Father’s Rights and Violence Against Women
by Dr. Michael Flood
In this talk, I’m going to focus on the ‘fathers’ rights’ movement, and their impact on violence against women.
Introduction: The fathers’ rights movement
The fathers’ rights movement is defined by the claim that fathers are deprived of their ‘rights’ and subjected to systematic discrimination as men and fathers, in a system biased towards women and dominated by feminists. Fathers’ rights groups overlap with men’s rights groups and both represent an organised backlash to feminism. Fathers’ rights and men’s rights groups can be seen as the anti-feminist wing of the men’s movement, the network of men’s groups and organisations mobilised on gender issues (Flood, 1998).
Two experiences bring most men (and women) to the fathers’ rights movement. The first is deeply painful marriage breakups and custody battles. Fathers’ rights groups are characterised by anger and blame directed at ex-partners and the ‘system’ that has deprived men or fathers of their ‘rights’, and such themes are relatively common among men who have undergone separation and divorce. The second experience is non-resident fathers’ dissatisfaction with loss of contact with their children or with regimes of child support.
The fathers’ rights movement focuses on trying to re-establish fathers’ authority and control over their children’s and ex-partners’ lives, on gaining an equality concerned with fathers’ ‘rights’ and status rather than the actual care of children, and on winding back legal and cultural changes which have lessened gender inequalities.
Fathers’ rights groups are well-organised advocates for changes in family law, and vocal opponents of feminist perspectives and achievements on interpersonal violence.
Impact of the fathers’ rights movement on violence against women
The fathers’ rights movement has had four forms of impact on violence against women.
Priviledging contact over safety
Most importantly, the fathers’ rights movement has influenced family law, with damaging consequences for women, children, and indeed men. Above all, fathers’ contact with children has been privileged, over children’s safety from violence. [See The Custody Scam, the story of Dawn Axsom, Child Abuse: When Family Courts Get it Wrong, Letter to Judge from Jury foreman regarding prosecution of mother trying to protect her children from abusive father, or watch the PBS documentary Breaking The Silence; Children’s Stories at the bottom of this post.–Deborrah]
An uncritical assumption that children’s contact with both parents is necessary now pervades the courts and the media. The Family Court’s new principle of the ‘right to contact’ is overriding its principle of the right to ‘safety from violence’. The Court now is more likely to make interim orders for children’s unsupervised contact in cases involving domestic violence or child abuse, to use hand-over arrangements rather than suspend contact until trial, and to make orders for joint residence where there is a high level of conflict between the separated parents and one parent strongly objects to shared residence.
The fathers’ rights movement has been unsuccessful in achieving its key goal of a rebuttable presumption of children’s joint residence after separation. However, other changes in family law and government policy over the last two years have reflected its influence. Recent reforms mean that greater numbers of parents who are the victims of violence will be subject to further violence and harassment by abusive ex-partners, while children will face a greater requirement to have contact with abusive or violent parents.
Current government policy echoes many of the key themes of the fathers’ rights movement. Both government policy and many fathers’ rights groups are guided by two central, and mistaken, assumptions: that all children see contact with both parents as in their best interests in every case, and that a violent father is better than no father at all (DVIRC, 2005, pp. 5-6). Both bodies talk of ‘conflict’ rather than violence, neglect violence as a legitimate issue for the courts and family services to address, emphasise mediation and counseling as solutions, and focus on punishing women for making false allegations or breaching contact orders.
Discrediting victims
The second impact the fathers’ rights movement has had on violence against women is in discrediting victims. Fathers’ rights groups tell two key lies.
First, fathers’ rights groups tell the lie that women routinely make false accusations of child abuse to gain advantage in family law proceedings and to arbitrarily deny their ex-partners’ access to the children.
Second, fathers’ rights groups tell the lie that women routinely make up allegations of domestic violence to gain advantage in family law cases and use protection orders to remove men from their homes or deny contact with children rather than out of any real experience or fear of violence.
