Encountering domestic violence: what to do
As you've no doubt noticed, the Urban Meyer situation has prompted a discussion on the blog about what the appropriate response is to domestic violence. I want to pass on a few thoughts on this that are rooted in professional experience.* Nothing I say here is intended to be a comment on the Meyer matter in particular.
My thoughts:
Let's imagine that you know or believe that a coworker or relative is abusing his/her partner or suffering from abuse by his/her partner. What do you do?
First, the wishes of the person who is being abused should almost always outweigh your own wishes.** A battered partner almost certainly has a better sense of the threat that her abuser poses than you do. If a battered partner says, "I don't want to call the police, because I think he'll kill me if I do," you should believe her.
Second, it may not be best for a battered partner for her abuser to lose his job. Whether it is better for society for him to lose his job is another question. But the battered partner may lose her only source of income if the abuser is unemployed. You may not be doing her a favor by causing that unemployment.
Third, note the complication that comes with domestic abuse. It's relatively easy to address violence at the hands of a stranger. But experiencing violence at the hands of the man you love(d) and the father of your children is another matter. Your interests and his will never be entirely exclusive. There will never be a clean solution.
Fourth, a battered partner who wants to get a restraining order (civil protection order/stay-away order, etc.) against her abuser may be able to get one with help from a local legal services office (Jim Harbaugh approved!). Please see the link below if someone you know needs that assistance.
Fifth, there may be local counselors/advocates trained in domestic violence who can help someone you know who is suffering domestic abuse. I don't know a single website to visit to find such people across the country, but a quick Google search for "domestic violence counselors + [your town's name]" should work. Survivors of abuse often feel severely isolated, and an important first step toward addressing abuse is to talk to someone about it.
*Nothing here is meant to be legal advice. I am a lemur chained to a computer.
**I say "almost" because you can be a legally incapacitated adult. And I'm not talking about a situation in which someone is passively - out of sheer indifference - allowing their partner to abuse their children. That is pretty rare as far as I know.
The link:
https://www.lsc.gov/what-legal-aid/find-legal-aid
Maybe the link will work in the comments: https://www.lsc.gov/what-legal-aid/find-legal-aid
Well hell. I've got nothing.
Erik, to add a hyperlink click on the third icon from the top left.
BOLD Italic Link
It's the one that looks like a chain link.
Thanks!
erik, sometimes you have to be the one to call the cops/get the PPO/have a literal intervention for the abused person. their sense of self-worth, blame, fear, and so many other competing emotions, are usually totally screwed up.
2 other observations:
1. your post is her, her, her. it has been my experience that women are more likely to be the batterer. the only saving grace, if there is one, is that women don't tend to inflict serious physical injuries or to murder.
2. don't forget jourdan lewis, which is to say, not every complaining witness is telling the truth.
these are generalizations. please don't apply them to the OSU cluster mess.
Okay, but let's be clear that you have unusual experiences w/r/t to the sex of the batterer and batteree. See https://ncadv.org/statistics.
As to your second point, it is certainly true, but it's not a coin flip. Sexual assault is vastly underreported and rarely fabricated. See https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf.
Thank you for posting these stats. It's extremely dangerous for people to project their limited experiences as being indicative of larger trends.
i have 30 years in the business, hundreds and hundreds of cases. not limited. i note that the stats cited say 1 in 3 women, 1 in 4 men vics. i'd switch those because most men not only won't report, they won't even consider the battery as a 'DV'.
August 3rd, 2018 at 10:32 AM ^
He did not project his experience as being indicative of larger trends. Your response seems to suggest that you are doing that.
He was merely pointing out that females can batter males. In his experience, that happens more often than males battering females.
Even if his experience is rare, it still happens. Men should not feel so ashamed of being battered that they stay silent and refuse to get help.
And then hysterical Bando chimes in misconstruing XM’s comments as victim bashing.
As a rule of thumb, whenever I see Bando and His Dudeness on one side, I’m inclined to support the other.
we weren't talking about sexual assault, but i do agree that is underreported and some of those cases are the most horrific. that statistic you cite though, is literally trying to measure a nearly unmeasurable number. who decides which one is false? advocates, not a neutral body, and there is no mechanism for measuring the false reports.
