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A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum...Well, that's how the line reads. But sometimes while we are doing something we realize something else happens along the way. I had just such an experience. Let me explain.
I recently picked up a brochure from the local battered women's shelter. Now don't start on me about, "Why would you do that! You're a man, and therefore you can't possibly be concerned about getting battered, being battered, or even affected by the issue of battering."
Let me say right up front that I had some existing notions about the activities of battered women's shelters, so when I see some new brochure or ad, I read them. I'm a citizen of my community. I have children here. I live here. I must go to court here if that need arises. So not only is it okay for me to be interested, but if I'm going to be a responsible, participating member of the community I have an obligation to be interested. Okay? If I have thoughts about the topic that aren't in line with others, maybe the literature will provide me some more clues as to the validity of those ideas. Or, maybe they will send me off on a trip to the forum, and who knows what we might discover along the way.
The usual suspects
What I found in the brochure seemed to fit quite well with some of my existing impressions of the battered women's shelter movement. There were lies about the frequency of battering, distortions of the reality that both sexes are capable of violence, there were the misleading "you may be a battered woman if:..." statements, even the fear tactics that were used to state that every woman needs to get with the shelter and make an "escape plan," and rehearse it so they will be prepared for when their male acquaintance became violent.
As I read that brochure I could feel myself getting angry that this was the "information" (dis-information) the shelter thought would be helpful to the community. Of course, there was the claim that "we provide services without regard to sex, or sexual orientation" of the person seeking services! So that's why they call it a "women's shelter," because we treat women and men equally and without discrimination! But why does the rest of the brochure shout so loudly that this isn't the case?
I decided to investigate the claims made in the brochure. Thank goodness for the internet. What could have taken months and money to track down and find information was only a few mouse clicks away. And in just a day of mining the resources of the internet, I had been to the Dept. of Justice, the FBI, the National Research Council, the White House, untold battered women's organizations sites, and even a site in my home state of Minnesota- the MN Higher Education Center Against Violence and Abuse. I downloaded papers, statistics, charts and graphs, facts and fiction.
What did I find? On the surface, that many of the claims were either outright impossible lies, while many others were carefully crafted distortions. Wow, this was a match for my earlier ideas. I could stop right here and say, "I was right! These battered women's shelter proponents are misleading the public, misspending funds, etc. and they need to be run out of town." But something unusual had happened on the way to the forum.
Does the women's shelter movement cost women their lives?
Sure I found the data that confirmed my ideas there was a "Women's Shelter Movement" which is clearly operational nationwide. Movement, because the shelters do not operate autonomously, nor in a vacuum. They do not operate without supportive funding from both government and private sources. And they do not confine their activities to sheltering women in danger. There is an element of buy-in and an element of almost religious fervor surrounding the "issues."
In looking at lots of the studies and reports on the topic of "battered women's shelters" one has to accept the fact that when it comes to protecting women from battering, that protection is a secondary matter. My formal education was as an electrical engineer, with lots of math on the side. I can spot number manipulation and statistical massaging. And had in fact worked with my state senator to unravel some goofy mathematical twists that had crept into a social services bill a couple of years ago. Yet, when people buy into bogus numbers, I still find it totally baffling.
Even Pres. Clinton has bought into the public position that Violence Against Women is a national priority, and the wheels of a nationwide reaction are in place. Here's where the unusual thing happened to come to my attention. I was browsing through a 1996 report to the President regarding the matter.
No matter how much a rational person knows he should expect bias in all matters that are touched by politics, the levels of dis-information at the president's office are unbelievable. With the president being fed such absolute distortion and one-sided "facts," it is little surprise that the citizens are hearing the same dis-information. The "misstated portrayal of battering" being done in the local brochure is something that many just brush aside and say "It's OK. It's for a good cause." But before one goes that far one should check some "stuff out.