I have written detailed critiques of these first two lies, and they are available both online and in the latest issue of the Australian journal Women Against Violence. I can send copies to anyone who wishes.
Men’s versus women’s violence (Impact on perceptions of intimate violence)
Related to this, the fathers’ rights movement also has had some impact on public perceptions of intimate violence. In particular, it tells the lie that domestic violence is gender-equal or gender-neutral – that men and women assault each other at equal rates and with equal effects.
While I’ve called this a lie, this is one claim for which there is some academic support.
To support the claim that domestic violence is gender-symmetrical, advocates draw almost exclusively on studies using a measurement tool called the Conflict Tactics Scale. The CTS situates domestic violence within the context of “family conflict”. It asks one partner in a relationship whether, in the last year, they or their spouse have ever committed any of a range of violent acts. CTS studies generally find gender symmetries in the use of violence in relationships. There are three problems with the use made of such studies by fathers’ rights activists.
First, men’s rights and fathers’ rights groups make only selective use of this data, as CTS authors themselves reject efforts to argue that women’s violence against men is as common or as harmful as men’s violence against women (Kimmel 2001, p. 22).
Second, there are methodological problems with the Conflict Tactics Scale. The CTS is widely criticized for not gathering information about the intensity, context, consequences or meaning of the action. The CTS ignores who initiates the violence (when women are more likely to use violence in self-defense), assumes that violence is used expressively (e.g. in anger) and not instrumentally (to ‘do’ power or control), omits violent acts such as sexual abuse, stalking and intimate homicide, ignores the history of violence in the relationship, neglects the question of who is injured, relies on only one partner’s reports despite poor interspousal reliability, and omits incidents after separation and divorce, which is a time of increased danger for women.
Third, a wide range of other data find marked gender asymmetries in domestic violence. For example, crime victimization studies based on large-scale aggregate data, household and crime surveys, police statistics, and hospital data all show that men assault their partners and ex-partners at rates several times the rate at which women assault theirs and that female victims greatly outnumber male victims (Tjaden & Thoennes 2000, pp. 25-26).
Feminist and other scholars have worked to reconcile the conflicting findings of these bodies of data. One important insight is the recognition of different patterns of violent behaviour in couples and relationships. Some heterosexual relationships suffer from occasional outbursts of violence by either husbands or wives during conflicts, what some (Johnson 1995, 284-285) call “common couple violence”.
Here, the violence is relatively minor, both partners practise it, it is expressive in meaning, it tends not to escalate over time, and injuries are rare. In situations of “patriarchal terrorism” on the other hand, one partner (usually the man) uses violence and other controlling tactics to assert or restore power and authority. The violence is more severe, it is asymmetrical, it is instrumental in meaning, it tends to escalate, and injuries are more likely.
CTS studies are only a weak measure of levels of minor ‘expressive’ violence in conflicts among heterosexual couples. They are poorer again as a measure of ‘instrumental’ violence, in which one partner uses violence and other tactics to assert power and authority (Johnson 1995, 284–285).
There is no doubt that men are the victims of domestic violence. Men experience domestic violence at the hands of female and male sexual partners, ex-partners, and other family members.
A growing body of research tells us that there are important contrasts in women’s and men’s experiences of domestic violence. Women are far more likely than men to be subjected to frequent, prolonged, and extreme violence, to sustain injuries, to fear for their lives, and to be sexually assaulted (Kimmel 2001, 19; Bagshaw et al. 2000). Men subjected to domestic violence by women rarely experience post-separation violence and have more financial and social independence. Female perpetrators of domestic violence are less likely and less able than male perpetrators to use nonphysical tactics to maintain control over their partners (Swan & Snow 2002, 291-292).
Women’s physical violence towards intimate male partners is often in self-defense (DeKeseredy et al. 1997; Hamberger et al. 1994; Swan & Snow 2002, 301; Muelleman & Burgess 1998, 866). On the other hand, women’s intimate violence can also be motivated by efforts to show anger, a desire for attention, retaliation for emotional hurt, and so on (Hamberger et al. 1994). It is inadequate to explain women’s violence simply in terms of their own oppression and powerlessness, and naïve to assume that women are immune from using violence to gain or maintain power in relationships (Russo 2001, 16-19).
