Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) – A Scourge on Society

Contrary to the relentless dissemination of anti-male hysteria by well-organized feminist groups, their political action committees, and spineless legislators led by lead feminist Joe Biden (D-De) – the reality is that women are just as likely as men to commit domestic violence. They are most likely to neglect and kill their children. If they’re not doing it, someone with whom they’ve shacked-up are involved is doing it with them or because they allow it to occur. In almost every case this is more than likely after the Divorce Machine has unceremoniously kicked the father out of the family and his children’s lives. Biological fathers are the least likely to abuse, neglect, or kill their children. The creation and passage of the Violence Against Women’s Act, a completely unconstitutional piece of legislation, has ensured a disgraceful level of funding and has put in place the tools any woman needs to destroy a man’s life. She has the full support and resources of federal and state governments to accomplish this, while misandrist organizations such as N.O.W. pat themselves on the back for a mission accomplished.

Their motto: “No matter the transgression – it will always be a man’s fault.” As a result, the man must pay.

– Men pay with the loss of involvement with their children in an overwhelming majority of the cases.

– Men pay with inordinately high child support orders in an overwhelming majority of the cases.

– Men pay with higher sentences when convicted of crimes than women who commit the same crimes.

– Men pay unnecessary punitive measures when they fall behind in child support while women rarely are punished in any meaningful capacity for custodial interference.

– Men pay through paternity fraud (many unknowingly) which is an absolute crisis in this country, oftentimes saddled with decades-long financial penalties supporting children that were never theirs. Women are rarely arrested for paternity fraud and penalties are rarer still and weak at best.

– False domestic violence accusations are an epidemic and mandatory arrest policies further the life-affecting damage on men. Women and children are adversely affected as well. Children lose a parent. They may lose their homes. Men may lose their freedom. Worse, people who do truly suffer domestic violence are at greater risk when when people waste the resources when making such fraudulent claims.

VAWA violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution by providing obscene levels of federal funding to protect only one gender – women.

VAWA violates the principle of federalism of the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, infringing on state sovereignty.

The Civil Rights violations are numerous and yet this “act” is current law.

This systematic demonization of men has been 30+ years in the making has been shockingly successful. The message has been clear and drummed relentlessly into the public consciousness. There is no excuse for domestic violence against a woman! What has been missing from that equation are children and most especially – men. Men need to wake up and organize to reverse this mythology before it’s too late, assuming it’s not already too late.

Reality Check: WOMEN ARE JUST AS LIKELY AS MEN TO COMMIT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. Many recent, reputable studies have reinforced this reality.

From Martin S. Fiebert out of the Department of Psychology at Cal-State Long Beach comes such incredible information from References examining assaults by women on their spouses or male partners, including:

• Women were more likely than men to “use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently.”
• Men suffered serious injuries in 38% of domestic violence cases.
• Men were 9-times less like to report domestic violence.
• 30% of men and 49% of women reported using some form of aggression in their dating histories with a greater percentage of women engaging in severe physical aggression.
• One comprehensive report of findings from international dating violence study which collected data from over 11,000 (70% women) college students from 50 universities in 21 countries. Subjects responded to the revised Conflict Tactics scale, gender hostility scales and injury scales. Findings reveal that women perpetrated greater partner violence than men, that women were more seriously injured than men and that hostility toward the opposite sex was significantly and similarly correlated with partner violence for men and women.

These are just a few samples from in excess of 100 which demonstrate the realities of domestic violence. This is reality, folks. For more reality, I strongly recommend the series of posts at Glenn Sacks’ site: From Ideology to Inclusion – Evidence-Based Policy (Domestic Violence Conference).

My message to men? It’s time to shed the tough-guy, I can deal with it attitude. If your partner or spouse batters you, call the police. Deal with the comments and snide remarks. If you’re not believed, call again next time, too – and keep calling. Don’t drop the charges, even though, for now, she may only get a slap on the wrist. If there is still time, participate in The Men’s Experience with Partner Agression Project. The figures above are very likely low due to the male penchant to avoid getting help. It’s why there is no “Violence Against Men’s Act.” It’s why there is no “Violence Against Person’s Act.” It’s why a “Men’s Domestic Violence Shelter” is as common as pregnant man. It’s why not one penny of the billions appropriated for VAWA is spent on equal protections for men.

