All too often we are presented with misinformation and fiction becomes a fact. The Battered Women’s Justice Project is a resource center that provides information concerning domestic violence. It is particularly concerned with training, practices, and policies of domestic violence issues for law enforcement. Many law enforcement officers attend training sessions held by this organization and some departments use their, Battered Women’s Justice Project training manual. The manual is titled, “Criminal Responses to Domestic Violence: Emerging Issues and Promising Practices.
Dr. Fernando Mederos is a contributor to the manual and a domestic violence consultant from Boston, Massachusetts. In the manual his article, Domestic Violence and Probation, proclaims that, "In reality men who batter are broadly representative of the general population of men, many are solid citizens with no criminal records, no substance abuse history, and long term employment." This is clearly not the truth.
In fact, data from Batterer Treatment Programs nationwide, data that Mederos is familiar with, document that is not the truth. It is a fact that some men meet that criteria, but to write that men in general batterer women in particular lacks documentation.
Mederos and too many others, chose to ignore the fact that there are reams of data that document that the majority of people who violently physically batter children, women and men have backgrounds of being abused themselves, have extensive juvenile and adult criminal records, and histories of behavioral disorders. Most of them have backgrounds of poverty and poor school achievement, long term unemployment, mental illness, substance abuse problems, etc, etc. This data is not only from batterer programs or people who have been arrested for domestic violence. Much of this information is gleaned from civil restraining orders where no criminal justice intervention takes place.
There is no question, as data demonstrate, that some people who batter do represent a cross section of the social, educational, and institutional strata. However, writing of batterers that "many are solid citizens" when there is little to no any empirical scientific data that will allow for even a guesstimate of just what is meant by "solid citizens" sounds and is intentionally misleading.
Emerge; a batterer intervention program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest batterer intervention program in the nation. Emerge claims that as many as one third of their clients are professional men, However, when asked for data to demonstrate the accuracy of those numbers they will not provide any information, because they can not.
In fact there is no data nationwide that can provide concrete numbers concerning just how many, "solid citizens" are "broadly representative" of batterers. Mederos, and other fundamental feminists, just pull those “facts” out of thin air as it suits their myopic single minded fundamental feminist ideological intervention procedure.
More disturbing than the Mederos and the Emerge claim is a New York “study” by Maria Roy. She proffers that "ninety percent of abusive men do not have a criminal record." That absolutely false claim is still being quoted by fundamental feminists. However, the vast majority of unbiased researchers acknowledge that number is not valid. In fact there is no data now nor was there ever any data to document the accuracy of her claim.
Again, this is not to question the fact that some doctors, lawyers, researchers, etc., regardless of gender, can be abusive. All criminal acts and in fact all aberrant behavior contains people from all strata of society, and that fact is not unique to domestic violence.
All, not some, but all data document that the vast majority of men do not batter women. And, without a doubt, there is absolutely no data to document what percent of male batterers are "solid citizens?"
The fact is that numbers do document that the number of men who batter women and children is small. The truth is that data document the vast majority of men who are “broadly representative” of batterers comes from a subsection of some men in particular and not men in general.
A National Institute of Justice report, The Effects of Arrest on Intimate Partner Violence: New Evidence From the Spouse Assault Replication Program, documents that 8 percent of victims of domestic violence reported repeat victimization that amounted to more than 82 percent of the 9,000 incidents studied.
The, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women is a report of the findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf. The authors write on page iii that, “The data show that violence is more widespread and injurious to women’s and men’s health than previously thought – an important finding for legislators, policymakers, intervention planners, and researchers as well as the public health and criminal justice communities. Why is it that so many public policy makers continue to ignore these findings?
We do not hear these truths often because the truth rebukes the theory that patriarchy causes men in general to batter women in particular. The majority of our public policy makers can not hear or see the truth simply because they choose not to seek it.
We need empirical evidence that leads us in the right direction. Perhaps a few courageous public policy makers could make the first small steps for humankind if they simply acknowledge the data from the above report. The report documents that approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. All men are not villains and all women are not their innocent victims. And that is the truth.
And for the sake of so many children, women and men who are abused, we must tell the truth and public policy makers need to act on the truth.
