The Booming Domestic Violence Industry
The social-work movement that fights domestic violence has grown large on state and federal tax monies
By John Maguire, Massachusetts News
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The Booming Domestic Violence IndustryThe social-work movement that fights domestic violence has grown large on state and federal tax moniesBy John Maguire, Massachusetts News |
August 2, 1999--All across Massachusetts, the social-work movement that fights domestic
violence is booming.
Only ten years ago, the women's safety-advocates were a small group of idealists,
operating on pennies. Today the movement has grown large on state and federal tax
monies.
Every month, it seems, it spawns new sub-programs, clinics, shelters, research institutes,
counseling centers, visitation centers, poster campaigns. The state disbursed about $24
million for domestic violence services last year, but that certainly is not all the money
spent. Today domestic violence is a big industry in Massachusetts.
Mapping the full extent of the domestic-violence industry is not easy, because it's a
cottage-industry, spread out in hundreds of places. State and federal money goes to well
over a hundred institutes, clinics, programs for counseling or outreach or coordination or
training, computer databases, coalitions, shelters, PR agencies and other groups.
Most would say that's just fine: Domestic violence is ugly and ought to be dealt with. But
others are beginning to wonder if the huge industrial cure is as bad as the disease.
One of many critics is John Flaherty, co-chairman of the Fatherhood Coalition. "This
industry is an octopus," he said recently. "It's got its tentacles in more and
more parts of everyday life. It's a political movement. Many of its employees are,
directly or indirectly, damaging children. This industry doesn't answer to anybody.
They're in it mainly for the money -- and the children be damned." The industry's
problems may be about to increase, because it is becoming clear through scientific
research that the whole premise of the movement and the industry it spawned -- that
"domestic violence" means bad men hitting helpless, innocent women -- is just
plain wrong.
The truth about violence in the home is that it's pretty much a 50-50 thing. Respected
social scientists Murray A. Straus and David Gelles have been publishing research for
years that shows the standard Only-Men-Batter story--probably visible on a billboard near
you -- just doesn't match reality.
Women and men attack each other about equally in the home. Solid research now shows that
women begin the physical fighting in their homes about half the time. Equally solid
research shows that mothers are responsible for 65 per cent of physical abuse of
children.
Although the words "domestic" violence are commonly used, some commentators say
that a better description would be "shack-up" violence, because violence is most
common, especially where children are involved where the woman is living with a boy
friend. In a piece in the Weekly Standard last December by John A. Barnes, he cited four
studies which show "that the incidence of abuse was an astounding 33 times higher in
homes where the mother was cohabiting with an unrelated boyfriend than in a stable nuclear
family."
The uncomfortable truth is spreading. The very liberal, if not PC magazine Mother Jones
ran a news story last month admitting as much. "A surprising fact has turned up
in the grimly familiar world of domestic violence," reported Nancy Updike. She wrote:
"Women report using violence in their relationships more often than men. The research
disputes a long held belief about the nature of domestic violence -- that if a woman hits,
it's only in response to her partner's attacks."
The writer admitted that 20-year-old myths in the movement were starting to fall. The
study of 860 men and women, she said, "suggest that some women may be prone to
violence -- by nature of circumstance -- just as some men may be."
In 1999, the state spent $24 million of its own and federal tax dollars
"fighting has grown large on state and federal tax monies violence." The budgets
have risen steadily every year. Slightly more than half of that money ($13.6 million) goes
to pay for 37 battered women's shelters and to pay their staff. There are no shelters or
services for men who are victims of domestic violence -- only women or homosexual men get
these services.
About a fifth of the money ($5.3 million) is spent in and around the courts, paying for
prosecutors, legal representation for women, and training for court personnel.
Of the remainder, at least $1 million goes to posters, ads, and other "outreach"
campaigns telling people not to be violent. The high-school campaign gathers teen-agers to
watch a play called "The Yellow Dress." Its point is that dating can end in
murder, and men should not be trusted. It costs the state $500,000 each year.
"Massachusetts and the Boston region have been very successful in winning federal
money," said Clare Dalton, of the Northeastern University Domestic Violence
Institute.
"We've got some federal money here. The Police Department has also been very
successful in getting federal money."
Federal money for domestic violence programs flows into the state in several streams. One
large source is the Victims of Crime Act money, which is disbursed by the Massachusetts
Office of Victim Assistance. Another source of big federal dollars is the federal Violence
Against Women Act, which is administered by the Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPS).
