The portion of an article published today is must reading for you all. 

Wishing you the best,
Lowell Jaks, ANCPR http://ancpr.org/
If you need help dealing with your own Family Law issues, go here:
http://ancpr.org/consulta.htm

This is just a portion of the article which can be read in its entirety at:
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-b/blumhorst/2005/blumhorst032105.htm

VAWA - One of the Biggest Taxpayer Fleecings in the History of America

Since the inception of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, the domestic violence industry has had over ten years to solve, or improve, the problem of domestic violence in our society. Billions and billions of dollars have been spent to create a fat, bloated bureaucracy that appears at times to have done as much to harm to the lives of women as it has done to help, and soon that bureaucracy will be asking for more money.

Saying that conflicts of interest exist in the domestic violence industry is like saying that conflicts of interest exist in any autocratic form of governance. Conflicting interests are so integral a part of the functioning of the domestic violence movement, that it might be best to dismantle that huge bureaucracy to effectively change it. Starting from scratch without the self-aggrandizing gender feminist modus operandi would be a vast improvement over the present unaccountable pork barrel,
that's siphoned away so many hard-earned tax dollars from our struggling society. While mountains of documentation have been created by the domestic violence industry to verify the effectiveness of VAWA, a growing body of evidence indicates this misguided, government monstrosity has ruined an untold number of innocent lives Domestic violence ideology all begins with a flawed premise that evolves out of the gender feminist belief that America is a Patriarchal society. All men are considered stereotypical members, or beneficiaries of Patriarchy (male privilege). All members of the Patriarchy thereby: have "power and control," systematically use "power and control" to oppress women, resort to violence to maintain "power and control over women."

At a recent Domestic Violence Council Conference in San Diego, one thing that was hammered home by one of the event's speakers was the fact that, during the past ten years, the rate of domestic violence homicides for women has remained relatively constant. Curiously, this has occurred during a time in our society that I would characterize as a Draconian, domestic violence, "arrest fest" of America's men. Often men have been arrested for the most trivial of things, such as throwing a pencil, or a "perceived threat" alleged by a female intimate. The speaker at the conference preached that the real reason behind domestic violence was "the violent nature of men," and that more Draconian efforts were needed. Of course, more arrests would give the appearance of a bigger problem, requiring more government funding.

Compares family and nonfamily violence statistics from victimization through the different stages of the justice system. Family violence is defined as all types of violent crime committed by an offender who is related to the victim and includes spouse abuse, parental violence against a child, and violence among other family members. Nonfamily relationships used for comparison include boyfriends and girlfriends, friends and acquaintances, and strangers. Data are drawn from victimization surveys, official police statistics, State and Federal court statistics, and surveys of inmates in State prisons and local jails.

Highlights include the following:

• Family violence accounted for 11% of all reported and unreported violence between 1998 and 2002.
• About 22% of murders in 2002 were family murders.
• Of the nearly 500,000 men and women in State prisons for a violent crime in 1997, 15% were there for a violent crime against a family member.

This week, RADAR has released a ground-breaking report, "VAWA: Threat to Families, Children, Men, and Women," (http://www.mediaradar.org/docs/VAWA-Threat-to-Families.pdf) that concludes that VAWA, although well intentioned, imposes a one-size-fits-all policy on American families. By treating families experiencing minor non-violent disagreements as if one party had attacked the other with a gun, families are ripped apart, the innocent are penalized, and children pay the price.

• Even when couple aggression is mutual or minor, domestic violence programs discourage partner reconciliation and encourage divorce.
• A National Institute for Justice study concluded, "Restrictions on couples therapy and individual psychotherapy for battering are a point of contention between feminist-oriented batterer intervention providers and mental health providers in many communities."
• The total absence of safeguards to prevent restraining orders from being issued for false or frivolous reasons deprives innocent people of their civil rights. Each year, half a million restraining orders are issued in cases with not even an allegation of violence.
• When New Mexico Judge Daniel Sanchez issued a temporary order requiring David Letterman to have no contact with a woman he'd never met, who'd accused him of harassing her telepathically over the airwaves, that was no aberration. It was business as usual for the family court system.
• Family law attorney Lisa Scott describes restraining orders as 'weapons of mass destruction'. She says of family courts, "Whenever a woman claims to be a victim, she is automatically believed. No proof of abuse is required.
• The result is that children typically lose daily contact with their father. While this may be appropriate in the minority of cases that are pathologically violent, the children of those half million orders no allegation of violence are are two to three times more likely to use drugs, do badly in school, be socially maladjusted, and engage in criminal behavior.