This article was first published August 2008. It was last updated in November 2011. It could use some refreshing, but it is still enlightening considering that the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization is stalled in Congress. Doing that took considerable, deliberate, and concerted effort by many people and several organizations. NCFM played a larger roll in helping to stall the reauthorization than most will ever know. NCFM, SAVE Services, Victims of Immigration Fraud, and a few other organizations continue to lobby for related reforms. While much goes on behind the scenes, SAVE and VOIP operate from Washington D.C.,  have developed strong relationships with legislators and their staffers, and continue to network with, educate, and work with those who have the power to reform VAWA. Both organizations deserve your support, as of course, as does NCFM. If you have suggestions for updating the article below please send them this way…

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In the Women and Violence” senate hearings in 1990, Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joseph Robinette Biden revealed,

“In my house, being raised with a sister and three brothers, there was an absolute – it was a nuclear sanction, if under any circumstances, for any reason, no matter how justified, even self-defense – if you ever touched your sister, not figuratively, literally. My sister, who is my best friend, my campaign manager, my confidante, grew up with absolute impunity in our household… And I have the bruises to prove it. I mean that sincerely. I am not exaggerating when I say that.”

Like so many chivalrous male victims Biden defends his abusers even having suffered “nuclear sanction”. I say “abusers” because someone in his immediate family other than his sister must have rendered the mushrooming catastrophic punishments.  Even so, Sister Valerie Biden Owens had “absolute impunity” giving her license to abuse at will without fear of penalty.

Valerie’s “absolute impunity” tragically lives through Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). For example, now infamous Mary Winkler recently escaped the death penalty and long term imprisonment murdering her husband Mathew by shooting him in the back.  Wrenched with pain it took Mathew 20 minutes to die. Mary watched, made no effort to call 911, and later played “the abuse excuse” card, even though other than her testimony there was no evidence to support her claims of being abused. Matthew Winkler’s oldest daughter, Patricia, said her father was a good man and did not abuse her mother. Now free, the Courts even gave Winkler custody of her children, thereby denying their understandable wish to live with their grandparents rather than the woman who murdered their father in cold blood.

Valerie has to be a driving force behind Biden’s obsessive championing of VAWA. Not only because of questionable values learned during childhood, but she also serves as a “volunteer political trainer for Women’s Campaign International, a non-profit organization dedicated to the empowerment of women in the world’s emerging democracies, and she currently serves on the national board of the DNC Women’s Leadership Forum”.

Regardless of danger victims of Sweden’s 1973 Norrmalmstorg bank robbery showed loyalty to their hostage-takers, a psychological process now known as the Stockholm Syndrome. Long after Patty Hurst’s abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) she told Larry King during an interview that,

“You have been so abused and so robbed of your free will and so frightened that you believe – you come to a point where you believe any lie your abductor has told you.”

Could it be that Biden is a sympathetic hostage turned true believer to an abusive past exploited by those he considers like-minded allies; here, trusted family members and misandric, ideologically driven, Domestic Violence Industry (DV Industry) stakeholders dependent upon VAWA dollars and other taxpayer funding?

Errin Pizzey is generally credited as the founder of the domestic violence movement, as well as opening the first women’s shelter, the Chiswick Women’s Refuge, in London in 1971. She soon realized there were as many violent women as there were men, a fact now proven by a plethora of worldwide research, as found in California State University’s Professor Martin Fiebert’s bibliography of over 170 academic studies and published papers. There is no reliable data to the contrary – none, regardless of DV Industry propaganda.

