Too often domestic violence training for law enforcement is biased and as just concerned with the struggle for gender equity, as it is with domestic violence training for law enforcement officers. One clear example of this misguided training is the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance, Training Manual for Civilian Domestic Violence Victim Advocates in Police Departments.
Excluding gender equity from domestic violence training does not mean that I do not support gender equity. I am the father of three girls and two boys. I expect and in fact, I demand, that they are all afforded the same rights. However, what does the just struggle for gender equity have to do with domestic violence training for law enforcement officers?
On page 26 of the manual, “Violence is learned behavior. It is taught specifically to the males in many if not most societies. Its purpose is to control and exert power and—it works!” Further down the page we read, “To see how both men and women become acclimated to violence as a right of the powerful we need look no further than the punishment of young children. If corporal (bodily) punishment, hitting or spanking, is used as the ultimate form of child discipline, the child learns that it is appropriate for the larger, more powerful person to hit the smaller, less powerful, ‘bad,’ person.” The authors of the above “police department training manual” then, quite illogically and despite reams of evidence to the contrary, conclude that family violence is learned and exhibited only by males, and that spanking of children teaches males to be abusers and females to be their victims.
The “battered women” or “Feminist – Cognitive Behavioral” model of training views domestic violence exclusively as violence against women is the only model used in Massachusetts and that is true for most states. This is because the vast majority of that training is paid for by the Violence Against Women Act. The Family Conflict and Psychotherapeutic models of domestic violence, recognized by professionals nationwide, are treated as if they do not exist.
All states have in place domestic violence statute laws that, in fact, do not limit domestic violence by age and gender. Nationwide, as well as in Massachusetts, by fact of legislation, domestic violence is not specifically and exclusively defined as men’s violence against women. Domestic violence by virtue of criminal and civil statute law is child, sibling, spousal, intimate partner, and elder abuse regardless of age or gender. Can any proper domestic violence training honestly ignore this reality?
The training in the Massachusetts manual is contradicted by the reality police officers, regardless of gender, face every day. Some women do use violence in family conflict incidents; it is often deliberate and not always defensive. In fact there is not a single scientific empirical study that can document that the violence women use in the home is defensive in nature. In fact, basic logic dictates that women who hit their children are doing so because they are bigger, stronger, and the law allows them to do so.
The Violent Home, by Richard Gelles found 94 percent of the mothers, compared to 65 percent of the fathers, physically mistreat their children at least once. The study, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Maltreatment 1996, document that 17, 590 males compared to 21,757 females physically abused a child. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that of children who were maltreated by their birth parents, their mothers maltreated 75 percent, and 46 percent were maltreated by their fathers.
The findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, estimate that as many as 4.5 million physical assaults are committed against U.S. women and 2.9 million physical assaults are committed against U.S. men by an intimate partner. The Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence document that from July 1999 through June 2000 62 children, women, and men died as a result of a domestic violence homicide. The victims were 26 females and 26 males.
The United States Department of Justice, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice, document in a recent Gallup Poll respondents were asked, “In most families people get mad at each other for one reason or another. Thinking about your own situation, have you, yourself ever been physically abused by your spouse or companion?” About 8 percent of males and 22 percent of females replied, “yes.” In a study from the National Institute of Justice, Full Report on Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women, it reports that 51.9 percent of women and 66.4 percent of men surveyed said they were physically assaulted as a child by an adult caretaker and/or as an adult by any type of attacker.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Murder in Families, documents that “in murders of their offspring, women predominated, accounting for 55 percent of killers.” The most extensive elder abuse report to date, The National Elder Abuse Incidence Study, reports that males were responsible for 53 percent of the abuse and females 47 percent. A study in the American Society of Criminology document that partner abuse can be reciprocal and are not always men abusing women.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that one of 12 every women and one of every 45 men have been stalked at some time in their lives.
The report, “Date Violence and Date Rape Among Adolescents: Associations With Disordered Eating Behaviors and Psychological Health, concerning the same type of adolescent abuse was administered in the Minnesota public schools and it reports that nearly 9 percent of girls and 6 percent of boys report some type of abusive date-related experience.
The October 2001 issue of the National Bulletin on Domestic Violence Prevention has an article concerning “domestic violence” training for law enforcement. The article notes that a victim assistance coordinator at a women’s shelter conducts “family violence” training for police officers. It also notes that the intent is to ensure that every cop in the nation receives “domestic violence” training and that officers are being instructed in how to handle calls involving “family violence.” One of the instructors, a legal advocate for a Women’s Community Association, states that she believes the training is useful for the police.
This “battered women” model is important, useful and beneficial and should continue with the caveat that it is only a single piece of a complex puzzle.
The form of domestic violence police officers most often respond to is not a “battered women” but rather family conflict abuse. Family conflict abuse can be an isolated act. The victim is not always a “battered woman” and the assailant is not always a “batterer.” Family conflict abuse can be motivated by an isolated argument, anger, jealousy or revenge for some perceived prior misbehavior. Similar to the “battered women” model this form of abuse is not caused by but, often can occur because of a loss of inhibition fueled by an excessive use of alcohol and/or drugs. Child, sibling, intimate partner, and elder abuse are common domestic violence calls for police officers.
Data collected from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) document that almost half of law enforcement domestic violence intervention do not involve a spousal styled relationship but rather what it labels “Other Family” or “Other Relationships.”
Ellen Pence, an influential feminists concerning domestic violence, believes that not every case of domestic violence is best resolved in a courtroom, that many individual victims can not be helped by a prosecution, and that every act of domestic violence does not necessarily lead to a serious attack on a victim.
Battered women need and deserve a considerate, compassionate, and empathic response from police officers. In violence between men and women, in which the more chronic, injurious, and sexual assaults are suffered, women are the predominant victims. However, as the Massachusetts Office of Victim Assistance manual notes, a society that condones or ignores any form of violence has little credibility to proclaim that there is never a valid reason for one person to hit another and that there is no “appropriate” use of physical force by one person against another – regardless of circumstance.
For that very reason, proper domestic violence training and education for police departments must be unbiased, honest, and inclusive of all victims. Police departments must receive domestic violence training that explores the complexities and the reality they see every day. Training that advocates all victims of domestic violence deserve their consideration, may cause some of the officers to display more compassion and empathy for all victims.
