
Ms. Muggeridge recalls her first ocean voyage at the age of 19. She and a female friend were among a very few passengers on a merchant ship steaming to England. After days of harsh weather, the skies cleared, and to celebrate, she and her friend donned pretty dresses and went above. They were greeted by a chorus of whistles. ``I blushed furiously and looked away,'' Ms. Muggeridge writes. ``Did you expect this to happen?'' she asked her slightly older friend. ``Oh, yes,'' came the reply.
The whistles didn't seem to Ms. Muggeridge to be a form of humiliation or harassment. She saw them as lilting notes of appreciation. No threat was intended or assumed. Both sexes took pleasure in the ritual. Naturally, the practice had to be banned.
Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist.
Congress should provide a way to enforce law
Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer (KY)
January 27, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Domestic violence is a problem that stretches across the country and reaches into our own community. Last September, the Congress tried to help victims by passing, as part of the Crime Bill, a law requiring all states to recognize and enforce out-of-state protective orders.
Good intentions, however, have been upset by sloppy legislation. Kentucky has been unable to implement the law because the Congress did not provide any framework for the 50 states. Without that framework, Kentucky judges and police cannot be certain that an out-of-state protective order is valid. Until they can, police can do nothing and victims are forced to go before the courts for new protective orders each time they enter a new state.
The hidden danger in this is that the new law promises victims interstate protection that it does not provide. Kentucky Justice Cabinet Secretary Paul Issacs told the Kentucky Domestic Violence Task Force in November that he is concerned that there are people who are vulnerable, but believe they are protected because the law is on the books.
Once again the Congress has chosen flash over substance and handed a bad law down to the states to straighten out. Citizens rightly believe that the laws on the books are the laws of the land. This case justifiably undermines people's faith in Congress and the law.
Had it had the desire, Congress could have held the necessary hearings to craft clear legislation. It chose not to, but passed the law anyway, hampering the men and women who are trying to eliminate domestic violence and help its victims.
Government officials, advocates and police expend great energy in fighting domestic violence, but the problem is not going away. From July 1993 to June 1994, Owensboro Area Shelter and Information Services Inc. sheltered 412 women and children and provided non-residential services to 487 people in Daviess County alone. OASIS says the numbers of people they have served in both categories since July 1994 are on a pace to easily surpass last year's totals.
Energy spent ironing out the problems in the federal law is energy that cannot be directed to serving abuse victims and breaking the cycle of violence in our communities. Congress was able to claim passage of the Full Faith and Credit Section of the Violence Against Women Act, but failed to truly protect the men and women who need the protections promised.
Little more can be done now than demanding quick action by the Federal government to clean up the mess. If the Congress wants to restore the people's faith in government, it should stop passing hollow or vague laws with attractive names. No matter how pretty the laws sound, the American people eventually discover the deception. The members of Congress who wrote and passed this law should be ashamed. They can do better.
The victims of domestic violence deserve to know they are protected. The men and women working so hard in Owensboro and across the country deserve help in their fight.
ORANGES & LEMONS
Beware Big Brother and his sob sisters
Orange County Register, The (Santa Ana, CA)
EDITORIAL
Author/Byline: Eldon Griffiths
January 31, 1995
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Driving out of Santa Fe, I slowed down to examine a billboard that showed a gigantic pair of handcuffs. The headline said "STOP WELFARE FRAUD" and underneath, the State of New Mexico listed ways and means by which John Q. Public could phone state agencies with tip-offs about scroungers who cheat honest taxpayers by false declarations.
Big Brother? Or an overdue attempt by the conservative state government to enlist the public's help in combating the widespread fraud that Congress is pledged to stamp out?
Take your pick, but note one fact of politically decisive importance when any democratic governments seek to reduce public spending: Small cuts nearly always provoke as much of a rumpus as big ones. It's best to go for major surgery. Saving "candle ends," as the poet once observed, is most likely to lead to burnt fingers.
I learned this lesson when Margaret Thatcher tried to chop a few million out of the British budget by abolishing free milk for school kids. This had been introduced in the dark days of World War II to ensure that, in spite of rationing, all youngsters got enough protein. But by the well fed 1970s there was no need for the program; many parents, in fact, were telling their plump kids not to drink the milk at school.
Thatcher's decision nonetheless caused a furor. Mothers denounced her as "Attila the Hen." Nutritionists went on TV to accuse her of condemning future generations to rickets. Milk producers said Thatcher was slaughtering "Daisy the Cow" to save a few sterling pounds.
Fast forward to the U.S. Congressional debate over the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. My instinct is that neither any longer is necessary, yet their staffs and their protectors in the liberal establishment will put up such a fight that we'll end up with a half-baked compromise. The case for getting rid of both is not that some of the idiots they sponsor daub their bodies with paint and roll over on canvas to produce "art." No, the reason for abolition is that the government has no business taking money out of the pockets of one set of taxpayers and handing it out to others, solely because a bunch of the high muck-a-mucks think that plasticine modelling is more deserving of public "welfare" than say, archery or tiddlywinks.
Cuts in public broadcasting and the NEA and NEH, in any event, would save at most $600 million out of a federal budget that now runs to $1,500,000,000,000. As a writer in the Arizona Republic put it, "We'll know Congress is serious about balancing the budget when it screws up courage to go after more formidable spenders."
Take for instance the VAWA, one of those alphabetic monsters I'll bet you've never heard of. It's part of Bill Clinton's crime program. The Violence Against Women Act, which zoomed through Congress last year, states that "all persons in the United States shall have the right to be free of crimes motivated by gender." To enforce this, the administration asked for and Congress approved a cool $1.5 billion.
The arguments that carried the day came from the feminist movement, spearheaded by one of the nation's loudest mouthed victimologists, Gloria Steinem. She's the harridan who wrote that "the most dangerous situation for women is not an unknown man in the street or even an enemy in wartime but a husband or lover ... in her home." Steinem, like Andrea Dworkin, another feminist bigot, who wrote Letters from a War Zone (read: marriage), helped mobilize the gender movement to insert four advocacy groups into VAWA: the Battered Women's Justice Project, the Health Resources Center on Domestic Violence, the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, and the Resource Center on Child Custody. These groups, writes Scripps Howard reporter Betsy Hart in the current issue of The Women's Quarterly , "view violence against women not as a criminal problem but as an ideological one."
VAWA is now pumping money into scores of gender causes. One of them, the Alexandria, Va., Office of Women's Affairs, alleges that "millions of women are ... abused by their husbands or partners each year." This outfit won support for a mandatory arrest program, requiring the police to nab someone for some offense, no matter how trivial, whenever they are called to a "domestic disturbance."
How strong is the evidence that "millions of women" are assaulted in their homes by their husbands? Most abused women, says the Office of Women's Affairs, never tell. While most of us were mourning the horrors of Auschwitz, Andrea Dworkin wrote that "the worst beatings, the most sustained acts of sadism, have no witnesses."
The best evidence Betsy Hart could find comes from the latest National Crime Victimization Survey. Husbands, the survey says, commit 2 percent of criminal assaults on women; former lovers, 18 percent; strangers those "unknown men in the street" whose threats Steinem says are insignificant 44 percent. Hart's common-sense conclusion: "A married woman who lives with her husband is one fifth as likely as a single, separated, or divorced woman to be a victim of violent crime in general and one tenth as likely to be raped."
Over to you, Speaker Gingrich. Don't get burned by the candle ends. Remember that Margaret Thatcher's achievement in cutting spending and taxes didn't arise from stopping school milk. It arose from cutting out whole chunks of the U.K. government and privatizing massive state industries like water, sewage, and airports. So don't waste your energies in the changing room, Newt. Focus on the main event, when you climb into their ring against the big boys and heavyweight sisters.
Sir Eldon is president of the Orange County World Affairs Council, a former member of the British House of Commons, and director of the Center for International Business at Chapman University.
MONEY MAY BE USED TO REDUCE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
February 7, 1995
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The 100,000 new police officers to be hired under the federal crime bill have drawn the headlines, but money to combat violence against women is also a part of the $30 billion package.
Workers from Battered Women's Resources - the agency that provides services to battered women in North Worcester County - attended a presentation yesterday on the $26 million in federal grants available this year under the crime bill's Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
The $26 million will be followed by $130 million in fiscal year 1996 and larger amounts in subsequent years, according to The Federal Register.
Each state will receive $450,000 this year. The money will be distributed to successful applicants in the form of block grants, according to Renee Landers, a deputy assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice. The grants encourage a united effort among prosecutors, police and battered women's advocates, she said.
Programs that have reduced violence against women, particularly domestic violence, are those in which prosecution, police and service providers work together closely, Landers said.
Karen R. Gaw, the executive director of Battered Women's Resources, said money is needed for court advocates, to help women negotiate the court system. All of the agency's current court advocates are volunteers, Gaw said.
The money also could be used for police training on domestic violence or to hire an overnight counselor for the agency's shelter, Gaw said. The shelter is for women who are fleeing their batterers.
Leominster Police Chief Peter F. Roddy said the violence against women funding will likely be discussed by a group of battered women's advocates and law enforcement officials that has been meeting regularly for several years.
The federal money also could be used to establish anti-stalking programs or to set up police and prosecution units that target rape or domestic violence, according to information from U.S. Rep. John W. Olver, D-Amherst. More than 1 million women are attacked each year by their husbands or boyfriends and nearly 500,000 females older than 12 are the victims of rape or attempted rape, according to those statistics.
COUPLE'S THREE-STATE TRIP WILL TEST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LAW
MAN IS FIRST TRIED IN FEDERAL COURT FOR ALLEGED SPOUSAL ABUSE ACROSS STATE LINES
Augusta Chronicle, The (GA)
February 28, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The bizarre odyssey of Chris and Sonya Bailey began when they were seen arguing at a bar near their West Virginia home.
It ended six days later, when Mr. Bailey carried his unconscious wife into a hospital emergency room in Corbin, Ky. In between, they apparently traveled hundreds of miles through three states.
Authorities say Mrs. Bailey spent at least part of that time locked in the trunk of the car. And her body was a veritable road map of abuse - myriad wounds, apparently inflicted at different times.
In May, this atypical case of alleged spousal abuse is scheduled to come to trial in an atypical place: federal court. Mr. Bailey is the first person prosecuted under a new federal law, the Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
The law, part of the omnibus crime bill adopted in August, makes crossing a state line to assault a spouse or domestic partner a federal crime.
``If you can't prove what happened in a given state, that state's criminal jurisdiction stops. When you have no idea where the injuries happened, no state may have jurisdiction to prosecute without federal law,'' said Victoria Nourse, a professor of criminal law at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
In state court, Mr. Bailey would have been charged with malicious wounding, a felony which carries a 2- to 10-year sentence in West Virginia.
The federal law, however, provides for up to 20 years in prison for ``permanent disfigurement or life-threatening bodily injury'' to a spouse or domestic partner; up to 10 years for ``serious bodily injury to (a) spouse or if the offender uses a dangerous weapon''; and up to life in prison for the death of a spouse.
Ms. Nourse, who worked on the bill as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee staff, said the law provides protection where state laws may fail.
Mr. Bailey also is charged with kidnapping his wife, a federal crime that carries a possible life sentence.
Using credit card receipts and motel registrations, police traced Mr. Bailey's rambling journey through southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Ohio, including stops in Cincinnati and Georgetown, Ky., where people reported seeing Mr. Bailey, but not his wife, state police Sgt. L.L. Nelson said.
Mr. Bailey has refused to talk to police since his arrest in Kentucky; his wife remains in a coma.
But at a preliminary hearing, FBI Special Agent Scott Francis said friends of Mrs. Bailey had said she wanted to end her three-year marriage but was afraid of her husband's reaction.
CLINTON AWARDS $26M FOR SERVICES AIDING FEMALE VIOLENCE VICTIMS
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
March 21, 1995
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As a teen-ager, President Clinton helped rescue his mother from her husband's occasional violence. At the White House Tuesday, he announced a new program that could help women avoid or escape domestic abuse.
Clinton awarded $26 million in state grants to improve law enforcement and victims services in cases involving violence against women. Each state may qualify for up to $426,000 in so-called "STOP" grants, the acronymn for Services, Training, Officers and Prosecution.
Although the money is mainly intended for violence hotlines, crisis centers, rape counselors, victim advocates, and special domestic violence police and prosecuting units, it may also be used for safety features, such as street lighting in high-risk areas.
"This is an issue with which I have dealt as president, as governor, as an attorney general, as a citizen going for years with my wife to the shelters in our state for battered women and their children, and as a human being," Clinton told an audience in the White House East Room.
"If children aren't safe in their homes, if college women aren't safe in their dorms, if mothers can't raise their children in safety, then the American dream will never be real for them no matter what we do in economic policy, no matter how strong we are in standing against the forces that would seek to undermine our values beyond our borders."
Clinton also used Tuesday's event to introduce his director for the Justice Department's new Violence Against Women Office.
Bonnie J. Campbell, 46, Iowa's former attorney general, will oversee the federal effort to stem domestic violence, rape, and sexual abuse in accordance with the 1994 Crime Act.
Campbell, a Democrat, who ran unsucessfully for governor of Iowa last year, had been instrumental in strengthening Iowa's domestic abuse laws and authored the state's 1992 anti-stalking law.
She praised Clinton as the first president "who is truly committed to the safety and security of the women of America."
Attorney General Janet Reno, Campbell's new boss, and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala each hailed the STOP grants and new federal office as a signal that violence against women will not be tolerated.
"The Violence Against Women Act calls on us to enter a partnership with health professionals, with social workers, with police officers, with prosecutors and with judges to create a seamless system that changes how we respond to women in danger," Shalala said. "Justice must not be dependent on geography. We need comprehensive services everywhere, and we need the involvement of every community and every citizen to protect women and their children and to prevent this domestic terrorism."
The money for the grants is included in the $30 billion crime bill control trust fund, approved last year as part of the 1994 Crime Act. More than $800 million has been allocated for STOP grants over the next six years. The crime bill also led to the creation of the Violence Against Women's office.
And while many provisions of last year's crime bill are under assault by the Republicans on Capitol Hill, money for the office and for the grants hasn't been.
Even though the officials were enthusiastically received and sometimes wildly applauded by the senators, representatives and citizen supporters in the audience, it was another of the president's dais mates who captured the heart and soul of the occasion.
Sarah Buel held the room rapt as she briefly reviewed her rise from battered wife and welfare recipient to night school student to Harvard Law cum laude graduate.
"When I stood on a welfare line as a battered woman many years ago, I would never have dreamed that this day would be possible," Buel said. "And make no mistake, welfare is the primary safety net of those of us as battered women who are trying so hard just to stay alive."