Three years before President Clinton signed Biden’s VAWA bill into law Pizzey explained in David Thomas’ book Not Guilty: the Case in Defense of Men (1993) the reason the women’s movement resists recognizing abused men:

“There’s a lot of money in hating men, particularly in the United States–millions of dollars. It isn’t a politically good idea to threaten the huge budgets for women’s refuges by saying that some of the women who go into them aren’t total victims.  Anyway, the activists aren’t there to help women come to terms with what’s happening in their lives. They’re there to fund their budgets, their conferences, their traveling abroad, and their statements against men” (Thomas, pp. 186-87)

Coral Davenport, Staff Writer for CQPolitics wrote in Healing Clinton-Obama Rift Just Not About Bad Feelings, that “Together, EMILY’s List, the Feminist Majority, the NARAL political action committee, the NOW political action committee, Planned Parenthood and Women Count have raised over $27.5 million for Democratic candidates thus far in the election cycle,” all examples of innumerable wealthy VAWA support organizations, some of which may receive huge public subsidies conceivably used for illicit campaign contributions and political pandering.

In one of my recent e-mails a DV Industry victim put it this way when explaining to another DV Industry victim how things work under VAWA and his continuing DV Industry saga,

“You are beyond that point and the Court System/Victim Industry is completely sold out to women’s advocates, you (as a man) have no sanctuary or friends in the SYSTEM, not even the ones you hire.  No “therapist/counselors” make enough money doing evaluations to keep their BUSINESS going.  They are all members of the United Way/VAWA/DV feed trough…..  Any buckling with that party line and that therapist would be kicked to the curb faster than John Edwards after a hot date.”

VAWA largess feeds tens of thousands of attorneys, including even public defenders creating an instant conflict of interest. The money directly or indirectly creates thousands of extremely well paid, comprehensive benefits, early retirement, soft-jobs in Family Justice Centers, child support services conglomerates, child visitation centers, child abuse consortiums, animal shelters (for victims with pets that witnessed the alleged abuse), juvenile dependency courts, police departments, and a plethora of other employers, largely governments and nonprofit organizations, all dependent upon buckling to the party line.

So, (1) by his own admission Biden may have grown up in an abusive home (2) his sister had impunity from any abuse she committed (3) she is one of Biden’s closest advisors and high ranking feminist operative (4) VAWA and the Domestic Violence Industries are primarily driven by the quest for more money – power and control (5) there are arguably as many or more abused men than women (6) someone’s lying.

Lie: “false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.”

DV Industry operatives knew early on that as many or more men were abused by women than women by men. Yet, imperative to the success of the feminist movement was the lie that all men were perpetrators and all women victims.

Lesbian researcher and scholar Janice Ristock in her landmark work “No More Secrets: Violence in Lesbian Relationships” (2002) noted that “…we were often worried about causing more harm to lesbians and to feminism by speaking about the issue to publicly.” Sixty-six percent of the lesbians in Ristock’s survey responded that they knew lesbians who had been in abusive relationships. (Page X). Ristock observed that,

 “Within the women’s movement, there have been two main forms of resistance to examining abuse in lesbian relationships: one stems from the desire to keep a focus on male violence, thereby minimizing women’s violence; the other arises from the fear that this issue will create a backlash against feminism and lesbians. The ideology that only men were violent was adopted by the radical feminist culture of the 1970’s… Perhaps the biggest source of resistance from feminist communities in general is that acknowledging lesbian abuse will threaten a dominant feminist analysis of violence against women in intimate relationships, which most often assumes a male perpetrator…” (Pages 3-5).

Obviously women-to-women violence brings into question radical feminist theories blaming everything from scratchy toilet paper to global warming on patriarchy and misogyny.

Aside from fears of revealing lesbian-on-lesbian violence radical feminists had to silence activists like Errin Pizzey. In 1982, Pizzey and Jeff Shapiro coauthored the book Prone to Violence, about abusive and violent women.  Pizzey reported that the book enraged feminists to the extent that her life was threatened.

