LETS CONDEMN ALL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE PERPETRATOR:

October is domestic violence month.The statistics on domestic violence are alarming, the unintended consequences of domestic violence are even more alarming, when we take into account the damage done to kids who witness domestic violence in the home.

An estimated one in every three women worldwide experiences violence, with rates reaching as high as 70 percent in some countries. Gender-based violence ranges from rape to domestic abuse and acid burning to dowry deaths and so-called “honor killings.”Violence against women and girls — in peacetime and in conflict — knows no national or cultural boundaries. We have made tremendous strides in combating these human rights abuses, but there is still much work to be done.http://​wom​en​thrive​.org/​i​s​s​u​e​s​/​v​i​o​l​e​n​c​e​?​g​c​l​i​d​=​C​I​S​4​5​s​i​9​g​7​M​C​F​c​m​d​4​A​o​d​v​W​s​Abg

The issue of domes­tic vio­lence is rather seri­ous, more and more peo­ple are becom­ing vic­tims of domes­tic vio­lence, as I write this blog I am painful­ly aware of a 38-year-old woman and her lover who lost their lives in the Bronx, New York . This woman lost her life in a hail of bul­lets at the hands of some­one with whom she report­ed­ly had two chil­dren. How can a man say he loves a woman but is will­ing to kill her?

It’s real­ly sim­ple men should not abuse their women or their kids. As it relates to chil­dren , let me be clear, despite what soci­ety tells you, there is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between dis­ci­pline and abuse.

That dis­ci­pline does not how­ev­er car­ry over to your spouse or loved one. There is no legal or moral basis for men to dis­ci­pline their wives or girl­friends. If you can­not get along, part ways ami­ca­bly and call it a day , you do not own her, she is free to do what she wants, with whomev­er she wants. (Hope my wife does­n’t read this para­graph).

One more thing on this kids issue, the state is quite will­ing to hire police offi­cers , arm and empow­er them to phys­i­cal­ly assault our chil­dren for the most triv­ial trans­gres­sions, and in many cas­es kill our chil­dren. Yet the very state tells you ‚you are not allowed to spank your own chil­dren, you have to decide whether your chil­dren belong to you or the state. For my part, I have nev­er spanked my chil­dren, even though I received more than my fair share of spank­ing, I chose not to do it, not because it was off the table, it was very much in the tool-box of cor­rec­tive tools, my boys just nev­er caused me to go to that extent. It cer­tain­ly was not because some state law told me I could not use what­ev­er rea­son­able cor­rec­tive mea­sure I deemed appro­pri­ate to raise my children.

But back to the issue at the fore here, the issue of domes­tic violence.

Yesterday Sunday October 14^th I was in Church with my fam­i­ly and of course the issue of domes­tic vio­lence was front and cen­ter, and cor­rect­ly so. We had a good chuck­le when Pastor relat­ed that when­ev­er cou­ples come to him for pre-mar­tial coun­selling he would always ask the woman “has he ever hit you”? He inti­mat­ed that he would be able to tell if she is telling the truth in rela­tion to his ques­tion by the length of time it takes for her to answer, or he would sim­ply watch her eyes. Based on her response he argues ‚he would tell her come back in a year; if he does­n’t hit you again, then maybe you both will be ready for mar­riage. Pastor joked that by this time the man would be ready to hit him, the con­gre­ga­tion explod­ed into rau­cous laugh­ter to that last line.

I too found that whole line fun­ny, but I thought there were cru­cial ele­ments miss­ing from the whole debate, pri­or to the Pastors com­ments one female con­gre­gant rat­tled off some fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics on domes­tic vio­lence , which frankly ought to con­cern all of us, we have sim­ply got to stop doing that much harm to the peo­ple we claim to love.

Absent the whole con­ver­sa­tion how­ev­er was a crit­i­cal com­po­nent. That is the issue of women ini­ti­at­ing vio­lence and end­ing up being the worse off for it.

OK, just hold off on the con­dem­na­tion for a while. I am sure many of you will blast me for that state­ment accus­ing me of blam­ing the victim.

Not so fast my friends, there is ample evi­dence out there. In my decade long law enforce­ment career I have heard sto­ry after sto­ry relat­ed to me in my offi­cial capac­i­ty , of women first intro­duc­ing phys­i­cal vio­lence into a rela­tion­ship only to come out on the wrong end of that exchange.

One of the prob­lems in deal­ing with domes­tic vio­lence as with every top­i­cal issue, is the pre­dictabil­i­ty of offi­cials to revert to knee-jerk band-aid reme­di­al fix­es, which does pre­cious lit­tle to fix the prob­lem, but cre­ates a whole slew of oth­er prob­lems on the oth­er end , because they fail to take all points of view into con­sid­er­a­tion, which would lend itself to ratio­nal, well thought out solutions .

