Why don’t women matter?

I mean this in absolutely the bluntest of ways and I want answers.

Why don’t women matter?

We can have a President who has assaulted women, Harvey Weinstein is a thing and do you know what our death rate due to domestic violence is?

The thing about domestic violence…

Here’s the thing most people don’t realize about fatal domestic violence: it’s entirely preventable. I said it, I hope that stings on the shoulders of anyone who’s said “how did this happen?” after a tragic murder.

It happened because she reached out for help in some way and was ignored — she didn’t matter. And it’s not just the friends and family that ignored her, but the police, family court, often the criminal court, the child welfare system and more.

There is never not a red flag, a whistleblowing moment where systems could intervene appropriately. Systems don’t listen though. When you call 911 for a heart attack there’s a whole truck full of people armed with the knowledge to figure out if you are indeed having one and how to fix it. EMS arrives shortly after you call 911, and they assess you, and they try to fix it. But when you call because of domestic violence, you run the risk of being further abused by police, arrested, and losing your children… All because you want someone to stop abusing you.

Systems show us yet again that women don’t matter.

See domestic violence builds over time. To be defined as domestic violence, it has to be a pattern of violence between folks that have an intimate relationship. Domestic violence escalates. It can start out as verbal abuse, subtle words with big impacts, and escalate slowly or quickly to physical violence and potentially murder.

So, if there’s a predictable pattern, if that’s part of the definition of domestic violence, then every escalation to murder is entirely preventable. There are easily quantifiable red flags, in fact, there are multiple threat assessment scoring systems (LAP, MOSAIC) that will show you that the systems know those red flags. And that those red flags very reliably predict fatal domestic violence. If the systems know what the red flags are for fatal domestic violence, why aren’t they intervening when they see the red flags?…

Proving domestic violence in family court is about as easy as studying in law school, med school, and flight school simultaneously — I’d love to meet the person capable of that. In domestic violence cases in family court alone, we miss the mark about 74% of the time (Joan Meier, George Washington University). In those are 74% of cases, do you know what judges do? Family court judges give custody to abusive parents. Not the targeted parent who has saught safety.

Some who commit domestic violence will never commit murder, but all have the capacity to. The only thing that has worked to change those patterns is accountability — and that’s where the systems need to do their parts.

The very same systems meant to protect us ignore us and often harm us.

A woman at the scene of a domestic violence incident is often emotional, upset, traumatized. Well, if the woman happens to be the victim (I understand that men are victims too, often though men perpetrate out of anger and hatred, while women perpetrate out of fear — those are two very different motives) wouldn’t you expect a victim to be emotional, upset, traumatized? Yet that turns into histrionic in a courtroom, someone who can’t be believed, someone who’s voice doesn’t matter.

Figuring out the accusations a mom in a domestic violence case is being set up for is almost as predictable as patters of abusive behaviors. Often the accusations include histrionic, alienating, likes to exaggerate, wants to be the center of attention, is overly emotional, controlling, overly concerned…

Instead of hearing victims, the system spends a lot of time gaslighting and revictimizing. Instead of appropriately interpreting women coming forward, the system turns them into psychotic frauds and the men into their victims. The irony is about 2% of mothers lie in custody battles — so there’s no precedence for the almost automatic assumptions that happen.

My all-time favorite hyperbole that happens is when a victim of domestic abuse has applied for a confidential home address — as a result of the abuse that’s happened to them. Confidential home address programs are often applied for through domestic violence programs and are often a part of the safety planning process.

Many of the programs are run through the Secretary of State’s office — seems legit right? Well, not in Family Court. In Family Court, having a confidential address could mean that you’re homeless, hiding something, living somewhere in secret, many things that have nothing to do with the state-run program that provides safety to domestic violence victims.

Most often the consequence for having a confidential home address through the Secretary of State’s office is having it stripped from you in Family Court. Many abusers will attack this status as it impales their impervious integrity. And when they do, instead of supporting a victim, or even calling the confidential address program to ask questions and understand it better, Family Courts will often listen to an abusers manipulation of the truth around it (or their lawyers) and dismiss the need for the confidential address and demand the real address be turned over.

So not only are Family Courts missing the beat when it comes to stopping further domestic violence, they actually enable more domestic violence.

I hope you were paying attention to how women don’t matter in Family Court.

If it’s 2020, and equal rights is a thing that is real and exists, I just really want to know why we don’t matter? Why does a women’s need for safety, even when documented by extensive police reports and lengthy domestic violence assessments, end up trumped by an abuser’s desire to abuse them? Why is this happening in America on such a large scale that we are giving children to abusers, to be abused, 74% of the time (on a good day)?

I need to know. Why don’t women matter?