Dr. Richard Gelles is one of the world’s premier family violence researchers. In The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence: Male Victims, originally published in The Women’s Quarterly, 1999, Gelles wrote,

“Two years after my initial study of family violence, the American Sociological Association included a session on ”Family Violence” as part of the association’s annual meeting program. This was the first time this scholarly association had devoted precious meeting time and space to this topic… uninvited, I went to the session anyway… Much of the session focused on the application of feminist theory, or patriarchy theory, to explaining the extent and patterns of violence towards wives… eventually someone raised the question of whether men were victims of domestic violence. The session leaders and many others in the group stated, categorically, there were no male victims of domestic violence… I explained that I had indeed interviewed men and women who reported significant and sometimes severe violence toward husbands…

In order to build a more solid knowledge base and understanding of family violence, my colleagues Murray Straus and Suzanne Steinmetz and I conducted the First National Family Violence Survey in 1976. The survey interviewed a nationally representative sample of 2,143 individual family members… The most controversial finding… was that the rate of adult female-to-adult male intimate violence was the same as the rate of male-to-female violence. Not only that, but the rate of abusive female-to-male violence was the same as the rate of abusive male-to-female violence. When my colleague Murray Straus presented these findings in 1977 at a conference on the subject of battered women, he was nearly hooted and booed from the stage… my colleague Suzanne Steinmetz published a scholarly article, ”The battered husband syndrome,” in 1978…

The response to our finding that the rate of female-to-male family violence was equal to the rate of male-to-female violence not only produced heated scholarly criticism, but intense and long-lasting personal attacks. All three of us received death threats. Bomb threats were phoned in to conference centers and buildings where we were scheduled to present. Suzanne received the brunt of the attacks—individuals wrote and called her university urging that she be denied tenure; calls were made and letters were written to government agencies urging that her grant finding be rescinded. All three of us became” non persons” among advocates. Invitations to conferences dwindled and dried up. Advocacy literature and feminist writing would cite our research, but not attribute it to us. Librarians publicly stated they would not order or shelve our books.”

Clearly, the preservation of the myth upon which VAWA was based – only men perpetrate violence and only women are victims – was so central to DV Industry and radical feminist operatives that they committed terrorist acts against those expressing contrary views. Additionally, these violent operatives well knew that woman-to-woman violence was common.

Lie in one’s throat or teeth: to lie grossly or maliciously: If she told you exactly the opposite of what she told me, she must be lying in her teeth. Also, lie through one’s teeth.”

To believe that Biden and his staff did not understand the truth prior to championing VAWA in 1994 is to believe that they are not just ignorant, but stupid, which they are not. He and his staff have received hundreds if not thousands of letters, e-mails, and other communications from respected individuals, scholars and organizations explaining that both men and women can be perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. Associates of mine have told me about private conversations with Biden concerning VAWA and abused men. One associate was even in the Constitutional Law class Biden taught at Widener University School of Law in which related issues were discussed. Educational materials have been hand carried to Biden’s Washington D.C. offices. So, if Biden’s not ignorant or stupid what is he? And, why is he so strongly against helping abused men? Why does he perpetuate the lie, even if only by omission and misrepresentation?

Could it really be as simple as growing up in an abusive home? If so, who in the home delivered the “nuclear sanctions”? Is he projecting some hidden shame? Is it mere chivalry? Is his sister pulling his strings re VAWA? Like Patty Hearst has he been brainwashed to believe the lies of his youth and political captors? Or, along with one or more of those possibilities is Biden simply a political opportunist who sold his soul a long time ago to radical feminism in return for their support to higher political office than the Senate? Who knows? I don’t, but he clearly has little or no regard for the untold thousands of families, men, women, and children devastated by arguably one of the most debilitating pieces of legislation ever signed into law, VAWA, even if he’s a true believer in DV Industry hyperbole.