A longtime activist for abused women and children, Buel now teaches law at Radcliffe College and has been a prosecutor in Massachusetts' Suffolk, Norfolk and Middlesex Counties.
"Know that this money is not only going to save the lives of domestic violence victims and their children," Buel said, "but ultimately will decrease crime in our communities because we know of the correlation between domestic violence, child abuse, juvenile delinquency and crime."
TAKING OF BLOOD SAMPLE CHALLENGED IN ABUSE CASE
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
April 14, 1995
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Blood and hair samples were illegally taken from a Kanawha County man charged under a new federal domestic violence law, his attorney said yesterday.
Attorneys for Christopher Bailey of St. Albans want to block genetic testing of two vials of blood and up to 50 hair samples taken from him by FBI agents in the South Central Regional Jail, according to motions filed by the attorneys.
The FBI agents did not have a proper sworn statement attached to a search warrant request, according to the motion, filed in U.S. District Court in Charleston.
Bailey also asked to speak with a lawyer before the samples were taken, but that request was denied, the motion said.
His attorney, Gerard Kelley, said the FBI's actions were unnecessary since Bailey remains incarcerated.
"When a person is indicted and incarcerated he's not going anywhere, and his lawyer ought to be given notice and involved in the process," Kelley said.
James Kessler, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Charleston, did not return a telephone message yesterday.
No hearing date was set on the motion.
Bailey's trial is scheduled for May 16.
He is accused of abducting his wife, Sonya Bailey, on Nov. 26, 1994, and abusing her during a six-day odyssey through southern West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and Ohio. He was arrested after he carried his unconscious wife into a hospital emergency room in Corbin, Ky., on Dec. 1.
U.S. Attorney Rebecca Betts said Bailey is the first person charged under the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The law, part of the omnibus crime bill approved by Congress in August, makes it a felony to cross a state line to abuse a spouse or domestic partner.
The new federal law carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison for permanent disfigurement or life-threatening injury to a spouse or domestic partner; up to 10 years for serious bodily injury to a spouse or if the offender uses a dangerous weapon; and up to life in prison for the death of a spouse.
According to police testimony during a preliminary hearing, emergency room doctors said Sonya Bailey had a large open wound on her forehead. She also had two black eyes, signs of rope burns on her wrists and ankles, and bruises on her neck, chin and forearms.
She remains in a coma and has been unable to help in the investigation.
THE UNFAIR SEX?
In the fight against rape and domestic violence, men are now presumed guilty
National Review
Author/Byline: WENDY McELROY
May 1, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
THE April 9 march on Washington to protest violence against women was yet another attempt to politicize the crimes of rape and domestic assault. Boosted by fresh funding from last year's Omnibus Crime Act, feminist advocacy groups are pushing the images of women as victims and men as beasts. Gloria Steinem declares that "the most dangerous situation for a woman is...[to be with] a husband or lover in the isolation of their own home." A massive billboard campaign proclaims: "One woman is battered every 15 seconds." Upon appointing the head of the Justice Department's new Violence Against Women Office, President Clinton declared that rape has increased three times faster than other crimes in the last decade. Yet according to the latest National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, sexual assaults on women declined 20 per cent from 1992 to 1993. And the same survey that found that a woman is beaten every 15 seconds also found that a man is battered every 14 seconds. This research indicates that 54 per cent of all "severe" domestic violence is committed by women. It's strange that we rarely hear these statistics.
In the current climate of hysteria, those who question the conventional wisdom are denounced as enemies of women. Radical feminists are using the issues of domestic violence and rape to create a new jurisprudence that assesses guilt and imposes punishment based on gender. In Feminism Unmodified, University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon argues that "some of the same reasons children are granted some specific legal avenues of redress...also hold true... for women." Lenore Walker, director of the Domestic Violence Institute and the leading exponent of "battered woman syndrome," explains the political underpinnings of violence against women: "A feminist political gender analysis has reframed the problem of violence against women as one of misuse of power by men who have been socialized into believing they have the right to control the women in their lives, even through violent means."
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which Congress approved last year as part of the Omnibus Crime Act, advances the radical-feminist goal of redistributing power from the ruling class (men) to the oppressed class (women). VAWA defines "gender-motivated crimes" as federal civil-rights violations, converting domestic violence and rape into "hate crimes." The law recognizes men and women as antagonistic classes to be governed by different standards of law.
VAWA allows not only criminal prosecution but also civil suits for "the recovery of compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive and declaratory relief, and such other relief as a court may deem appropriate." Just as "crimes motivated by race" can be tried under federal civil-rights statutes, so too can "crimes motivated by gender." In effect, a man can be tried (and punished) twice for the same crime. Furthermore, by making rape a civil offense as well as a crime, feminists avoid the need to prove rape "beyond a reasonable doubt." All a civil court requires is "a preponderance of the evidence."
The success of "battered woman syndrome" as a defense in murder cases also illustrates how standards of justice have been warped by the politicization of violence against women. Traditionally, a plea of self-defense required imminent danger without the possibility of escape. Today, courts are acquitting women who kill abusive husbands in their sleep.
What the Research Shows
SUCH deviations from traditional legal standards are driven largely by the perception that domestic violence is something that men do to women. As we have seen, this is a myth. The research cited above is far from an isolated case. In 1975 and 1985, sociologists Murray A. Strauss and Richard J. Gelles conducted what may be the best available studies of family violence. They found that men were as likely as women were to be victims of domestic violence (though women are more likely to be seriously injured). Indeed, in the decade between the two studies, the rate of violence by men against women dropped, while the rate of violence by women against men rose. To counter the charge of "gender bias," Strauss reran the 1985 numbers using only the responses of women - and came up with the same results.
Other studies also indicate that men are victims of violence more often than women. In 1994, according to the Justice Department, 55.5 per cent of domestic murder victims were men. Last July, the 13th World Congress of Sociology reported that in 1992 American husbands assaulted wives at a rate of 4.6 per cent, while wives assaulted husbands at a rate of 9.5 per cent. The latest National Crime Victimization Survey found that women were 40 per cent less likely to be victims of violent crime than men.
Dogmatic attitudes have crippled honest research into domestic violence. In 1988 R. L. McNeely, a professor at the University of Wisconsin's School of Social Welfare, and a graduate student, Gloria Robinson-Simpson, published an article noting that men are the victims of domestic violence about half the time. According to the Washington Post, a women's organization threatened to use its potent influence in Washington to have McNeely's research funding pulled. In 1978, when Suzanne Steinmetz published an article on the "battered husband syndrome," distressed feminists called anonymously and threatened to hurt her children.
Such zealots are aided by others who unthinkingly accept propaganda as fact. In October ("National Domestic Violence Awareness Month") of 1994, when members of Congress rushed to express their support for battered women, accuracy was lost in the stampede. Representative Olympia Snowe (R., Me.) declared, "Domestic violence...is the leading cause of injury to women aged 15 to 44, according to recent research by the Surgeon General and the American Medical Association." The study to which Representative Snowe was alluding actually found that violence in general was the leading cause of injury to women in a single black West Philadelphia slum. In only 12 per cent of the cases was the perpetrator identified as the woman's husband or lover. Representative Eva Clayton (D., N.C.) claimed that "in one year more than four thousand women have been killed by their husband or partner." Imagine how surprised the FBI must be: its Uniform Crime Statistics place the number somewhere between 1,200 and 1,400.
The FBI, of course, is not using the expansive feminist definition of domestic violence. In its 1994 "Fact Sheet," the San Francisco - based Family Violence Prevention Fund describes "domestic violence" as "the actual or threatened physical, sexual, psychological, or economic abuse of an individual by someone with whom they have or have had an intimate relationship."
Feminists are also pushing a redefinition of rape. In 1991 Canada passed a "no means no" rape law, which reversed the burden of proof and narrowed the definition of consent. Under this law, sex is rape whenever a man fails to "take reasonable steps" to make sure he has the woman's consent. Even if the woman yells "Yes!" repeatedly during coitus, the sex act could be considered rape if she is in a "diminished state" - say, drunk or on drugs.
Courts are coming dangerously close to accepting the definition of rape offered by Catharine MacKinnon: "Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated." The new feminist definition of rape reverses the presumption of innocence. Traditionally, a man accused of rape was considered innocent until lack of consent was proved. Now the onus is on the man to prove that the woman, in a sane and sober state of mind, gave an explicit "yes." And since sex is rarely preceded by explicit consent, such proof is hard to come by.
A man's sincere belief that he had consent is no longer a defense. Susan Estrich, a law professor at the University of Southern California, maintains that women should be empowered "in potentially consensual situations with the weapon of a rape charge." Consent can never be assumed, even in the light of cooperation or a past history of romance.
Even explicit consent may not be enough. Dr. Andrea Parrot, a Cornell University psychiatrist, defines a rape victim as "anyone who is psychologically or physically pressured into sexual contact." By this standard, a woman who is persuaded to have sexual intercourse is a rape victim.
In the rhetoric of radical feminists, false rape accusations almost never occur. The data say otherwise. A recent article by Eugene J. Kanin in the Archives of Sexual Behavior reported on a study of rape allegations that had been brought in a small community over a nine-year period. Of 109 allegations, 45 were officially declared false, meaning the complainant later admitted that no rape had occurred.
Rape allegations can have a disastrous impact on the accused man. Last summer the New York Times reported that a male student at Pomona College had been denied his diploma because a woman decided to denounce a sex act that had occurred two years earlier. She claimed rape based not on the use or threat of force but on the lack of explicit consent.
This sort of injustice is the inevitable consequence of treating men as a separate and antagonistic class, rather than as individuals who share the same humanity as women. Men are not monsters. They are our fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and lovers. They should not be made to stand before a legal system that presumes their guilt. Feminists must resist the temptation to wield power as unjustly as men have in the past.
Memo: Miss McElroy, a contributing editor to Liberty, is the author of Freedom, Feminism, and the State (Holmes and Meier) and XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, forthcoming from St. Martin's.
No Staying Power
Despite changes in the law, abused immigrant spouses face hurdles in remaining here
Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
May 3, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A growing number of immigrants, claiming abuse by American spouses, are hoping recent changes in the federal law will protect them from deportation.
At issue is an immigrant spouse's ability to obtain permanent residency even if the U.S. citizen spouse refuses to support his or her immigration status.
A provision in the Violence Against Women Act, adopted by Congress last fall, gives immigrant spouses, who experts say are almost always women, greater legal recourse if they can document abuse against them or their children.
The act "is certainly a major victory and remedy," says Leni Marin, a senior program specialist with the Family Violence Prevention Fund in San Francisco.
It "will enable battered immigrant women who are entrapped in violent relationships to have the options necessary so they can lead better lives."
But critics say that the provision may not do enough. The change in the law "is not going to affect a whole lot of women," says Paul Zoltan, legal director at Proyecto Adelante, a legal and social services agency for Central Americans in Dallas. "It is drafted rather narrowly. Many victims of spousal abuse will be just as out in the coldas they have been."
Immigration lawyers say that these domestic violence cases are often long shots at best because of the elements that the immigrant must prove. Recognition of the need for rights for abused immigrant spouses is a relatively new phenomenon, with some of the first legal provisions coming in 1990.
One local example of an immigration case featuring abuse allegations is that of Sharon Lane-Hughes, a British citizen, who came to Dallas seven years ago as the wife of an American bond trader. The marriage, according to court records, ended in 1991 amid allegations of domestic violence.
Because she is no longer married to the U.S. citizen, Ms. Lane-Hughes, 31, faces deportation and could lose custody of her three children.
Her ex-husband denies that any abuse occurred, according to his lawyer, who says that Ms. Lane-Hughes is resorting to false accusations to remain in the United States.
Loiva Monteiro, 24, a Brazilian native living in Dallas, also faces deportation. She describes her feelings about her ex-husband: "I thought he had completely the power to do anything he wanted to do. He's American and he's in his own country," she says in an interview.
On shaky ground
Many of the women are undocumented or depend on their American spouses to obtain permanent residency for them, immigration lawyers say. The fear of deportation and language and cultural barriers prevent many from reporting abuse.
"A lot of men use (the woman's immigration status) as a tool to continue the mistreatment," says Wanda Resto-Torres, a lawyer with Ayuda, an agency serving battered immigrant women in Washington.
Congress has sought to provide battered women with more options, Ms. Resto-Torres says.
Congress recently changed the law to allow immigrant spouses to petition for permanent residency independently of their American spouses - or apply for suspension of deportation - if they can document abuse against them or their children.
Under the new provision, Ms. Lane-Hughes must prove that she was battered or subjected to extreme cruelty, has been a person of good moral character, and would experience extreme hardship if deported, says Dallas lawyer Harry Joe, who is representing her.
She has alleged in a legal brief filed in Dallas immigration court last December that, during the marriage, she became the subject of her ex-husband's "physical, emotional and sexual abuse" and that he "repeatedly used her non-permanent resident status and financial dependence as a way to dominate and control (her)."
She is seeking to suspend her deportation, and a hearing is pending. She lives in Richardson with her children, ages 6 to 9, all of whom are U.S. citizens.
Thomas Mayes, a Dallas lawyer who represents Ms. Lane-Hughes' ex-husband, says in an interview that Ms. Lane-Hughes is "a manipulative person willing to go to any lengths to stay in this country."
Her allegations are part of "a well-thought-out attempt to circumvent the immigration laws," he says. Ms. Lane-Hughes' ex-husband did not respond to a request for an interview. Issue of violence
There is no accurate way to measure the extent of the problem of violence against immigrant women, say advocates for battered women. But even though there are thousands of immigrant women who do not face domestic violence, the problem is very real, they say. Only recently has the problem been recognized by lawmakers and the courts, they say.
"We think there are hundreds if not thousands of battered immigrant women who have not come forward because of language and cultural barriers," says Ms. Marin of the Family Violence Prevention Fund.
U.S. immigration policy has been based in great part on the goal of reuniting families, immigration officials say. U.S. citizens and legal residents have the right to apply for permanent residency for their noncitizen spouses or children.
In the early 1980s, Congress became concerned about a rising number of fraud cases: Immigrants were marrying Americans for the sole purpose of getting their green cards, says Kim Ogden, assistant district director for examinations in the Dallas office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
To deter fraud, Congress in 1986 required that foreign spouses of Americans be granted permanent residency only on a conditional basis, lawyers say. After two years, the foreigner and the American must file a joint petition and prove their marriage is bona fide to remove the conditional basis.
Under that law, foreign spouses had little control over their immigration status and were vulnerable to the whims of their American spouses, immigration lawyers say.
In 1990, Congress changed the law. Now immigrants who can prove that they or their children were abused by their American spouses can seek a remedy. They can remove the conditional basis from their permanent residency without needing the OK from their American spouses.
