Impact Of Domestic Violence Laws On National Defense
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VAWA and variants on the "honey trap"
Domestic violence and abuse charges in Colorado Springs
Pentagon doesn't need an Office of Male Bashing
Feminist challenge to Secretary of Defense Rumsfield
Demographic data make it quite clear that at least two-thirds of the restraining orders and domestic violence charges in El Paso County are an abuse of process. State court data show that El Paso County has two-and-a-half times the number of domestic violence cases as comparable jurisdictions in Colorado and more than three times the number of cases predicted by NCVS estimates (see Table 39).
The military career of any man or woman with DV charges or a restraining order against them is over in this third largest bastion of military might in the United States, to say nothing of the many civilians who lose their security clearances and military contracts when charged with DV.
In October 2004 the Equal Justice Foundation had an opportunity to visit several local military bases and talk with a number of troops regarding problems they were having with domestic violence and abuse charges. The impact of these false allegations, and the accompanying persecution by the local district attorney with her Fast Track program, were all too painfully well known to the military and civilian personnel we spoke with.
These are a few examples of the horror stories we heard:
• An Air Force Master Sergeant had been stabbed by his raging, alcoholic wife. When he called the local police they came and arrested him. Although an Air Force investigation found that he was the victim, the local DA persecuted him for over six months. The civilian charges against him were only dropped when his wife died as a result of her alcoholism. We were extremely pleased when he told us that he' d found our DV against men web site a couple of months after being stabbed and how much it had helped him.
• An Army Sergeant First Class spoke to us about the violence of his ex-wife and the hell he went through before he could finally escape, and how no one would believe him, nor were there any support groups like the EJF for him at the time.
• An Army Sergeant, wearing a Combat Infantry Badge with a unit that got back from Iraq in the spring of 2004 and is being deployed again in March 2005, found his wife was having an affair. When she came back after being gone for 2 1/2 days he was naturally angry and they were apparently arguing in her car. Instead of letting her simply drive off he pulled on the emergency brake. Eventually she left to return to her lover. Eight hours later she called the police. The local DA then charged him with menacing, false imprisonment, and child abuse (their child was present during the argument). As we see all too often, his incompetent attorney is recommending he take a plea bargain. Of course that would end the sergeant's military service and destroy his life and child but the attorney would rake in an easy $1,500 bucks and the DA would have another win. Only the sergeant and the nation would lose while the local DA prosecutes and persecutes one more man for his wife's adultery. Roughly 50% of the hundreds of married men the EJF has heard from are charged with DV after they find their wife was having an affair. Though it must occur, we have not yet heard of a case where the husband became violent. The worst we hear of is the husband threatens the wife's lover, e.g., see the Emerson case, which is considered to be menacing for which the husband is to be punished.
• Another Air Force Master Sergeant told us of being falsely accused of domestic violence and having gone through three attorneys who all tried to sell him down the river with a plea bargain. Only when he found a fourth attorney, one the EJF recommends (Ted McClintock of the Liberty Law Center in Colorado Springs) was he able to get the false charges against him dismissed and save his career.
• An Army medic, a Staff Sergeant, spoke at length to us about the emotional abuse he suffered from his ex-wife, and the tantrums she' d throw. He was quite obviously still haunted by the experience.
• A civilian from the Pentagon visiting Peterson AFB told us how he wished he' d known about us last spring when he went through one of these nightmares.
Virtually all the command officers and NCO's we spoke with had one or more troops under their command in trouble with restraining orders or DV charges. Typically the troops in trouble are NCO's or junior officers, lieutenant through captain: the warfighters.
We were appalled to be confronted directly with so many cases of patently false accusations of domestic violence against military men among the tiny fraction of the local military commands we came in contact with. Clearly, the abuse of process occurring in domestic violence cases in Colorado's 4 th Judicial District has a very negative effect on our national defense.
