VAWA Posts:
Subject: Biden's VAWA classifying rape and domestic violence as hate crimes against women
Gender-based bill assaults logic
John Leo - Us New & World Report - Los Angeles Times
October 03, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
"This is a perfect example of the now-reflexive American habit of reducing almost all social problems to ones of bias. The usual price to pay for this is the shearing away of all bothersome complexity, a spreading politics of group grievance, and the sharpening of division between groups.
There are social costs to depicting rape as something one group does to another out of generalized bias. This is already a strong ideological strand within feminism. Susan Brownmiller, in her influential book, Against Our Will, called rape "nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."
...Rape is not like race oppression, even though Brownmiller derived her theory from a historian of slavery. One of the unacknowledged costs of not solving our race problem is that it keeps being used, ever more dubiously, as a model for more legislation.
And as long as the tactic keeps working, we will see more of it."
"This is a perfect example of the now-reflexive American habit of reducing almost all social problems to ones of bias. The usual price to pay for this is the shearing away of all bothersome complexity, a spreading politics of group grievance, and the sharpening of division between groups.
There are social costs to depicting rape as something one group does to another out of generalized bias. This is already a strong ideological strand within feminism. Susan Brownmiller, in her influential book, Against Our Will, called rape "nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."
...Rape is not like race oppression, even though Brownmiller derived her theory from a historian of slavery. One of the unacknowledged costs of not solving our race problem is that it keeps being used, ever more dubiously, as a model for more legislation.
And as long as the tactic keeps working, we will see more of it."
[GENDER-BASED BILL ASSAULTS LOGIC. JOHN LEO U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT LOS ANGELES TIMES. October 03, 1990]
Ex-model addresses panel - Slashing victim speaks at sex-crime hearing
Dallas Morning News
June 21, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON -- If she wears enough makeup, Marla Hanson can hide the scars left by attackers, ordered by her landlord to slash the New York model's face in 1986.
But some wounds never heal, she said.
"These are not the scars that hindered my modeling career,' said Ms. Hanson, 29, who began her fashion career in Dallas and is now a film maker.
"These are scars that don't show up in pictures . . . but have changed the way I look at the world forever,' she told a Senate committee Wednesday. "Sometimes I wake up and see something or smell something that reminds me of the attack, and I am paralyzed.'
Ms. Hanson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering legislation to crack down on crimes committed against women. Sponsored by the committee chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the Violence Against Women Act of 1990 declares that sex crimes would violate a woman's federally protected civil rights.
"For too long, we have ignored the right of women to be free from the fear of attacks based on their gender,' Mr. Biden said. "A rape or sex assault should be deemed a civil rights crime, just as "hate beatings' aimed at blacks or Asians are widely recognized as violations of their civil rights.'
Under Mr. Biden's proposal, a female victim could receive compensatory and punitive damages. The bill also would increase penalties for rapes committed on federal property, while requiring and expanding victim restitution in sex crime cases.
In addition, it would earmark funds for mass transit safety and $200 million for law enforcement grants to the 40 areas of the country deemed by the Justice Department to be the most dangerous for women. Another $100 million would be split among the 50 states to combat crimes against women.
Federal penalties also would be imposed on husbands who cross state lines or violate existing court orders to stay away from their wives. The bill would make such court orders effective in all states, while providing grants to states and localities to encourage arrests of abusing spouses.
Although there is a new federal Hate Crimes Statistics Act, the law only requires the Justice Department to document crimes directed at gays and minorities, Mr. Biden said.
The new legislation would establish a National Commission on Violent Crime Against Women to monitor increasing crimes against women.
"It's not that this is the solution, but it's the beginning of a solution,' Ms. Hanson said. "I was attacked in 1986 and already I see attitudes beginning to change. And that's very exciting to me.'
Ms. Hanson, a film student at New York University, underwent extensive plastic surgery to diminish the scars she suffered. The attack occurred after Ms. Hanson rebuffed advances from her landlord.
"It seems in this society the term innocence implies some sort of guilt -- and nowhere is that attitude more apparent than in our current judicial system,' she said.
Ms. Hanson's landlord and two other assailants were each given the maximum five- to 15-year sentence.
Wilson pledges to increase penalties for rape and domestic violence
Proposes legislation that would make 18 years the minimum sentence for rape
San Diego Union-Tribune
June 26, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson said yesterday that if he is elected governor, he would sponsor legislation to greatly increase penalties for rape and domestic violence in California.
Under his proposal, announced at a news conference in front of the Los Angeles County Jail, sentences for rape and other violent sex crimes would triple, and penalties for spousal abuse also would be increased.
"No society that calls itself civilized is entitled to do so if it cannot protect its people," Wilson said. "And specifically the state of California owes a duty to women to see that they are safe in their homes and in the streets."
Wilson insisted he did not view the legislation merely as a vehicle to establish his credentials on issues of concern to women in his campaign against Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco.
"I think it's a way to get men's votes as well," he said. "I don't think men are indifferent to the safety of their daughters, their wives, their sisters."
Specifically, the proposed legislation would impose a minimum prison sentence of 18 years for a rape conviction.
Tamara Wimler, a rape victim from San Diego who appeared at the news conference with Wilson and a number of law enforcement officials, said she believed the severe sentences would encourage more rape victims to come forward.