I often wonder that if I didn’t see fit to hide my embarrassment and shame for what I was embroiled in and called the cops when the few times things got physical, I *might* have faired better in the early days of the divorce & custody battle. Maybe I wouldn’t have chosen to endure these experiences as long as I did. At least towards the end, I was smart enough to call the police when things started to deteriorate and escalate between us. It’s very likely why I managed to escape the false domestic abuse allegations that countless others have not.

On September 30, the Violence Against Women’s Act is scheduled to expire. This means that radical feminists and their misandry-pushing organizations such as N.O.W. will be engaging in a full-out media assault to dust off the false hysterical claims to vilify the male of the species and mobilize support for a renewal. Frankly, I’m saddened by the fact that so many follow leadership that has been so frequently embarrassed after having some of their scare-tactics and hysteria so effectively debunked by real facts.

Please don’t allow this to happen. What has transpired since its inception is nothing more than criminal and affects men, women, and children alike. It’s not too early to start contacting your state’s representatives and oppose any attempts to renew this unconstitutional travesty. Worse, Biden and his cronies in man-hatred, along with his radical feminist supporters have even considered spreading this scourge worldwide via I-VAWA which would see U.S. Taxpayer dollars spent overseas to spread this anti-male cancer across the globe. The rest of the world doesn’t need this type of poison spread throughout.

ACT NOW. Act against both the renewal of VAWA and the implementation of I-VAWA by contacting your legislators today, tomorrow, and as often as you can make the time between now and September. Click here to find out how to contact your representatives. If you care about men, women, and children in this country, your efforts are needed to defeat this. It’s devastating to families. It’s a burden on every citizen of this country. Help put a stop to it.

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A View From Canada – The Plight of Divorced Dads

A view from Canada…

Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Saturday, December 08, 2007

The Plight of Divorced Dads

No other topics I write about so consistently provoke passionate personal response as those dealing with systemic discrimination against men. When, for example, I point out double standards for boys and girls in the health care system, or expose the use of bogus statistics around domestic violence, my inbox fills with male gratitude simply for acknowledging an obvious fact: Our culture is profoundly misandric.

Of the myriad forms of discrimination men cite, one looms over the rest: The egregious treatment meted out to fathers in the throes of contested child custody following the “no-fault” divorces most of them did not initiate or desire. My files bulge with stories of disenfranchised fathers ripped from their children’s arms and lives. They have lost their homes, their careers, fortunes, friends and reputations, often on the basis of false allegations of abuse (for which their female accusers are virtually never punished). I wouldn’t mention such anecdotal evidence, if the anguish in these testimonials didn’t jibe with objective data confirming the shameful gender bias that dominates the family law system.

About half of all marriages end in divorce. Women are twice as likely to initiate a divorce as men, largely because they can be fairly sure they’ll end up with control of the children. Where shared parenting is the default template, divorce rates plummet. Men are six times as likely as women to commit suicide within the first two years after a separation: That they kill themselves from despair rather than their ex-wives for revenge is, ironically, a tragically eloquent rebuttal to the feminist credo that men are inherently dangerous to women. Although 25% of women make more money than their spouses, 97% of support payers are men (even in cases of shared parenting). Mobility decisions favour women: The psychological comfort to a Vancouver mother of moving near her Toronto-based family will be privileged over the psychological devastation the virtual loss of his children causes the Vancouver-bound father.