The following article first appeared in MensNewsDaily.com on August 5, 2005
Probably one of the oldest tricks in gathering intelligence against an enemy or in espionage is the use of a "honey trap." In popular fiction a "honey trap" usually implies a woman entrapping businessmen, military men, and officials in sexual liaisons to retrieve intelligence. But in a broader sense a "honey trap" is slang for use of men or women in sexual situations to intimidate or snare others.
Often, particularly in wartime, it is as useful to simply prevent the target of the "honey trap" from accomplishing their mission as it is to garner intelligence from them. That can be done in a variety of ways, one of which is to compromise their security clearance by covert acts, or otherwise force them out of their position.
In today's technological world espionage targets aren't diplomats or the spies of Ian Fleming's 007. They are engineers, technicians, logistics experts, special operations military men, photoimagery specialists, programmers, database administrators, cryptographers, and those who control and monitor satellites, among others. These critical individuals are concentrated in a few areas. For the present example of how "honey traps" can be used today I will use Colorado Springs as the target area. One, because I live here, and two because such obvious targets as:
• NORAD - Cheyenne Mountain is on the southwest margin of Colorado Springs;
• U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) - Charged with defense of continental U.S;
• Space Command - For all the U.S. Armed Forces;
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NIMA) - All GPS birds are flown from here;
and many other similar agencies and military forces are located here.
While I use Colorado Springs in the following scenario, the ideas were brought to me by airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and engineers from such locations as Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Roanoke, Virginia; San Diego, California; Fallon/Hawthorne, Nevada; Seattle, Washington; Reston, Virginia and other installations near Washington, D.C., among others.
It is basic to espionage to use an enemy's weaknesses against them whenever possible. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and the Lautenberg Amendment 18 USC §922(g)(8 and 9) are two such current weaknesses in the United States. These federal laws are amplified by state and municipal laws against domestic violence and abuse.
Under federal laws and regulations any man with a restraining order against him, or who has been convicted of domestic violence cannot
"ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce."
Quite a handicap for a military man, police agencies, and many civilian employees with high security clearances.
Further, under DoD and similar agency regulations, the man cannot hold a security clearance with a DV conviction. State laws are typically even more stringent about what the man can handle, e.g., any hazardous material. And commonly the man loses any professional licenses, passport, and drivers license either directly or indirectly as a result of such charges.
Obviously, any military man, federal agent, technician, or engineer charged with domestic violence or abuse is going to be taken out of their position. Since the numbers of men in most of these positions are very limited, and training a replacement is both time consuming and expensive, it is greatly to an enemy's advantage to encourage domestic violence charges against them.
Locating a "target" isn't much of a problem. One might start at Frankie's Bar outside Peterson Air Force Base. Casual conversation picks up a name, digital cameras are ubiquitous, most any Internet search or private investigator can be used to get details such as address or phone number. Integration of his photo with some suitable pornography using Photoshop or a similar program is easily done. Follow that with a letter to his wife or girlfriend with the doctored photos and some details, and a suggestion she might want to get a restraining order or charge him with DV to get the house, the car, the kids, the bank account, etc.
If he is deployed and the wife is playing around, another variant of the "honey trap" might be used and the agent gets a little on the side. Maybe send the husband or boyfriend some revealing pictures of his wife or girlfriend while he is in Iraq or Afghanistan to add fuel to the fire. Using a "honey trap" against deployed military men also has a multiplying factor as it destroys the morale of troops serving with the victim.
Restraining orders are issued ex parte (without the other party present) and no proof is required, perjury is never prosecuted, and hearsay is admissible as evidence. So it doesn't matter if he is being shot at in Iraq, the order will still be issued and in force. And if he is charged with DV the restraining order is mandatory and a conviction carries lifetime penalties.
Throw in a messy divorce and custody battle with allegations of child and sexual abuse and the poor guy is in court for years but certainly not carrying a gun, holding a security clearance, or his job.
Other variants of a "honey trap" using DV and abuse charges no doubt come to mind but the final objective is the same. Get a restraining order or DV conviction against a man in a critical national security position and he is out of the game.