Still, the law did not cover foreign spouses whose partners had never even begun the immigration process for them, lawyers say.
So, as part of the Violence Against Women Act, Congress created a provision allowing battered women to self-petition for permanent residency without the sponsorship of their spouses.
A tangible benefit
Undocumented immigrant women will probably benefit most from the new provision, lawyers say.
"This is one of the first kinds of relief available for them," says Pam Willhoite, public policy director of the Texas Council on Family Violence, a coalition of shelters for battered women. "And a recognition that there's a critical need to balance the scales of power."
Ms. Lane-Hughes, who is currently undocumented, married her husband in England in 1986, according to the brief filed in immigration court. In the early days of the courtship, he had sent her flowers, called her frequently and taken her to parties at London nightclubs, she says in an interview. "He was very flash," she says, using British slang.
They came to the United States in 1988, bringing two children, according to the brief. Ms. Lane-Hughes says in an interview that she entered with a visitor's visa that has since expired. A third child was born here.
According to an April 1990 Dallas police report, Ms. Lane-Hughes filed a complaint against her husband, alleging that he had struck her during an argument. Her husband was arrested and charged with assault, the police report states. He pleaded guilty to the assault charge, according to records in Dallas Municipal Court.
Ms. Lane-Hughes sought counseling and filed for divorce in May 1990, according to the legal brief in immigration court.
That fall, with the divorce pending, Ms. Lane-Hughes completed an immigration petition that her husband had signed the year before, according to the legal brief. She used it to gain permanent resident status, following the advice of a previous attorney, according to the legal brief.
But in 1992, an immigration judge ruled that the petition was invalid and "obtained by deliberate fraud," according to the judge's written decision, which was filed in court.
"She is obviously of the opinion that she was an abused spouse, and that may be true," Judge Edwin Hughes wrote in his ruling on that 1992 hearing. "But, this is not the forum in which to obtain redress for such wrongs, and those wrongs did not create a legal right for her to become a legal permanent resident of the United States on her own motion."
No help from courts
In the case of Ms. Monteiro, legal remedies have not helped, says her lawyer, John Wheat Gibson.
Despite her testimony and a divorce court finding that she was the victim of "extreme cruelty," an immigration judge ordered her deported one year ago. Her case is under appeal.
Ms. Monteiro says in an interview that she entered the United States in 1989 on a six-month visitor's visa. She got married in May 1990 to a U.S. citizen, who petitioned for her to gain permanent residency on the two-year conditional basis, according to a brief filed in support of her appeal in immigration court.
According to court documents in her divorce file, Ms. Monteiro alleged that the marriage deteriorated into physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and that her ex-husband threatened to call the INS numerous times.
Efforts to contact Ms. Monteiro's ex-husband were unsuccessful. His divorce lawyer did not return repeated phone calls. INS officials in Dallas said they would not discuss Ms. Monteiro's or Ms. Lane-Hughes' cases because of privacy restrictions.
The judge found that Ms. Monteiro had been "threatened, battered and subjected to extreme cruelty" during the marriage, according to the divorce decree. He awarded Ms. Monteiro $105,500 in actual damages and $655,000 in punitive damages, according to the divorce decree.
Yet the same month, the INS sent Ms. Monteiro a letter denying her request for a waiver and terminated her conditional permanent residency. The INS district director told Ms. Monteiro that she had not convinced the government that it should exercise its discretion.
The director said in his letter that Ms. Monteiro had not leveled charges of abuse until after her permanent resident status was terminated and that she had not sought counseling until after being advised to do so by an attorney.
Mr. Gibson disagreed, noting that Ms. Monteiro had called police on at least two occasions during the marriage.
Enough protection?
Advocates for battered women say they are still unsure about whether the Violence Against Women Act will provide enough protection. The INS is expected later this year to issue
regulations on how it intends to implement the law.
Some advocates say that most women will be unable to convince a judge that their deportation would result in extreme hardship.
"It's a standard that immigration judges apply very strictly," says Margaret Donnelly, professor of immigration law at Southern Methodist University.
Some advocates say there also is a need to let immigrant women and those who can help them know more about the legal relief that is available.
There is some concern, for example, that battered spouses who get divorced before filing the initial petition might be ineligible for the law's protection, says Barbara Hines, an immigration lawyer in Austin. That question could be answered by the forthcoming regulations, she says.
Ms. Willhoite says the issue poses a unique challenge: the need for coordination among advocates for battered women and immigrants, as well as family law attorneys and immigration lawyers.
Julie Oliver, executive director of Texas Lawyers Care, a pro-bono program of the State Bar of Texas, says that because of the recent changes in the law, her group is preparing some presentations. Ms. Oliver's group will conduct a training session May 12 at the Texas Law Center in Austin.
"It is absolutely critical that (lawyers and advocates) understand the implications of the law so that they don't jeopardize their clients' ability to obtain relief," Ms. Oliver says.
Seminar to help battered immigrants
Austin American-Statesman (TX)
May 11, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A new weapon for battered immigrant spouses and children to obtain residency in the United States without the sponsorship of their abuser will be the topic of a training seminar Friday.
Called ``The Violence Against Women Act: Implications for Battered Immigrant Spouses and Children,'' the seminar will discuss new rules that allow victimsto petition for permanent residency in the United States and avoid deportation.
``Under the immigration laws, to obtain a green card through a family member you need that family member's cooperation,'' said Lynn
Coyle, staff attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Antonio. ``Self petitioning under the new law allows a woman who has been battered or subject to extreme cruelty by her spouse to file without her spouse's cooperation.''
The training is designed for immigration and family lawyers and battered women's advocates but is open to anyone interested in learning about the new law, Coyle said.
Registration is $20 for staff members of nonprofit or pro bono organizations, domestic violence volunteers and attorneys willing to accept two pro bono cases involving the new law. The fee is $75 for private attorneys.
The seminar, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., will be at the State Bar of Texas, 1414 Colorado St.
FIRST FEDERAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TRIAL TO START
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
May 16, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Sonya Bailey had a child at 18 but never married until she was 30.
The marriage in 1991 became her top priority, so much so that she started spending less time with her daughter, with her mother and sister and with friends from work or high school days.
In January 1994, police answered a domestic violence call at her small white home outside Charleston. Sonya said her husband, Chris, had dragged her down the stairs from her daughter's room and forced her into their bedroom. She filed charges but dropped them.
Sometime in November, Sonya apparently decided to leave her husband. She told her mother and at least one friend she wanted a divorce. She was afraid of what he might do, the friend told the FBI.
Chris and Sonya Bailey disappeared Nov. 26 after a night of drinking and quarreling in a bar near their home. They were missing for five days, until Chris Bailey showed up at a Kentucky hospital with his wife in the car.
Chris Bailey, 34, a chubby nursing-home worker, said Sonya had been unconscious for two days. When doctors asked why he had not sought help sooner, "He said he really didn't know. He was scatterbrained," FBI agent Scott Francis testified in court.
Sonya Bailey, 33, has been in a coma ever since.
The FBI believes Sonya was beaten in bed, bound at the hands and feet and left in the trunk of her car for much of the five-day trip through West Virginia and Kentucky. Agents retraced her husband's path through motel receipts, bank withdrawals and statements from motel and store clerks. No one recalled seeing a woman with him.
Chris Bailey is the first person in the United States charged in federal court with domestic violence. Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act in September as part of the crime bill.
Penalties range from up to five years for bodily harm to life in prison if a death occurs.
"Sonya wanted so bad for this marriage to work that she would just let things go," said her mother, Elena Campbell of South Charleston.
"I think, more or less, she just wanted to be a happy homemaker, a wife and mother," said Connie Riley, who worked with Sonya for a few years processing medical claims. "Her goals were not like going back to college, becoming a doctor or anything like that."
"He just wanted her with him all the time. He just smothered her," Sonya's mother said.
The domestic violence section of the Violence Against Women Act targets people who cross state lines to injure a spouse or intimate partner. It also provides protections for battered spouses and their children. Among them:
State courts must honor protective orders from other states so spouses who flee do not have to go through more legal hoops.
Victims of gender-based crimes, such as rape or domestic abuse, can file for civil damages under the federal Civil Rights Act. Spouses who leave in search of safety often lose their assets.
Grants are available to educate judges about domestic violence, to implement pro-active arrest policies and to track offenders.
Also, in March, President Clinton opened an Office on Violence Against Women within the Justice Department.
"This is part of what I would call the movement to federalize a lot of different crimes. Whether you agree with that or not is something we could debate for a long time, but it's happening," said Rebecca Betts, the U.S. attorney for southern West Virginia.
"The problem is state laws are inconsistent," said Julie Goldscheid, a staff attorney with the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense Fund in New York, which led a four-year lobbying effort to pass the law.
"It is the first time that there is federal, nationwide recognition ... of the disproportionate way in which women are harmed by violence in our society," Goldscheid said.
Bailey has been in jail, held without bond, since his arrest. His record consists of three drunken-driving convictions, which cost him his driver's license.
But the FBI has since learned of a kidnapping situation involving his first wife. She told agents he once took her by force to another state when she asked for a divorce.
The defendant's brother, David Bailey, believes Chris is innocent.
"Chris maintains to this day that when [Sonya] wakes up, she will clear him," the businessman said in December.
Defense lawyer Gerard Kelley plans to attack the FBI's evidence when the case goes to trial today.
He said he has been "extremely busy, trying to pull together the meager resources defendants get, trying to defend this man - this man who brought his wife to a hospital," Kelley said. He said Bailey loves his wife and asks about her every day.
Sonya Bailey is at a rehabilitation center. Four months after she was taken to the Kentucky hospital, her feet were still swollen with deep red cuts from the ropes that apparently had bound them.
Her arms and hands were rigid from lying on them for so long. Doctors say she has brain damage, more from a lack of oxygen than from the blood loss. Her weight has dropped from 132 pounds to 102.
The Baileys' daughter, Jessica, 14, who was adopted by Chris Bailey after the marriage, lives with a family friend and visits her mother about once a month.
"She goes to see Sonya, and she is a basket case for two or three days," said Campbell.
"Sonya has no recognition of me at all," Riley said after a visit this month. "She looks at you and listens. She'll laugh and she'll cry.
"Everybody is mad as hell, of course," said Riley. "We do really hope they make an example of Chris Bailey.
"I knew that she was scared of her husband, little things that she would say. But I don't think she ever thought it was that bad."
Riley and Sonya played bingo every week at a Moose Club, and Chris would come along. But he sat alone at the bar while they played.
When the women took up walking at a high school track, they soon had company there as well, Riley said.
"The first few times she came by herself. We would walk and talk. Then he got to where - I guess he didn't know what she was talking about, so he came along. He didn't talk too much. He would just listen. She would always have to include him.
"So we just stopped walking," said Riley.
The injuries inflicted on Sonya Bailey have cost her family tens of thousands of dollars in the last four months. She has insurance, but her unpaid medical bills are $25,000 and climbing, according to her mother. She may lose about $18,000 in equity she has in her $55,000 house because the private mortgage holder plans to foreclose.
Sonya's mother has $3,000 in legal bills from efforts to take guardianship of Sonya and her daughter away from Chris.
Campbell, 58, who has worked as a motel desk clerk for six years, makes $4.90 an hour.
"It's a mess. Everything's a mess," she said the day she learned of the foreclosure.
"I get so mad, I want to hurt him," Campbell said. "But I know that violence was the problem to begin with."
Battered spouse pleads to keep husband jailed
Republican, The (Springfield, MA)
May 18, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
NORTHAMPTON - Marquis Loud is not her real name. Neither is Rhonda Moon, Marquis Moon, Sabrina Santos or Cindy Santos.
These are all the aliases of one scared woman born with the name Rhonda Fisher.
Lately, Fisher, 26, has been trying her best to keep her husband in the Franklin County House of Correction where he is serving a six-year sentence for assault and battery, for violating a restraining order and several other charges.
"If he gets out, I'll be dead within 24 hours. He's made that perfectly clear," says Fisher.
Moon is scheduled to go before a parole board in Greenfield today to determine whether he should be released early.
"Everybody tells me he's not going to be freed," said Fisher, who cannot attend the meeting, which is closed to the public.
In an effort to evade Peter Moon, her husband for six years, Fisher has changed her identity seven times. She refused to give her latest name.
Fisher says Moon beat her throughout their marriage and gave her burns, broken bones and caused two miscarriages.
"One night he put cigarettes out in my hair," she said. "Later, when I tried to get a drink, he smashed the glass in my hand and put my hand on a hot burner on high. Then he told me he was going to cool me off and he put my hand in the toilet"
Fisher says she wanted to leave her husband but was afraid Moon would turn on her family. She also says she was rendered helpless by her husband who controlled her financially and emotionally.
"Society has a hard time understanding why women don't leave abusive relationships," Fisher said. "But what real alternative do we have? There are none. Neighbors, family and friends don't want to get involved, and if the police don't see the crime, they have nothing to go on."
Moon was arrested May 4, 1993 after abducting Fisher's 7-year- old daughter and leading police on a high speed chase through Turners Falls and Greenfield.
He was convicted on charges that included two counts of assault and battery (one count with a dangerous weapon, a hammer), possession of a firearm, four counts of stalking, and 11 counts of violating a restraining order. Moon has been in jail since 1993. Moon was not charged with kidnapping Fisher's daughter.
In all, Moon was sentenced to 38 years. But since most of the terms are concurrent, he will spend a maximum of six years in jail and could be free as early as this afternoon.
Fisher has waged a paper war against domestic abuse that even made its way to Congress.
In 1993, U.S. Rep John Olver, D-Amherst, entered a letter drafted by Fisher into the Congressional Record as part of a speech about the Violence Against Women Act. The law makes it a federal offense for abusive spouses to travel across state lines to contact their spouses, and it authorized more than $260 million to fight violent crimes against women.
DEFENSE PRESENTING CASE IN KIDNAPPING
Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
May 22, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The federal kidnapping and interstate domestic violence case against Chris Bailey will go to the jury this week with some mysteries.
The prosecution completed its case Thursday. U.S. District Judge Charles Haden recessed the trial until today, when the defense will present its case.
A defense attorney, Gerard Kelley, acknowledged in opening statements last week that it won't be possible to answer every question raised by the prosecution's evidence, especially those involving Sonya Bailey's blood found inside the trunk of their car.
Chris Bailey awakened from an alcoholic blackout Dec. 1 in a rural area he had never seen, then discovered his wife, covered with blood and unconscious in the back seat of their car, Kelley said.
"Mr. Bailey came out of a blackout. He didn't know what had happened," Kelley said.