Men are likely to under-estimate and under-report their subjection to domestic violence by women (George 1994, 149; Stockdale 1998, 63). There is no evidence however that male victims are more likely to under-report than female victims. In fact, men tend to over-estimate their partner’s violence and under-estimate their own, while women do the reverse (Kimmel 2001, 10-11).
The fathers’ rights movement’s attention to domestic violence against men is not motivated by a genuine concern for male victimisation, but by political agendas concerning family law, child custody and divorce (Kaye & Tolmie 1998, pp. 53-57). This is evident in two ways.
First, the fathers’ rights movement focuses on this violence when the great majority of the violence inflicted on men is not by female partners or ex-partners but by other men. Australian crime victimisation surveys find that less than one percent of violent incidents among men is by partners or ex-partners, compared to one-third of incidents among women (Ferrante et al. 1996, 104). Boys and men are most at risk of physical harm from other boys and men.
Second, the fathers rights’ movement seeks to erode the protections available to victims of domestic violence and to bolster the rights and freedoms of alleged perpetrators, and this harms female and male victims of domestic violence alike. I turn to this now.
Protecting perpetrators and undermining supports for victims
The fourth way in which the fathers’ rights movement has had an impact on violence against women is in its efforts to modify responses to the victims and perpetrators of violence.
The fathers’ rights movement has sought to wind back the protections afforded to the fictitious ‘victims’ of violence and to introduce legal penalties for their dishonest and malicious behavior. The Lone Fathers’ Association and other groups argue that claims of violence or abuse should be made on oath, they should require police or hospital records, and people making allegations which are not then substantiated, and those who’ve helped them, should be subject to criminal prosecution. They call for similar limitations to do with protection orders.
Fathers’ rights groups also attempt to undermine the ways in which domestic violence is treated as criminal behavior. They emphasise the need to keep the family together, call for the greater use of mediation and counseling, and reject pro-arrest policies.
Such changes would represent a profound erosion of the protections and legal redress available to the victims of violence and the ease with which they and their advocates can seek justice. This agenda betrays the fact that the concern for male victims of domestic violence often professed by fathers’ rights groups is rhetorical rather than real. While such groups purport to advocate on behalf of male victims of domestic violence, they seek to undermine the policies and services that would protect and gain justice for these same men.
Fathers’ rights groups often respond to issues of domestic and sexual violence from the point of view of the perpetrator. And they respond in the same way as actual male perpetrators: they minimise and deny the extent of this violence, blame the victim, and explain the violence as a mutual or reciprocal process (Hearn, 1996, p. 105).
This sympathy for perpetrators is evident in other ways too. Fathers’ rights advocates have expressed sympathy or justification for men who use violence against women and children in the context of family law proceedings. And, ironically, they use men’s violence to demonstrate how victimised men are by the family law system (Kaye & Tolmie, 1998a, pp. 57-58).
Members of fathers’ rights groups also act as direct advocates for alleged perpetrators of violence against women. For example, one group distributes pamphlets for ‘victims of a false AVO’, giving no attention to how to respond to ‘true’ perpetrators of violence nor to the safety of family members.
Fathers’ rights groups also attack media and community campaigns focused on men’s violence against women, call for the de-funding and abolition of what they call the “domestic violence industry”, and engage in the harassment of community sector and women’s organisations which respond to the victims of violence.
Other, positive responses by men: The White Ribbon Campaign
This is all pretty depressing news. In this context, I’ve been especially heartened to see a growing positive response by men, in alliance with women, to help stop violence against women. I will focus on one such response.
White Ribbon Day is the largest effort by men across the world, working in partnership with women, to end men’s violence against women. White ribbons are worn on the day by men to show their concern about violence against women, and by women who are supporting men. It takes place on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
In Australia, White Ribbon Day is organised in part by UNIFEM, a women’s organisation, but it is conducted in partnership with men and men’s organisations. The White Ribbon Campaign focuses on the positive roles that men can play in helping to stop violence against women.