Is this "unscientific" approach of bias and distortion good for the purpose of the battered women? No. Is it good for the kids. No. Does it foster public attitudes that do no good and actually cost women in violent circumstances their lives? Yes. That's the strange thing I had come across. Let me share a bit.
Sheltering killers?
The National Research Council was asked to provide the President with input on the matter of battered women. Their response took the form of a paper 237 pages long. The preface carefully explains that they did not consider any view other than that of "women victims and male perpetrators."
The committee chair explains that despite growing awareness, drastically increased openness, discussions of rape and battering on television talk shows, etc., basically the battered women problem is just as bad as it was in the mid-1970's. She states that despite all the studies and research, there is still a lot of misinformation out there. One might be tempted at that point to ask, "What good has all the research and spending done then?" I sure wonder.
But a few pages into the paper, the authors are taxed to explain away something odd. They have a graph that shows the rate of killing of women by intimates (husbands, ex's, and boyfriends) has not changed. But the graph does show the rate of killing of men by intimates (wives, ex's, girlfriends) has changed. It has been reduced to less than half the level of the late 70's. The authors cite a paper published in 1989 that posed the possibility that the decrease was the result of the increase of battered women's shelters! But they roll right on by and only mention that the rate of killing of women by intimates is not changing. That is apparently not part of their mission.
Here we have the only achievement of 20 year of effort on the part of the battered women's shelter movement: The number of men being killed in intimate domestic violence has been dramatically reduced!
This should be cause for celebration. It should make the headlines of every newspaper in this country! But this top level presidential advisory panel did what? They swept this gem of truth under the rug! They didn't give the battered women's movement credit for the astounding accomplishment of saving thousands of men's lives. Isn't that odd? This should have been Nobel Prize material!
But just a little thought shows how bad that choice is, of putting on the blinders instead of seeking supportable explanations for what the data shows.
Since the earliest studies, broad based surveys demonstrate that men and women are about equally violent in their relationships. Crime report statistics on the other hand are different, being derived from police reports. The Uniform Crime Rate Report, for instance, as compiled by the FBI, makes no claim to gather data about the "actual" rates of violence, but rather only the rate of police reported crimes.
By doing so, they also place some limitations on the data by defining certain crimes to have limited sets of perpetrators and/or victims. Such is the case with rape: the UCR defines rape victims to be females, and perpetrators to be males. Thus there can be no incidents of sexual violence by a female that will be included in their report.
Back to the NRC paper, what's missing? Not acknowledging that men are killed by women intimates caused these researchers to miss the importance of the decrease in the rate of those killings. But then, having missed the important fact that the rate actually got better for men since 1978, they miss another crucial fact: the decrease in the rate of men being killed by their intimates started with the battered women's shelter movement.
Will battered men's shelters save women's lives?
The rest of the NRC paper deals with the issue of battering of women from the single-minded view of what else should we do to protect these women from their violent battering husbands. Because that's what Pres. Clinton asked for. They try to figure out why the women's rate didn't respond to the battered women's shelter movement, and what the movement should do to make it respond. But their bias brushed aside the answer from the very beginning!
Let me try to re-state it, briefly. The women's shelter movement wants to cast the impression that all domestic violence is somehow magically unidirectional. Always men battering victim women. The facts belie their bias - even studies of lesbian relationships show the violence level to be nearly the same - but they ignore all that. Hence, they were doomed to failure. So when they should have been jumping up and down screaming, "I got it," instead they dismissed the only result that correlated with the activity of the battered women's shelter movement.
Creating battered men's shelters should do the same thing for women! Getting men the help to resolve the anger of a domestic conflict should clearly reduce the number of women victims. None of the other things tried have worked. But this will.
If creating battered women's shelters caused the rate of women murdering their intimates to drop to less than half of where it started, then there is a clear implication as to how to decrease the numbers of women victims. This is an exciting thing! This is what the battered women's movement set out to do! But now they brush it aside. So if we really do wish to save women's lives, then we have to push hard to establish battered men's shelters. Now. None of the gradually experimental stuff. The faster the better. And we should see the number of battered women dive.