"How she got in the trunk and how she got out of the trunk, we just don't have any evidence on that."
And the government's case, presented through the testimony of a number of witnesses, suggests that Sonya Bailey was brutally beaten in her own bedroom.
Chris Bailey is charged with kidnapping and violating the federal Violence Against Women Act, passed by Congress last year.
Sonya Bailey, 33, remains in a coma.
MAY HAVE BEATEN WIFE
MAN SAYS DEFENDANT CLAIMS HIS DRUNKEN STATE BLOTTED HIS MEMORY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
May 23, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A St. Albans man accused of beating his wife into a coma and taking her to Kentucky in the trunk of their car agreed with prosecutors yesterday that ''there was a possibility that I did do it."
But Christopher Bailey testified that he doesn't recall what happened because his memory was blacked out by alcohol.
Bailey, 34, said he can only recall an argument with his wife, Sonya, 33, in a bar in St. Albans. The next thing he knew, he woke up some time later in a strange place to find her bloodied body in the back seat of their car, he said.
Bailey is the first person in the nation to be charged with violating the federal Violence Against Women Act, passed by Congress last year. He is also charged with kidnapping.
The law makes crossing a state line to assault a spouse or domestic partner a federal offense punishable by up to 20 years in prison for permanent disfigurement or life-threatening injury, and up to life in prison if the victim dies.
Sonya Bailey remains in a coma.
Bailey said he "was pretty intoxicated" the night of Nov. 25 and as a result is confused about events. But he recalls arguing with his wife about money at the bar.
He said he remembers a bar employee asking him to leave, so he walked across the street to a strip-tease bar called Big Bertha's.
"I don't remember leaving there," he said.
The next thing he remembers, "I woke up in the car. I turned around toward the back seat. My wife was back there. She had blood all over her head. She was laying there like she was asleep.
"I said, 'Sonya, are you all right?' I said that three or four times, and then I reached back to see if she was still alive," Bailey said. "I had no idea where I was at. I had no idea what had happened."
Bailey said he started to drive but headed nowhere in particular.
"I tried to figure out what happened (and) how I got there," he testified.
During questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Miller, Bailey acknowledged repeatedly that he "could have" beaten his wife but simply didn't recall.
Miller suggested that he avoided taking Sonya Bailey to a hospital when he awoke because "you thought you'd get in trouble."
"That thought did go through my mind," Bailey said. "I had no idea how badly hurt she was. If I had known then what I know now, I would have taken her to a hospital immediately ...
"I was very confused and very scared at that time," he said. "At that time I didn't know if I had done it or not. There was a possibility I did do it, yes. I still don't know."
Also yesterday, defense lawyers presented the testimony of two medical doctors who explained the effects of alcohol on short-term memory.
"It is unlikely that someone intoxicated with alcohol could remember something longer than five to 10 minutes," said psychiatrist Dr. Simon McClure.
"At the end of the intoxicated state ... the person wakes up, but they have no ability to recall," he said. "We call that a blackout."
In addition to alcoholism, McClure said, Bailey suffered from an acute stress disorder triggered by waking up in unfamiliar surroundings and finding his wife injured.
"This time he woke up in a car that he initially did not recognize, he didn't know where he was and as he was groping around, he was struck by the bloody presence of his wife," the psychiatrist said.
"That began the second major mental illness, the acute stress disorder," he said. "He was unable to gather or capably employ his usual reasoning skills."
First person convicted under new violence law
Bismarck Tribune, The (ND)
May 24, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- A man who beat his wife bloody and drove around two states with her locked in his trunk became the first person Tuesday convicted under the new federal domestic-violence law.
Christopher Bailey, 34, could get up to 20 years in prison under the new law and life behind bars for kidnapping. Sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 21.
He beat his wife, Sonya, on Nov. 26, placed her unconscious in the trunk of their compact car and drove around West Virginia and Kentucky until Dec. 1, when he carried her into a Corbin, Ky., emergency room, prosecutors said.
Sonya Bailey, 33, remains in a coma.
The Violence Against Women Act, part of the 1994 crime bill, makes crossing a state line to assault a spouse or domestic partner a federal offense. Bailey was the first person prosecuted under the law, which was passed in August.
""This sends a message that federal authorities are willing to step in and prosecute domestic violence where we can,'' U.S. Attorney Rebecca Betts said.
Advocates for victims of domestic abuse said prosecuting offenders under state laws is often difficult when the evidence doesn't clearly show which events occurred in which legal jurisdiction.
Had Bailey been prosecuted under West Virginia state laws, he would have faced a malicious wounding charge that carries up to 10 years in prison, state police Sgt. J.J. Dean said.
Bailey's lawyers wouldn't comment after the verdict.
During the trial, they argued that Bailey was in an alcoholic blackout and never intended to harm his wife.
Bailey, a handyman at a nursing home, testified he could only remember arguing with his wife in a bar in their hometown of St. Albans and waking up two days later in a place he didn't recognize to find her severely injured in the back seat. He was seated behind the wheel of the car, he said.
He said he drove around a few days before taking her to a hospital, because ""I thought I could get her better by myself.'' He said he went to a Kmart and bought bandages, hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic ointment for her wounds.
Investigators found a pool of blood and urine in the wheel well of the trunk. The lid of the trunk was dented from the inside and scratch marks were found around the lock.
Project to educate prosecutors, judges on federal domestic violence act
Dallas Morning News, The (TX)
June 4, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - But for the heedless crossing of a state line, Sonya Bailey's husband, the agent of her horrific six-day journey in the trunk of a compact car, might have walked away with a two-year sentence - or less.
Christopher Bailey recently became the first person convicted under the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which made crossing a state line to assault a spouse or domestic partner a federal felony.
The law is so new that many prosecutors and judges are
unfamiliar with its provisions, which call for penalties of up to 20 years for permanent disfigurement or life-threatening injury and up to a life sentence if the victim dies.
This summer, U.S. Attorney Rebecca Betts of the southern district of West Virginia, whose office prosecuted Mr. Bailey, will instruct federal magistrates from across the country on the criminal portions of the act. Judicial conferences are scheduled in Salt Lake City, San Diego and Atlanta, an education project financed by the new law.
"There is a critical need for education of the judiciary because people are just so uninformed. Judges come to this issue with all the myths and biases that the public brings," said Julie
Goldscheid, a lawyer with the Legal Defense and Education Fund of the National Organization for Women, in New York City.
Ms. Goldscheid said the science and documentation of domestic violence "is very well-established and very comprehensive."
She cited survey results that show rape by a man known to the victim is often more traumatic than rape by a stranger because it destroys the victim's ability to trust.
"It's a big surprise to judges, and it's important to
sentencing," Ms. Goldscheid said. "Too often they think, `Well, it was just her boyfriend, no big deal.' "
Besides the educational component, the new law also makes protection orders valid across state lines for the first time.
Without such "full faith and credit" provisions, Ms. Goldscheid said, a woman who tries to leave an abusive husband by moving to another state sometimes finds herself victimized again.
"It happens frequently," Ms. Goldscheid said. "A woman leaves her batterer, moves to another state to start a new life - and finds she won't be able to enforce her protection order."
Taken together, Ms. Goldscheid said, the provisions of the Violence Against Women Act "filled a gaping hole that had been in the law before."
The law also contains a new civil rights remedy for victims of violent crime motivated by gender, even if the perpetrator has not been charged with a criminal act.
In cases of rape, sexual assault or assault and battery, victims may bring civil lawsuits, which carry a lesser standard of evidence than criminal proceedings, if the acts were "committed because of gender or . . . due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim's gender."
Sonya Bailey, 33, remains in a coma today. She was near death last Dec. 1 when her husband carried her into a Corbin, Ky., emergency room six days after beating her senseless in the bedroom of their St. Albans, W. Va., home.
Mr. Bailey kept his wife in the trunk of the car while he drove aimlessly across West Virginia and Kentucky, crossing the state line at least three times, "just driving to calm himself down," as his psychiatrist testified.
Police arrested Mr. Bailey in Kentucky but had to drop the charges because they couldn't document what happened in their jurisdiction. In less than four weeks, Mr. Bailey was the object of a federal indictment based on the new law.
At his sentencing Aug. 21, Mr. Bailey faces up to life in prison for kidnapping and up to 20 years for permanent disfigurement.
Lynn Hecht Schafran, director of NOW's National Judicial Education Program, said the act "puts women on an equal footing before the law with other protected classes."
"There is a particular kind of violence that is directed at certain people because they are the color they are, or because they are the religion they are," Ms. Schafran said. "Women have never been protected under these statutes.
"It's an important thing to say, that we recognize there are crimes where people are selected for violence solely because they are women, and the law isn't going to countenance that, any more than it would countenance the beating of someone because he or she is black."
BATTERED ILLEGALS THREATENED BY BUREAUCRACY
NEW REGULATIONS ON CRIME MEASURE ARE FAULTED ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ)
June 6, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The young Nigerian woman picking at her cold French fries isn't sure who she fears more: her husband or the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
One, she says, wants to kill her. The other would deport her.
A little-known provision of last year's crime bill, which allows battered aliens to file their own immigration papers, was supposed to protect people like her who risk deportation in order to escape violent marriages.
But regulations implementing the new law are still being written by bureaucrats who, immigration attorneys say, don't understand the dynamics of domestic violence. Telling her story in a downtown fast-food restaurant, the 25-year-old mother of three children - all U.S. citizens - will, on the advice of her attorney, use only her first name: Ngozi. She is in the country illegally and living in hiding from her husband of seven years.
The beatings and death threats began, she said, two months after she arrived in the United States as a 16-year-old child bride.
"He told me if I try to leave, he's going to kill me because he's the one who brought me here" with promises of higher education and legal immigration status, said Ngozi.
Until last year's crime bill was signed, immigration law required the citizen or legal-resident spouse to file for legal-resident status - a "green card" - on behalf of the immigrant spouse.
"He said he would file the papers," Ngozi said. But he never did, and immigration attorneys say that is typical in domestic-violence cases where the abuser controls not only his victim's immigration status but also her ability to work legally.
Poverty, homelessness and deportation are powerful threats, said Ngozi's attorney, Wendy Patten, who is juggling 13 other cases involving battered alien women.
"What he's telling her is the law won't help you. They'll always listen to me and I control your life," said Patten.
Ngozi and her three children live on $420 in cash welfare payments and $300 in food stamps each month.
The Violence Against Women Act, which was ultimately rolled into the 1994 crime bill, was designed to put the law on the side of the battered woman.
It allowed battered aliens to petition the INS for legal status on their own, and suspended deportation proceedings for aliens who could prove battering and who would be here legally except for the abuser's refusal to petition on his victim's behalf.
But a House provision giving the women temporary work authorization while their petitions were being processed was dropped from the final bill signed into law on Sept. 13.
Patten and an informal coalition of immigration attorneys and women's rights advocates nationwide want the INS to provide for the temporary work authorization in its regulations.
But that is unlikely, according to INS spokeswoman Cathy Boothe.
"There will be no automatics in getting authorization," Boothe said after reviewing a draft of the interim rules, expected to be published for public comment in the next few weeks.
Applications by battered spouses will instead "be looked at on a case-by- case basis and there will be options," she said.
That's not good enough, says Albuquerque, N.M., attorney Sarah Reinhardt, whose legal clinic has 16 battered, undocumented-alien clients waiting to file for protection under the new law.
Without a regulatory directive on work authorization, battered women will have to "rely on the good will" of INS field officers who have no real experience with domestic violence cases, said Reinhardt.
"They haven't been in the trenches and seen this stuff up close. It's such a complex area, I just can't assume they're going to be sensitive," she said.
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), author of the original House bill, is also skeptical.
"We don't have any reason to believe INS will do right by these women. It's been a year since we passed that legislation. They've shown great reluctance to comply with it," said Slaughter. She has met with officials from the Justice Department's office on violence against women, pushing them to oversee the INS' work on the regulations.
Ngozi's attorney says that unless the women are allowed to support themselves and their children, the new protections are useless.
"The point of the law is to prevent women like this from having to stay in a violent situation because they depend on him. If the INS deprives them of work authorization, they're going to drive these women back to their abusers," said Patten.
YEAR LATER, THE HYPE OVERSHADOWS DEATHS
VICTIMS SEEM LOST IN GLARE OF SIMPSON CASE
Akron Beacon Journal (OH)
June 11, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
On a gentle slope beneath a spreading pine, a headstone finally marks the grave of Ronald Lyle Goldman.
"Missing you now, loving you always," it says.
His father and stepmother, Fred and Patti Goldman, waited almost a year, in accordance with Jewish faith, before marking the spot in Westlake Village where they buried their 25-year-old son. They unveiled his tombstone in a Memorial Day weekend ceremony symbolizing an end to formal mourning.
Few visit this place. One hazy morning, days before the service, a young woman arrived bearing sunflowers and delphiniums. She knelt and wept over the anonymous patch of grass. "I love you and miss you more every day," read the tiny florist's card signed by the dead man's girlfriend.
Almost 100 miles to the south, in a small Roman Catholic graveyard in suburban Orange County, the body of Nicole Brown Simpson lies next to her grandfather's, under a simple granite rectangle bearing her name and declaring "Always in Our Hearts."
Many come here, some of them strangers who leave long letters attached to floral bouquets. One note ended, "I'm sorry that I never got to know you."
Louis and Juditha Brown plan to mark the first anniversary tomorrow of their 35-year-old daughter's death with a public candlelight vigil at a nearby beach. "There is no excuse for abuse," reads the flier announcing it.
Since these two people died together on June 12, 1994, life has changed dramatically, and not just for the families left behind.
A stylish enclave called Brent-wood is now a tourist mecca, an unemployed houseguest named Kato Kaelin has a national fan club and tell-all books reap fortunes for first-time authors, including a recovering cocaine addict.
Seemingly everyone, everywhere knows far more than is necessary about an avalanche of surreal events leading to "The Trial" -- a proceeding that limps, on national television, toward no visible end.
Meanwhile, the cause of all this fades farther and farther from view.
On a quiet Sunday night, at the front gate to her Brentwood condominium, the ex-wife of O.J. Simpson and a friend who was doing her a favor were stabbed at least 36 times and left to die, their blood cascading across terra cotta tiles and soaking into closely cropped grass.
Orenthal James Simpson, winner of college football's Heisman Trophy, former star of the Buffalo Bills, a man with an easy public smile and a raging private temper, is charged with wielding the knife.
A PUBLIC PERSONA
In public, her blond hair swept to one side, her toned body in form-fitting evening wear, Nicole Brown Simpson certainly didn't look abused. At movie premieres and sporting events, on the arm of her famous spouse, she smiled broadly, her beautiful face tilted at a saucy angle.