Misandry in family law begins with an ideology that views children as the property of women, even though many peer-reviewed studies show children want and need both parents, and no studies show sole parenting by a mother serves children’s best interests. This ideology is instilled in judges during training sessions featuring feminism-driven materials, and subsequently often plays out as unaccountable kangaroo courts. The result is that an adversarial mother who initiates a divorce against the will of the father –however indifferent her parenting skills, however superb his and even if the children spend their days with nannies or day care workers –pretty well has a lock on sole custody of the children. If she denies rightful access to the father, she will never be punished at all. Conversely, if he withholds money, he will be criminalized: His picture as a “deadbeat dad” may appear on government-sanctioned Internet sites, and if he goes to jail, as is likely, he will serve a longer sentence than cocaine dealers.

Most men think such kafkaesque scenarios can’t happen to them. Happily married men parenting with equal diligence believe in their hearts that men who find themselves savaged by the family law system are congenital losers, or were demonstrably lousy husbands and fathers. Many such “winners” are in for an unpleasant surprise.

“We want to pull away from the idea that parents have rights in relation to their children,” said Jennifer Cooper, chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s family law section, representing 2,200 divorce lawyers. “Parents” in this statement is the hypocritical lip service feminism pays to humanism: She meant “fathers,” for women’s rights today are never “pulled away from,” only supported or furthered. In the days when children belonged to both their parents, it used to be said that children were “hostages to fortune.” Today they are hostages to feminism and the state.

In his new, cleverly titled book, Taken into Custody, Stephen Baskerville, president of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, paints a bleak picture of the routine injustice a divorcing father can expect when a woman initiates a divorce. Baskerville baldly warns: “If I have one urgent piece of practical advice for young men today, it is this: Do not marry and do not have children.” His book, like many others of the genre, makes a persuasive case. Men should read them. If the system does not become equitable, don’t be surprised if men choose increasingly, and with reason, to play their trump card: Voting for equality with their condoms.

The Plight of Divorced Dads (Feminism, Misandry, Child Custody Laws, Disenfranchised Fathers)

bkay@videotron.ca

(Reprinted with permission)

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"Child" Support or State Windfall?

DW:
Child Support. These are two of the ugliest words in our language. It wasn’t meant to be that way, but when you say these words they bring up very specific, wide-ranging feelings and thoughts. Most of them, not positive. I can tell you from experience over the last 4-years that child support has only partially to do with actually supporting children. It only partially has to do with the best interests of the children.

In 1995 a full 89% of a primary parents were mothers. The media would like you to believe that’s because fathers have abandoned their children. Not only did they abandon them, they refuse to pay child support. (They would also like you to believe that men are all abusive, but that’s for another post.)

The media likes to pull out statistics like the fact that over 30% of single mothers live in poverty. They never actually answer how those “absent”, really just non-custodial, fathers are living, you are left to believe they are millionaires who ran away with their secretary on their private yacht. We spend millions of dollars a year conducting studies on these single mothers, and yet we spend nothing to find out how the fathers are doing. We conclude over and over that children with absent fathers have higher risks of everything from dropping out of school to ending up in jail, and yet we continue to legally take fathers away from their children through custody agreements hammered out in court, just so they will be forced to pay child support so the state can earn more money.

Keith McLeod told the Ways and Means Committee in a hearing, “One must wonder if child support enforcement is one of those misguided social hysterias that are causing more harm than they are solving exactly because we are, yet again, addressing the wrong thing; the wrong end of the stick. Perhaps government policy should change to ensuring any child’s family remains intact irrespective of what happens between its parents. (Whether its parents are married, divorce, or never married, the child’s family be the same people and allowed normal parental roles unless a clear and present danger from one can be proved. Current policy is to intervene upon divorce to prevent one parent from parenting.)”

What really gets me about child support is the enforcement issues that follow behind custody orders or rather the fact they our legal community refuses to enforce child visitation even when it’s been court ordered. Yet they will spare no expense sending a father to jail because he is behind in child support. If mothers went to jail because they withheld their children from the father, an issue would be solved almost by default because the father would then have his children. However, when a father goes to jail because he is unable to pay his child support, nothing is solved. You have now made it impossible for him to pay because he is racking up more support payments while he is in jail and unable to work. You have now also hindered his ability to get a job with a criminal record once he is released.