It’s like two pow­er-for­wards going for a rebound, the guy who does­n’t get the ball elbows the play­er with the ball, as they run back up-court, the guy who got elbowed retaliate,and is caught doing so by the Referee, he gets a tech­ni­cal foul, he protests , and gets a sec­ond tech­ni­cal foul, he is dis­qual­i­fied from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the game fur­ther. Not only does he get thrown out of the game but that tech­ni­cal foul is added to a sea­son total which fur­ther penal­izes that play­er. The play­er who ini­ti­at­ed it all suf­fers no consequence.

I oper­ate a small busi­ness, and I inter­act with a fair amount of men on a dai­ly and week­ly basis, these men come in and they share sto­ries of issues that are front and cen­ter in their lives, most­ly because I ask what is hap­pen­ing in their lives . Separate and apart from my under­stand­ing of the facts as a result of my for­mer law enforce­ment car­rear, the sto­ries I hear are con­fir­ma­tion that yes many men are abu­sive to their women , but many women ini­ti­ate violence.

Not only do women ini­ti­ate vio­lence against their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er but they use the female friend­ly crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to exact revenge and vengeance on the very men they claim to love.

This oth­er side of this sor­did saga has received atten­tion large­ly satirically.

Cop gets called to the house by hus­band who just gets stabbed, cops arrive , woman is stand­ing above hus­band with knife in hand as he lays bleed­ing on the floor, Cop pulls weapon points it on man bleed­ing on floor, ask woman “did he touch you, did he touch you”?

Satire aside, this is a seri­ous part of the equa­tion which gets exclud­ed from the con­ver­sa­tion in the hur­ry to fix the prob­lem, or prob­a­bly appear to be doing so.

Many men have relat­ed to me their expe­ri­ences of spend­ing weeks in Jail because their girl-friends or wives were mad about some­thing, she calls the police and report­ed that she was assault­ed, the guy gets arrest­ed and spends a week in Jail. In many cas­es the same women are the ones who post bail for the men. After she is sat­is­fied of course, that he has been pun­ished enough in her esti­ma­tion, or when she needs favors from him.

Many of these men end up with expan­sive rap sheets in many cas­es unde­served, but man­dat­ed by a das­tard­ly crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, too lazy to draft real leg­is­la­tion, free from the cor­ro­sive influ­ence of spe­cial interest.

Before writ­ing this blog I spoke to my wife about my thoughts she was stri­dent­ly con­vinced that I am wrong on the mar­gins. She believes that the num­bers speaks for them­selves, she is con­vinced that the num­bers rat­tled off by nurs­es at church­es are indeed legit­i­mate sta­tis­tics com­ing from shel­ters Police and NGO’s.

I am con­vinced those sta­tis­tics tell only a small part of the story.

Absent from those sta­tis­tics are actu­al tes­ti­monies and record­ings of what occurred in each case that made arrest possible,who did what to whom , what we are giv­en are just raw police arrest num­bers, , noth­ing about dis­missal of cas­es, noth­ing about the speci­fici­ty inher­ent in each case.

I spoke to a young man today who for this pur­pose I will call X , he was arrest­ed for domes­tic vio­lence some time ago, after being held in jail for over a week he was released. He came to see me to con­duct busi­ness, he told me why he was in court today October 15^th.

They offered X , 6 months in prison and 5 years pro­ba­tion, his crime ? He got into a heat­ed argu­ment with the moth­er of his child, he got mad, kicked the door of their apart­ment, and threw the phone to the floor.

I asked him if I could tell his sto­ry, he will­ing­ly oblig­ed, he would have had me use his name if I want­ed to.

A real­ly close fam­i­ly mem­ber who has been with his wife for 27 years was arrest­ed on domes­tic vio­lence charge his life was up end­ed , he nev­er laid a fin­ger on his wife, not once in those 27 years.

I was to attend a birth­day par­ty that night, I was tak­ing my wife and he agreed to take his wife , even though they had some dif­fer­ence that day, I sug­gest­ed to him that it would be a good ice break­er and a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for them to patch up their differences.

So he drove home, close to his home he saw his wife dri­ving away with their son, he tried to get her atten­tion by flash­ing his lights, honk­ing his horn with­out success.

He thought maybe she was in dan­ger, he though maybe some­one was in the car with her forc­ing her to dri­ve with­out stop­ping, he did not know what to think , why would she not respond,? Surely she saw him?

So he drove beside her , honk­ing his horns , not know­ing she had called the police, a cou­ple of min­utes lat­er the cops pulled both of them over, he was relieved , think­ing “thank God the Cops are here, what­ev­er the prob­lem, it will be resolved ” .

Well it was resolved but not in the way he envisaged.

She told the police she was leav­ing the mat­ri­mo­ni­al home and he chased her down and she was ter­ri­fied for her life. He was arrested.

They are back togeth­er, but the resid­ual con­se­quences of her actions will haunt and impact their lives for the remain­der of their lives. There are count­less sto­ries, on both sides of the divide, all I am say­ing is that if we are to fix this prob­lem, let us first avail our­selves to the full realities.

Domestic vio­lence affects both men and women, and it def­i­nite­ly has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for chil­dren, let’s fix the prob­lem with­out leav­ing any­one out .

Let’s fix the prob­lem with­out demo­niz­ing any­one, let’s be fair.