To find out more, visit the website: http://www.whiteribbonday.org.au/
Conclusion
To continue our efforts to prevent violence, several strategies are necessary.
We must continue to respond effectively to those who’ve experienced this violence, the coalface work that some of you already do.
We must continue to keep the issue of violence against women on the public agenda.
We must step up efforts to engage men in positive ways, building partnerships with supportive men and men’s groups. We must confront, or sidestep, the dangerous ambitions and dishonest claims of the men’s and fathers’ rights backlash.
The achievements of the father’s rights movement are already putting women, children and indeed men at greater risk of violence and abuse. The fathers’ rights movement has exacerbated our culture’s systematic silencing and blaming of victims of violence and hampered efforts to respond effectively to the victims and perpetrators of violence.
However, the new politics of fatherhood has not been entirely captured by the fathers’ rights movement. There is potential to foster men’s positive and non-violent involvement in parenting and families. Key resources for realising the progressive potential of contemporary fatherhood politics include the widespread imagery of the nurturing father, community intolerance for violence against women, growing policy interest in addressing divisions of labour in child care and domestic work, and men’s own investments in positive parenting.
However, thwarting the fathers’ rights movement’s backlash requires that we directly confront the movement’s agenda, disseminate critiques of its false accusations, and respond in constructive and accountable ways to the fathers (and mothers) undergoing separation and divorce (Flood, 2004, pp 274-278).
Beating the backlash
The following are some of the political strategies we can use to help beat the fathers’ rights backlash.
Discredit fathers’ rights groups. Emphasise that they;
- Are interested only in reducing their financial obligations to their children;
- Are interested only in extending or regaining power and authority over ex-partners and children.
- Do nothing to increase men’s actual share of childcare / parenting or men’s positive involvement in parenting both before and after separation.
- Collude with perpetrators of violence against women and children, protect and advocate for perpetrators, or are perpetrators.
- Produce critiques of their lies and their strategies which are credible and accessible.
- Co-opt the new politics of fatherhood;
- Support positive efforts to respond to separated fathers. (And emphasise that FR groups fix men in anger and blame, rather than helping them to heal.)
- Build on men’s desires to be involved (and nonviolent) parents.
- Find alternative male voices: supportive men and men’s / fathers’ networks and groups.
‘Speaking as a father…’
Tell women’s stories
Atrocity tales: Stories of abuse and inequality.
In letters, submissions, on talkback, etc.
(But beware of the ways in which these can (a) portray women only as victims, (b) homogenise and essentialise women’s (diverse) experiences of violence, and (c) undermine credibility and support. )
Find and nurture male allies: in government, the community sector, academic, etc.
More widely, we must continue do the work of violence prevention: to undermine the beliefs and values which support violence, challenge the power relations which sustain and are sustained by violence, and promote alternative constructions of gender and sexuality which foster non-violence and gender justice.
Contact the Author:
Dr Michael Flood
Postdoctoral Fellow
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS)
La Trobe University
E-mail: michael.flood[at]anu.edu.au
PO Box 4026, Ainslie ACT, 2602
Presentation in Panel, “Myths, Misconceptions, and the Men’s Movement”, at Conference, Refocusing Women’s Experiences of Violence, Sydney, 14-16 September.
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Category: Men's Issues
Straus 2007, CONFLICT TACTICS SCALES
The CTS is both the most widely used measure of family violence and also the most widely criticized. Extensive critical examination is appropriate for any widely used instrument because, if the instrument is wrong, then a great deal of research will also be wrong. In the case of the CTS, however, the most frequent criticisms reflect ideological differences rather than empirical evidence. Specifically, many feminist scholars reject the CTS because studies using this instrument find that about the same percentage of women as men assault their partners. This contradicts the feminist theory that partner violence is almost exclusively committed by men as a means to dominate women, and is therefore taken as prima facie evidence that the CTS is not valid. Ironically, the fact that the CTS has provided some of the best evidence confirming the link between male dominance and partner violence and other key aspects of feminist theory of partner violence (Coleman and Straus 1990; Straus 1994) has not shaken the belief that the CTS is invalid.