Now, I’m not saying some mothers do not have a GREAT reason to withhold their children, such as drug use or sexual abuse or that some fathers just choose not to pay their support obligation. What I am saying is that we need to stop treating fathers as criminals and make the retributions equal if this is really supposed to be about the best interests of the children. Or better yet, keep the families together whether they are divorced or not, sharing costs AND care equally and not just using the horribly flawed “income shares model” which is simply a transfer of wealth from one party to the other in the interests of “providing the children with the same income as if the families were still intact.” Reality is, the family is not still intact. There are now two households to support, each with only one income or, in a worst-case scenario, two households to support with only one income to support them.

LM:
The “best interests of the children” is a term that is now used as a shield to justify moronic, punitive measures against payors who fall behind or fail to pay child support. No reasonably intelligent human being can justify using such tactics which only make it difficult, and in too many cases, impossible for the payor (usually the father in nearly 90% of the cases) to earn income. Arrearages pile up, and the parties with a vested interest in promoting mass hysteria propagate the “deadbeat dad” myth.

Even more interesting is some figures I saw worked up using Indiana child support laws, which uses the income shares model. The law says, given a family with a combined income of $50,000 the cost for a child aged 2, it costs $24,272 – the percent of pre-tax income 49%. For a child aged 9, with a combined income of $30,000 it costs $10,600 or 35% of their pre-tax income. This is using the model to calculate who pays what amount of child support.

Why then, is the national average for what states pay out to foster care families for those same children only $7,044 and $7,244 respectively? Because paying out for foster care doesn’t earn the state money, but divorce and child support does. The midwest alone is much lower with figures of $5,604 and $5,768 respectively. So then, why would so many people choose to foster care a child when the Indiana Supreme Court indicates that it costs, in some case, almost $20,000 more per annum to raise a child?

You can read the article which breaks it out amongst a wide range of incomes here: Child Support Analysis – boonecountyfathers.org

The reality is that the laws are draconian and defeat the alleged purpose of “the best interests of the children.” In my case, during the period where I was a non-custodial parent paying child-support, I paid nearly 43% of my after-tax income to my ex-spouse. At the time, I was bringing home about $3,200/month and paying child-support and childcare “in proportion to the income” of the both of us. $1,250. In each of two consecutive years, I paid to my ex-spouse, tax-free for her: nearly $14,000 in each of those two years. Keep in mind now, that was just my portion of what my state says it “costs for the basic needs of the children” – an amount somewhere North of $21,000. Folks, I can assure you, when we were married, I wasn’t paying that much to raise my two children, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the house we lived in if, in reality, it cost that much money. When you factor in that it is after-tax money for which I get no tax relief, the costs are far higher. At the time, it left me with approximately $1,800 on which to live. That is, find a home reasonable enough to accommodate two youngster, pay rent ($1,000 would get me an efficiency where I was living at the time), buy furniture, food, clothes, gas, pay utilities, car insurance/repairs/maintenance, life insurance, health insurance co-pays and other medical costs… and all of the things that normal people in normal circumstances have to do.

Few people realize that in most states and even surrounding countries – your normal daily expenses are not even considered when factoring child support. The rules are clear… he makes this much money, she makes this much money, combine them – give the money to her and how you live is NONE OF THEIR CONCERN. Then, they use a formula to determine how much it costs to raise a child per year and it’s astounding and based on incorrect data.

Now, factor in that the laws also have determined through some never named or cited research, that when you are divorced, suddenly if you get a raise, make more money, get a second job – the costs for the basic needs of the children go up – and your support figure goes up accordingly! I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in wondering where and how that rationale came to pass, because I can tell you this, if and when I received my annual raise – my kids didn’t suddenly need more food, more clothes, more shelter, more utilities, etc. etc. etc. However, once you’re in the divorce machine – the laws and computations say that’s what happens. Who suffers? The person who pays the price is usually the non-custodial parent – in the overwhelming majority of the cases – the father. Let’s not just blame custodial mothers though, I mean, who wouldn’t want more money for nothing, right? The system allows it and the only person who loses money is… guess who? The father. Mom can file for a support modification whenever she wants. You have to produce your financials. Who gets paid? Conference officers. Judges. Lawyers. Mother. Court clerks. Transcriptionists. Secretaries. The state fund. Who is paying? The non-custodial parent. It’s state and federal sanctioned theft hidden behind “the best interests of the children.”

