Jonathan P. Baird

I still remember my first domestic violence client.  She was a married woman.  When her husband drank heavily on weekends, he would grab her by the hair with one hand while punching her in the face with the other hand.  He regularly gave her black eyes.  He broke her collarbone.  He told her she was a little slut who deserved the punishment she received.

When my client attempted to leave the relationship, her husband physically attempted to stop her.  He punched in the hood of her car.  He took the top of a rubbish can and threw it at her vehicle, breaking a tail-light.  As she drove away from her home, he got in his car to follow.  When my client stopped to avoid further chase, her husband told her that he intended to burn down her mobile home and kill her and himself.

I think of this case when I consider efforts by the government to oversell the idea that the reason many women are on welfare is because they refuse to stay with their husbands.  The fact is, for many women on welfare, the presence of men in their lives keeps them dependent on government help rather than helping them give it up.

For my client, fortunately, welfare was part of the answer to a better life.  She managed to get a restraining order and a divorce.  She was able to pull her life back together.  The fact the she and her children could get temporary help from welfare made it possible for her to leave the relationship.

But efforts to pressure women to stay in bad marriages continue.  Some members of Congress have announced that a new emphasis on marriage should be a major part of welfare reform.  Rep. Wally Herger of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means welfare subcommittee, proposed that states be required to spend part of their welfare money on pro-marriage activities.

The idea that welfare recipients are trapped in poverty primarily due to being unmarried is flawed.  Poor women do not need government ayatollahs telling them to get married.  They can decide for themselves when to get married.  Government cannot legislate relationships and force people to love each other.

A new body of research raises big questions about the marriage emphasis in welfare reform.  Organized and popularized by Jody Raphael of the Center for Impact Research in Chicago, the data show that the prevalence of domestic violence in the lives of many welfare recipients has been grossly underestimated.  for many, the path from welfare to work has been blocked by the sabotage of violent abusers.

The typical welfare recipient is not an unattached single female head of household.  More often than not, welfare recipients are at least intermittently involved with men, many of whom are physically and emotionally abusive.  These abusive me, motivated by the need to possess and control their partners, intentionally undermine their partners’ steps toward economic improvement in order to maintain dependency.

Researchers have consistently found that 20-30 percent of women receiving welfare benefits are current victims of domestic violence.  About two-thirds are past victims.

Abusers’ sabotage takes many forms.  They forbid women from getting jobs or going to school.  They cause school failure and dropout by destroying books and homework assignments.  They hide car keys, refuse to give rides, slash tires and mess up child care arrangements.  They traumatize partners by physical violence, sexual assault, and emotional abuse.

Abusers will often try to prevent their partners from using birth control.  They exercise control by keeping their women pregnant.  That way the woman will be less likely to attract other men and will be kept out of the labor market.  Contraception is a threat to abusers who think women use birth control so they can have relationships with other men and not get caught.

It Gets Worse

When women separate from their abusers and attempt to leave the relationship, abusers escalate their tactics.  Many abusers stalk and threaten their former partners.

Law Professor Martha Mahoney coined the phrase “separation assault” to described abuser efforts to prevent leaving and force return.  If the abuser cannot stop the separation, he will focus on punishing the woman for ending the relationship.

The domestic violence victim is a hostage, trying to find safe haven between accommodation and resistance.  The domestic violence-related murders we routinely experience are the most graphic, extreme aspect of separation assault.  Less well-known are the abusers’ efforts to regain control by calling the welfare department to make allegations of welfare fraud and child abuse.

A client of mine, previously on welfare, obtained a copy of a log kept by her former husband about her whereabouts once they separated.  The log reflected his active stalking of her.  In military-like fashion, he detailed her comings and goings, her visitors and his suspicions about what was going on inside her apartment.

This stalking went on for an extended time as my client had been afraid to take any assertive steps.  When he had the opportunity, her ex-husband used to flash his guns and knives to intimidate her.  Even years after they divorced, he continued a form of low-level warfare to gain ground in his never-ending custody quarrel.

Reliving the Trauma

The net effect of the abuser’s sabotage is to undermine self-sufficiency and to force women out of work or education.  The abuser fears a loss of control.  He actually prefers his woman to be on welfare because he is threatened and shamed that his breadwinner role may be usurped.