But battered she was. After her death, authorities released tape recordings of her previous calls for police help.
"He's going to beat the s--- out of me," she sobbed into the phone eight months before she was killed and just moments after a screaming, cursing Simpson bashed in her back door.
The couple's two children, daughter Sydney, 9, and son Justin, 6, who were asleep in second-floor rear bedrooms inside Nicole Simpson's condo the night she was killed, now live with the Browns.
Sydney knows Daddy is accused of killing Mommy. Justin doesn't, according to the Browns, who spent much of the last year keeping the children from public view.
The shrieking and pleading on the police tapes seared the reality of domestic violence onto the nation's conscience -- for a time, at least.
+ The Browns, who say they didn't recognize signs that their daughter was abused, founded the Nicole Brown Simpson Charitable Foundation.
+ President Clinton spoke out, describing domestic violence as "a crisis occurring all around us" and saying, "We can no longer ignore the pleas of those in desperate need."
+ Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act as part of the 1994 crime bill, ordering stiff punishment for attacks on women, making restraining orders valid across state lines and providing a civil rights remedy for women who are targeted for violence because they are women.
+ In Los Angeles, the notoriety of the murders helped push the district attorney's office to open a Family Violence Unit to prosecute abuse and murder cases.
"The number of calls we got skyrocketed," said Marlene Sanchez, assistant head deputy of the unit. "I can't tell you the number of reports we had where the man said, 'I'm going to do an O.J. on you.' "
In 1993, the district attorney's office filed 1,500 felony spousal abuse cases. Last year, the number rose to 2,064. Other areas of the country report similar trends.
It's not clear whether batterings and other forms of abuse are really on the rise or whether women and their friends or relatives are simply recognizing the violence for what it is and seeking help rather than hiding the truth.
"A woman is beaten every 15 seconds," said Nicky Amundsen, development coordinator of Peace at Home, an advocacy group in Boston formerly known as Battered Women Fighting Back. "That number hasn't changed."
SWINGS OF FORTUNE
Some of the last year's most noticeable swings of fortune involve lawyers, the news media and public opinion.
Celebrity attorney Robert Shapiro, now relegated to the sidelines of Simpson's so-called legal "Dream Team," used to get hounded for autographs at the downtown Criminal Courts Building. Recently, he was booed at a Lakers game. At a fight in Las Vegas, the sight of Shapiro prompted chants of "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!"
Television ratings, which soared during Simpson's infamous freeway chase and in the early court days, have fallen off.
"I think it's largely been a period of great excess," said Everette Dennis, executive director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University in New York. "More than what anyone could possibly want to know has been written and broadcast."
Last month, an Associated Press poll found that only 7 percent of Americans were still following the case "very closely," one-third the audience that identified itself that way 10 months ago in an ABC News survey.
However, tourists still flock Nicole Simpson's empty condo, to the nearby estate of her ex-husband and to Mezzaluna restaurant, where Goldman worked as a waiter and Nicole Simpson ate dinner with her family just hours before the murders.
Goldman later stopped by her condo to return a pair of eyeglasses her mother had dropped outside the restaurant. Those glasses, tucked into a white envelope, were found near his mutilated body.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California, where Simpson won the Heisman in 1968, sees good in most things, this case included.
"More people will learn about the legal system from this case than ever before," said Chemerinsky, who now gets stopped by strangers because of his televised trial commentary.
"I realize there are people who see lawyers in this case as being sophists into self-aggrandizement, and journalists as being sensationalists ... but it's still the prosecution and a defendant before a judge. The rules of criminal procedure apply like in any other case. The Constitution applies like in any other case."
And, Chemerinsky said, there is an even more important lesson to be learned: "My hope is that it will cause society to rethink who we make celebrities and who we make heroes."
Biden speaks to victims at conference
Delaware State News (Dover, DE)
June 17, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
DOVER -- Tackling the problem of violent juveniles will be the next legislative project for Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., while he continues to combat threatened funding cuts to the Violence Against Women Act.
Sen. Biden revealed his new focus prior to his address at the final day of the Crime Victims Conference at the Sheraton Inn and Conference Center.
''I am shifting my focus to violent juveniles who are perpetrating a larger proportion of the violent crimes,'' Sen. Biden said. ''They seem to be the least susceptible to sanctions.''
He said public hearings will be planned in the near future on the problem of youth violence in Dover and Wilmington.
''We need to reinstitute a focus on violent youth, to begin to look closely at it and see what we can do,'' Sen. Biden said. ''It is indirectly related to violence against women.''
At the same time, Sen. Biden said, his focus will remain on keeping the Republicans from gutting the Violence Against Women Bill by cutting the funding in the trust fund. Vigilance will also be maintained to prevent the $100,000 in police funding from being cut.
Sen. Biden spoke to the gathering of about 80 victim service providers about ongoing work to implement the Violence Against Women Bill in Delaware. President Bill Clinton signed the legislation into law last September.
''For far too long, society has turned its back on the nightmare of violence against women,'' he said. Sen. Biden said the goals of the legislation are to make the streets safer for women, make the court system more responsive to the victims of these violent crimes, and extend to female victims the equal protection of the law.
Delaware is receiving $426,000 in federal monies as a result of the legislation. A council, made up of Secretary of Public Safety Karen L. Johnson, U.S. Attorney Gregory M. Sleet, Family Court Chief Judge Vincent J. Poppiti and Sen. Patricia M. Blevins will make recommendations on how the money will be spent to implement the bill.
Secretary Johnson said different organizations and agencies have been asked for proposals on how the money can best be spent. ''We expect to receive those responses by the end of June,'' she said.
Sen. Biden said he would like to see the money spent on battered women's shelters.
''There are three times as many animal shelters as there are battered women's shelters,'' he said. ''About 75 percent of the women who are homeless, walking the streets, are there because they are victims of domestic violence.'' The legislation also encourages arrests without requiring the victims to sign a warrant, and provides funding for education efforts and for improving computer databases to combat stalking, among other pro-female victim measures.
Interstate abuse of women illegal
San Antonio Express-News (TX)
June 17, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Rebecca Betts has a message to send not only to perpetrators of domestic violence, but also to federal judges and prosecutors: Crossing state lines to commit spousal abuse is a federal felony.
Betts, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, recently used that key provision of the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994 for the first time.
She successfully prosecuted Christopher Bailey, who beat his wife senseless in their St. Albans, W.Va., home. He then put her in the trunk of his car and drove for six days around that state and into neighboring Kentucky.
Police arrested Bailey in Corbin, Ky., when he took his comatose wife to an emergency room. Because they could not determine that a crime had occurred in their jurisdiction, Kentucky authorities were not certain they could prosecute him.
The new federal law gave Betts authority to do so. Thanks to her efforts, Bailey now faces a possible life sentence for his crimes.
That case was unusual. More common, domestic violence experts believe, will be cases where battered wives unsuccessfully try to escape abusive husbands by moving out of state but are tracked down and attacked again.
"The new law also makes protection orders valid across state lines for the first time," the Associated Press reported. It further gives domestic violence victims standing to file civil suits in federal court if they were targeted because of gender.
"It's an important thing to say that we recognize there are crimes where women are selected for violence solely because they are women, and the law isn't going to countenance that," said Lynn Hecht Schafran of the National Organization for Women's National Judicial Education Program.
This summer, Betts will speak to federal judicial conferences across the country to educate judges and prosecutors on the new law and its uses. Making the measure work effectively is just as important as getting Congress to pass it was.
COURT REJECTS DEPUTY'S WIFE IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASE
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
June 20, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The Supreme Court yesterday left standing a lower court ruling that said a sheriff's department had no constitutional duty to protect the family of a deputy who killed his 4-year-old daughter and wounded his wife and stepson before fatally shooting himself.
Without comment, the justices turned down an appeal in which Sheila Yarbro Garrett argued that her estranged husband's superiors and co-workers in the Shelby County, Tenn., Sheriff's Department failed to act despite numerous pleas that he was threatening the family and becoming increasingly violent.
Clyde Eugene Garrett was out on bail after being charged with assaulting his wife when he kicked in the door of the Garretts' suburban Memphis home, brandishing his service revolver in one hand and his own pistol in the other, on Feb. 11, 1990.
He shot and killed his daughter Nikki, 4, and shot Sheila Garrett in the face and her son, Donnie Donaldson, 16, in the shoulder before turning a gun on himself.
Sheila Garrett sued the sheriff's department, alleging it showed deliberate indifference to her constitutional rights to due process and equal protection of the law and to the rights of her children.
A federal trial jury awarded her more than $1.4 million in 1993, but a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that judgment on a 2-1 vote in January 1995.
In an unsigned opinion, the majority reasoned that sheriff's department superiors and colleagues had no "special relationship" with Garrett's family that established a duty to protect them against domestic violence.
The majority rejected the idea that a "special relationship somehow existed" because the department provided the service revolver used in the shootings on the grounds that the department had no policy "of permitting drunken off-duty officers to carry their firearms."
The Supreme Court action yesterday came as the justices are being pressed to take on constitutional claims arising from domestic violence. The court also expects to face a rising caseload soon under the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994, under which the government obtained its first conviction June 3.
Without comment last month, the justices turned down an appeal by a Columbia, Mo., woman who had a court-issued restraining order against her estranged husband when he showed up at her parents' home, shot and killed her mother and kidnapped and raped her.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a $1.2 million verdict for Kimberly Roth and her father in that case, said it was "pure speculation" to suggest that Roth's estranged husband wouldn't have killed her mother and abducted her had police arrested and jailed him for prior harassment in violation of the protective order.
ABUSE EXPERTS CALL FOR POLICE TRAINING
State Journal-Register, The (Springfield, IL)
June 24, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The criminal justice system needs funding both to train police to handle domestic violence cases and to hire more advocates to work with victims through the court process, social service workers say.
Advocates for victims of domestic abuse asked the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority to use part of a federal grant to help them improve training for officers who deal with domestic violence cases.
The authority conducted a public hearing Friday to determine how to use a $426,000 federal grant issued as part of the national Violence Against Women Act, included in the 1994 crime bill. The money is to be used in ways that will improve the criminal justice system's response to violence against women.
At least 25 percent of the federal grant has to be allocated to law enforcement, prosecution and victim services.
Victims of domestic violence often refuse to report their cases to law enforcement because they fear being scrutinized by police, social workers said.
"I know community members still have fears of reporting, not only because they are afraid of a perpetrator's abuse or how the community will treat them, but because they are fearful of the very system that is supposed to protect them," said Melissa Dessert, director of the rape crisis center at A Woman's Fund in Urbana.
"What they don't want is to have to answer questions that are accusing, blaming or insensitive to the crime that has been committed against them."
Counties also need more money to hire court advocates who work with victims in coordination with police and prosecutors, said Mary Rebar, who is an advocate in domestic violence cases in Champaign County. The state's attorney's office receives 10 reports of domestic violence cases every day in Champaign County and the caseload has increase by 10 percent each month this year, she said.
"Despite our prevention efforts, the number of persons requesting assistance is increasing," said Linda Woods of the Center for the Prevention of Abuse in Peoria. "Many clients have utilized our counseling services but chose not to report their rape to police, (which) indicates they feared being doubted or judged critically by the officers."
According to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, about 500,000 women and girls are victims of rape or attempted rape each year. Less than half of all violent crime against women is believed to be reported to law enforcement, the group said.
Biden upset over cuts to Violence Against Women Act
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
July 13, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
It should have been a triumphant day - unveiling an impressive list of people who would keep public attention focused on preventing domestic violence - for anti-violence advocates like Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
But instead, as Attorney General Janet Reno and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala came together to unveil the members of the Advisory Council on Violence Against Women on Thursday, Biden fumed at Republican attempts to slash funding for the act that was included in last year's crime bill.
House Republicans have proposed cutting $162 million from the $267 million authorized in the anti-violence act that would have gone to such things as setting up shelters for abused women and their children, providing community-based educational programs to prevent abuse and to provide for courtroom advocates for the child-victims of abuse.
An estimated 60,000 women will not be able to find room at shelters if the cuts go through, Biden told the gathered members of the advisory council. He told the members that their role is to "make sure that the public understands what the commitment was and how it is being reneged upon.
"The fact of the matter is you all have your work cut out for you."
Advisory council members include Judge Vincent Poppiti, chief judge of the Delaware Family Court, as well as actress Susan Dey, nationally syndicated advice columnist Ann Landers, Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation, and Robert McAfee, president of the American Medical Association.
Poppiti, who also serves as chairman of Delaware's Domestic Violence Coordinating Counsel, said he hopes that the advisory council would still be able to get the message out - even with less money.
"We've got to have a coordinated message to stop violence in our homes and violence against women in our streets," he said.
Biden, D-Del., said the $267 million authorized in the act would not mean one cent in additional taxes to deal with "this gawd-awful problem" of domestic violence.
Instead, money to fund the anti-violence programs was slated to come from federal jobs that were eliminated, he explained.
"The money is there - not a single new penny in taxes," Biden said. "Don't let them take our money and spend it on something else - whether it's a tax cut for the wealthy ... or a worthwhile social program.
"The commitment has been made."
A TALE OF LAWS, $$ AND POLITICS
Staten Island Advance (NY)
July 23, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON - It could have never happened under the Democrats.
On July 10 Republican Rep. Susan Molinari's hard-line anti-crime measure permitting evidence of prior sex crimes to be used in the trials of repeat rapists quietly became law. The next day the budget cutters in the House applied a buzz-saw to the 1993 Violence Against Women Act, a package of liberal spending programs intended to combat violence against women.
Appropriations subcommittees, now controlled by the Repubicans, voted to omit nearly two-thirds of the funding authorized last year for battered women's shelters, rape prevention, child abuse prosecution, a national domestic violence hotline and other programs. The panel approved only $75 million of the $237 million proposed for the initiatives under the Act.
The cuts were especially galling to supporters for the programs because they were supposed to have a guaranteed financing source a trust fund fed by the savings generated from the elimination of 272,000 federal jobs.
For House Democrats, the situation of was another case of the world turned upside down. When the Act originally passed the old Democratic House in the fall of 1993, Democratic leaders, led by Reps. Charles Schumer of Brooklyn and Pat Schroeder of Colorado, vetoed the inclusion of Ms. Molinari's prior evidence amendment.
It was adamantly opposed not only by the American Civil Liberties Union but by some feminist groups.
When the House then rolled the Act into its version of the 1994 omnibus crime bill, the Democratic leadership refused to allow Ms. Molinari to offer her proposal as an amendment to the new package. It was ruled ungermane.