Conservative columnist Carey Roberts in The ABA Goes to the Dark Side wrote,

“The domestic violence industry is one of the most corrupt and unaccountable enterprises in modern-day America. Every year it sucks over $1 billion from the federal treasury and ships the money to a variety of radical feminist organizations dedicated to revamping the family unit… the Violence Against Women Act, domestic violence programs encourage women to file false allegations, strip fit fathers of their natural right to parent, and doom kids to live in a single-parent household…”

Robert’s sentiments are confirmed by a host of others including the highly regarded international organization Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) and it’s over 70 co-sponsoring organizations from around the world. For over two years RADAR has been investigating and reporting on VAWA and the devastating impact of this truly ill conceived and corrupt legislation.

In a series of investigative reports RADAR found that (1) VAWA funds immigration fraud costs the American taxpayers $170 million a year (2) VAWA funded programs were riddled with malfeasance and mismanagement with some workers earning well over $100,000 per year (3) over a million false restraining orders are issued each and every year – the latter of which turns untold numbers of extended families into wrecking ball rubble.

Professor Stephen Baskerville in his 2002 article Fathers Under Siege: No Restraint on Restraining Orders wrote:

 “The real purpose of restraining orders is not so much to prevent violence as to eliminate one parent during divorce proceedings. This is now common knowledge in legal circles.”

 Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association, writes that

 “[A]llegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage” in divorce courts and that restraining orders are doled out like candy. Everyone knows that restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply… the facts have become irrelevant.”

 Just this year RADAR’s “Reform VAWA Now” campaign was instrumental in stopping one of Senator’s Biden’s most recent assaults on the family, men, women, and children – the National Domestic Violence Volunteer Attorney Act (NDVVAA).

The NDVVAA would have provided tens of millions of dollars to DV Industry operatives for training 100,000 attorneys to help abused women; that is, instill into the attorneys psyche anti-male radical feminist ideology. Fully supported by the horrendously pro-women and anti-male American Bar Association the NDVVAA would have been a huge boon to DV Industries, including creating jobs for new feminist warrior attorneys armed with undergraduate degrees in women studies; or, more aptly, WoMEN StuDIEs.

It was reported by a Congressional staffer to RADAR representatives that the defeat of the NDVVAA was a first; that generally any pro-women legislation sails through with overwhelming partisan support.

Thanks in large part to radical feminism’s war on men and politicians like champ Biden the DV Industry is now one of America’s biggest exports. In England women who kill abusive partners in cold blood could escape a murder conviction with yet another abuse-excuse if they prove they simply feared more violence, but not men. Sociologist Jiri Burianek, co-author of a domestic violence survey and head of the sociology studies at Prague’s Charles University Faculty of Arts, said “… surveys conducted abroad showing that both genders have more or less equal experience with domestic violence have been warning us for a long time men are often more vulnerable than women since there is actually nobody to help them, while women have dozens of non-profit organizations to protect them… Men have nobody to turn to…” In Britain the Ipswich Evening Star reported a 20% increase of abused men. This year the Subcommittee on the Family Crisis in Israel ignited a stormy clash between government representatives and rights groups. In India men’s rights groups say they are tormented by vicious and vengeful women misusing pro-women laws. Sweden, Denmark, Norway all have commissions to abolish domestic violence against women, but not men. Thorkild Vestergaard-Hansen, who heads Mandecentret said, “It’s crazy that the men’s crisis centres don’t receive the same amount of subsidies as the 40 or so women’s shelters.” In Costa Rica a man can be tossed out of his own home by his wife or girlfriend merely alleging abuse, like raising his voice. A police officer said: “Women in Costa Rica are taking advantage of this new law. They throw out their boyfriend and then steal their things and leave” – just like Anywhere, America, no evidence required. Among many other countries, Ghana has “Domestic Violence Victim Support Units ”, but this third world country seems to be getting it right. When asked if the Domestic Violence Bill has helped, a program representative said, “[Y]es and no because the bill is gender neutral so it is there to protect everybody, but without resources like education and money, the office can do little to make a real difference for victims of domestic violence…”

The situation in the Czech Republic reminded me of attending volunteer training for President Bush’s first Family Justice Center which opened in San Diego a few years back. About a dozen senior Czech judges were touring the new facility.  I believe Ms. Gael Strack, Center Director, chaperoned. She began introducing the various judges to the several of us in the training session as well as to the trainers. I was last to be introduced. Gael cleared her throat, thought how best to introduce me, and said something like, “And this is Harry Crouch – men’s rights advocate, and President of the San Diego Chapter of the National Coalition of Free Men.”