Wilson also proposed mandatory arrests in certain domestic violence cases, as well as expanding the state's shelter and treatment programs, which he said turn away two women for every one they accept.
"We are going to take domestic violence out of the bedroom and into the courtroom," the Republican said.
The proposed legislation is similar to a federal bill Wilson trumpeted last week with a news release headlined, "Wilson Calls for Tough Penalties for Crimes Against Women."
Wilson signed on as a co-sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act of 1990, whose principal author -- not acknowledged by name in the press release -- is Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. Wilson acknowledged yesterday that only 1 to 2 percent of such crimes fall under the jurisdiction of federal authorities in the first place.
Wilson vowed as governor to "spend what it takes" to upgrade domestic violence programs and build necessary prison space for sex-crime offenders. He estimated the cost of needed prison space at $60 million over five years.
Yet he said he opposes Gov. Deukmejian's long-disputed plan to build a new state prison in an industrial area on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles. Hispanic activists have battled the proposal, claiming the site is too close to residential neighborhoods of East Los Angeles.
"I am not in favor of that particular site, but I think the time is probably past where very much can be done about it," Wilson said.
Last week, Deukmejian denounced Los Angeles political leaders for maintaining a "NIMBY" (not in my back yard) attitude when it comes to the prison and other issues.
Said Wilson, "I would prefer to build them where people want them."
In Pakistan, women who have been raped are jailed as adulteresses
USA TODAY
June 26, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
In Pakistan, women who have been raped are jailed as adulteresses. If they manage to escape that punishment, they are still seen as indecent. They are shunned, when they're not beaten or otherwise abused.
The blame-the-woman syndrome hasn't resulted in such violent reactions in the United States. Not in modern history. But past reactions were bad enough. The victim of rape was disgraced, treated as a harlot. If she had a child as the result, the child led a life tainted by public scorn for his mother's "sin."
On the surface, old attitudes have been fading. For the most part, rape victims are treated as exactly that . . . victims. The courts, police and medical personnel have become more aware of the depths of the trauma. Friends and family have become more understanding.
There are exceptions. In Florida last year, a jury decided that a victim "asked for it" by wearing revealing clothes. Her attacker was freed. The jury ignored the psychological makeup of rapists. Their kicks come not from sex, but the control and destruction of another human being. Hatred motivates them.
And there are still the dolts who, uncertain of their own charms, like to cling to the idea that women who say "no" are being coy. They really mean "yes."
The dolts are also the ones who keep the line alive, "If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." The myth that women enjoy brutality is, always has been, an excuse for violence against women.
Generally, the public, excluding the dolts, objects to remarks that trivialize the crime of rape. The Texas' GOP candidate for governor, Clayton Williams, discovered that when he used the rape line in talking to some media people.
On a bad-weather day, he likened the weather to rape and suggested that everyone relax and enjoy it. The outcry was immediate, as it should have been. His Democratic opponent, Ann Richards, has made the most of it, as she should have.
A forgivable mental slip, his defenders say. Rather, it was a slip of an attitude that dies hard.
The attitude has been kept on life-support systems not only by doltish individuals and thoughtless jurors, but by so-called popular artists: musicians of the rap and heavy-metal variety and comics of the Andrew Dice Clay variety.
The media have given the Florida obscenity charges against the rap group 2 Live Crew a wealth of attention. "Wealth" is the right word. The group's album sales have soared, reaping multidollars.
Group members cry racism and protest that they have been singled out. Performer Clay, they huff, is just as nasty and his records are untouched by official hands. They're right. He is just as nasty. So are heavy-metal bands.
As long as Florida officials are searching for obscenities, they might try the shops carrying Clay or heavy-metal material.
The defenders of rap offer a double-edged argument. When they say that rap as a form is rooted in black culture, they are on solid ground. But when they say that the lyrics' messages in all cases are expressions of black culture, someone should be saying "whoa!"
Not all rap groups are under attack. The ones that encourage responsibility, that decry injustice, that delight in sly satire on sexual relationships they're not the ones under fire.
It's the other ones. The ones whose kindest word for a woman is "bitch," who see women as animals "begging" to be raped, to be beaten, to be wounded in ways most people can't imagine. They're the ones, like 2 Live Crew, who kindle anger.
To say, as some defenders do, that their message is a "comic parody" of black culture is to say that those degradations are a part of black culture. It's an insult to decent people with a rich culture.
But sexism doesn't know a color line. And teen-age fervor for rap groups or heavy-metal bands or the Clays of the performing world doesn't begin or end with color and income. Attitudes are being formed across all lines.
It's the same old story, true as ever: Parents have to draw the line, cut into the profits that keep the groups going by saying no to tapes and concert tickets.
There may be other help: With the crimes of rape rising at a rate four times faster than other crimes, official Washington is looking into a bill that would stiffen and broaden penalties against rapists.
Called the Violence Against Women Act, the bill also describes gender- motivated crimes as civil-rights violations, allowing victims to sue their attackers.
Media attention has been slight. The testimony of victims before the Senate Judiciary Committee received only a few paragraphs here and there. Their tragedies aren't as titillating as 2 Live Crew's raunchy antics.
The bill should pass, and the warning it sends should be widely reported: Rapists will face the kind of music that doesn't end on an upbeat. Not only rapists but anyone who decides that punching women is a privileged male sport.