Your exceptions =/= the rule. Pointing to a single apparently false accusation, and personal experience that stands in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is not an excuse to reframe the discussion on domestic violence.
bando, don't i remember you embarrassing yourself on these same topics when i posted a diary on the jourdan lewis case? yeah, i think so.
incidentally, tell us about the decades of your experience in DV matters. or are you virtue signaling. see the stats posted above, even by their numbers 1 in 4 males (1 in 3 females) has been a victim of DV. so by that metric my comment is pretty accurate also.
Virtue signaling? More like taking the time to point out to people like you that the instinct to blame victims and believe your anecdotes over hard evidence is why women underreport incidences of domestic and sexual violence.
And when it comes to Lewis, I remember you consistently blaming victims, as you continue to do every time one of these types of threads comes up. Like it wasn't disgusting the first few dozen times. Enough.
August 2nd, 2018 at 10:40 PM ^
i did not and do not blame victims. i represent victims on a regular basis, do you? i point out though that all 'victims' aren't to be believed, which means they aren't victims in the first place. i just walked a falsely accused client out of court in trial the other day. i couldn't believe that client was ever charged as they fought off an admitted sexual assault in the course of the event. so that client was the true victim in every sense of the word, and i believed them and proved it in court. satisfied now? i do believe in and have a heart for victims. i also have discernment.
August 3rd, 2018 at 11:43 AM ^
One thing your fairly "macro" estimation on stats fails to account for is the degree and severity of abuse and the potential for your location to represent an anomaly in the data.
It is irresponsible to attempt to equate male on female DV to female on male. Perhaps in a very gross measure of number of overall incidents, both reported and unreported, you could show they approach the same levels, but that is far from the whole story.
You'll never be able to convince me that:
-an equal number if men are sent to emergency rooms/medical practitioners with serious/grave bodily injuries like broken bones, missing teeth, internal bleeding, concussions, etc. suffered at the hands of a female. It is at epidemic proportions for women and there isn't some giant "shadow treatment" dynamic for men that masks it b/c of under-reporting.
-an equal number/proportion of men are stuck in a sustained and extended cycle of abuse due to economic dependency, sheer physical restraint or familial/child concerns.
I'm not saying that f>m DV doesn't happen, or even that it isn't under-reported or a serious concern, but it is preposterous to equate it to m>f DV in any manner that seeks to portray them as being the same thing.
I have some experience in dealing with this directly in both Michigan and California volunteering at organizations that provide legal help and logistical/economic support for people as they escape abusive situations. In my experience it ran about 10:1 f:m and categorically the women were seeking help after a much longer period of abuse on average, reported a history of much more serious injuries and had far fewer options open to them in terms of being able to leave.
please re-read what i wrote up there. i didn't attempt to equate the level of physical injury, only the incidence of occurrence if using the same measuring stick of defining what 'domestic violence' means. as you read closer, you'll see that i went to pains to say that 'the only saving grace, if there is one, is that' the injuries tended to be less serious when its women on men violence.
coincidentally, my experience comes from here and in cal, like yours.
A few observations:
1. YOU'RE A MORON.
2. See 1.
Agreed. Guy is a grade-A piece of shit.
now ms. dudeness, you promised to ban yourself. keep your promise big fella.
Just shut up you idiot. You've said enough in your stupid posts in this thread. Blaming women for domestic violence is absurd. You're disgusting.
August 2nd, 2018 at 10:34 PM ^
did not and would not blame victims, male or female.
would blame you though, for not being a man (i assume you are male) who keeps his word. a shame, really.
Yet you literally did blame women for "the majority" of domestic violence in your above comments.
You're one of those people who can't admit to being wrong. You're a small person in every way. And you're completely wrong here. I hope you don't have daughters. Sick fuck.
August 3rd, 2018 at 10:25 AM ^
reading is hard: 'blame' would be something like 'X got hit because s/he deserved it'. that is not what i wrote or implied. if i said women are the majority of drunk drivers, would you say i blamed them? of course not.
nice name calling. good to know your chain is so easily pulled. are you sure you won't take me up on that charity event you chickened out of earlier this year? you pick the style: box/kickbox/MMA, you pick the weight of gloves, we have a bunch of folks donate some money, and give it to the charity of the winner's choice. BBQ before a football game. it'll be fun. the only caveat is that it would have to be one of the last 2 home games since my 4 oldest sons will have football until then and i coach some of them.
xoxo
al bundy
August 3rd, 2018 at 11:27 AM ^
I've contacted the mods about your continued threats to fight me at a home game. I go to every home game. This is starting to get kind of frightening to me. I hope this gets addressed quickly. You're clearly a crazy person.