Biased expectations, wrong results
What happened was that the results were the "wrong" ones? Like doing in high school chemistry lab: you know the answer you are supposed to get, so any time during the experiment if some measurement isn't "right" there is the temptation to make the measurement fit the desired outcome. Same thing here. Had they conducted their study without biased expectations, then the researchers would have caught the decrease of women killing men and learned how to use that result. But that was not on the agenda. And to this day it isn't. Sad isn't it?
As women had a place available to go to, to put some physical space between themselves and their violent partner and to receive some assistance in dealing with the anger and stress of the situation, they retaliated less. Simple - take the women out of the proximity of the male and provide support and tools for coping, and fewer men died because fewer women stayed at the level of conflict and anger that would otherwise lead them to deadly violence.
Helping men helps women
Interestingly, just the physical distance isn't enough! If it were, then we would have seen the numbers of women dying decrease as well. Because no matter who moves a bit away, both male and female are equally separated. So why didn't the number of women dying drop, too? Because the males weren't given any help to resolve their anger and conflict levels! Just the opposite, in fact.
Women in shelters are often guided into getting orders for protection, and then return to the house after forcing the man to leave and the courts order him to stay away. There is often the restraint from the children as well. And then a divorce hearing and lawyers and heightened levels of conflict! The woman gets support from an advocate through the litigation, and, as is the undeniable reality in the family court, she is favored in the rulings because the judge is a believer in the "male=perpetrator, female=victim" assumption that has come with the battered women's shelter movement.
The result? The male does not receive the conflict resolution and anger diffusion that could be offered. Nobody listens to him. Nobody helps him cope. Nobody cares. Maybe he can find that on his own, but most often he is left to either stay at the conflict level or even have things get worse. That's why helping women hasn't helped women.
It is so obvious. But it was not the "right answer." Battered women's shelter proponents don't acknowledge that women as well as men get violent, and sometimes kill. So will they acknowledge that getting the women out of the violent situation and defusing the anger successfully reduces their fatal level of violence? Of course not. To do so would taint their image. So they would rather keep this quiet and turn their eyes as more women die, are seriously physically injured, or emotionally strained.
The politically correct view harms women
There is a definition by the 1995 Minnesota Violence Prevention Advisory Task Force that includes the following statement: "Violence is an act taken against another or, in its passive form, a refusal to act to prevent harm to another." Ironic, isn't it that this characterizes the very battered women's shelter movement that talks of ending violence but refuses to this day to act to prevent harm to women?
Look at the analysis. I didn't do the research or design the surveys. I'm not "in" the politically embraced group who has been defining battering for the past 20 years. But because I think it is not okay for a group to knowingly distort the truth in their brochures I decided to look into the matter. And I think that anyone who really wants to save as many women's lives as there have already been men's lives saved, needs to be willing to lose their bias and embrace the facts.
Is it worth maintaining a politically correct stance on intimate violence if it costs women's lives? And remember that when those women die and leave kids behind, and dad goes to jail for the crime, what kind of hell do the children have to live with?
Is there anything so precious about the distortion that battering is one-way only? So precious that women's lives will be willingly paid to maintain the illusion?
What is the real agenda of the battered women's shelter movement if they are willing to perpetuate the battering and death to succeed as a movement? These are deep rhetorical questions, not for a quick fix explanation. Because whatever the real truth is, the current stance is directly contributing to the death and continued battering of women.
If this information were made widely available instead of hushed by national committees, federal agencies and strong political lobbies, you wouldn't be hearing it from Kel Krosschell. Because the really compassionate majority of women would be screaming "Discrimination!" "What we're doing now is letting more women get killed, and less men!" "Unfair!"