Then, at least officially, the blame will be placed firmly where it belongs: on the savage, not on the victim of savagery.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ADD ANTI-FEMALE ACTS TO LIST OF HATE CRIMES
St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
July 14, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
As you read this page, every six minutes, somewhere in the United States a woman will be raped; each 18 seconds, one will be beaten. Three of four women in America will be victims of at least one violent crime during their lifetimes. When those attacks are motivated by a general dislike of women, they should fall into the category of hate crimes.
In the Twin Cities alone this summer, four women have been killed, injured or kidnapped by husbands or boyfriends. In Minnesota, eight women have died so far this year as a result of domestic violence. Eighteen were killed in 1989. Such attacks, when motivated by misogyny, also should fall into the category of hate crimes.
That is why legislation offered by Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., is a welcome step. Introduced last month, the Violence Against Women Act of 1990 could help elevate the issue to the national agenda. It would create of a national commission, double penalties for rape, earmark more funds for law enforcement and other safety measures and make gender-related crimes a civil and human rights violation. Sen. Biden wants federal law to acknowledge that attacking a woman because of her sex is the same as attacking or murdering a black because of race or a Jew because of religion.
All these needed and long-overdue steps are compatible with Minnesota's leadership on this issue. As a result of a statewide Task Force on Sexual Violence Against Women, state lawmakers in 1989 passed comprehensive legislation that also increases penalties, supports battered women's centers and provides better protection for women. Both the federal and local legislation also emphasize education as a preventive tool.
As much attention as the issue has received in recent years, there is still a pervasive attitude that violence against women is only a "crime of passion" or a "sexual matter" between the individuals - whether or not the assailant is a stranger. Not all such assaults can be so easily explained.
With some men, such acts are meant to intimidate, harass and terrorize with the intent of exercising power or control.
The rise in violence against women is part of a general trend; evidence suggests that America is becoming meaner and more vicious every day. Hatred, tension and frustration ooze around us, then come to life through increasingly violent crime. Women are the largest target group for crimes of violence, simply because there are more of them.
While it is important to treat the symptoms of this creeping disease through penalties, counseling and safety measures, it is even more critical that we reach the hearts and minds of youth to stop vicious attitudes before they start.
VICTIMS NEED HELP TO OVERCOME BARRIERS OF SILENCE, SHAME
Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
July 18, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
Overcoming the barrier of silence and shame that surrounds victims of gender-based assault is a great and grueling battle. At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, women stepped up the fight by supporting the creation of a national commission on violence against women.
The committee heard testimony on a bill introduced by Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., called the Violence Against Women Act. The proposed legislation would set strict penalties for sex crimes, make gender-related crimes a civil rights violation and give victims the right to sue for punitive damages.
Marla Hanson and Nancy Ziegenmeyer, two well-known women in the fight for victims' rights, testified on behalf of the bill. Hanson, a former model, gained celebrity not from her looks, but from the brutal attempt a man made on the streets of New York City to destroy her beauty by slashing her face with a razor.
Ziegenmeyer was the woman who recently shocked the public when she related the story of her rape to The Des Moines Register. Her decision initiated a debate on whether to release the name of victims of sexual assault to the media.
During the trials of their assailants, both women shared the anguish of reliving their attacks.
Too often, women are made to feel responsible for the crime. Unwilling to submit to the judicial evisceration of carrying a complaint to trial, many women give up the right to report and prosecute their attackers.
Last week, two South Florida women were added to the list of those who decided against repeating the humiliation of their assault. They escaped the rigors of participating in a trial, but I doubt their torment is over.
They were violated by those they felt they could trust -- local law enforcement officials. A Tamarac woman wanted information about a neighbor in trouble.
What she got was the Broward sheriff's deputy's hand in her robe. The deputy, aided by a plea bargain, was sentenced to 18 months for sexual battery. If his sentence sounds like short time for abused community confidence, realize that with incentives, the former deputy may serve only six to eight months.
In West Palm Beach, a woman reported that she had been raped during a robbery in her home. When the police officer came to investigate, he had her disrobe. Later, at the police station, he had her disrobe again and took the liberty of fondling and photographing her.
As a result of a plea bargain, the ex-West Palm Beach police officer will remain under house arrest for two years of his 10-year probation period. He also will receive counseling. There was no mention of supportive services for the victim. She requested that the officer's life not be endangered by a prison term, showing much greater concern for his safety than he did for hers.
The victims demonstrated a deep sense of humanity and caring, despite the despicable actions of the two officers.
The right to security of two women in Broward and Palm Beach counties was violated by police officers. When did the duty ''to protect and to serve'' turn into the right to violate the public trust? What made those officers think they could get away with abusing two women they were paid to protect?
Thank God they were caught. I wish the women had the private strength and public suppport that would have led to trials and verdicts in their favor, but I cannot demand that the Tamarac and West Palm Beach women accept the stigma of victimization. I am not sure I would be strong enough to participate in a jury trial. It's difficult to carry the weight until it's on your shoulders.
I am sorry that theirs and unknown other voices remain silent. I want all victims, especially women, to speak out loudly enough to eradicate the violence resulting in the shocking statistics that reveal that a woman is raped in this country every six minutes and beaten every 18 seconds.
