Category: Domestic Violence

UK Considers Guaranteeing Alleged Victims in Domestic Violence Cases Anonymity

The British government is considering a change in its laws that would guarantee alleged victims of domestic violence the same privacy granted to individuals in rape, divorce and sexual abuse cases. In the United States legal guarantees of privacy are only afforded to minors in such cases, but in Great Britain apparently the courts extend privacy to adults in such cases as well.

The change in the law has an odd motivation — the Home Office is concerned about the number of women who withdraw their allegations of domestic violence before the case against the alleged perpetrator can go to trial. An unidentified Labor Party source told The Independent (UK),

We need to address the problem of women who have suffered abuse and want the police to act but don’t want all their family and sexual history put on display. People in the family courts or who have been sexually abused don’t have their identity revealed but in many cases the same personal information will be disclosed in domestic violence cases.

But, of course, in the case of a marital domestic violence case it’s going to be difficult to hide the identity of the alleged victim unless the identity of the alleged perpetrator is also going to be made private.

Second, it seems to be a dubious contention at best that women withdraw their allegations of violence because of fear of publicity over the case. This assumes that victims of domestic violence always perceive their interests as best served by a legal prosecution of their victimizer but are being thwarted by an invasive media. The Labor government should be called to provide some evidence for that sort of claim.

That being said, the practice of granting anonymity to individuals involved in legal cases should be done only with great care and when the damage likely to be done to the individuals far outweighs the need for transparency in such processes. It’s hard to imagine, for example, how British citizens are served by having divorced proceedings hide the identity of litigants. Similarly, although the press in the United States generally chooses not to run the identity of alleged rape victims by custom, making it illegal to do so is an unnecessary limitation on the transparency of such legal actions.

Source:

Battered women may get right to anonymity in court. Marie Woolf, The Independent (UK), June 11, 2003.

Kentucky Supreme Court Vacates Domestic Violence Order Between Couple Not Living Together

In April the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that domestic violence protective orders could not be issued in cases where neither party to the complaint was living with the other.

Laura P. Wiley had obtained a protection order against her boyfriend, Charles Barnett. Wiley claimed that Barnett had threatened to kill her and had tailed her car “in a reckless manner.”

Barnett challenged the protection order on the grounds that domestic violence protection orders could only be issued when a couple was cohabitating. Since he and Wiley did not live together, then, an protection order could not be issued against him.

Two courts upheld the order, but the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed the decision. Writing for the majority, Justice Martin Johnstone wrote that while the law “should be construed liberally in favor of protecting victims,”

But the construction cannot be unreasonable. The phrase ‘living together’ implies some sort of cohabitation.

Source:

Court says domestic violence order not meant for ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ cases. Charles Wolfe, Associated Press, April 24, 2003.

Great Britain Considering a Domestic Violence Registry

The BBC reports that Great Britain is considering creating a domestic violence registry similar to its national sexual offender registry.

The registry would track anyone who was sentenced to jail six months or more for an act of domestic violence, and require such individuals to report with police when they move. According to the BBC,

The decision on whether to tell a woman of her partner’s violent past would be made after a risk assessment by police and social services.

It’s not clear if this registry will only list men convicted of domestic violence or if the BBC is just being sloppy with its language.

Source:

Domestic violence register ‘planned’. The BBC, May 26, 2003.

Janet Reno Urges Better Domestic Violence Enforcement — Be Afraid, Very Afraid

The Toledo Blade reported in April that former U.S. attorney general Janet Reno called for increased enforcement to combat domestic violence.

Reno pointed out that when she was state attorney general for Dade County, Florida, she made domestic violence a priority. Reno did not mention that she also railroaded a number of defendants in the 1980s when she was Dade County chief prosecutor as part of the nationwide hysteria over child sex abuse (see Frontline’s excellent site about the Dade County prosecutions).

Reno asked an audience at the University of Toledo, “If we cannot have peace in our homes, where can we have peace in our world?”

But if we cannot have justice in our courts, how can we have it in our world? Reno allowed herself and her office to be caught up in a hysterical movement and innocent men paid the price. Punish men and women who engage in violence against loved ones by all means, but resist falling prey to demagogues like Reno who pervert justice to further their own careers.