The measure was eventually included in the crime bill but only after House Republicans succeeded in stalling a vote on the final version of the legislation later that year and then forcing Democrats to accept the prior evidence language along with other changes.
The Democrats never envisioned the Molinari proposal becoming law. They inserted language in the overall crime bill barring the prior evidence measure from going into effect until six months after the U.S. Judicial Conference, the official organization of the nation's federal judges, submitted what was expected to be a negative report on it to Congress.
The way would then be cleared for opponents of the measure, principally then Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph Biden of Delaware, to kill it. In an acidly worded speech given as the crime bill cleared the Senate last year, Biden vowed to do just that, calling the Molinari amendment "the craziest rule I have ever heard of."
When the judges' report arrived, he said, "someone has the burden ... I guess it would be me ... to stand up on the floor" and lead a repeal effort.
As anticipated, the liberal-leaning judicial conference did deliver the negative verdict on the measure in January, labeling it "unduly prejudicial" to defendants. But by this time, Biden and the Democrats were out of power and no longer in a position to revisit the issue.
Although elated by the final triumph of her amendment, Ms. Molinari made it clear last week that she was not happy with the cuts proposed in the Violence Against Women Act programs, which she supported despite the exclusion of her amendment.
"I will do every thing that I can to restore them," she said early last week. Indeed, by the end of the week, the congresswoman, the vice chair of the House Republican Conference, had helped persuade other House GOP leaders to restore $40 million of the money.
But she refused to speak ill of her Republican colleagues who had taken part in the attack on the bill. "We all are engaged in the nearly impossible job of balancing the budget in seven years, so we are bound to have some disagreements along the way," she said.
The main nemesis of the domestic violence programs, John Porter of Illinois, the chairman of the health and human services appropriations subcommittee, said most of them were "duplicative of programs in other places."
The women's programs may have an eaiser time of it in the Senate, where they have the support of Orrin Hatch of Utah, Biden's Republican successor as chairman of the Judicary Committee and one of Capitol Hill's most influential conservatives.
ALABAMA MAKES RAPE VICTIMS PAY FOR EVIDENCE EXAM
BILL TO END POLICY IS GETTING GOVERNOR'S ATTENTION
Seattle Times, The (WA)
July 24, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Julie Lindsey was robbed, kidnapped, handcuffed to a tree and raped. Then a hospital nearly sued her because she didn't have money to pay for her rape exam.
Alabama is the only state requiring most rape victims to pay for the exams needed to gather the semen, hair and fiber samples used to prosecute rapists.
A bill to end the policy nearly died in the Legislature until media coverage set people talking and Gov. Fob James moved the bill to the top of his agenda for today.
"There's a lot of things about this crime that strike me as strange. This is just one of them," said Lindsey, who agreed to be identified for this article.
The exams average $350 but can run as high as $1,200. A few police departments pay hospitals for the work; most do not.
Anita Drummond, director of the state Crime Victims Compensation Commission, wants lawmakers to allow her organization to pay for the exams.
Without making that change, Alabama stands to lose its share of $35 million in law-enforcement training money available under the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.
James' support tilts the odds in the bill's favor, said sponsor Rep. Tony Petelos, but Drummond and her colleagues are still concerned.
"Rape is probably one of the lowest issues on the totem pole," she said, adding that efforts to improve treatment of rape victims in Alabama have stalled for a decade.
Ten years ago, Lindsey, now director of the Council Against Rape, was clerking at a motel when two armed men burst in, robbed the motel and kidnapped her. They handcuffed her to a tree, sodomized and raped her.
She managed to break free and eventually found herself at a hospital undergoing a "humiliating prodding and probing."
The next day, she was fired because of the attack. Her boss "didn't want me around any more," she said.
A few weeks later she found the hospital's $200 bill in her mailbox.
"It never occurred to me that I would have to pay for this. That was the last thing that was on my mind," she said. "I didn't have any insurance, I was fired from my job, I couldn't pay the bill.
Eventually the hospital turned me over to a collection agency."
She was eventually able to pay.
The traditional stigma attached to rape lies behind the struggle over the legislation, said Lou Lacey, director of Rape Response in Birmingham.
"Our society is still completely full of misconceptions about sexual assault, especially about who's to blame," Lacey said. "If we're unclear about where to put the blame, we certainly don't want to pay for it.
Act won't aid battered women
Tampa Bay Times (FL)
EDITORIAL
Author/Byline: ANITA K. BLAIR
July 27, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The Violence Against Women Act, passed by Congress last year as part of the federal crime bill, created the widespread expectation that it will help battered women.
It won't.
It is a step backward for women who are victims of domestic abuse.
The act makes federal offenses of domestic-violence crimes, which are most effectively handled at the state and local levels.
For example, it encourages victims to ask federal courts for relief even though state courts would provide faster trials by prosecutors more experienced in these cases.
Fortunately, the House Appropriations Committee wants to send taxpayers' dollars authorized under the Violence Against Women Act to states and localities.
This week the House was expected to pass a bill that will provide $75-million in block grants for the 1996 fiscal year. The Senate likely will go along with this appropriation.
Battered women can get real assistance from hometown volunteer organizations that can help them find a job and a new place for the women and their children to live. These groups typically rely on private charity.
Under the federal law, government money is funneled to private feminist organizations such as the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and the Battered Women's Justice Project.
They provide counselors who will educate women about the ""truth'' of domestic violence.
The debate and passage of the law was surrounded by a lot of hype.
There was a widespread impression that domestic violence is a kind of airborne contagion liable to strike any family at any time.
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence asserted that violent crime strikes a woman every 15 seconds.
President Clinton repeated the statistic. But in March, the White House retracted that statement, admitting it was unsubstantiated.
The 1985 National Family Violence Survey, a sample of 6,000 men and women, estimated that there were 1.8-million battered women. Researchers still use this study, contending that it stands as the best estimate.
It showed that, each year, per every 1,000 people there were 34 reported incidents that might well have caused physical injury. It also showed there were 3.7 per 1,000 that actually caused injury.
Experts say that when a woman is threatened or abused by the man she lives with, the key to preventing further injury is separation. If she cannot or will not leave, she risks additional and more serious injury.
Therefore, the experts say, laws against domestic violence should seek to remove the offenders by imposing long prison terms and abolishing parole. This wisdom contradicts the federal law's preference for so-called treatment and parole for abusers.
Under the act, to get federal money, the states must certify that their laws are consistent with the new federal legislation.
This action will inhibit states from taking stronger, possibly innovative, action they might consider appropriate.
The act does not fight crime, it just tinkers with it. It authorized $1.6-billion in spending for six years.
About 90 percent of this sum would support bureaucrats and consultants engaging in studies, plans, policies, recordkeeping, consultation and ""needs assessments.''
By returning some of these dollars to the states and municipalities, the House will do battered women a favor.
More police officers, prosecutors and prisons are the only way to make these women safer in their homes and neighborhoods.
Anita K. Blair is vice president of the Independent Womens' Forum, a conservative public-policy group.
Domestic violence funding faces cuts
Bismarck Tribune, The (ND)
July 27, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A $50 million cut in funds promised last year to fight domestic violence will hurt North Dakota, the state's congressman says.
""The House is backsliding to commitments it made last year to victims of domestic violence, both battered spouses and children,'' Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., said Wednesday. ""It certainly is very bad policy.''
North Dakota would have been eligible for $9 million over five years for domestic violence-related programs, plus a share of another $500 million in related programs. Now, Pomeroy said, no one knows how much the state will receive.
""That's unclear at this point,'' the congressman said. ""What is clear is the resources will not be available to fulfill the full promise of the (Violence Against Women) Act.''
The House passed the measure, contained in a major appropriations bill, late Wednesday night.
Cuts in the domestic violence program hit states like North Dakota especially hard, Pomeroy said, where half of the state's homicides are a result of domestic disputes.
The Legislature is not doing enough to fund domestic violence programs, he said.
""Federal cutbacks will hurt the most where states have done the least,'' Pomeroy said. ""Unfortunately, North Dakota falls into that category.''
Last year's crime bill did not appropriate money for domestic violence programs. Since the vote last year, control of Congress has changed from Democrat to Republican. The cuts in promised funding are part of the Republican effort to chop spending to reduce the federal deficit.
The congressional change of heart is especially surprising in light of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, which prosecutors tie to domestic abuse, Pomeroy said.
""We barely pay attention to it any more,'' he said of the trial. ""But it underscores the tragic dimensions of domestic violence.''
ASSISTANCE FOR BATTERED WOMEN MUST COME FROM THE LOCAL LEVEL
Deseret News, The (Salt Lake City, UT)
July 27, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
THE VIOLENCE AGAINST Women Act, passed by Congress last year as part of the federal crime bill, created the widespread expectation that it will help battered women.
It won't.
It is a step backward for women who are victims of domestic abuse.
The act makes federal offenses of domestic-violence crimes, which are most effectively handled at the state and local levels.
Fortunately, the House Appropriations Committee wants to send taxpayers' dollars authorized under the Violence Against Women Act to states and localities.
This week the House is expected to pass a bill that will provide $75 million in block grants for the 1996 fiscal year. The Senate is likely to go along with this appropriation.
Battered women can get real assistance from hometown volunteer organizations that can help them find a job and a new place for the women and their children to live. These groups typically rely on private charity.
Under the federal law, government money is funneled to private feminist organizations such as the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and the Battered Women's Justice Project.
Experts say that when a woman is threatened or abused by the man she lives with, the key to preventing further injury is separation. If she cannot or will not leave, she risks additional and more serious injury.
Therefore, the experts say, laws against domestic violence should seek to remove the offenders by imposing long prison terms and abolishing parole. This wisdom contradicts the federal law's preference for so-called treatment and parole for abusers.
Under the act, to get federal money, the states must certify that their laws are consistent with the new federal legislation. This will inhibit them from taking stronger, possibly innovative, action they might consider appropriate.
The act does not fight crime, it just tinkers with it. It authorized $1.6 billion in spending for six years.
By returning some of these dollars to the states and municipalities, the House will do battered women a favor.
More police officers, prosecutors and prisons are the only way to make these women safer.
HOUSE INCREASES FUNDS FOR DOMESTIC-VIOLENCE PROGRAMS
Macon Telegraph, The (GA)
July 27, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The House came up with more money Wednesday for domestic violence programs but rejected an attempt to resurrect crime prevention programs advocated by the administration.
The bill also would end funding for President Clinton's program to help communities hire thousands more police.
In another long day of debate over 1996 spending bills, Republican leaders endorsed a plan to ensure that all spending cuts be used to reduce the deficit. Democrats have accused Republicans of funneling savings from spending cuts into accounts to be used for tax cuts for the wealthy.
The House spent the day on a bill to fund $27.6 billion in 1996 for the departments of Commerce, State and Justice and related agencies.
Commerce takes a 17 percent cut from 1995, to $3.4 billion, as Republicans pushed ahead with plans to dismantle the department as part of efforts to balance the budget by 2002.
In what Rep. Nita Lowey, DN.Y., described as ``one of therare victories'' for the Democrats, the Republican leadership agreed Wednesday to assign $50 million for domestic violence programs from a $2 billion law enforcement block grant fund.
Added to the original $75 million budgeted and $40 million to be set aside from the crime trust fund, the money nearly equaled the $175 million authorized under the Violence Against Women Act passed last year.
Lowey said Republicans had joined in a unanimous vote to pass that act, and ``clearly they didn't want to debate this issue with us on the floor.''
But the House rejected, 296-128, an amendment by Rep. Cleo Fields, DLa., to transfer $200 million from the block grant to prevention programs that were part of the crime bill passed under a Democraticcontrolled Congress last year.
Clinton, in a speech on urban policy Tuesday, noted that ``it was the law enforcement communities of America ... who told us that we had to have crime prevention programs and something for our children to say yes to as well as to say no to.''
BILL ATTACK$ DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
HOUSE ALSO TIES CUTS TO REDUCING DEFICIT
Philadelphia Daily News (PA)
July 27, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The House yesterday approved a bill to provide more money for domestic- violence programs, but rejected an attempt to resurrect the crime- prevention programs advocated by the Clinton administration.
The bill also would end funding for President Clinton's program to help communities hire thousands of police officers.
In another long day of debate over 1996 spending bills, Republican leaders endorsed a plan to ensure that all spending cuts be used to reduce the deficit. Democrats have accused Republicans of funneling savings from spending cuts into accounts to be used for tax cuts for the wealthy.
The House spent the day on a bill to fund $27.6 billion in 1996 for the departments of Commerce, State and Justice and related agencies.
The bill, passed 272-151, provides $14.5 billion for the Justice Department, up from $12.2 billion in 1995, and $5.2 billion for the State Department and related agencies, down from $5.7 billion. Of the Justice money, $4 billion is for a crime-reduction trust fund.
Commerce takes a 17 percent cut from 1995, to $3.4 billion, as Republicans proceeded with plans to dismantle the department as part of efforts to balance the budget by 2002.
The GOP leadership opposed rank-and-file efforts to take deeper chunks from the Commerce budget - an amendment by Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., to eliminate the Economic Development Administration, which helps economically distressed areas, was defeated, 310-115.
But Rep. Dick Chrysler, R-Mich., a freshman who has campaigned to close down Commerce, said he had received assurances from GOP leaders that they would come up with legislation later in the year outlining Commerce's demise.
In what Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., described as "one of the rare victories" for the Democrats, the Republican leadership agreed to assign $50 million for domestic-violence programs from a $2 billion law-enforcement block-grant fund.
Added to the original $75 million budgeted and $40 million to be set aside from the crime trust fund, the money nearly equaled the $175 million authorized under the Violence Against Women Act passed last year.
But the House rejected, 296-128, an amendment by Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., to transfer $200 million from the block grant to prevention programs that were part of the crime bill passed under a Democratic-controlled Congress last year.
"These are the midnight basketball programs back with us again," said Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., head of the Appropriations subcommittee that deals with the Commerce, State and Justice departments, in dismissing the amendment.
DOMESTIC ABUSE NEEDS ACTION, NOT STUDIES
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
July 30, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The Violence Against Women Act, passed by Congress last year as part of the federal crime bill, created the widespread expectation that it will help battered women. It won't. It is a step backward for women who are victims of domestic abuse.
The act makes federal offenses of domestic-violence crimes, which are most effectively handled at the state and local levels. For example, it encourages victims to ask federal courts for relief even though state courts would provide faster trials by prosecutors more experienced in these cases.
Some in the House, sensibly, have concluded that sending funds to local crime-fighting agencies is the most effective thing the federal government can do to protect the safety of women in their homes and neighborhoods. The House recently voted to appropriate $75 million for local law-enforcement purposes as part of the crime bill.
The House is also considering another $40 million. This money would not prevent or punish violent crime against women. Instead it would support a massive victimhood industry.