Another irony is that despite these denuncifications, many feminist researchers use the CTS. However, having used the CTS, they reaffirm their feminist credentials by routinely inserting a paragraph repeating some of the erroneous criticisms. These criticisms are then cited in other articles as though they were empirical evidence showing the invalidity of the CTS, whereas there is only endless repetition of the same invalidated opinions.
PROCESSES EXPLAINING THE CONCEALMENT AND DISTORTION OF EVIDENCE ON GENDER SYMMETRY IN PARTNER VIOLENCE
In this paper, Murray A Strauss lists the different ways in which feminist activists deliberately distort and conceal evidence in order to create the false impression that men are more violent to their partners than women.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V74-gender-symmetry-with-gramham-Kevan-Method%208-.pdf
FReaks need to put on leashes…build your own shelters…maybe Sacks or Holstein can help you out…or maybe Warren Farrell can make room by unloading some of his 1977 issue of Penthouse and give you a SAFE place to stay…just do not bring any underage females.
Here are some recent statistics on DV that many of you may find interesting- especially ideologues who get their information from the feminisms disinformation machine. These findings donâ??t really get jibe with what feminists have been saying for the past forty five years – but then, truth and feminists â??statisticsâ?? were never too well acquainted.
http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 247 scholarly investigations: 188 empirical studies and 59 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 240,200.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm?type=n
SUMMARY: A 32-nation study of violence against dating partners by university partners found that about a third had been violent, and most incidents of partner violence involve violence by both the man and woman, according to Murray Straus, founder and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. The second largest category was couples where the female partner was the only one to carry about physical attacks, not the male partner. Strausâ?? new research also found that dominance by the female partner is even more closely related to violence by women than is male dominance. These results call into question the widely held belief that partner violence is primarily a male crime and that when women are violent it is self defense.
Also see:
http://news.ufl.edu/2006/07/13/women-attackers/
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/pdfs/Intimate_Partner.pdf
Guys! Do not get married. Do not cohabitate. Do not procreate.
Don’t give modern feminism what it needs to survive….YOU!
Step back, drop out and let them and their beloved anti-male divorce courts, family courts and domestic violence industry die a miserable death.
Krigsman.Inc
The KKK and Father’s Rights are the same group of people. FR groups try to befriend the weak Negro man so that they can continue to get away with treating all women like dogs, and then they turn around and shit on everybody (that means, their new Black men friends, too).
Father’s rights activists claim that they were successful in destroying the documentary “Breaking The Silence: Children’s Stories”, but they weren’t as successful as their bragging indicates.
PBS in the end came out in support of the documentary. Sadly, the producers of “Breaking The Silence” were under so much pressure and received so much hate mail from angry and abusive father’s rights activists that they edited the portion of their documentary with Sadiya Allilre and her daughter, Fatima Loelinger. The only reason they saw fit to edit was that they were under attack by malicious thugs.
Here is Fatima’s statement describing abuse heaped upon her by her father. Father’s rights activists prefer to ignore a girl’s own personal statements about abuse she suffered. They refused to believe her. And they claim to be concerned about children’s safety and welfare. Far from it.
http://www.courageouskids.net/stories/fatima.htm
Here is what really happened regarding “Breaking The Silence: Children’s Stories”. Keep in mind that this documentary was about children speaking out about abuse they experienced at the hands of their fathers. Father’s rights activists didn’t believe any of them. Typical.
http://www.florida-family-lawyers.com/trishwilson/breaking_the_silence.html
PBS Final Statement Supportive Of “Breaking The Silence: Children’s Stories”
PBS’s final statement is out. It supports “Breaking The Silence”.