MGoPoints: -973418
Just ignore him. It would be better for both of you and all of us if you did.
When I see a post from ST3 and this crazy fucking shit sack who threatens to fight me in every thread on one side... I tend to say fuck right off.
st3, i know you're right, but its so much fun. its like fishing, but better.
fish on!
Not sure what your experience is, but in my nearly 10 years as a prosecutor who has handled 100s of DV cases and worked with numerous victims, the batterer is almost always male. I’m talking like 90% of the time male. At least.
Just about the only place where the aggressor is usually the woman is on sports message boards. These people will never be convinced otherwise. Pure delusion.
30 yrs, so i see your 100's of cases and raise you 20 more years. i agree that in criminal court rooms the batterer is at least 90% of the time (more like 95%) male. that isn't the metric i was commenting on.
Been a police officer for some time. DV requires force or fear. Unless you are a mandated reporter you are not obligated to report the incident. If you choose to do so, call the local PD if the victim is seeking help. Active incident always call PD. Always useful to assist the victim in seeking a TRO.
I’ve taught my daughter 3 things:
1.) watch for signs of it in others (I’ve often seen signs of it early on in relationships)
2.) nobody has a right to lay a hand on you inappropriately for any readon
3.) the only one you can count on for seld- defense is yourself. If you call the police, it’s too late
Hopefully you teach (have taught) her how to shoot a gun too. Any man that lays a violent hand on a woman deserves a bullet to the brain. That's "step 1" in my book if I am a woman: you hit me, next step you take that's not out the door you will be shot.
Oh... maybe...?
It's good to teach such things. Unfortunately, the rate of domestic violence has increased during the pandemic, and it's important to know how to protect yourself. I've found this interesting content at https://samploon.com/free-essays/domestic-violence/, where everyone can find useful info. It's an educational resource for students, but I think the more information you know, the more you are ready for different situations.
If I encountered it, I’d defend myself to the degree required in order to secure my well-being.
Teach all females gun control..that is HOW TO CONTROL a gun so they can protect themselves.
August 2nd, 2018 at 11:05 PM ^
Women (and men, and children) who live in a home with a gun are significantly more likely to be shot (or shoot themselves) than those who live in a home without a gun.
August 2nd, 2018 at 11:07 PM ^
A better answer is to have a 50 state solution to make it illegal for anyone convicted of any domestic violence offense to own any type of firearm. It's astonishing how easy abusers can still buy and own guns in most states.
If your knowledge of domestic abuse comes through a work context, immediately find out if you are mandated to report and who you should report to.
All situations are different. There are abusive partners both male & female, sometimes both at the same time. One thing that seems to be common in most abusive relationships is that if an abused party doesn't want help, all the help in the world won't do anything because they'll go right back to the abuse.
I am the product of a home where dad was a violent alcoholic who used mom as a punching bag. She finally left him when she came home to find the house trashed, a bunch of her stuff burned in the back yard, and dad still drunk the next morning not even remembering what he did. She realized one day it could be us in the yard.
I've seen many cases of abuse where people just wouldn't leave, but if you tried to help they would take the side of the abuser without even blinking. One of my neighbors used to have bruises all over her face, but did she leave? No. She would be outside the door kicking & screaming to be let in when he would lock her out. I watched an argument outside my window one night where the woman demanded to know where he had been and with whom until he admitted he had been with another woman. She then went after him physically. He responded by punching her in the face. Why didn't I call the cops? She had a friend with her who didn't even bother to get off her phone and sat there rolling her eyes through the whole thing like it was just another night.
If someone wants out, they deserve the respect that decision brings. Until then, all that can be offered is advice and support.
(Relationships are a mess. I don't even date.)
FWIW - and I know it’s not much - I’m sorry you had to endure all that.
Thankfully he quit drinking a few years later (after totaling yet another car) & the father I remember is someone I can't even imagine doing the things I have heard about. He even admitted to me before he died that he really screwed things up with mom. (Unfortunately I wasn't old enough to even think that the person who needed to hear that wasn't the one he was talking to.)
People need to stand up on their own. Unfortunately it takes too many much too long.