Violence Against Women Act

The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law. It was passed as Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 HR 3355 and signed as Public Law 103-322 by President Bill Clinton on September 13 1994. It provided $1.6 billion to enhance investigation and prosecution of the violent crime perpetrated against women, increased pre-trial detention of the accused, provided for automatic and mandatory restitution of those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted. The National Organization of Women heralded the bill as "the greatest breakthrough in civil rights for women in nearly two decades."

VAWA and the 1994 Crime Bill in general was written by Democratic Senator Joe Biden, supported by Congressional Democrats and President Clinton, and opposed by then minority Congressional Republicans with a few exceptions. [3]

VAWA was reauthorized by Congress in 2000, and again in October 2005, when it passed the Senate unanimously. The bill was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 5, 2006. The latest version for the first time also recognizes male victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

VAWA will be up for reauthorization in 2010.

Civil Rights Violations

Various groups have voiced concerns that VAWA violates due process, equal protection, and other civil rights violations.

The American Civil Liberties Union derided the Act as "troubling", saying that the increased penalties were rash, the increased pretrial detention was "repugnant" to the US Constitution, the mandatory HIV testing of those only charged but not convicted is an infringement of a citizen’s right to privacy and the edict for automatic payment of full restitution was non-judicious in their paper "Analysis of Major Civil Liberties Abuses in the Crime Bill Conference Report as Passed by the House and the Senate", dated September 29 1994. However, the ACLU has supported its reauthorization on the condition that the "unconstitutional DNA provision" be removed.

In 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States held part of VAWA unconstitutional in United States v. Morrison. Only the civil rights remedy of VAWA was struck down. The provisions providing program funding were unaffected.

RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) has issued a series of investigative reports on VAWA. These reports document widespread abuses in terms of male DV victims being treated as perpetrators[4], restraining orders issued with no claim of physical violence [5], persons are falsely accused and arrested [6], and constitutional protections are circumvented [7].

Criticisms

Critics of VAWA cite studies, such as the analysis by Martin S. Fiebert of the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, who compliled 195 scholarly investigations: 152 empirical studies and 43 analyses, which demonstrate women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men . That aggregate sample size exceeds 175,700.

Failure of the courts to prosecute false domestic violence allegations in divorce and custody battles is viewed as advocating false domestic violence accusations in the same manner that claims of maritial infidelity were exaggerated before no fault divorce legislature. Thomas Kasper writes in the Illinois Bar Journal, domestic violence measures funded by VAWA readily “become part of the gamesmanship of divorce.” Critics of VAWA reject inferences that instill gender politics of radical feminists and pro-feminist men by portrayal of women as victims and men as perpetrators and view the VAWA as discriminatory toward men as would be a Violence Against White's Act toward blacks. False allegations of violence or of a sexual nature was also a main tactic of the WKKK to encourage discrimination of black men.

International Perspectives

The World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women [8] in the same year, concluded that civil society and governments have acknowledged that domestic violence is a public health policy and human rights concern.

Nonetheless, the task of documenting the magnitude of intimate partner violence and producing reliable, comparative data to guide policy and monitor implementation has been difficult. Two recent studies provide contrasting views on domestic violence around the world.

In the first study, professor Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire interviewed 13,601 men and women in dating relationships in 32 countries around the world. Overall, Straus found that 31% of couples had engaged in any act of physical violence such as shoving, slapping, or punching. Among those couples that did engage in physical aggression, 68.6% of the couples engaged in mutual violence, 21.4% was initiated by the female, and 9.9% was male-only aggression. , Table 2. Even for severe violence, women were twice as likely as men to initiate the violence [Table 3].

The World Health Organisation Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence against Women [9] is a second study. Released in 2005, the study analysed data from 10 countries and sheds new light on the prevalence of violence against women. It seeks to look at domestic violence from a public health policy perspective. The WHO study has been criticized, however, on the grounds that it neglected to interview men or consider male victimization, and that its training methods were biased[10].

The findings from these two studies can be used to inform a more effective response from government, including the health, justice and social service sectors, as a step towards fulfilling the state’s obligation to curtail domestic violence under international human rights laws.

External links

• [11]
• Create an e-annoyance, go to jail
• Privacy Provisions of the Violence Against Women Act
• World Health Organisation Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women 2005
• Family Violence Prevention Fund
• Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization
• Read Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding the Violence Against Women Act
• Is the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) a good law?
• Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization
• VAWA - OPEN LETTER to Congress
• RADAR
• Time to Defund Feminist Pork — the Hate-Men Law
• Laughing at Restraining Orders
• Stop Abuse For Everyone
• Stop Abuse For Everyone New Hampshire