Because illegal immigrants are everywhere now, the risk for an enemy agent of being caught in such operations is virtually zero.
Restraining orders and DV charges are so common that the method will work even with a shotgun approach, as shown below.
Colorado Springs is home to a feminist organization known as TESSA. TESSA's budget is about $1.6 million dollars per year, primarily funded by VAWA and state funds. They have about 50 paid staff and volunteers. In public statements they continue to insist that 95% of all domestic violence is against women and that when women use violence it is only in self defense, and they only help women.
Flyers published by TESSA claim they obtain 2,500 restraining orders a year against men. Estimates are that up to one half of these orders are against military men from the many military bases surrounding Colorado Springs.
To make matters worse (or better for those running a "honey trap") the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that such organizations as TESSA cannot be required to disclose what information or help they provide women seeking to charge men with domestic violence or obtain a restraining order.
Table 47 shows that the Fourth Judicial District (includes Colorado Springs) prosecutes about 3,500 domestic violence cases a year, more than 2 1/2 times the number of DV cases in the comparable First Judicial District (Golden and Lakewood), which does not have any military bases or comparable targets. Again, estimates are that one third to one half of the DV charges in Colorado Springs are against military men. The EJF has also heard from a large number of local military men, engineers, and programmers caught up in false accusations of domestic violence or abuse.
The Fourth Judicial District also uses a Fast Track system to process men accused of domestic violence in which due process is ignored and the men are not allowed to consult a defense attorney before being pressured and cajoled to enter a guilty plea. The conviction rate under Fast Track is reportedly around 60%.
The use of domestic violence and abuse charges and restraining orders in Colorado Springs are so pervasive, and the numbers so far beyond comparable population centers that it seems inconceivable that at least some of these charges are not used as "honey traps."
Whether any of the staff or facilities of such organizations as TESSA are knowingly or unknowingly cooperating in operating "honey traps" is unknown. Clearly, however, such groups are acting either wittingly or unwittingly as a Fifth Column to the benefit of enemies of the United States in time of war.
© 2005 Elaine Donnelly
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
November 11, 2005 — Imagine these scenarios: A junior female soldier has an affair with an infantry officer in Iraq. When the relationship cools she revengefully accuses him of sexual assault. Her e-mailed complaint activates the Office of the Victim Advocate in the Pentagon. OVA officials pressure the accused officer's commander to remove him from his unit on the eve of battle.
At the Naval Academy, a female midshipman willingly parties with a classmate. Both have broken rules against alcohol and sex in Bancroft Hall, but to escape punishment she accuses him of sexual assault. The male midshipman is threatened with criminal prosecution and dismissal.
Meanwhile a Marine is barred from his home because his wife told authorities she fears domestic violence. Civilians funded by the Office of Victim Advocate help obtain a court protective order, but not counseling to save the marriage. The accused husband's "treatment" requires him to sign a release disclosing his "violence history" to commanders and military investigators.
Scenarios such as this could become commonplace if Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld establishes an Office of the Victim Advocate in the Pentagon. Legislation to establish a high-level OVA failed in Congress, but Rumsfeld's Office of Military Community and Family Policy signed an undisclosed contract with Wellesley College Centers for Women to "study" prospects for one anyway.
Implementation of a self-interested Wellesley proposal could create a new job market for "women's studies" graduates schooled in man-hating ideology. Sexual assault is always wrong and should be punished promptly at the local level. An OVA in the Pentagon, however, would operate as an "Office of Male Bashing" that would nuclearize the war between the sexes.
The Report of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault and Violence at the Service Academies at West Point and Annapolis, following a similar study of 2003 sex scandals at the Air Force Academy, presages the coming turmoil. Presumptions, findings, and recommendations in this report are skewed by the panel's over-representation of civilian "victim advocate" groups. Like-minded activists are likely to control a successor Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military Services (DTF-SAMS), authorized by Congress in 2004.