The documentary was not seen by PBS as being one-sided and lacking balance, as fathers’ rights activists have claimed it is. There was also no mention of one of the mothers in the documentary being an alleged abuser, which was a big sticking point for fathers’ rights activists, in particular Glenn Sacks. There were no problems seen with the people who had been interviewed.
This part is very interesting – Glenn Sacks is crowing about PBS’s final statement on his web site, but he doesn’t post the entire statement. He only quoted from the last paragraph about a new documentary being made.
He can’t post the entire statement because it so clearly comes out in support of “Breaking The Silence”. Sacks put his name behind the biggest protest against the documentary, and especially against Sadiya Alilire, whom he and numerous fathers’ rights activists claimed was the “real” abuser. PBS did not come to the same conclusion about Alilire. PBS concluded that “[i]n stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts.” No mention of one of the mothers interviewed being a “child abuser” or abuser herself. Sacks wouldn’t dare post the entire statement because it would show that fathers’ rights activists – in particular, himself – were not successful in getting “Breaking The Silence” discredited as poorly-researched, biased material. PBS clearly stated that the documentary was neither. PBS found the documentary to be “open-minded” and “fair”.
PBS wrote that “[t]he producers approached the topic with the open mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists. Their research was extensive and supports the conclusions drawn in the program.” PBS supports the documentary.
PBS also concluded that the topic is very complex, and was perhaps not best described using first-person stories that the documentary used, especially in describing Parental Alienation Syndrome. Please note that PBS stated that “the documentary’s “first-person story telling approach” did not allow the depth of the producers’ research to be as evident to the viewer as it could have been.” This means that PBS agrees that producers’ presentation of PAS as junk science was supported by research, but the way it chose to describe PAS didn’t make it as clear to viewers as it could have been.
It has commissioned an hour-long documentary to delve more deeply into these kinds of custody cases, PAS, and family issues.
Fathers’ rights activists are taking this as a big win, but that’s not the case. The topic is going to get further, more in-depth analysis. That doesn’t mean that fathers’ rights activists will be able to force PBS to air their propaganda. I’d welcome the fathers’ rights garbage be presented in a documentary where the other side – the side with the facts and valid research behind it – will make them look even more petty, vindictive, and stupid than they already look.
This final statement is actually good news for the supporters of “Breaking The Silence”. Here’s the final statement:
PBS STATEMENT RE: BTS
Breaking The Silence: Children’s Stories (BTS) chronicles the impact of domestic violence on children and the recurring failings of family courts across the country to protect them from their abusers. In stark and often poignant interviews, children and battered mothers tell their stories of abuse at home and continued trauma within the courts. The producers approached the topic with the open mindedness and commitment to fairness that we require of our journalists. Their research was extensive and supports the conclusions drawn in the program. Funding from the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation met PBS’s underwriting guidelines; the Foundation had no editorial influence on program content.
However, the program would have benefited from more in-depth treatment of the complex issues surrounding child custody and the role of family courts and most specifically the provocative topic of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Additionally, the documentary’s “first-person story telling approach” did not allow the depth of the producers’ research to be as evident to the viewer as it could have been.
PBS has received a substantial body of analysis and documentation from both supporters of the documentary and its critics.
It is clear to us that this complex and important issue would benefit from further examination. To that end, PBS will commission an hour-long documentary for that purpose. Plans call for the documentary to be produced and broadcast in Spring 2006. We expect that the hour-long treatment of the subject will allow ample opportunity for doctors, psychologists, judges, parent advocates and victims of abuse to have their perspectives shared, challenged and debated.
Holstein and Sacks are disgusting examples of their gender…they promote hate of women and also the pro-pedophile Warren Farrel…do you think that WE all forgot about that Penthouse magazine interview your buddy did?? If so..you can find the TRUTH here!
