DOMESTIC VIOLENCE – Male Victims

In recent years, male victims of domestic violence constitute an increasingly significant proportion of reported domestic violence cases. The crisis of men experiencing domestic violence is certainly not new; however, with more men coming forward and tougher police rules and mandatory arrest laws in place, a greater percentage of women, unexpectedly, are arrested for domestic violence. While the prevalence of such cases demands greater recourse for males in the legal system, the reality is quite the opposite: Not only have the crimes committed by females been dismissed by unjustified excuses of self-defense and trauma, men have continued to be accused of domestic violence at an extremely disproportionate and discriminatory rate compared to women, and male victims of domestic violence have been virtually ignored by the judicial system, media, and government sponsored advocacy programs. By focusing only on domestic violence against women, much of which has been reported to be false accusations, and ignoring the growing number of male victims, the likelihood of domestic violence, overall, has escalated. Statistics of Males Victims of Domestic Violence

The National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000) reports that about 835,000 men are victims of violence by an intimate each year, which translates into a batter of a male every 37.8 seconds somewhere in the United States. The data further shows that assaulted men are more likely than assaulted women to experience serious assaults of being hit with an object, threatened with a knife, or being knifed. When considering relevant homicide data, studies show that women are more likely than men to initiate serious domestic violence, resulting in four out of ten male intimate homicides. The Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report on Women Offenders, in fact, reports that Victims who are intimates accounted for an identical percentage of both male and female violent offenders. Despite such alarming results that clearly impose the necessity for advocacy and outreach for male victims, government sponsored research and the media has focused almost exclusively on the risks women face from domestic violence. The Center for Policy Research, Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, and the National Institute of Justice, for instance, have avoided services and public awareness to male victims and failed to mention any violence by women against men. Perhaps the greatest contributing factor to this problem is the advocacy based focus on serving women and protecting female victims, particularly under the federally funded Violence Against Women Act. Proponents of this view have endorsed the ‘Duluth Model’ ideology in which battery is equated with masculinity and male oppression of women– an unsubstantiated view that has become virtually codified in the Violence Against Women Act. Men Dismissed as Victims of Domestic Violence Advocates of the Violence Against Women Act have dismissed male victims as statistically insignificant and have attempted to revise the judicial system to benefit women. Furthermore, proponents of the Act claim that women arrested for battery are simply acting in self-defense and deny the documented evidence that women are often perpetrators of domestic violence. While the U.S. Supreme Court found the civil right remedies embedded in the Act unconstitutional, the ideology that encompasses biased gender myths continues to run equally strong. The unfortunate result of such misleading ideological myths is the lack of public education, advocacy or policy research to help male victims of domestic violence. While advocacy and private and government funded research for female victims are undisputably necessary, equally imperative is the same for the 835,000 men assaulted each year. Contending that women do not have the capacity for aggression, especially in the face of contradicting studies, violates feminist principles that were designed to eradicate the unequal treatment of men and women. Furthermore, attempting to get female perpetrators “off the hook” and prosecuting men simply based on gender violates civil rights by the judiciary and the legislature: Disregarding the effects of domestic violence on men is inherently outlawed in the principles of Equal Protection and Due Process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution as well as civil rights code, 42 U.S.C. 10606(b). Additionally, filing claims pursuant to unconstitutional domestic violence laws violates other constitutional provisions and case law: U.S. Constitution, Article VI Section 2, Harris v. McRae 448 U.S. 297, at 312 (1980), Miranda v. Arizona, 384 US 436 p.491, and Marbury v. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803). Each of these legal authorities finds that any legislation or ruling that impinges on or abrogates fundamental rights secured by the Constitution is considered null and void. A court found violating such principles can lose federal funding for misuse of federal funds and be liable for sanctions under the civil rights violations code, 42 U.S.C. 1983. Criminal Defense and Domestic Violence Victims In the legal arena of criminal defense, it becomes vital to eradicate the systematic and inexplicable infringements on fundamental rights and accusations of crimes based on gender. Such unconstitutional violations, compounded by the loose definitions of domestic violence that resonate in domestic violence laws such as the Violence Against Women Act result in the disproportionate rate of complaints made against males. Additionally, domestic violence laws that guarantee women the resources to aid in the prosecution of males, as well as mandatory arrest laws and police rules, have only facilitated false accusations that are often made by women. Furthermore, dismissing battery claims filed by male victims through unjustified excuses of self-defense, trauma, and stress serves only to sustain the feminist radical ideology, thus alienating and misrepresenting the growing number of male victims of domestic violence even further. In order to control the crisis of domestic violence, therefore, the judicial system must uphold the fundamental rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, eradicate prosecution practices based on destructive gender myths, and provide recourse for male victims of violence. If the legal system fails to do so, more perpetrators will go unpunished while innocent victims are abandoned without justice and restitution.

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domestic violence, male victims of domestic violence, men as victims, domestic law,

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