Girlfriend and I Cited for Domestic Battery

[cdwjava]

Er... what? Most domestic terrorists look more like Tim McVeigh than they do Abu Nidal. Even if we're talking GWOT, which of Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, and Richard Reid were Arabs, again? Assumptions like that can cause you to walk right by the most dangerous people, although it can keep us safe from Syrian musicians....

Uh huh ... but when you look at the aggregate totals of terrorists of all stripes, the non-Arabs pale in comparison. And I do not recall qualifying my very broad and generic comment regarding terrorists with the word "domestic".

In the case of Domestic Violence, according to the most recent NIBRS stats females are the victims of DV by more than 4 to 1. So, while this figure does not prove by inference that a male is guilty, it is an explanation as to why there is a presumption that the male is the guilty party. And, quite frankly, most the investigations we engage in tend to show that the male is the primary aggressor thus there is often a presumption of the male being the primary aggressor even if both parties might be equally to blame. However, pushing a man's buttons does not make the female to blame for being attacked, and very often this sort of excuse is the reason the male cites for committing the assault.

If there is a bias assuming males to be guilty of committing domestic violence more often than women it is as a result of experience. Fortunately, this board is not a court of law and we are each allowed to proceed based upon our biases and presumptions. And since none of us has all the facts, only one party's claims, we often have to fall back on generalities.

- Carl

[aardvarc]

And...domestic violence is a unique crime in several aspects.

One of the reasons that such an extreme degree of interventions is taken is because it's one of the few crimes that has an extraordinarily high level of upward progression. Committing DV once increases the odds that it'll happen again. A second occurrance more strongly predicts a third and so on. No one ever stole your car to death, no matter how much that car was worth, or shoplifted clothes to death, no matter how much they took - but domestic violence homicide can and certainly does escalate to the point where a victim is dead at the end of the day - number of prior incidents being one of the key predictive factors. Because of its escalating nature, all parties, from police, to advocates, to courts, have a big picture interest in preventing the pinnacle of domestic violence escalation - death. Most certainly women can be every bit as deadly as men - however, if we're specifically talking about deaths related to domestic violence, men murdering women far outnumber women murdering men; women who kill tend to do so methodically for money or advantage (poisoning and hiring contract killers being the statistically preferred method), while men tend to kill in the heat of the moment in rage (a firearm being the preferred method - used to kill not only the victim, but frequently for the perpetrator to kill themselves too). The PREVENTION of this dynamic is what the process, as flawed as easily manipulated as it may be, is intended to address. So every time you turn on the TV and see yet another (look around, there are several EVERY day in this country) man murder his wife/girlfriend/ex/baby's mama after a history of domestic violence, you can thank HIM for the system continuing to function as it does - because the behavior is still massively widespread. There's a very concrete reason why when a women is found dead that the husband/boyfriend/ex is the prime suspect right off the bat - because usually, they done it. When that dynamic changes and men start banding together to raise their children, to control their own beheviors, and to change the belief systems that lead to PREVENTING domestic violence at the same level that women banded together to get the system to REACT to domestic violence, things might change. Until then, the fact remains that the majority of death in domestic violence occurs at the hands of men, and thus ALL men facing ANY level of domestic violence charge pay the price under a system trying to avoid that end.

[fcel]

'When that dynamic changes and men start banding together to raise their children, to control their own beheviors, and to change the belief systems that lead to PREVENTING domestic violence at the same level that women banded together to get the system to REACT to domestic violence, things might change. '

What belief systems are you talking about?