The problem is that civilian "victims advocates" rarely understand or respect the unique legal code of the military, which imposes serious penalties for offenses, such as "conduct unbecoming an officer," which do not exist in civilian law. Professional victimologists routinely confuse one-sided allegations with substantiated crimes, excuse women of the consequences of their own high-risk behavior, demand punishment even when self-proclaimed victims do not report offenses to authorities, and are not satisfied with anything less than courts-martial and convictions, even when guilt is unproven.
The Service Academy Task Force recommendations reflect radical feminist dreams, starting with gender-based admission quotas to increase "acceptance" of women, even though the military has a greater need for male officers for the combat arms. Gender quotas would create an oversupply of female officers, who will demand "career opportunities" in the infantry, Special Operations Forces, and submarines.
That prospect meshes with the Task Force's unsupported claim that academy women are harassed because of women's exemptions from direct ground combat which, they say, should be dropped. Violence against women is wrong, you see, unless it happens at the hands of the enemy.
Task Force members want sensitivity training in "prime time," with grades factored into class standings. Mandatory indoctrination courses would teach why it is necessary to have different physical standards, allowances, and special "assists" for female trainees. Resentment of women could increase, since everyone knows there is no "gender-norming" on the battlefield.
The Task Force Report lists a wide array of agencies ready to provide immediate support for complainants, but barely mentions the scarcity of resources available for accused offenders. The report presumes "victimhood," but not legal innocence. This disregards the importance of due process in convicting true offenders. It also ignores fraudulent complaints, which are perceived as a problem by 73% of academy women recently surveyed by the Defense Department Inspector General.
The response of Defense Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness David Chu to the Task Force Report correctly challenges the call for "confidentiality" in preliminary legal proceedings — a demand already denied by a military Court of Appeals. Chu's response should have rejected more recommendations, instead of implying approval that will encourage more of the same in the next task force report.
What's worse, the Defense Department's apparent concurrence could be seen as a green light for an Office of the Victim Advocate (OVA) in the Pentagon — a feminist boondoggle promoted in 2004 by the left-wing internationalist group Amnesty International. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) sponsored a 95-page bill that reveals expectations for the OVA, which could be established administratively, even though the legislation failed.
An OVA Director would have a license to meddle in distant "he said, she said" disputes that are local and highly emotional. Regular OVA reports on sexual misconduct would feed media prejudices, which turn even good news stories into black eyes for the military. Funded with defense dollars, the OVA would conduct surveys and summit conferences, promote feminist legislation and UN treaties, and award lucrative grants to sexual assault "experts" who are "culturally competent;" i.e., "politically correct."
Empowered with Defense Department credentials and OVA grants, local victims advocates would enjoy special confidentiality privileges, and handle domestic violence complaints by requesting mandatory protective orders from courts. Counseling to repair troubled marriages would be barred, but presumptive "offenders" would have to undergo "treatment" and sign a release of his personal "violence history" to military commanders and law enforcement authorities.
Feminists also want to criminalize "stalking," a subjectively defined offense that would be hard to eliminate on small, remote military installations, including Navy ships. Service members receiving any type of disciplinary action for domestic violence or sexual misconduct would be denied promotions, and penalties for conviction would include mandatory restitution of court and other costs, regardless of economic circumstances.
An uncontrollable OVA would also push for military law reforms that would criminalize sexual offenses already subject to severe nonjudicial punishment. Perpetrators would be reported to the FBI and labeled sex offenders for life.
The Slaughter OVA bill would have authorized more than $218 million over four years, but the Pentagon should not divert a single defense dollar for this purpose. Spending money on an Office of the Victim Advocate would be tantamount to feeding a carnivorous plant, similar to the one in the hit Broadway play, "Little Shop of Horrors." Defense Secretary Rumsfeld should decline, without apology, to bring a man-eating plant with worldwide reach into the Pentagon on his watch.
Ms. Donnelly is a former member of the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces and President of the Center for Military Readiness.