Battered women can get real assistance from hometown volunteer organizations that can help them find a job and a new place for the women and their children to live. These groups typically rely on private charity.
Under the federal law, government money is funneled to such feminist organizations as the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and the Battered Women's Justice Project. They provide counselors to educate women about the "truth" of domestic violence.
The debate and passage of the law was surrounded by a lot of hype. There was a widespread impression that domestic violence is a kind of airborne contagion liable to strike any family at any time.
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence asserted that violent crime strikes a woman every 15 seconds. President Bill Clinton repeated the statistic. But in March, the White House retracted that statement, admitting it was unsubstantiated.
The 1985 National Family Violence Survey, a sample of 6,000 men and women, estimated that severe domestic violence occurs at an annual rate of 34 per 1,000 for women. The rate of violent acts against men, perpetrated by women, is actually higher at 48 per 1,000. But injury-producing domestic assaults suffered by women at the hands of men were 3.7 per 1,000, compared with 0.6 per 1,000 for men injured by women.
Experts say that when a woman is threatened or abused by the man she lives with, the key to preventing further injury is separation. If she cannot or will not leave, she risks additional and more serious injury.
Therefore, the experts say, laws against domestic violence should seek to remove the offenders by imposing long prison terms and abolishing parole. This wisdom contradicts the federal law's preference for so-called treatment and parole for abusers.
Under the act, to get federal money, the states must certify that their laws are consistent with the new federal legislation. This will inhibit them from taking stronger, possibly innovative, action they might consider appropriate.
The act does not fight crime; it just tinkers with it. Of the $1.6 billion in spending over six years authorized under the Violence Against Women Act, about 90 percent would support bureaucrats and consultants engaged in studies, plans, policies, recordkeeping, consultation and "needs assessments."
By returning some of these dollars to the states and municipalities, the House can do battered women a favor.
More police officers, prosecutors and prisons are the only way to make these women safer in their homes and in their neighborhoods.
WELLSTONES URGE FULL FUNDING TO FIGHT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
August 1, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone and his wife, Sheila, joined police, prosecutors and advocates for battered women on Monday in arguing for full federal funding for shelters, prosecutors and other domestic violence programs.
The Wellstones are concerned that the $240 million originally authorized to be spent in 1996 under the Violence Against Women Act is being whittled away by the new Republican Congress. While the final decisions have not been made, current proposals in the House call for spending $165 million next year, the Wellstones said.
Paul Wellstone called the lower funding level ``an abandonment of that commitment'' to reinvigorate the battle against domestic violence. He vowed to fight for the $240 million figure when the budget bills move to the Senate later this year.
He said the funding is a fraction of the amount Congress is talking about spending on weapons systems that may not be needed, such as the B-2 bomber. ``We're not going to stop the violence in the streets until we stop the violence in the home,'' he said.
During the start-up of the program this year, Minnesota received $425,000 for planning and training. But the state likely will receive a much larger grant this year, so advocates argued that the funding decisions in Washington could affect the availability of services in Minnesota.
Chris Georgacas, the state Independent-Republican chairman, challenged Wellstone's assertion that the $165 million funding level represents a reduction. He said it is an increase over the current funding level, and represents roughly the amount that President Clinton is seeking for the programs.
Georgacas also took a shot at Wellstone for raising campaign money in the entertainment industry, which Georgacas accused of promoting images of the sort of violence that the federal law seeks to limit. Georgacas said it is ``hypocritical and morally unconscionable'' for Wellstone to take such contributions.
The Violence Against Women Act, passed in 1994 as part of the national crime bill, provides money for new shelters for battered women and their children; for police, prosecutors and victims' advocates; for programs to reduce sexual abuse of young people; and for gathering data on rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.
Eileen Hudon of the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women said domestic-violence programs are uneven around the state. She said the new money could help rural counties with small staffs and few programs.
Sheila Wellstone, who has been active on domestic-violence issues, said a broad array of services are needed. She and other speakers said Minnesota has long been recognized as a leader in the field.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said focusing on domestic violence in the prosecutor's office is ``difficult and time-consuming. ... It takes people, it takes time,'' he said.
Federal law will provide help to battered women
Tampa Bay Times (FL)
EDITORIAL
August 10, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Re: Act won't aid battered women, by Anita K. Blair, July 27.
As the director of CASA, one of 1,500 ""hometown volunteer organizations,'' which provide shelter and services for survivors of domestic violence and their children, I strongly disagree with Anita K. Blair's flippant analysis of the Violence Against Women Act. I speak as one of many battered women and battered women's advocates who worked for the passage of this bill.
While CASA depends on volunteers for assistance, it takes cold cash to pay for the mortgage, insurance, utilities, food and incredibly small salaries for a dedicated 24-hour staff. A full third o our budget is from state and federal sources. We are in desperate need of funds to meet the dramatic increase in demand for service. Three years ago we received 4,700 crisis line calls. This year we received over 14,000! We will be grateful for our share of the Violence Against Women Act funds.
It appears Blair has infused the assumptions endemic to her conservative agenda with the recommendations of ""experts'' in the area of domestic violence. Leaving the abusive relationship does not necessarily end the abuse. For many battered women, leaving increases the danger. Because the batterer is frequently the father of her children, most battered women and their advocates do not advocate ""imposing long prison terms and abolishing parole,'' except in extreme cases. The reason the fede ral law may imply a preference for treatment and parole is that we, the experts, advocated exactly that position. Appropriate long-term intervention/treatment is more innovative (and cost effective) than prison.
We can debate statistics on domestic violence. The fact is that it occurs and it's a dangerous, misunderstood problem that is much more common than we once assumed. Statistics are not as definitive as we would like because, until recently, they simply were not kept. Two years ago in Florida we legislated law enforcement to note domestic violence on their reports. A few years earlier we had to legislatively require law enforcement officers to even write reports on every domestic violence incident. Police only maintain statistics on problems that the community deems important. We tacitly permit violence in our homes by failing to record it. I am hopeful that some of the Violence Against Women Act funds will be spent to ""engage in studies , plans and policies.'' Most of us working in our humble shelters with battered women and children are too busy saving lives to count numbers.
Police officers, prosecutors and prison officials will freely admit they are only part of the solution to the domestic violence problem. What about the family, friends, neighbors, nurses, doctors, counselors and clergy who know about the violence long before the justice system is involved? It takes a whole community to end domestic violence.
Linda A. Osmundson, executive director, CASA, St. Petersburg
An unhelpful attack
Re: Act won't aid battered women, by Anita K. Blair, executive vice president of the Independent Women's Forum. The attack on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by attorney Blair is one of many timed to help congressional Republicans eliminate $1.6-billion that was appropriated last year for the historic Violence Against Women Act. I would like your readers to be aware of the following points that have been made by the NOWLegal Defense and Education Fund, by ""Speaking Up,'' a newsle tter of the Family Violence Prevention Fund and the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and disseminated by the Internet Political Women's Hotline Volume 15a.
VAWA does not usurp states' responsibilities for prosecuting domestic violence and sexual assault crimes. VAWA creates federal jurisdiction over interstate problems, as when batterers stalk their victims across state lines.
VAWA does not fund studies and consultants at the expense of services for battered women. Instead, it authorizes funds that community-based shelters urgently need so they won't have to turn away victims of abuse.
VAWA does not thwart efforts by state and local officials to prosecute and punish batterers. Most VAWA funding is designed to educate and train state and local police and prosecutors so they can do a better job of protecting women and their children.
VAWA will not block stronger state or local laws. Asking states to certify that their laws are consistent with VAWA will encourage states to ensure that they adequately protect women victims of violent crime. For example, because of this requirement lawmakers in Alabama may soon end the practice of forcing rape victims to pay for their own forensic examinations.
Mary-Kay Bunton-Pierce, communications vice president, Tampa NOW and charter member of Women Leaders Online, Tampa
Task forces won't prevent such deaths
Tampa Tribune, The (FL)
August 11, 1995
Author/Byline: NEIL COTE
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
ST. PETERSBURG -- In so many ways, it was just another death by domestic violence.
For years, two people lived together for reasons best known to them. That is, if they had any clue at all. Which, according to evidence, wasn't apparent.
They were often at each other's throat. The cops regularly responded to incidents at their home. Potentially deadly incidents that only got worse.
In 1991, the woman allegedly cut up the man with a straight razor, leaving a 12-inch gash in the back. One year later, she allegedly threatened to stab him with a butcher knife. Both charges were dropped. And in 1993, he served probation for hitting her with a bottle. More recently, he allegedly struck her again.
Yet this couple stayed in the relationship. For better or for worse. Well, it wound up for the worse.
Surprise.
When you're heading for the border, you're bound to cross the line. And that line was crossed earlier this week when one of the partners allegedly stabbed the other to death.
So, just another domestic violence death? Well, almost. Only this time, the genders were reversed.
The suspect was Shirley Peoples, who had been involved in stabbing incidents with at least three other people. The victim was Jeffery Hughes, who had survived previous knife incidents.
Everyone's against it
Domestic violence -- it's horrible. Who can disagree?
Nobody. Maybe that's why there's so much political posturing against it. But it seems so inconsequential.
A couple years ago, the Florida Legislature decided that cops must keep better records on domestic violence. And in the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial, the Legislature decided that state attorney's offices must have specially trained prosecutors for domestic abuse cases.
In many ways, this could be considered yet another unfunded mandate -- the very things counties and cities hate. But the legislation still was largely applauded. After all, it sent a message that the Legislature opposed domestic violence.
As is the U.S. Congress. Last year, it passed something known as the Violence Against Women Act -- another touching name that no one could oppose. Lots of grandstanding prior to this getting passed. But you don't have to be too cynical to suspect much of it was Sen. Joe Biden's attempt to redeem himself with women following his role in the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill thing of 1991.
Among the law's provisions: making federal offenses of some domestic violence crimes -- even though state and local authorities usually are most capable of prosecuting almost any offense short of blowing up a federal building.
Then there's federal money being funneled to the states, as well as to a slew of organizations with names such as the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and the Battered Women's Justice Project. All kinds of studies and blue-ribbon committees in the works.
But a lot of good this did in the Shirley Peoples/Jeffery Hughes case. And it won't do any more good for so many other couples in the same self-destructing boat.
Goes without saying
Retrospect gives us all 20/20 vision. So the saying goes. Yet Hughes would be alive today if he had done what any partner -- male or female -- should do in such a situation.
Leave.
You live with someone who's acted recklessly with a knife, and you're probably going to get cut. It's that simple.
This is the kind of reality that a lot of do-gooders will never get a grip on. Much as they want to, they can't micromanage other people's lives.
So often, when a domestic partner is killed, the blame goes to the most cosmic sources: society, television, music, unemployment, under-employment, The System -- whatever that is.
But in the Peoples/Hughes case, it all boiled down to this:
Two combative partners kept living together. The cops couldn't pry them apart forever. And the courts could only do so much.
That same scenario that figures in many domestic violence tragedies. It's a crying shame. But people in that cycle usually have only themselves to blame.
THE POWER OF WOMEN VOTERS
Capital Times, The (Madison, WI)
August 26, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
``It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people who formed the union,'' women's suffrage campaigner Susan B. Anthony declared more than a century ago.
As obvious as the logic behind those sentiments may have been, however, they were not embraced by the government of the United States until Aug. 26, 1920 -- 75 years ago today -- when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted.
At the time of the decision to extend voting rights to women, there was great debate over what this move would mean -- with some women arguing that their votes would ``feminize'' government, making it more caring and responsive.
Such theorizing proved quite fantastical, as research quickly showed that women tended to vote pretty much along the same lines as men -- meaning they were more influenced by history, region and class than sex. In recent decades, however, there has been a growing consciousness of ``the gender gap'' -- where more women vote for Democrats, more men for Republicans.
Whether the gender gap is a reality is still debated, but there can be little doubt on this 75th anniversary of women's suffrage that the new Republican Congress is no friend to women.
Hannah Rosenthal, the executive director of Wisconsin's Democratic Party, argues that Newt Gingrich and his crew have created a ``Republican contract on American women.''
Rosenthal is clearly a partisan, but she backs her point up well by noting that Republicans in Congress have cut funding for women's health programs, diluted the strength of child support enforcement, eliminated programs that train women for non-traditional jobs, reneged on Congress' pledge to fully fund the Violence Against Women Act, sought to eliminate funding for family planning programs and to restrict access to abortion, and attacked affirmative action programs that benefit women more than any other group.
There is no requirement that women vote their best interests as a group. But as the Republican Congress veers further and further to the right, in hopes of satisfying a tiny clique of ``angry white males,'' it raises the genuine prospect that angry females of all races and classes may turn their majority status into the political firestorm that feminists anticipated 75 years ago.
A federal judge in West Virginia Friday handed down the first sentence under the Violence Against Women Act
UPI (USA)
September 1, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
A federal judge in West Virginia Friday handed down the first sentence under the Violence Against Women Act, which President Clinton signed into law last September. U.S. District Judge Charles Haden II in Charleston sentenced Christopher Bailey to life in prison for interstate domestic violence and kidnapping his wife. Bonnie Campbell, director of the Justice Department's Violence Against Women Office, issued a statement on the sentencing from Beijing, where she is a U.S. delegate to the Fourth U.N. Conference on Women.
'The punishment fits the crime,' Campbell said. 'This sentence sends a clear message to batterers that spousal abuse is a serious crime. They will be prosecuted and severely punished.' Bailey and his wife Sonya were reported missing by family members shortly after last Thanksgiving. Police officers found a blood-soaked pillow and mattress in the couple's St. Albans, W.Va. Bailey delivered his wife, comatose and near death, to the emergency room of a hospital in Corbin, Ky., last Dec. 1. Although no longer comatose, Sonya Bailey remains in a permanent vegetative condition.
Under the Violence Against Women Act, a total of $800 million in federal funds will be disbursed to states to help fight domestic violence. Already this year, $26 million has been allocated to train law enforcement officers, expand agencies and apply advanced technology to improving data collection and tracking systems. But the continued funding for the Violence Against Women Act has run into trouble on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have pledged to balance the budget by 2002. Only one other case has been brought under the federal statute. Ricky Hiton Steele has been charged with raping and beating his domestic partner in Oregon, then transporting her to California before continuing to abuse her.
ILLINOIS - CONGRESSMAN TO STEP DOWN
Augusta Chronicle, The (GA)
September 2, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Rep. Mel Reynolds, convicted of having sex with an underage campaign volunteer, said Friday night that he will resign his congressional seat effective Oct. 1.