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fathers/farrell.htm
because NONE of you would recognize the truth if it hit you in the face.
natl coalition for men?? how completely and utterly ridiculous! thats like having a natl org of white people..oh yea they do…its called the KKK! flippin fools
Here is an FYI for those who read this article and watched the video. Truthfulness is greatly diminshed in this piece. Here is the real story about “Breaking the Silence”:
PBS Portrays Known Child Abuser as Hero
Juvenile Court Found Mother Culpable of Multiple Acts of Child Abuse
Fatherhood advocates have publicly revealed extensive court findings, records and testimony that indicate that Sadia Loeliger–portrayed as a heroic mom in a recent, nationally-broadcast PBS documentary–abused children under her care. A Tulare County Juvenile Court concluded in August of 1998 that Sadia Loeliger had committed multiple acts of abuse, and adjudged both her daughters as dependents of the Juvenile Court.
Sadia Loeliger and her 16 year-old daughter Fatima were key figures in PBS’s Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories. The film purports to detail an alleged crisis of fit mothers losing custody of their children to violent husbands in divorce. In the film, Sadia is portrayed as the victim of anti-mother bias in family courts.
The documents were revealed by Los Angeles-based newspaper columnist Glenn Sacks, who has helped lead a protest of the show, and Scott Loeliger, Fatima’s father who was divorced from Sadia in 1991. According to Sacks:
“It’s amazing that PBS and the filmmakers decided–despite repeated warnings–to nationally televise Sadia and her claims. Not only were there clear Juvenile Court findings of her abuse of Fatima and also of Fatima’s cousin Sara, who lived with Sadia, but we have extensive testimony from Sadia’s babysitter, Sara, and several mental health professionals about Sadia’s violence. The filmmakers put a child [Fatima] in an extremely difficult position.”
Doris Nava Arellano, Sadia’s babysitter for 18 months, testified that “every child in the house is afraid” of Sadia and that “Sara actually has scars on the back of her legs and on the left side of her head from Ms. Ali-Loeliger’s attacks on her.”
Sara, then aged 15, penned a desperate letter detailing the abuse she suffered at Sadia’s hands, writing “she hits in front of anyone anywhere with anything. I fear for my life sometimes. Just recently she hit me in the head.”
In the documents Sadia is portrayed by numerous mental health, judicial and investigative authorities as violent and abusive towards the children under her care.
A child abuse investigator for Tehama County wrote that Fatima, then age eight, “says she is afraid to go home because she fears being hit again. She also expressed concern for the two other female minors in her mother’s residence.”
A therapist who conducted investigations for Shasta County Child Protective Services wrote that Fatima “told me she did not want to go home because she was afraid her mother was going to hit her.”
Another therapist wrote “On two separate occasions this child reported to me that she was burned ‘with a match’ by her mother, Sadia Ali Loeliger….I am extremely concerned regarding this child’s welfare.”
Among the documents revealed are a series of letters, written to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Breaking the Silence co-producers Tatge-Lasseur Productions and Connecticut Public Broadcasting, informing them of Sadia’s history of child abuse. The letters were written earlier this year by Scott Loeliger, a Northern California physician, and his attorney Dennis Roberts. They asked that footage of Scott’s daughter Fatima be excluded from the film. Despite this, PBS went forward with the broadcast, including the sections featuring Sadia and Fatima.
Breaking the Silence is already the source of considerable controversy. At the instigation of Sacks, Fathers and Families, Help Stop PAS Inc., the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, and others, PBS and its affiliates have been flooded with over 10,000 calls and letters protesting the show. Sacks calls the show a “direct assault on fatherhood” which “portrays fathers as batterers and child molesters who steal children from their mothers.”
Holstein, President of Fathers and Families, says:
“A few groups are concerned about the accelerating trend towards joint custody of children, and are striking back by accusing most fathers who seek custody of being batterers and child abusers. It’s a shame PBS has dispensed with objective reporting and chosen to air an extremist point of view without looking at the political motives of the advocates it features.”
Sacks adds:
“It’s a shame they didn’t check the backgrounds of the mothers they chose to lionize more carefully, too.”
As one that they would call a FEMINAZI and yet believe that I would hit or be violent towards my husband…the only thing that I beat on him is his cock…you mens rights activists are truly abhorrent and gross….