Let the outrage against crimes result in greater compassion, understanding and support. Proposing and passing laws is easy. Changing beliefs and practices and taking the stigma of fear and silence from the shoulders of victims is the crux of the fight for victims' rights. The Violence Against Women Act, although no panacea, is a long-awaited step.
Group turns anger over rapes into action
Tampa Bay Times (FL)
July 23, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The day after a 79-year-old woman was raped in her home in Regency Park and her 80-year-old husband was forced to watch, the customers in Judi Barrett's beauty shop could talk of little else.
""A lot of them are widows. They're elderly. It really made them feel very vulnerable. It was a very terrorizing experience,'' Ms. Barrett said.
As if that weren't enough, twice during May girls were abducted from their homes in West Pasco and sexually assaulted. The three incidents occurred within eight days, leaving Ms. Barrett's customers ""enraged, furious, scared and helpless.''
""They moved down here from New York, from Michigan to get away from it, to live their senior lives quietly, to be able to go for walks and go to bingo,'' Ms. Barrett said.
She wrote letters to the newspapers. People began to write letters in response, and July 2, there was a meeting at the beauty shop. That's where Enraged People Against Rape - EPAR, rape spelled backward - began.
""Our liberty is being taken away from us. We have to have locks on our doors and guns in our houses. We have to imprison ourselves because of our fear. That's what we're angry about,'' Ms. Barrett said.
The group has discussed working in favor of tougher sentences for rapists and elimination of reductions in their prison time, Ms. Barrett said.
Wednesday night, reporters were invited to sit in as the group's executive committee discussed its goals, reviewed bills and statutes and worked on organization.
The meeting was at Ms. Barrett's beauty shop outside Port Richey, not far from the site of the Regency Park attacks. Ms. Barrett, 50, didn't want the name of her shop published because of concern about her safety.
The 10 women and one man in attendance were diverse. Ages of EPAR members range from 30 to 80. The group includes retired people, professionals and homemakers. Some of the people at the meeting were customers at Ms. Barrett's beauty shop. Others were members of the Pasco chapter of the National Organization for Women. There is no official affiliation between NOW and EPAR, said NOW chapter president Sue Bean.
EPAR wants the support of a wide range of community organizations, from the League of Women Voters to Hadassah to men's organizations such as the Elks. EPAR has scheduled a general meeting at 7 p.m. Aug. 13 at the CARES Center on Ranch Road. Members will make presentations about the group and seek the support of new members and other groups.
Wednesday, much of the discussion centered on legislation and statistics. A letter from U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., described his Violence Against Women Act of 1990. The group also discussed the cover story of the July 23 issue of Newsweek, ""The Mind of The Rapist.'' Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on violent crime against women found that rape has increased four times faster than the overall crime rate in the last decade, the article said.
A woman is raped every six minutes in this country, the article said. The rate of rapes in the United States is 13 times that of England, and 20 times that of Japan, according to Newsweek.
Bean quoted statistics that three of every four women will be the victim of a violent attack at some point in their lives.
Cory Walther, a marketing representative who lives in New Port Richey, said EPAR would have to stress these sorts of statistics to inspire people to work for change.
""People have to get enraged,'' Ms. Walther said. ""They have to feel like they're part of it.''
There were 105 incidents of forcible sex, which include rape, sodomy and other sex crimes, in Pasco County and its municipalities in 1989, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement report ""Crime in Florida.''
Members also discussed what they would need to learn about local and state laws regarding sex offenders and how the system might be improved.
""The statistics seem to indicate one of the largest problems is getting people to report the crime,'' said Eloise Taylor, a Port Richey lawyer.
She cited the statistic that half of all rapes are not reported.
Programs in Baltimore and New York City that pay special attention to the needs of rape victims immediately after an attack, and that use legal assistants to develop a rapport with victims, may provide important solutions, she said.
Changing basic attitudes about the rapist and his victim will be at the heart of any progress against sexual attacks, Taylor said. Mothers Against Drunk Driving was mentioned several times as an organization that changed the perception of a problem.
""We're at the information-gathering stage,'' Taylor said.
The group also discussed obtaining non-profit status, a post office box, letterhead and a logo. After two hours, the formal part of the meeting ended.
Outside the warmly lit room were the dark streets of the subdivision, where, Ms. Walther said, a community of older citizens is terrified.
""Every age is raped. It's open season,'' Ms. Barrett said. ""I don't want to be vulnerable.''
THE UNREPORTED CRIME
Daily Press (Newport News, VA)
September 4, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
The statistics are eye-popping: Only about 7 percent of all sexual attacks are reported to police. A woman's chances of being raped in a given year are about 1 in 55. About 1 in 7 female college students have been raped, more than half of them by dates, and only 5 percent of the victims reported the assaults to police. More than a fourth of women surveyed report being victims of rape or attempted rape.
The statistics were cited recently by Mary Koss, a University of Arizona researcher and author of a new study on rape who was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The occasion was a hearing on legislation introduced by committee chairman Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., to combat violence against women.
What the numbers mean, when gathered en masse, is that sexual violence is a big problem in this country and one that has not been addressed. It's difficult to assess and solve a problem when it hasn't been adequately identified. Koss' numbers indicate that the stigma and mixed messages associated with being a victim of sexual assault are so great that women despair of even asking for help. Biden's legislation is part of the solution, and public awareness and a change in attitude on the part of society are another.