Both MOVA and EOPS are located in state offices at 1 Ashburton Place, next to the State
House. MOVA's on the 11th floor, EOPS is on the 21st.
Getting answers even to simple questions on how much money is being spent is not easy.
Three weeks of repeated calls and visits to staffers in the Cellucci administration
brought sluggish or no response. Jean Hurtle, the Executive Director of the Governor's
Commission on Domestic Violence, when asked repeatedly for a fact sheet on how much money
was being spent in this field produced nothing. Jason Kauppi, an executive office press
aide, failed to respond to roughly ten phone calls requesting information on the domestic
violence budget. The figures above and in the accompanying box came from the staff of Sen.
Steven Panagiotakos, D-Lowell.
According to Cam Huff of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, budgets at the Department
of Social Services have risen almost seven per cent per year, since 1993. Compared with
the overall budget, he says, this is "significantly higher than average."
If the domestic violence industry were an old-fashioned textile mill, the central
power-shaft turning all its machinery would be the 209A restraining order. Judges issue
them at the rate of 145 a day, according to the Boston Globe. Without the steady roll of
restraining orders, all the machinery of the domestic violence industry would grind to a
halt.
To the activists, the 209A law is almost a magic sword that saves women's lives.
"There's almost a religion of restraining orders among women's advocates,"
commented Ray Saulnier, a fathers' rights activist from Maine.
But a growing number of men, their relatives, and lawyers find the 209A law grossly unfair
-- almost a police-state tool that destroys families and saves very few. Recent efforts to
reform the law have gained sympathetic hearings in the Legislature.
On the books for 20 years, 209A became the tool of choice for the activists in the early
1990s. Almost every year since then, that scope of the law has been expanded, and the
grounds for defense diminished. Activists have sought and gained almost draconian powers
for women, on the argument of a "crisis" in domestic violence.
As the law has expanded, its enforcers have multiplied. Today this state has hundreds if
not thousands of 209A specialists who have been trained. Training in getting restraining
orders, and in helping and urging women to get them occupies a significant amount of the
curriculum at Northeastern University's Domestic Violence Institute internship program.
Federally paid advocates in many if not all district and probate courts in the state are
also trained to assist women in getting restraining orders. To the movement/industry, the
restraining order is a shining sacred sword of power that can never do harm, but magically
protects women and children at all times.
The restraining orders bring the police power of the state immediately to the woman's
protection, and the man she says she is afraid of is immediately thrown out of his house,
if not arrested.
But to others, a restraining order looks an awful lot like the tool of a police state.
Attorney Sheara Friend, of the Wellesley firm Kahalas, Warshaw & Friend, estimates
that about half of all restraining orders are merely legal maneuvers, where there is no
real fear of injury on anyone's part. If she's right, about 20,000 of this state's
restraining orders each year have nothing to do with domestic violence -- other than to
claim it. If each of those phony orders harms seven people (a father, two kids, two
grandparents and two other relatives) then 140,000 Massachusetts citizens suffer needless
disruption and emotional pain each year.
About ten years ago, some evidence was required. Someone had to show bruises, or bring in
testimony to support the accusation.
The legislature has loosened the standard. Now the person seeking the order need only
state he or she is "in fear" of the other person.
It doesn't take a cynic to point out that when a woman is getting a divorce, what she may
truly fear is not violence, but losing the house or kids. Under 209A, if she's willing to
fib to the judge and say she is "in fear" of her children's father, she will get
custody and money and probably the house.
"Mediation and communication counseling are critical in a divorce," says Sheara
Friend. "The 209A non-contact order prevents that. Especially if it's a divorce that
involves children, you need the parties talking with each other. The 209A completely stops
that. It's a very divisive thing to do right at the time the parties need to talk. You
can't even get the parties in the same building."
Long-term emotional damage to children's fathers -- surely not good for children --
often begins with a restraining order, she says.
"A man against whom a frivolous 209A has been brought starts to lose any power in his
divorce proceeding. They do start decompensating, and they do start to have emotional
issues, and they do start developing post-traumatic stress disorders. They keep replaying
in their minds the tape of what happened to them in court. It starts this whole vicious
downward cycle. They've been embarrassed and shamed in front of their family and friends,
unjustly, and they totally lose any sense of self-control and self-respect. They may
indeed become verbally abusive. It's difficult for the court to see where that person was
prior to the restraining order."
This is a different era from the 1950s, she points out, and many fathers are very close to
their children, and bond closely with them from an early age.