© 2005 Phyllis Schlafly
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
November 9, 2005 —The feminists have launched a devious attack on the U.S. Armed Services that could have a very detrimental effect on morale, retention, and recruitment. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was a college wrestler at Princeton, and now we will see if he is man enough to stand up to the feminists.
In 2004, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) introduced a bill of over a hundred pages to authorize a high-level Office of the Victim Advocate (OVA) in the Department of Defense; fortunately, it didn't pass. In 2005, congressional feminists sponsored a four-page version of the same bill, which likewise went nowhere.
But the feminists are resourceful. They have persuaded Rumsfeld's Community and Family Policy office to award a contract to Wellesley College Centers for Women to make recommendations about establishing an OVA in the Pentagon.
The recommendations are wholly predictable — they would be based on Slaughter's failed legislation. They will call for setting up an OVA in Washington to provide feminists who major in Women's Studies with tax-funded jobs from which they can pursue worldwide feminist goals in the Armed Services and destroy the career of any man who stands in a woman's way.
A Pentagon Office of the Victim Advocate would soon become an out-of-control agency working to implement feminist beliefs, i.e., men are batterers and women are victims, a woman's complaint or he-said-she-said allegation must be accepted as valid and acted upon while no presumption of innocence is granted to the man, the definition of domestic violence does not have to be violent or even physical, and the complaining woman must be provided with free legal and "victim services" while the man is on his own to find and hire a lawyer willing to challenge feminist anti-male orthodoxy.
Wellesley's recommendations will doubtless include many of the details spelled out in the original Slaughter bill, such as a rule that no military man can be eligible for promotion if he has received any adverse personnel action relating to sexual misconduct or domestic violence. Another caveat is that arrest and prosecution of the man must go forward even if there is no visible indication of injury and even if the victim opposes prosecution.
Surely Wellesley will copy portions of the Slaughter bill that authorize feminist pork. The victim is to be provided a victim advocate, a victim counselor and victim support liaison, and lucrative contracts are to be awarded to the domestic-violence service industry to train the Defense Department on how to support self-proclaimed victims.
Violence against women should, of course, be aggressively prosecuted, but there is no justice when the government accepts feminist dogma that the woman is always right while the man is always wrong. Secretary Rumsfeld needs to understand that the civilian domestic-violence lobby uses a definition of domestic violence that includes facial gestures, perceived insults, put-downs, embarrassments, and other annoyances and disagreements.
Another portion of the Slaughter bill that will probably turn up in Wellesley's recommendations is the prohibition against providing "couple counseling or mediation." The Slaughter bill also includes the requirement that the man must sign a release to allow private information on his case to be given to 14 different agencies.
A Pentagon OVA would make it easy for a woman to destroy the military career of any man by a simple accusation, whether or not it is true or proven. Motives to stick the knife in a man are endless, including rejection after a relationship gone sour, disappointment when he resists her advances, an unwanted pregnancy, preventing the man from getting joint custody of his child, resentment about an unpleasant assignment, or envy because she was passed over for promotion.
It is curious that the feminists are interested in combatting violence against women only by friendly forces. The feminists constantly demand that U.S. women be assigned to combat situations where violence against women by the enemy is considered okay because it promotes sex equality in the military and career advancement for women.
The recent PBS program called Breaking the Silence is an example of feminist propaganda that men are batterers and women are victims. Among the falsehoods in the film was the assertion that "one-third of mothers lose custody [of their children] to abusive husbands" and that if a divorcing father seeks any form of child custody, he's most likely a wife-beater.
In fact, divorced fathers win child custody of their children only 15 percent of the time, and U.S. government figures show that the majority of perpetrators of child abuse and neglect are female. Yet the Mary Kay Ash Foundation paid a half million dollars to film and publicize PBS's war on dads.
The feminists always think big when it comes to spending other people's money. If the Slaughter legislation had passed, it would have put $218,600,000 over four years into feminist coffers, and they will now be seeking that incrementally from Secretary Rumsfeld in addition to the many supportive programs that already exist.
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