Koss found in examining statistics from the Justice Department's 1986 National Crime Survey that one factor in the submerging of correct rape numbers is that government surveyors don't ask the right questions. The federal definition of rape basically limits it to what might be described as conventional sex, albeit by force. State laws are broader, correctly including any number of forms of sexual intrusion.
It also seems credible that women who won't report sexual assaults to police are unlikely to tell the government about it either. Koss estimated the government's record of incidents is 15 times too low. "This compromised data creates a false picture of rape as an infrequent crime and, as a result, blunts social concern about the extent to which American women are victimized," she testified.
There's a gender problem too in the way the government does its surveys. Koss observed that women from certain ethnic backgrounds are bound by custom not to discuss sexual matters with men, even those with the federal seal of approval. That point likely applies to women in general as well.
It should also be noted that a key element in sexual assault, regardless of the approach, is consent. There is surely a fundamental misunderstanding in this country of the circumstances under which sexual contact is acceptable. When more than half the victims of sexual assault say an acquaintance or date was responsible, it means an awful lot of men think "yes" when the woman says "no."
Biden's legislation, the Violence Against Women Act, would extend civil rights protection to victims of sex-related crimes so they could seek damages in the courts and would double federal funding for battered women's shelters. He announced new provisions last week to increase money for rape crisis centers, perhaps encouraging more women to report crimes, and boost funding for rape education programs on college campuses, in response, the senator said, to letters from women who said they'd been raped by people they knew.
The approach will be costly, but the country cannot afford not to help victims of sexual assault. There are too many scarred victims who need to be mended so that they can resume normal lives. And given the history of the uphill battle to overcome the trauma of rape, it's wise to invest in preventative programs that may help women avoid being victimized in the first place.
JUDGES WANT COURTS TO TREAT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MORE SERIOUSLY
Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
October 2, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
When she was bruised and bloodied, recalled Sarah Buel, "the police kept saying I should stop doing things to aggravate my husband."
Now an attorney in Cambridge, Mass., Buel fled a violent marriage 13 years ago and became an advocate for battered women and abused children.
She was on Capitol Hill Monday when the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges issued a report calling for sweeping changes in the way the legal system deals with domestic violence.
"The whole area of family violence has long been a troublesome one for the courts," said Stephen Herrell, an Oregon state circuit court judge and chairman of the judicial committee that wrote the report, "Family Violence: Improving Court Practice."
Assaults, murders and rapes often are committed within families, the report said.
"Yet many law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, judges and others continue to treat initial reported family violence incidents as less serious than the same offense between non-family members."
When she sought help after her then-husband beat her, said Leslie Boyd Ford of Baltimore, "a police officer put his arm around my husband's shoulder, telling him to walk around the block when he got angry."
The report said the legal system must regard "all family violence as criminal conduct no less serious than stranger-to-stranger assault."
Women and children are the victims of most domestic violence. Just witnessing violence in the home makes a child more prone to violent behavior as an adult, the report said.
The judicial recommendations were hailed by legislators who are supporting a "Violence Against Women Act" in Congress. The bill would finance shelters for battered women and rape centers, toughen penalties for sex crimes, promote arrests of abusive spouses and otherwise provide victim relief in crimes committed primarily against women.
"The grim fact of the matter is that in the United States one out of two women is a victim of sexual assault or domestic violence in her lifetime," said Rep. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who is sponsoring the bill in the House.
"Violent crime against women is rising," Boxer said, citing FBI statistics. "Every six minutes a woman is raped. Every 18 seconds a woman is beaten."
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE REPORT CHIDES COURTS
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA)
October 2, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
WASHINGTON - As victims of domestic violence looked on, a group of judges issued a report Monday that suggests the legal system doesn't take spouse beating and child abuse seriously.
"Frankly, we have not handled these cases well," said Stephen B. Herrell, a Portland, Ore., circuit judge who coordinated a 2 1/2 -year study by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
The council's report recommends that judges receive training in dealing with domestic violence, and that they and other law enforcement personnel start considering family violence serious criminal contact rather than simply "family spats."
Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Judge Salvadore T. Mule, president of the judges group, said he often sees the children of battered spouses in his courtroom.
"We see kids coming back as delinquents who have all kinds of psychological problems because they witnessed such violence as their mother being killed, or stabbed by the father," Mule said. "This intense violence leaves permanent scars."
Sarah Buel of Boston said that when she contacted police about her husband's beatings, she was advised to "stop doing things that were aggravating to my husband."
Buel said she and her son, now 15, were forced to move 15 times during the past 13 years to escape from her former husband "due directly to the lack of police response in virtually every city we went to."
Since leaving her husband, Buel worked her way through Harvard Law School and took a job in the Boston district attorney's office prosecuting domestic violence cases.
"I hope that I fight more and I advocate more strenuously because I know what it is like to be a victim of violence," Buel said.
Mule said his organization, which represents 2,500 judges, is pushing state legislatures to increase support for battered spouse shelters and to require judges to consider past incidents of family violence in determining child custody and visitation issues.
The group also recommends that civil protective orders be more readily available to prevent family violence. Orders should remove the offender from the home, while letting the victim and children remain with adequate support and protection, the group's report said.
Herrell said the reason courts have not done an adequate job in the past is "sexism and gender bias that has gone on for years and years."