"In this day and age, we have fathers who take an extremely active role in parenting
-- sometimes more than the mother."
"I call them mother-dads," she says. In many restraining-order cases, she says,
"These fathers are completely frustrated because they can't co-parent their child
because of a restraining order. They have been raped of their parenting relationship with
their child."
While Friend and others see false restraining orders as enormously destructive, and
permanently traumatizing, the $24 million domestic violence industry is built on the
restraining order. Most of the activities that people get paid for in the domestic
violence industry cannot start until a restraining order has been issued.
The restraining order is entered into the state's restraining order registry on a
computer in downtown Boston. It is never deleted. Police officers, probation officers and
judges have the right to check the database.
What will it do to someone's career if they are in there indefinitely and an employer
somehow calls in to check? "We can't respond to that question," said Coria
Holland, press person for the Mass Probation Service. "Probation is just the conduit
for getting the information into the system. We're just the recording arm."
"Supervised visitation" is a booming part of the industry today. In
1994, only three visitation centers existed -- they were pilot projects in Springfield,
Roxbury and Brockton. Today, there are 13 state-funded centers absorbing nearly a million
dollars a year. These centers not only get state funding, they also charge fathers for the
privilege of seeing their own offspring. Rates go as high as $120 for ninety
minutes.
The assumption "is that a lot of dads are abusing their children and their access to
their children must be supervised," declares Michael Ewing, a fatherhood activist.
Though research suggests this assumption is completely false, the supervised visitation
industry has skyrocketed anyway.
The centers strongly assume that children's fathers are guilty of some unnamed crime.
Caring fathers with the bad luck to be accused often endure insulting, exploitative
treatment to see their children. They complain rarely, because the social workers can and
do end visitation for little or no reason.
Pamela Whitney, a social worker who came to the Massachusetts Department of Social
Services in 1986 as a consultant, has been Director of Domestic Violence and Family
Support Services since 1994. Her office is at 24 Farnsworth Street in Boston. She
supervises a budget that was $13.6 million last year, and may go higher.
She says supervised visitation is recommended "where there has been a separation
between the parents and a history of domestic abuse."
When challenged, she backtracks and admits she meant to say "accusation of domestic
abuse."
She says her department pushed for visitation centers, beginning with three pilot centers
in the early 1990s. The department recommended expansion, "because the courts found
it so helpful and useful." Now there are 13. She said her goal was to have at least
one in every county. More are probably coming.
"The feeling on the part of the courts and others was it was often unsafe for
children to visit with their offending parent," she said. She acknowledged that when
she said "offending parent" she meant a parent who had been accused of an
offence.
Each state-supported visitation center is funded by D.S.S. to such a level that it has at
least $75,000 to work with. The money goes to fund staff and a "budget
coordinator." The coordinator "does outreach to the courts and other
agencies." D.S.S. funds also pay, she said, for "the people who are actually
doing the visit between the parent and child."
"Some visits don't need to be supervised," she said. "But in other cases
where there is higher risk involved...this provides supervision for those who are doing
the actual visit." The observers are trained according to "guidelines"
developed by the central nexus for DV policy in the state, theGovernor's Commission on
Domestic Violence.
She acknowledged that the same accusation that forces a man into a center, also forces him
to pay both his and his wife's fees. "If A says that B is abusive, then B has to pay
the money," she said.
Ms. Whitney said she thought the sliding scales ranged from $1 to $5, and that an indigent
parent could do community service to pay for his visitation time.
But in reality, at least in Robert Straus' center in Cambridge, the sliding scale runs
from $20 to $40 or $80 per hour, and any parent who cannot pay cannot see his
children.
Asked her reaction to the case of the father of three who recently had to pay The Meeting
Place $120 to see his children for 90 minutes, she said, "I've never heard of such a
thing. One hundred twenty dollars a visit is extraordinary."
"All these visitations have been ordered because the children involved are at
risk," explains Robert Straus, a lawyer and social worker, and currently director of
the Meeting Place, in Cambridge. Straus has been a key figure in our state's development
of professional supervised visitation. Asked to explain "at risk", he says:
"You have a range of physical and sexual abuse situations where the parent is either
alleged to be, or been proved to, abuse the child."
"As you know," he adds, confidentially, "there have been a number of deaths
in Massachusetts." When asked to name an actual child's death he was referring to,
however, he said he could not remember.