Source:

Janet Reno urges better effort against domestic violence. Toledo Blade, April 8, 2003.

Killing Women: Two for the Price of One in Iran

New Zealand News recently ran a chilling story about how the Iranian legal system devalues the lives of women. The story centered around Tehran-based human rights lawyer Hadjimashhady whose daughter was killed in a car accident in 2002 after a 70-year-old opium addicted truck driver fell asleep and ran a stop sign.

Under Iranian law, Hadjimashhady was entitled to blood money from the family of the driver, but because the victim was a woman, he was only entitled to half the blood money that would have been required had the victim been a man.

Hadjimashhady told The New Zealand Times that he wasn’t interested in the blood money, and that the differing rates for men and women make the whole affair even more bizarre,

I don’t want the dieh [blood money]. Janooreh [the truck driver] doesn’t have any money, he wasn’t insured, and he doesn’t have any family. But this law, this is a reactionary law. It is something that belongs in medieval times, I think.

A group of female Members of Parliament in Iran are campaigning to equalize the monetary amounts. They note that while the system may have made sense in a traditional, nonindustrial society — where the death of a man could mean the death of the primary income provider in the family — that it is insulting to women in contemporary Iran.

Fatemeh Rakei of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee for Women’s Issues also cites a similar religious tradition called quessas, in which if a woman murders a man the mans’ family can demand vengeance (i.e., the death of the woman), but if a man kills a woman, the woman’s family must first pay the man’s family half of the man’s blood money before demanding vengeance.

Rakei told The New Zealand News that she believes this has led to an increase in wife killing since many families simply can’t afford to pay the blood money.

Source:

The price of women. Tim Elliott, The New Zealand News, February 15, 2003.

Free Clara Harris?

A Texas jury earlier this year convicted Clara Harris of killing her husband after she caught him with another woman. Harris repeatedly drove over her husband with her car.

In a short article about the trial and conviction, Cathy Young noted that during a segment about the case on The O’Reilly Factor some women wrote in via e-mail to express their support for Harris. But, to my knowledge, no prominent feminists took the absurd route of defending Harris.

Not so, however, for those nutty right wingers at WorldNetDaily.Com where Editor and CEO Joseph Farah devoted an entire column to singing Harris’ praise and saying that, if there were any justice in the world, Harris would be set free. Farah wrote,

I say: Free Clara Harris. We need more women like her. Live like her.

. . .

People are no longer accountable to anyone. They don’t believe they are accountable to God. They don’t believe they are accountable to their spouses. And they don’t believe they are accountable to their children. They are not accountable to the state, as no-fault divorce laws have made certain.

. . .

If I were on that jury, I would find Clara Harris not guilty. After she was sprung, I’d give her a medal. She did the world a favor. She may have acted emotionally. She may be sorry for what she has done. But, frankly, she did the right thing. That creep deserved what he got.

In Harris’ case, fortunately, no one on the jury shared Farah’s views, but Young notes a Texas case where the jury did buy into this sort of ridiculous argument. In 1999 a jury convicted Jimmy Dean Watkins of murder after he shot and killed his estranged wife in front of his 10-year old son. But the jury sentenced him to just 10 years of parole after buying into his claim that he was acting on a sudden passion (even though Watkins had fled the scene after his gun jammed, then returned to fire the fatal shot after restoring his weapon to working condition).

Apparently a world in which men and women run around killing their philandering spouses without any sort of consequence may appeal to Farah, but Young is correct in noting that as much as we might sympathize with someone who commits a crime of passion, we should never allow that sympathy to be used as a justification for murder,

A certain measure of sympathy for people who commit crimes of passion is understandable. Many feminists have attributed this sympathy to the underlying belief that men “own” women; but they are wrong. Most of us can relate to feelings of anger, loss and betrayal caused by infidelity or rejection?in a way we cannot relate to the cold-blooded motives of someone who kills for greed. But we should never allow this emotional understanding to overshadow the horror of what happened to the victims.

Sources:

Free Clara Harris! Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.Com, January 30, 2003.

She Done Him Wrong: Cowboy law, sexism mix in wronged wife’s trial. Cathy Young, Reason, February 4, 2003.