Herrell said his group is endorsing the the Violence Against Women Act, which is expected to be considered by the House soon.
The legislation would double the $18 million now available for battered spouse shelters, and provide grants for programs that train police officers, prosecutors and judges on how to deal with family violence.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a Senate sponsor of the legislation, recounted statistics recently compiled by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Among them:
In 1989, the number of women abused by their husbands was greater than the number of women who got married.
Nearly 50 percent of abusive husbands batter their wives when they are pregnant, making them four times more likely to deliver infants of low birth weight.
Each year, more than 1 million women seek medical assistance for injuries caused by battering.
There are three times as many animal shelters in the United States as battered women's shelters.
GENDER-BASED BILL ASSAULTS LOGIC
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Author: JOHN LEO U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT LOS ANGELES TIMES SYNDICATE
October 3, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
At first glance, the proposed Violence Against Women Act of 1990 seems like a good idea, perhaps even an obvious one. Rape and domestic violence are horrendous problems in America, getting worse each year.
The bill would try to cope by providing stronger penalties for repeat offenses, allowing victims to sue offenders in federal court and making judicial protective orders for women applicable across state lines.
Fine. But for a first clue as to what's wrong with the bill, listen to Sen. Joseph Biden, who introduced the measure: "For too long we have ignored the right of women to be free from fear of attacks based on their gender."
Now, students of the English language will be quick to note that the senator has emitted a very peculiar phrase here. What is "based on their gender" doing in this sentence? Everyone knows that almost all rapes (97%) are male-on-female.
Quick now: What else could these rapes be based on besides gender? Matched tax brackets? Compatible zodiac signs? Identical television-viewing habits?
Similarly, it will come as news to most of us ordinary citizens, as well as social scientists, that out-of-control husbands who punch their wives do so out of what the bill describes as "gender-based animus."
So out of shoddy-legislation-based animus, I phoned the Senate Judiciary Committee and queried a spokeswoman, who asked to remain unidentified. How can the bill depict spouse-battering and rape as civil-rights violations?
"Well," she explained, "if someone discovered that 97% of a group of victims were black, or Iraqi, it would be clear that a particular group is being singled out for disadvantageous treatment. Why should women have to be on their guard all the time wherever they go?"
They shouldn't, but her answer gives the game away. To bring rape and wife- beating under the umbrella of civil-rights protection, it is necessary to argue that these are acts of prejudice and discrimination, like denying someone a job on the basis of race or sex. But they clearly aren't, which is why all the verbal gymnastics are required.
Heterosexual rapists attack women because of their sexual orientation, not because they arbitrarily decide to single out just one of our two leading genders. And husbands beat wives because they are locked into self-defeating emotional relationships and try, stupidly, to settle matters or gain dominance with their fists. We are a long way here from the original model of civil- rights legislation: The long oppression of blacks by whites, based clearly on discrimination and nothing else.
There are several things to say about this odd bill.
One is that some local crimes are being federalized here with little showing of why they should be. (A proper showing might demonstrate that some states, at least, are simply not responding to women's complaints. If so, let's see the evidence.)
Second, this is a perfect example of the now-reflexive American habit of reducing almost all social problems to ones of bias. The usual price to pay for this is the shearing away of all bothersome complexity, a spreading politics of group grievance, and the sharpening of division between groups (in this case, males and females).
There are social costs to depicting rape as something one group does to another out of generalized bias. This is already a strong ideological strand within feminism. Susan Brownmiller, in her influential book, Against Our Will, called rape "nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."
I do not agree. The battle line is not male vs. female; instead, it is most males and all females vs. a small minority of violent and mostly young males.
Finally, I think the proliferation of proposed civil-rights bills is based on ever weaker analogies to our race problem. Rape is not like race oppression, even though Brownmiller derived her theory from a historian of slavery. One of the unacknowledged costs of not solving our race problem is that it keeps being used, ever more dubiously, as a model for more legislation.
And as long as the tactic keeps working, we will see more of it.
GUEST VIEW / BLOODY ANNIVERSARY
La Crosse Tribune (WI)
Diane Snyder - President of the Greater La Crosse Area Chapter of NOW, the National Organization for Women
December 6, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine entered the University of Montreal's School of Engineering carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle and, after deliberately separating the students in one classroom into two groups, one of males and one of females, he opened fired on the female students shouting "you're all (expletive) feminists." In the end, 14 young women were murdered. Nine other women and four men were wounded. Lepine then turned the gun on himself, leaving behind a three page suicide note condemning women.
This year on Dec. 6, feminists world-wide are taking a moment to reflect on the awful Montreal slayings. Rarely is a crime so blatantly gender-motivated that even the media cannot deny it, although some journalists tried to blame Lepine's past bad relationships with women as the motivation. Feminists in Canada are rallying to have Dec. 6 claimed a national holiday. World-wide we are marking the day as one to remember all victims of gender-motivated violence.
Again and again we are reminded of the frightening anti-woman sentiment which exists in our society. The statistics are appalling. In our so-called civilized country, a woman is battered every 15 seconds. Battering is the number one reason for admittance to an emergency ward and the single largest cause of injury for women. A rape is committed every six minutes, and at the current rate, a 14-year-old girl today has a one in three chance of being sexually assaulted in her lifetime. One married women in seven is raped by her husband. Yet only a handful of states consider marital rape a crime.