Straus has been part of an informal matrix of lawyers, judges, social workers, academics
and domestic violence activists since the early 1990s. These people, some idealistic and
some merely pragmatic, have networked, talked with each other, served on various
commissions, boosted each other' s careers, and helped to expand the definition of
domestic violence, and the size of state and federal funding massively.
Straus is a leader now, and heads what is called the Supervised Visitation Network. He
described the growth of that group in glowing, emotional terms during a phone
interview.
"The Supervised Visitation Network started in 1992. A group of people met in New York
through the Ethical Culture Society, which had started a supervised visitation program in
New York City. At that point it was just 30 people from around the country, most of whom
had never met anyone else doing supervision. We had all been working in isolation. It was
an extremely high energy meeting. It was very much an informal association of people
helping each other out. It began with a handful of members and now has over 400 members
throughout the U.S., Canada, and Australia. It's a fascinating field...because when it
began it was virtually without funding."
But not any more. Though The Meeting Place began in 1991 with only a grant from the Boston
Bar Foundation, and continued to 1998 "without a penny of public money" that
public money is starting to flow now, Straus admits with a tone of satisfaction.
The major state source is through the state DSS Domestic Violence Unit, whose budget of
over $900,000 "has been an immense advance over the last few years.."
What if the father doesn't have enough money to see his kid in a given week?
"Difficult question," answers Straus, who pauses and then says the father gets
"a week's grace" and then the child-father contact is cut off.
His program never tries to get husbands and wives to talk out their problems privately, he
said, but urges them to go back to court instead. He said children are in visitation for
long periods, from nine months to many years. He said that no matter how well, how
happily, the father-child interaction is going, his program never recommends to the judge
that supervision should end and normal parent-child contact resume.
These programs have sprung up all across America " entrepreneurial tricks and ideas
spread easily each summer at this industry's conferences. Wherever supervised visitation
has appeared, criticism has followed.
In Virginia, Michael Ewing, president of the Virginia Fatherhood Initiative, has an
unusual perspective. He is one of the few pro-father people ever to run a "visitation
center." His non-profit organization applied for and got a federal grant to negotiate
access and visitation issues between divorced parents. He hoped to show that in situations
of conflict between divorced parents, supervised visitation was not necessary. He sees
such programs as "designed to humiliate men." In his program's first year, the
Norfolk area courts made more than 700 case referrals. "We solved all of the problems
but two," Ewing said. "Only two families required supervised
visitation."
"There are many ways to handle the exchange of children without having parents
supervised. We ran a neutral pickup and drop off program and there were no problems. We
made clear to parents that they had to be 'model citizens' during drop off, or they would
be reported to the court."
He said the supervised visitation idea has been " beefed up with phony
statistics" and there is very little need for it.
Solid research shows that most physical child abuse is done by mothers, or by mothers'
live-in boyfriends. Ewing is one of many in the fathers' movement who wonder why natural
fathers " who in reality are quite unlikely to abuse their own children " are
targeted for the humiliation of supervision "I think there's another agenda
here," he says. "Some special interest women's groups think that males in
general are disposable. We're great sperm donors and paychecks " but beyond that
there's not much need for good fathers or good men."
He said he thinks supervised visitation came about "because women wanted to con- trol
the dad's access to their children, and to humiliate them by making them see their
children in the presence of a social worker and pay for the privilege of doing
so."
Perhaps because of its success, Michael Ewing's non-visitation-center approach to family
conflict lost its funding in the second year. He said he thinks a local social worker who
had lost clients due to Ewing's success complained to an influential state senator.
How many of these supervision cases really require supervision for the safety of the
children? Michael Ewing doesn't think very many: he found two cases out of 700.
But the domestic violence entrepreneurs and state officials live in a different world from
us. A sense of nameless vague threat is always in the background. To hear the pros talk,
all the men they deal with are batterers, sexual abusers, or virtually time bombs of
violence. Repeated cliches like "at risk" and "a safe place" and
"maintaining safety" pepper their sentences. Yet, in many cases, there is no
evidence of violence or any kind of serious harm to children " merely an accusation
by the mother. But in the DV industry, when the accusation is made, the case is
closed.
At least some of the men interviewed for this story are devoted fathers. It is clear that
some have heroically maintained contact with their children over a period of years,
despite having to pay a small fortune in cash and endure repeated harassment by petty,
vindictive state officials. During a dozen hours of telephone interviews, not one
supervised-visitation official spoke any word of praise for any man's love of his
children.