The one male judge in the group said something indiscernible in Czech, developed a tremendously broad smile, rose on tiptoes high above his shorter female counterparts, extended his arm as high as he could stretch it, enthusiastically waived back and forth a thumbs-up like he’d just discovered a long lost best friend was still alive, and loudly proclaimed, “RIGHT ON!” Everyone gasped, chuckled, laughed, and for the briefest of time our opposing views wondrously blended with humanity across geographic and ideological boundaries.

Moving on, if Biden has his way gender inclusive programs like Ghana’s will be dead before they have a chance to spread meaningful solutions throughout the world. Last year Biden introduced the “groundbreaking” International Violence Against Women Act offering to export even more destruction.

Biden is passionate about his blatant gender bias. Listen to his “End Domestic Violence” speech found at the bottom of the page at “On a more personal note” in which Biden loudly babbles,

“If I could change the attitudes of anyone I wouldn’t change the attitudes of men – but women, to understand that no man has the right to raise his hand to any woman under any circumstances – any, none, none, none, NONE!”

I’d like to see Biden explain that to the abused men I work with almost every day, including a man who was getting ready to go on a motorcycle ride with his brother, sister-in-law, and friend when his Karate trained wife stormed in with closed fist and landed a haymaker to his chin, pushed him against a wall, kneed him five times in the groin, and left deep cuts and welts on his neck and face when trying to gouge out his eyes. Culturally brainwashed like Biden and the rest of us guys, he did not hit her, though had he done so he may not have been so seriously injured. She was arrested, not prosecuted, and received no sanctions whatsoever – typical. The San Diego City Attorney’s Office found witness declarations not credible. Both his brother and sister-in-law are highly respected medical doctors. His brother also has a law degree. Both witnessed the beating and submitted their “not credible” declarations. Had the roles been reversed the husband might now be in prison, all thanks to VAWA and ilk.

While it’s a stretch, under the circumstances I wonder how Biden would feel about a male soldier taking down a female suicide bomber to stop mass murder, a worse form of domestic violence for sure.

How about woman-on-woman violence? If you read Ristock you discover such wicked women are really creative in their forms of abuse, disgustingly so. How come we don’t hear Biden passionately saying “…no woman has the right to raise her hand to any woman under any circumstances – any, none, none, none, NONE!” Or, no woman has the right to raise her hand to a man, a child… How come he doesn’t talk about that if he’s truly interested in ending domestic violence? How come, indeed?

Shouldn’t we change the attitudes of everyone – men, women, Biden and ilk – to understand that no person has the right to raise his hand to anyone else except in self-defense, regardless of gender? Indeed, we should.

Oh, and the National Organization of Women’s (NOW) Defense and Education Fund, their legal advocacy organization dedicated to advancing the rights of women and girls, along with NOW proper, apparently wrote VAWA. Biden championed the monster after his staff drafted the misandric work into a piece of legislation. He is not the author of VAWA as he claims; only the royal messenger turned chivalrous champion; or, fool, to the substantial detriment of humankind.

Fool-noun (1) a person who lacks judgment or sense (2) a person who has been tricked or deceived into appearing or acting silly or stupid: to make a fool of someone (3) an ardent enthusiast who cannot resist an opportunity to indulge an enthusiasm: He’s usually a dancing fool.

Biden still doesn’t get it – violence is not gender specific. And, he may yet become President. Dance on Mr. Biden, dance on…

Harry Crouch

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Tags: Biden, domestic violence, joe biden, national coalition for men, ncfm, vawa, violence against women act, vp biden