Even more appalling is society's continued tolerance, and in some cases, even condonation of violence against women. In the United States, only 2-3 percent of all men who rape outside of marriage to prison for the crime and 52 percent of all men who rape are arrested again within three years. An estimated 90 percent of rapes go unreported because victims fear our notoriously sex-biased and rape-victim blaming judicial system. Last summer a jury in Jacksonville, Fla., acquitted a confessed rapist because the victim "provoked" the attack by wearing a mini-skirt. On the evening of Dec. 6, 1989, in Montreal, gun sellers reported an onslaught of requests for the same semiautomatic rifle used by Lepine, and some stores reported being sold out.
In the La Crosse Tribune on Nov. 21, 1990, a letter appeared written by Chris Johnson. Johnson implies that women are raped because they let the man pick up the dinner tab. "The woman who continues to think her mere presence is a gift to men" says Johnson, "is the one who's most likely to be sexually assaulted."
Rape is an act of violence. As long as society continues to deny this simple fact, and continues to victim-blame, condone and applaud gender-motivated crimes, the violence will continue.
With the recent passage of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, we hear a lot in the media about "hate" crimes. Hate crimes are defined as those crimes motivated by a victim's race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity. Hate crimes are seen not only as crimes but as a civil rights violation. Unfortunately, gender-motivated crimes are not covered under the current hate crime definition. This is a grave oversight.
As a society, we must begin to realize that some crimes are committed against women because they are women, and for no other reason. The women killed in Montreal died because they were women. In the United States every six minutes a woman is raped because she is a woman. When a race-motivated crime is committed, no one questions whether or not the victim "provoked" the attack by the clothing they were wearing, or whether or not the assailant first bought dinner for the victim, or whether or not the assailant had past bad relationships with persons of this race. Gender-motivated crimes such as rape must also be categorized as hate crimes, as a civil rights violation.
Currently, an act which would achieve hate crime status for gender-motivated crimes has been introduced into the U.S. Senate by Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. It is called the "Violence Against Women Act of 1990, S.2754." Additionally, the National Organization for Women will be lobbying once again for the passage of ERA (Equal Rights Amendment). Advocates of women's rights need to speak up and be heard so that critical measures such as these will be passed.
Until women are adequately protected as equal citizens under the law, women will not be safe. Remember Montreal.
BIDEN PROPOSES LAW TO PROTECT ABUSED WOMEN
Orlando Sentinel, The (FL)
December 17, 1990
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/
For nearly a half million women, the holiday season is a time not of joy but of violence and tragedy, says Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has proposed the first federal legislation dealing with domestic violence.
''During this holiday season, in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's, about 450,000 women will be violently abused in their homes,'' said Biden, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ''And most tragically, every week between now and Christmas, about 30 women will be killed by their spouses.''
Almost all legislation dealing with violence between intimate adult partners remains at the state and local level.
The Violence Against Women Act, which Biden proposes to reintroduce in the next Congress, would subject abusers to stringent penalties and would triple federal financing for battered women's shelters.
It also would create federal penalties for abusers who cross state lines in search of a fleeing partner and would offer incentives to states that arrest spouse abusers.
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Supreme Court strikes down violence against women act
CNN
May 15, 2000
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority in trying to give women who were victims of sexual violence the ability to sue for civil damages in federal courts under the Constitution's Commerce Clause.
The court struck down provisions of the Violence Against Women Act by a 5-4 majority.
"Gender motivated crimes of violence are not in any sense economic activity," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority.
Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala had filed suit under the act alleging two football players had raped her in a university dormitory in 1994.
Her case contended that because she subsequently dropped out of college she had suffered an economic consequence of a lesser education and poorer job opportunities.
But the conservative wing of the court found neither the Commerce Clause nor the 14th Amendment suitable for congress to pass such a law.
"If the allegations are true, no civilized system of justice could fail to provide a remedy," Rehnquist said in delivering the court's opinion. "But it must come from the Commonwealth of Virginia, not the federal government."
The ruling comes in two combined cases: Brzonkala v. Morrison and United States v. Morrison, argued January 11, 2000.
The Supreme Court: The court on federalism; Women lose right to sue attackers in federal court
NY Times
Published: May 16, 2000
Declaring that ''the Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local,'' the Supreme Court today invalidated a six-year-old provision of federal law that permitted victims of rape, domestic violence and other crimes ''motivated by gender'' to sue their attackers in federal court.
The 5-to-4 decision, striking down the civil remedy provision of the Violence Against Women Act, was the latest application of the court's newly restrictive view of Congressional power and of the degree of deference that Congress is owed by federal courts. Although one of the most sweeping of the justices' decisions in this area recently, it will almost certainly not be the last.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's majority opinion rejected each of the two sources of constitutional authority that Congress had asserted as the basis for the legislation. The majority concluded that the civil remedy provision was neither a valid regulation of interstate commerce nor a proper means of enforcing the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment. [Excerpts, Page A20.]
The decision affirmed a ruling last year by the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., dismissing a suit brought by a college student against two varsity football players whom she accused of raping her in her dormitory room shortly after the start of her freshman year.
The plaintiff, Christy Brzonkala, withdrew from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and brought her suit after learning that the football players, Antonio Morrison and James Crawford, would not be disciplined by the college. When the defendants then challenged the constitutionality of the Violence Against Women Act, the federal government intervened in the suit to defend the law.