More recently, the company I worked for up and left – moved across the country. I was out of a job collecting $1,300 per month in unemployment compensation. I had previously made a fairly nice wage. My portion of the mortgage alone was $1,100. The cost of my health insurance coverage for myself and the children was more than $700. Do the math, folks. I’m bringing home $1,300. Just housing and health insurance expenses were $1,800. Ask me if I had to stop paying child support. No. No. I filed for a modification and the Psycho Ex Wife contested it at conference. She, after all “needed more money or she couldn’t pay her bills” despite having a well-paying job herself. That means an automatic hearing. That means paying an attorney close to $2,000 to prepare for and show up to entertain a judge, who, by the way, said the words that would strike fear in the hearts of the toughest men “imputed income.” When a judge decides he is going to calculate “imputed income” – he looks at your earning capacity and can impose child support based upon that. In theory, the judge presiding over the support matter could absolutely have continued to charge me based on what I could be making if I had a job. That means I could have still been paying the PEW almost my entire unemployment compensation check leaving me $100 to live on. Thanks to the $2,000 invested via a credit card for my attorney, I “only” had to pay $200 per month. So now for just the housing, health insurance, and child support, I had $2,000 worth of bills to pay with $1,300 in income. Never mind any other expense. Never mind the other two kids and my lovely partner.

The job loss was unexpected and obviously, the reserve that was in place didn’t last long after having to pay an attorney. I was out of work for 9-months despite having resume’s in at more than 400 companies nationwide in a matter of a few weeks.

I was fortunate despite the very deep hole we now have to dig ourselves out of. Despite having 50/50 custody, I still am required to pay PEW as much as $600+ per month because I make more money than her. Necessary expenses don’t count in most states. Seriously – not at all. I make good money and due to the logistics necessary to secure this position – we can still barely make ends meet. Yes, there are some things we can still cut, but in the grand scheme of things, we still can’t save any money for our future together, let alone our childrens‘ futures.

I’d love to see someone publicize the stories of thousands of fathers just like me who have to clear hurdle after hurdle after hurdle while spending his life savings (and then some) to all those with their hand out at the divorce machine for them to determine how much it’s going to cost me to have my children with me in some meaningful capacity.

Forget about the massive legal costs – I paid between $30,000 and $40,000 in child support money to PEW in the last 3-years. Do you think she used any of it to set up college funds for the kids? Nope. Savings? Nope. Investments? Nope. She has nothing to show for it. Nothing. Not a pot to piss in and near the brink of bankruptcy herself making nearly $40,000 per year without all that money. What a total frigging tragedy.

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Federal Incentives Exist to Make Children Fatherless

Phyllis Schlafly
May 9, 2005

Why has Congress appropriated taxpayer money to give perverse incentives that break up families and deprive children of their fathers? The built-in financial incentives in the current child-support system have expanded the tragedy of fatherless children from the welfare class to millions of non-welfare divorced couples.

Americans have finally realized that providing generous welfare through Aid to Families with Dependent Children was counterproductive because the father had to disappear in order for the mother to receive taxpayer-paid benefits. Fathers left home, illegitimacy rose in alarming numbers and children were worse off.

AFDC provided a taxpayer-paid financial incentive to reward girls with their own monthly check, food stamps, health care and housing if they had illegitimate babies. “She doesn’t need me, she’s got welfare” became the mantra.

Congress tried to reform the out-of-control welfare system by a series of child-support laws passed in 1975, 1984, 1988, 1996 (the famous Republican welfare reform), and 1999. Unfortunately, these laws morphed the welfare system into a massive middle-class child-support system that deprives millions of children of fathers who never abandoned them.