“Once again the feminist lobby, the domestic violence industry, the anti-father, anti-husband socialist man-haters who make up the justice system and run the country,”
Isn’t that about the silliest thing you’ve ever read?
Men are women are equally CAPABLE of violence just as Whites and are equally capable of racism (well, not exactly, as far as the power aspect is concerned). It is the REALITY that really bites the big one.
That reality, screams on http://domesticviolencenews.blogspot.com
No argument needed
It should be noted that ALL studies (including those found at the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center) that supposedly “prove” that men and women are equally abusive rely on the very same grossly flawed Conflict Tactic Scales that Dr. Flood criticized (rightly) in his article. Women are not abusing men at the same rates men abuse women. That myth has been discredited a long time ago.
If father’s and men’s rights activists are really all that concerned with abused men they would apply for grants to open their own battered men’s shelters and actually do something constructive to help battered men.
But, no, that’s not what they do.
Instead, they attack services and funding for battered women. That’s what father’s and men’s rights activists are really all about when it comes to addressing domestic violence – they seek to take away help for battered women, leaving them at the mercy of their abusers. It’s no surprise since there are so many abusive, controlling men in the father’s and men’s rights movements – as is evident by the hateful comments they are leaving here.
Dr. Katherine van Wormer, an expert on domestic violence, controlling and abusive men, and men that murder women was interviewed by advice columnist Deborrah Cooper on Saturday, December 5th on the issue of murder suicides and the reasons for the rapid and disturbing increase of these horrific crimes against women and children by men that claim to love them.
In spite of the postings both before and after this by men’s rights activists, the fact remains that men are murdering their estranged wives and girlfriends, along with the children of those unions in alarming numbers. What in the world makes these guys believe they have the right to take someone’s life just because they aren’t getting things the way they want?
Spoiled, selfish, angry, cowardly – a variety of adjectives comes to mind. None of them flattering and none that indicate that a man involved has his children’s best interest at heart. Otherwise, he wouldn’t beat on or kill their mother. Otherwise, he wouldn’t beat on or kill them either.
Click to listen to the broadcast entitled Murder Suicides – If I Can’t Have You…No One Will!”
Self-serving feminists and pandering chauvenists continue to ignore the reality of family violence and male victims.
National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center http://www.NFVLRC.org Policy Statement on Family Violence
“Reports from the WHO (Archer, 2006) also make it clear than in many countries around the world, particularly where women have little political or socioeconomic power, women represent the much larger share of IPV victims. However, the most reliable population of surveys indicate that in Western industrialized democracies such as the United States and Canada, where they enjoy higher status, women engage in physical aggression at rates comparable to men (Archer, 2000; Fiebert, 2004; Straus & Gelles, 1990) and are as likely or more likely to be the initiators (DeMaris, 1992; Morse, 1995; Dutton et al., 1999; Straus, 1993; Williams & Frieze, 2005).”
“Shernock’s (2005) analysis of over 2000 IPV incidents in Vermont revealed that men were categorized as perpetrators 3.2 times more often than women on the initial police report, but subsequently arrested 9 times as often. At issue is the extent to which this pattern of gender bias reflects flawed “dominant aggressor” guidelines and assumptions about IPV based on discredited sociopolitical theories of patriarchy”
“Victimized males do not have access to services because of the assumption that they are only minimally impacted by IPV, if at all. This assumption, however, runs contrary to an overwhelming body of research evidence. A significant minority of IPV-related physical injuries, between 25% and 43%, are incurred by men (Archer, 2000; Laroch, in preparation; Mirrlees-Black, 1999; Straus, 2004; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000), and men are the victims in nearly a quarter of intimate homicides (Rennison, 2003)”
same old pro-pedophiles commenting and showing the world what you really are! LMAO!
@ Anders:
Perhaps Elin should be thankful (hopefully) that Tiger didn’t bring home pubic crabs, herpes, and/or HIV to her. Sound like he had lots of opportunity to do so.