Fathers' rights fogotten by laws
Tuesday, April 6, 1999
By Mark Charalambous
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Political activists are often surprised when they stumble upon laws
that are in clear violation of civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill
of Rights, such as freedom from warrantless arrest and search and
seizure. Here in Massachusetts, the most flagrantly unconstitutional
laws are those drafted ostensibly to protect women from domestic
violence and sexual assault.
The rights of the men accused have not merely been relegated to the
back of the bus -- they're no longer on the road.
Men who have been victimized by these laws are dumbfounded when they
realize the flagrant injustice they experience is in fact entirely
legal. How is it that a college student can be taken from his class
in handcuffs, pilloried in the press and stigmatized in his
community, yet his accuser, who partied with him and several friends
the night before, has her identity kept secret while she levies a
rape allegation to save her reputation?
HUSBANDS SUFFER
Cuckolded husbands wonder how legislators could write a law that
strips them of their parental rights, throws them out of their homes
and criminalizes any contact with their own children, merely on the
say-so of their estranged spouses.
Why do legislators write laws with such disregard of constitutionally
protected civil liberties? There are several reasons.
Some just don't understand the importance of the Bill of Rights.
Others understand but don't care, believing that if a law is
unconstitutional, a high court will eventually strike it down. Still
others reason that these laws address a pressing social need that
outweighs due process and the presumption of innocence. These
politicians are, of course, the most dangerous of the lot.
It's not clear which category Gov. Paul Cellucci belongs in, but he
recently filed legislation to make second violations of domestic
abuse protection (209A) orders punishable with 5 years in jail. I
doubt there is an adult in the commonwealth who by now does not know
of at least one innocent man who has been “209A'd” by a
vindictive woman.
FEMALE MONOPOLY
These men, many of them fathers who have been criminalized and
cruelly separated from their children, need to convince legislators
of the harm caused by 209A. However, the entire discussion on
domestic violence is monopolized by the battered women's advocates.
These are the people who propagate domestic violence “facts”
such as: up to 35 percent of women's hospital emergency room visits
are attributed to domestic abuse; women comprise 95 percent of all
domestic violence victims; and the average sentence for a woman who
kills her mate is 15 years, for a man, 2 to 6 years.
All of these “facts” are, in fact, false. According to the
United States Department of Justice report (“Violence-related
injuries treated in hospital emergency departments,” August
1997), in all hospital emergency visits nationwide in 1994, 0.3
percent of women's visits were due to domestic violence. The false
statistic is then an exaggeration of two orders of magnitude, an
inflation of 10,000 percent.
Most victims of domestic violence are children, and most perpetrators
of child abuse are single mothers. The rate of male-on-female
domestic assaults is roughly equal to female-on-male-this has held
constant in all scientific studies of domestic violence since the
late 1970s. And men receive longer jail sentences than women for
spousal homicide.
Another United States Department of Justice report (“Spouse
murder defendants in large urban communities,” 1995) reveals
that men receive sentences of 16.5 years on average, women 6 years,
and male conviction rates are likewise higher, 87 percent to 70 percent.
Faced with a disinformation campaign that demonizes men and that
conditions girls and women that men are to be feared, not loved, what
are men to do?
Every year concerned citizens draft bills to correct the flaws in
these laws and submit them to their legislators -- who promptly take
them. This year, the Massachusetts Legislature has the opportunity to
change 209A by adding the word “intentional” in front of
“violation,” so that men cannot be subject to 2.5 years in
jail for a chance meeting with their “abused” ex's in the
supermarket -- or for falling prey to a 'I'm sorry, dear, I didn't
mean it, come on home and let's makes things right' violation ploy.
Chances are you won't read about the 209A Reform Bill in the press.
But you have already heard Cellucci has filed pages of legislation to
-- incredibly -- toughen 209A. Is the governor out of touch with
reality? Perhaps.
In a similar vein, after giving testimony in favor of another of his
bills for tougher penalties for sex offenders on March 14, he was
described as “downright wrong on a number of things he said that
provide the premise for his legislation,” by a former
commissioner of the state Department of Youth Services who testified
in opposition.
Faced with universal opposition, fathers' rights advocates are
undertaking their own research project. Bear in mind that combating
domestic violence is a multi-million dollar industry in Massachusetts
alone; some of the principals in the battered women's movement are
rumored to have six-figure salaries.
Yet Steve Basile, a software engineer with a masters degree in
mathematics, and the Fatherhood Coalition are conducting the study on
their own time with their own resources. And when word got out that
they had copied 400-plus 209A court dockets from Gardner District
Court and were busy inputting the pertinent info into a database and
proceeding with a phone survey, cages were rattled.
Attorney General Thomas Reilly announced the filing of legislation
aimed at inhibiting the study by restricting access to personal
information in 209A dockets to those with legitimate need for the
information. That of course won't include the Fatherhood Coalition,
who apparently hit a nerve with the study.
According to Sen. Therese Murray (D-Plymouth), who filed the bill,
there was “no purpose, besides intimidation, for this
organization, or any uninvolved individual or group, to access this information.”
REASON FOR ACCESS
The Fatherhood Coalition has a very real and compelling reason to
have this information. Someone from outside the domestic violence
community has to look into actual 209A data to find out what effect
ithas on families, because we certainly can't trust anyone in the
domestic violence community to do so. Refer back to their abuse of
statistics above if you need further convincing of their lack of credibility.
Truth is the best disinfectant. Every year tens of thousands of 209A
restraining orders are given out in Massachusetts. They're now given
out to schoolchildren.
What is the logical conclusion, a world where everyone has a
protection order against anyone they find annoying? Fathers whose
only crime was falling out of favor with the mothers of their
children are being jailed for trying to telephone their kids.
The Legislature has been acquiescing to the battered women's
advocates for years. But they have also been hearing from their
constituents for years, so they all know what is really going on.
Unfortunately, few have the spine to stand up to the victim-feminists
and the powerful politicians who pander to them.
Mark Charalambous of Leominster is active with the Fatherhood Coalition.
©1999 Worcester Telegram & Gazette