So, I'll not just say it's okay for the local women's shelter to distribute brochures that contain gross lies. I'll not sit back and say it is okay to brainwash women into thinking that having an "escape plan" will protect them when it doesn't! And I certainly will not silently let the lie be funded to the exclusion of doing what will clearly help reach a solution.
That would make me fit the definition of "refusing to prevent harm to another." And since you now know this stuff too, you'd fit the definition of a passive perpetrator if you don't do everything you can to save women's lives.
I'm sure that you will think seriously about this matter. Ask some hard questions about the research. The FBI, DOJ, MINCAVA, NRC, etc. all have their information ready for whoever is willing to read and study it.
It was only a few mouse clicks away. I had a very enlightening week without really trying. And I don't think it's just because I went to Engineering school that I got hit upside the head with the obvious when I started reading. Because I'm not some high paid lobbyist or a task force leader, or internationally renowned social researcher.
Just a dad.
Truth rising from the burning wreckage of a marriage
Just a dad who showed the court that the accusation of "domestic abuser" was bogus. One who sat in front of the judge knowing that a battered women's shelter advocate was sitting on the other side of the courtroom with the other party, immediately implying to the judge that some abuse had happened (it hadn't). The dad that still missed 3 weeks of seeing, phoning, even sending a birthday card to his son because of an illegal ex-parte restraining order. And the guy who still has on the court records that prospective employers can readily go check, "Domestic Abuse Hearing File # XXXXXXXX."
The bogus garbage notwithstanding, I never harmed my wife. Despite the willingness of Judge Ancy Morse to issue the OFP though it did not meeting statutory requirements, despite Judge Debra Jacobsen entering the courtroom with her mind as judge all made up against me, despite Child Support Enforcement Supervisor Kathy Needham conspiring with the Sheriff to convince him I was a dangerous "wacko" (documented in her own records via Data Privacy Act as well as by the Sheriff's admission of the same), despite all of that extra fuel onto the burning wreckage of our marriage, the documentation demonstrates I, Kel Krosschell, was not one who would have harmed my wife in the first place.
And despite the fervor of the battered women's shelter in believing they are right, even if I was guilty, then all their get tough on the male crap would not have made it any safer for my wife, or my kids, or me. The studies and the historical statistics that even the Understanding Violence Against Women report to President Clinton included, show that all this didn't make a difference... at least not a difference for women.
In our case, they got lucky. The shelter folks got involved in my family situation and did their normal stuff, and it did absolutely no good for my wife. The bogus order for protection provided no protection, just fear for my kids. But I now know that the research proves it might have saved me! Thanks! This service should not be dismissed without any thank you. It is the only thing the battered women's shelter can possibly claim to have done that was of positive benefit to my family.
And now you too know the rest of the story...of what I discovered on my way to the forum, so to speak. (Sorry Paul Harvey)
Pass this on
Please don't keep this a secret. This is truly life and death information. Copy and distribute it in any lawful and responsible manner.
Please pass it on to your legislative representation. Legislators across this country need to be asking the question: "What can the battered women's shelters possibly think they accomplish by minimizing the great breakthrough discovery that they have made?"
They can only find out that there is no benefit to society from stifling the truth. By recognizing the importance of the only documented improvement attributable to the battered women's shelter movement, we can begin to reduce the number of women victims for the first time since this nation started to try to solve that very problem. Then we can all have a better world as a result. An accomplishment the battered women's shelter movement doesn't even want to take credit for.
Go Figure...
Kel Krosschell is a dad who in his day-to-day activities as a superhero, crime-fighter, and social reformer, does unfunded observation of issues affecting our society today. He does not smash phone booths when changing clothes. He drives a white Dynasty, not a winged-mammal-mobile. To avoid criminal charges he has not nailed his findings to the doors of the local churches.
You can reach Kel by e-mail at:
Kel Krosschell
1334 SE 4th Ave #3
Rochester, MN 55904-7477
(507) 252-8842
What do you think? Talk about it on the Equalitarian Discussion Forums.
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