The two-term Illinois Democrat, 43, made the announcement before a national TV audience on CNN's Larry King Live. He said he had told his aides to notify House Speaker Newt Gingrich of his intention to quit.
The black lawmaker reiterated his claim that the case against him was motivated by racial bias. He said his young accuser ``would do anything that people with white skin and blond hair and blue eyes told her to - that's what she said.''
He was convicted Aug. 22 of criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, child pornography and obstruction of justice.
WOMEN'S CONFERENCE DENOUNCES DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Morning Edition [NPR] (USA)
September 13, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
BOB EDWARDS, Host: Good morning, I'm Bob Edwards. About 14 or 15 men who participated in the Ninth Annual Labor Day Weekend Skydiving Show in Fort Dodge, Iowa, had a real good time, and they'll be invited back next year but city officials hope the skydiving men will be wearing more than their parachutes. Having just successfully battled a proposed nude-dancing juice bar, Fort Dodge officials are not ready to sanction naked skydivers. You're listening to NPR's Morning Edition.
The United Nations Women's Conference, now in its final days in Beijing, is the first U.N. conference to give serious consideration to the issue of domestic violence. The draft document to be approved formerly on Friday calls domestic violence an abuse of human rights and urges countries to condemn it, prevent it, and punish it when it occurs. The United States already has taken action. Congress has passed legislation that treats domestic violence as a serious crime. NPR's Mary Kay Magistad reports from the conference site in Beijing.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD, Reporter: Fifteen years ago, when there were few shelters for battered women in the United States and little public acknowledgement that domestic abuse was a serious and all too common problem, Thea DeBall [sp] was married to an abusive husband. One night her husband hit her and then chased her out of their apartment in Westchester County, New York. DeBall says she went to a neighbor's place and called the police.
THEA DEBALL, Attendee, U.N. Women's Conference: When the police arrived I apprised them of the situation and told them I only wanted to get some clothing and my pocketbook. The only question they asked me was whose name the lease for the apartment was in. When I told them it was in my husband's name they said there was nothing they could do for me.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: DeBall says that over time she looked for help in other places too, from a counselor, from emergency room doctors, but no one really wanted to get involved. Eventually, after nine and a half years of an abusive marriage, she was convicted of first degree manslaughter for killing her husband, an act she says she doesn't remember. Since then DeBall has served her prison term and now helps run a shelter for battered women in Westchester County. Also since then most states have strengthened their domestic abuse statutes so they now provide victim compensation and have made it easier for women who are battered or stalked to get civil protection orders and carry them across state lines.
Bonnie Campbell [sp] is the director of the Violence Against Women Office in the Department of Justice, set up by the recently passed Violence Against Women Act.
BONNIE CAMPBELL, Director, Violence Against Women Office of the Department of Justice: And so while I go around a lot of times talking about how much we have to do in this area, I think it's very important to remember that we have come a very long way.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: The new Violence Against Women Act provides federal funds to states to establish and train special police units and prosecutors to deal with cases of domestic violence. It allows victims to seek financial compensation from their abusers with a lower of burden of proof than is usually required in criminal actions. It makes it a federal crime to cross state lines to continue domestic abuse and it requires states to fully enforce the protective orders of other states.
Campbell says besides these gains in the U.S. itself, she is also glad to see domestic violence so firmly on the international agenda and in the final document of the U.N. Women's Conference.
BONNIE CAMPBELL: For the first time the platform for action calls on all governments to condemn violence against women and to build a response that will change society's attitudes about these kinds of violence, as well as the way justice systems respond.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Of course it will be up to each individual government to decide how much it can, or wants to do, to prosecute men who beat their wives. In many cultures this is still considered, by men, to be a normal part of a marriage, but many delegates at the Women's Conference believe change is still possible, and what are merely words in the conference's final document now can have the strength over time to sway opinion and improve conditions for women. I'm Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.
Roth defends GOP cuts; Biden ready to fight for anti-crime money
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
September 26, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
As the budget battle rages this week in the Senate, Sen. Bill Roth is taking on critics in his Senate Finance Committee who say the GOP is cutting too deeply, while Sen. Joseph Biden is ready to fight to restore crime-fighting money that Republicans hope to reduce.
On Tuesday, as Roth presided over his first public hearing as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Democrats met him head-on by harshly criticizing Republican efforts to pare Medicare by $270 billion, rack up another $182 billion in Medicaid reductions and slash the earned income tax credit for the working poor.
"I believe we are seeing the wrong and some very dangerous priorities in the proposal before us," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. "This is not what Americans are asking of us."
Roth, however, did not take the criticism lightly.
"What is your plan? How do you propose to save Medicare and Medicaid? ... If we don't save these programs, there won't be anything for anybody."
At another point, the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, expressed surprise with Roth's decision to bar a Treasury Department official from joining committee staffers in answering questions that would present the administration's view.
"When the administration has a plan, I'd be happy to hold hearings," Roth retorted.
As Roth got gavel-to-gavel television coverage, Biden held a press conference with Senate Democrats to voice opposition to the remaining spending bills pending in the Senate.
Included is a GOP proposal to eliminate money in the Justice Department appropriations bill. The money was slated for hiring community police officers and for combatting violence against women - two measures called for in last year's crime bill, which Biden spearheaded.
Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he planned to offer two amendments:
- One to restore the $75 million in cuts to the Violence Against Women Act, bringing it up $175 million for this fiscal year;
- And another to combat Republican attempts to eliminate hiring community police officers. The 1994 crime bill called for hiring 100,000 police officers across the country in five years.
Republicans have proposed reducing the program from $1.9 billion this fiscal year to $1.7 billion and to turn it into a block grant, which states could use for any law enforcement function.
"I'm prepared to debate any of my friends on the floor as to whether or not they want 100,000 cops in their local jurisdictions," Biden said at the press conference.
"This is all about politics. If this had the name of Dole on it, if it was the Dole crime bill instead of the Biden crime bill, or the Bush crime bill instead of the Clinton crime bill, they'd be all for this."
Biden added: "They're stealing money from the thing that middle class Americans want most: the chance to be able to walk safely in their neighborhoods, send their kids to school without them being victimized and to put violent criminals in jail."
The other two spending bills pending are for Veteran Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, as well as Labor and Health and Human Services.
Although Democrats acknowledged that the spending bills probably would pass, even without Democratic support, Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said several would subsequently be vetoed by President Clinton.
"Even if they are beaten, we think it's very important for Republicans and Democrats to be on record in favor of or in opposition to the cops program, in favor of or in opposition to head start, in favor of or in opposition to national service."
Meanwhile, in a news conference in Wilmington on Tuesday, Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., praised the Republican Medicare proposal. He called it the only "substantive proposal" available, but said he is concerned about the proposed formula for allocating Medicaid funds - a move that could potentially hurt Delaware. He vowed to work to change it.
"Medicaid must be changed in a way that is fair to all states," Castle said.
Crime bill funding restored
Delaware State News (Dover, DE)
October 2, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON, D.C.-- Fending off efforts to cut future crime bill money, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., announced the passage of two amendments that will restore funding previously cut from the proposed 1996 budget.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted last week to eliminate plans to put 100,000 additional cops on American streets, and to cut funding for rural drug enforcement, drug courts and military-style boot camps.
An amendment by Sen. Biden reversed that action, and another amendment by the Democratic senator also restores previously cut funding for the Violence Against Women Act. The amended appropriations bill now goes to a House-Senate conference committee.
''I am very please that we have stopped this back-door attempt to rewrite the Crime Law and to stop the progress we have already made in fighting violence in America,'' Sen. Biden said.
The crime bill, a six-year comprehensive plan to combat violent crime, has put numerous cops on Delaware streets and provided funding for drug courts in Kent and Sussex counties. The state will also receive funding for programs through the Violence for Women Act.
''The law is now providing an unprecedented infusion of federal dollars from a $30 billion trust fund that uses savings from cutting federal bureaucrats ... without adding to the deficit or requiring new taxes,'' Sen. Biden said.
Clinton tells federal agencies to conduct domestic violence info campaigns
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
October 2, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Proclaiming domestic violence "an American issue," President Clinton Monday ordered federal agencies to conduct information campaigns for employees during October, designated Domestic Violence Awareness month.
"After all, we know there must be federal employees at work, even as we speak, who themselves are the victims of domestic violence," Clinton told a White House audience.
The president told the gathering of government officials, women's advocates, police officers, business owners and formerly abused women that women are not the only victims of domestic abuse.
"This is a children's problem. And it's a man's problem," Clinton said, echoing an admonition from Jerry Rossi, president of a department store chain. Moments before Clinton spoke, Rossi had told the group "men must tell men" that abuse is unacceptable.
"We hope that we can say now," said Clinton, "that as a matter of national policy, with the support of people all across America, in uniform, in women's groups, in support groups: The days of men using physical violence to control the lives of their wives, their girlfriends and their children are over."
Insisting "we don't have to put up with this," he called upon House and Senate conferees to restore full funding for the Violence Against Women Act - VAWA.
Passed as part of the 1994 Crime Bill, VAWA comprises a raft of programs aimed at preventing domestic violence or assisting its victims with counseling, police and placement services.
The House lopped off $50 million from the administration's $175 million request to finance VAWA in 1996, but the Senate approved Clinton's proposal.
"I spend a whole lot of my time trying to make or keep peace," Clinton said, citing Northern Ireland, Southern Africa, Haiti, and nuclear weaponry as areas where he has worked for peaceful solutions.
"But we don't need just peace with other countries," he said. "We need peace on our streets and in our schools and, perhaps most of all, in our homes."
Six women who had been abused by their husbands shared the dais with Clinton; Rossi; Nashville police Sgt. Mark Wynn; Attorney General Janet Reno; and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
One, Tana Sherman, 51, of Andover, Mass., held the audience rapt as she recalled two decades of physical abuse at the hands - and feet - of her former husband. Sherman said she and her husband were in denial.
She said the beginning of the end came when she found the strength to call a battered woman's hot line and finally utter the words she had been unable to say: "My husband is hurting me."
Sherman has since remarried and works in a program to educate women about domestic violence.
HOUSE MEMBERS SEEK FUNDING FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT
Grand Forks Herald (ND)
November 1, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Ninety-three House members -- including six Republicans -- joined Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., Tuesday in an appeal for funding aimed at preventing violence against women.
All signed a letter to the conference committee working to resolve differences between the House and Senate version of the Justice Department appropriations bill. The letter urges the panel to fully fund the Violence Against Women Act. The House version approved only $125 million for the act. The Senate appropriated the full $175 million approved in the 1984 crime bill.
The act created a number of new grant programs to support local efforts such as law enforcement training, prosecution of offenders and expanded services for victims. North Dakota's share the first year was $401,000 for anti-domestic violence projects.
Biden tries to fight GOP shifts in anti-crime funding
USA TODAY (Arlington, VA)
December 7, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Sen. Joseph Biden Thursday unsuccessfully fought to save federal money for additional police officers, boot camps and other provisions of last year's crime bill from Republican efforts to shift the funding.
But the Senate voted 50-48 for the Commerce, Justice and State appropriations bill that includes the changes. Sen. Bill Roth supported it.
The House passed the bill 256-166 Wednesday, with Rep. Mike Castle voting for it.
President Clinton has threatened to veto it.
The $27.3 billion bill would replace a plan to put 100,000 new police officers on the street with a $1.9 billion block-grant program that Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned would allow local jurisdictions to use the money for everything from "traffic lights to parking meters."
Already, 25,000 new officers have been funded in the year since the law was passed, Biden said.
"The 1994 crime law, in my view and the view of law enforcement agencies across this country, is working," he said.
Biden earlier had succeeded in getting the Senate to approve an amendment restoring the money for the 100,000 cops, but it was taken out during House-Senate negotiations.
Biden also argued against a Republican-backed initiative to eliminate $150 million for drug court programs and to cut $200 million from prison funding, including money for military-style boot camps for non-violent offenders. Delaware loses $1.5 million under the bill.
He did succeed, however, in driving back Republican attempts to cut $75 million from the $175 million in funding for the Violence Against Women Act.
Meanwhile, Castle went against the House leadership and voted against the spending bill for the departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, passed by the House Thursday. He said he was concerned about too-severe cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency and cuts in funding for housing for the poor and elderly.
Clinton has said he will veto the bill, which Castle said means "we can go back to the drawing board and come up with an appropriations bill that finds a more equitable balance between efforts to balance the budget and provide funding for needed agencies."
FIRST ARREST IN WOMEN'S ABUSE LAW
Ohio man allegedly harassed ex-wife who fled to New Jersey
Times Union, The (Albany, NY)
December 22, 1995
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
NEW YORK - An Ohio man who prosecutors said harassed his ex-wife and sent her hundreds of threatening letters after she fled with their young son to New Jersey has become the first man in the country to be arrested under a federal law included in the year-old Violence Against Women Act.
The new law makes it a federal crime to cross state lines to violate a protective order. In the case of the Ohio man, Wayne Hayes, state authorities had done everything to uphold a protective order issued against him by a New Jersey family court judge.
Even so, his ex-wife's lawyer, Ronald Busch, said, ``She was in such fear and desperation because he lives in Ohio and it was hard for the state to deal with him.''
The announcement was made Thursday by prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York, who laid claim to the case because Hayes mailed some of the letters to a Long Island friend.
The law was passed by Congress in 1994 as part of a growing national effort to bring domestic violence under tougher scrutiny by the criminal justice system.
But prior to the passage of the federal law, many of the changes had occurred in a patchwork fashion at the local level. The federal law was an attempt to assure battered women that enforcement of orders of protection does not come to a halt at state borders. The act also provides $1.6 billion for programs to shelter victims of domestic violence and to educate judges and lawyers about it.
Despite the strong language of the new statute, it has lain dormant for over a year. The delay, said some lawyers, reflects both the lag time for new legislation to trickle down to the troops, as well as a lingering disinclination by federal prosecutors to pursue matters still seen as the tawdry province of the states.
Another law under the act allows federal prosecutors to press cases in which a person crosses a state line to injure a spouse or domestic partner. That law has only been invoked four times.
In the first case, a West Virginia man severely beat his wife, threw her into the trunk of his car, and drove through Kentucky and Ohio with her for six days, before leaving her at the emergency room of a Kentucky hospital.
In the case of Hayes, a restorer of antique airplanes who lives in Mount Vernon, Ohio, his wife left him in 1992, taking their toddler son and moving to her parents' home in Middlesex County, N.J.
That year she got an order of protection against him that prevented him from contacting her or their son. The couple was divorced the next year. Since the divorce, said Busch, Hayes sent his wife 615 letters. Court papers describe the letters as rambling and disjointed, at once professing Hayes' eternal love for his former wife and then threatening to kill her and kidnap their son.