As former President Ronald Reagan often said, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”

People think that child-support enforcement benefits children, but it doesn’t. When welfare agencies collect child support, the money actually goes to the government to reimburse it for welfare payments already given to mothers, supposedly to reduce the federal budget (which, of course, is never reduced).

In 1984, Congress passed the Child Support Enforcement Amendment. It required states to adopt voluntary guidelines for child-support payments.

In 1988, Congress passed the Family Support Act, which made the guidelines mandatory – along with criminal enforcement – and gave states less than one year to comply. The majority of states quickly adopted the model guidelines conveniently already written by a Department of Health and Human Services consultant who was president of what was shortly to become one of the nation’s largest private collection companies, which makes its profits on the onerous guidelines that create arrearages.

The 1988 law extended the guidelines to ALL child-support orders, even though the big majority of those families never had to interact with government in order to pay or receive child support. This massive expansion of federal control over private lives uses a Federal Case Registry to exercise surveillance over 19 million citizens whether or not they are behind in child-support payments.

The states collect the child-support money and deposit it in a state fund, but the federal government pays most of the administrative costs and, therefore, dictates the way the system operates through mandates and financial incentives. The federal government pays 66 percent of the states’ administrative overhead costs, 80 percent of computer and technology-enhancement costs, and 90 percent of DNA testing for paternity.

In addition, the states share in a nearly $500 million incentive reward pool based on whatever the state collects. The states can get a waiver to spend this bonus money anyway they choose.
However, most of the child support owed by welfare-class fathers is uncollectable. Most of them are either unemployed or have annual incomes less than $10,000.

So, in order to cash in on federal bonus money, build their bureaucracies and brag about successful child-support enforcement, the states began bringing into the government system middle-class fathers with jobs who were never (and probably would never be) on welfare. These non-welfare families have grown to represent 83 percent of child-support cases and 92 percent of the money collected, creating a windfall of federal money flowing to the states.
The federal incentives drive the system. The more divorces, and the higher the child-support guidelines are set and enforced (no matter how unreasonable), the more money state bureaucracies collect from the federal government.

Follow the money. The less time that noncustodial parents (usually fathers) are permitted to be with their children, the more child support they are required pay into the state fund, and the higher the federal bonus to the states for collecting the money.

States have powerful incentives to separate fathers from their children, to give near-total custody to mothers, to maintain the fathers’ high-level support obligations even if their income is drastically reduced and to hang onto the father’s payments as long as possible before paying them out to the mothers. The General Accounting Office reported that in 2002 that states were holding $657 million in undistributed child support.

Fatherless boys are 63 percent more likely to run away and 37 percent more likely to abuse drugs. Fatherless girls are twice as likely to get pregnant and 53 percent more likely to commit suicide. Fatherless boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to end up in jail.

We can no longer ignore how taxpayer money is providing incentive for divorce and creating fatherless children. Nor can we ignore the government’s complicity in the predictable social costs that result from more than 17 million children growing up without fathers.

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Our commentary: Until I was eyeball-deep in my own contentious divorce and custody battle with my psycho ex-wife – I… had… no… clue.

The article above is one of many we will share and will shine a light on the reality of the billion-dollar Divorce Industry. I added emphasis on the word “industry” because that’s what it is – one of the biggest, most profitable businesses in this country and perhaps the world.

If the men of the world, and the women who love them, their children, and their families don’t begin to educate themselves on the depth of this curse on families – the future is bleak indeed. As with most everything in our world today – follow the money. When you offer incredible financial incentives which serve to encourage the destruction of families – the end result is: the destruction of families.

Think about the divorce cartel and the kind of money it takes to pay lawyers, mediators, counselors, custody evaluators, judges, clerks, staff, police, prison guards, domestic violence shelters, collection agencies… and the list goes on and on and on and on and on- you soon realize the sheer volume of people whose livelihoods depend on the divorce machine running at peak productivity… to society’s detriment.

They all do this while hiding behind the cloak of “doing what’s in the best interests of the children.” It doesn’t get more vile and disgusting as that.

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