The law's supporters argued that widespread violence against women, and fear of violence, had a negative effect on the nation's economy, measured in the billions of dollars a year, by impairing the productivity and the mobility of female employees and students. To accept that reasoning, the chief justice said today, ''would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit or consumption.'' But a general police power is something ''which the founders denied the national government and reposed in the states,'' he added.
The Violence Against Women Act also has a criminal provision, making it a federal crime to cross state lines to engage in domestic violence or stalking. The Supreme Court last year refused to hear a challenge to that provision, which was not at issue in the case today but which the chief justice suggested in a footnote was constitutional because of the explicit requirement of interstate conduct. The law also provides federal money to the states for programs to prevent violence and assist victims.
Much of the attention and debate surrounding the law has focused on the civil damages provision at issue today, which the lower courts have applied some 50 times, a number that would probably have been larger had the law not been under a constitutional cloud. While most states have laws permitting people, including victims of sexual assaults, to seek damages against their attackers, Congress acted after dozens of studies showed that women seeking such relief faced considerable obstacles from state judicial systems that regarded sex offenses as unworthy of serious attention.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the chief Senate sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act, said at a news conference today that ''this decision is really all about power: who has the power, the court or Congress?''
Senator Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, said there had been notable improvement in the states since Congress put the issue on its agenda in the early 1990's. He predicted that the decision today ''will have a lot less impact on violence against women than on the future role of the United States Congress,'' adding, ''The damage done to the act is not as bad as the damage done to American jurisprudence.''
Both Senator Biden and Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who was the law's chief sponsor when he represented Brooklyn in the House of Representatives, said years of hearings before the legislation was passed had been aimed at compiling a record of the scope of the problem, to persuade the Supreme Court that a national solution was warranted.
''Just at a time when the economic and social conditions of the world demand that we be treated as one country and not as 50 states, the Supreme Court seems poised to undo decades and decades of a consensus that the federal government has an active role to play,'' Senator Schumer said in an interview.
In a dissenting opinion today, Justice David H. Souter included three pages of the findings from various Congressional reports, and predicted that the majority's ''new judicially derived federalism'' would eventually prove as serious a wrong turn for the court as the decisions of the 1930's that, in rejecting elements of the New Deal, provoked the court-packing crisis of 1937. Referring to that episode's ''pedigree of near-tragedy,'' Justice Souter said that ''today's decision can only be seen as a step toward recapturing the prior mistakes.''
The justices' 5-to-4 division was familiar from a series of decisions over the last five years that have struck down federal laws or created new state immunities from the application of federal law. Beginning with its ruling in United States v. Lopez in 1995, which overturned a law against carrying a gun near a school and marked the first time since the New Deal that the court had invalidated a law as exceeding the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, the court has also struck down part of the Brady gun control law and laws making states liable to suit in federal court for patent and trademark violations. Earlier this year, the court ruled that states could not be sued by their employees for violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
Joining Chief Justice Rehnquist in the majority today, as in all the other decisions, were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. Justice Thomas wrote a brief concurring opinion to say that the court should have put Congress under an even tighter rein. Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a dissenting opinion and also signed Justice Souter's dissent, as did Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Although the tone of the opinions today, totaling 71 pages, was quite muted, the gulf between the two factions of the court is wide and growing wider. The court has already granted review in three more federalism cases, and the decision today, United States v. Morrison, No. 99-5, is likely to inspire more challenges to the reliance of Congress on its authority to regulate interstate commerce. Federal environmental regulations that restrict the use of private property might present an inviting target for such a challenge, some students of these recent developments believe.
Chief Justice Rehnquist's majority opinion today reiterated that the ''economic nature of the regulated activity'' was at the heart of any analysis of Congress's exercise of its commerce authority. ''Gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity,'' he said.
The opinion stopped short of adopting a categorical rule that Congress can never do what it claimed to do in this law: address the aggregate economic effect of activity that itself may not be inherently economic. But the chief justice noted pointedly that the court had never endorsed such an approach. In any event, he said, the court is and will remain ''the ultimate expositor of the constitutional text.''
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Souter said that when it came to ''supposed conflicts of sovereign political interests implicated by the Commerce Clause,'' the court should step back and let the political system work out the problem. Noting that 36 states had filed briefs supporting the law, he said it was ''not the least irony'' of the case that ''the states will be forced to enjoy the new federalism whether they want it or not.''
Chief Justice Rehnquist said the provision could not be sustained under the 14th Amendment because that amendment prohibits discrimination by states or ''state actors'' rather than the private individuals whose conduct is the target of this law.
Kathryn J. Rodgers, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented Ms. Brzonkala (pronounced brahn-KAH-lah), criticized the decision, saying it took ''the federal government out of the business of defining civil rights and creating remedies.''
Michael E. Rosman, general counsel of the Center for Individual Rights, which challenged the law on behalf of the defendants, said the decision was a welcome reminder that ''democratic majorities are limited by the text of the Constitution.''
''This was an effort by Congress to aggrandize its authority,'' Mr. Rosman added, ''and the court is now requiring Congress to toe the constitutional line.''
The History of the Violence Against Women Act
US Department Of Justice
Office Of Violence Against Women
September 14, 2009