Leaving an abusive relationship is often a protracted battle to escape captivity.  The battle takes a huge toll on domestic violence victims.  A significant percentage suffer symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.  Symptoms include chronic anxiety, memory loss, insomnia, dissociation, nightmares and flashbacks during which the person relives the trauma as if it were actually taking place.

Trauma and depression can  undermine women’s ability to concentrate and function effectively in the work world and in training programs.  The symptoms may continue to be experienced long after the abuser is physically gone from the victim’s life.  Trauma survivors have trouble planning or believing in the future.

In considering how domestic violence affects welfare recipients, special attention should be paid to psychological and emotional abuse.  Many welfare recipients suffer from poor reading skills.  If, over a period of years, they have been repeatedly told that they are unintelligent and incompetent, they are likely to experience significant vocational and intellectual deficits.

Sensitive Response

To its credit, our state Department of Health and Human Services elected to implement the Family Violence Option under welfare reform.  This option allows an individualized and sensitive response to the needs of domestic violence victims.

Domestic violence and welfare have usually been seen as separate and distinct issues.  Neither conservatives nor liberals have appreciated the full implications of the interconnections.

Assuming marriage will be a cure-all ignores what we know about domestic violence.  Even worse, such an emphasis may work to pressure women into staying in abusive relationships.

There are still people who say Martin Luther King Jr. shouldn’t be celebrated with a holiday.  Here’s why he’s a hero despite his flaws.

As we all know, New Hampshire took a long time to recognize the Martin Luther King holiday.  This was not due to some accident.  there was a sizable opposition within the state to this celebration.

Various reasons have been voiced for why King did not deserve this recognition.  These include a  negative assessment of King’s character, especially his marital infidelities, the charge that King was a communist, and the conclusion that he was not worthy of an honor of this magnitude.

Because I believe this is a holiday we should celebrate, I want to make the case for why the state was correct in honoring King with a holiday.  I also want to respond to the arguments of the opponents.

The primary reason for the holiday is the superb quality of King’s service to the nation.  With style and passion, King led the struggle for civil rights for all Americans.  Devising many creative strategies, he repeatedly put himself in harm’s way to make equality a reality.

He certainly did not have to play this role.  He came from a comfortable background.  He could have lived a private life as a prosperous local minister in Atlanta.  Instead, accepting the challenge of leadership, he made choices that meant he would risk his life and live in peril constantly.  Virtually his entire adult life, King encountered death threats, culminating in his assassination at age 39.

It is hard to imagine the world King confronted before the civil rights movement.  Black people could not vote freely, eat at restaurants, buy houses in white neighborhoods, rent motel rooms, go to certain public schools, get certain types of jobs, swim at public pools or drink at public water fountains.

Belief in the superiority of the white race justified this institutionalized discrimination.  The Klan and other white racists backed up the established order by terrorizing, lynching and murdering.

The courage displayed by King and his cohorts in confronting this vicious system was enormous.  It is easy to forget that not only did King often fail to receive police protection, but he also had to contend with the police assisting his enemies.

He was the object of constant snooping by the FBI.  In last 1964, the FBI sent King a cut-and-spliced tape of his sexual encounters with numerous women.  Accompanying the tape was a letter in which the FBI suggested King should kill himself because of his alleged moral depravity.  Yet King never hated his political foes or denied their humanity even in the face of their dirty tricks.

King was not in it for the money.  He never cashed in on his leadership role.  When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he gave all $54,000 to the civil rights movement.  He earned about $200,000 a year in annual speaking fees, averaging 300 speeches a year.  He gave the movement most of that money.

His family lived in a rented house until 1965, when his wife prevailed on him to buy a very modest house in Atlanta.  King actually felt guilty about owning a house because he considered it an unnecessary luxury.

These days our societal heroes, whether CEOs or professional athletes, demand multimillion-dollar contracts and signing bonuses.  King’s life was a sharp rebuke to that mentality.  He sided with the poor and oppressed and he never separated himself from everyday people.

Black Superman?

In appreciating King, there is a danger that he will be seen as the plastic Black Superman who gave the “I Have A Dream” speech.  Freezing an image, even a fabulous image, is unreal and phony.

There is no need to whitewash King’s flaws.  He was very human.  He had a weakness for beautiful women.  He carried on several extended extramarital love affairs as well as many one-night stands.  For long stretches, he lived on the road away from his family.  He battled depression and guilt.

Those who opposed a King holiday because of his sexual liaisons have a narrow view of character.  There is a peculiar desire in this country to expect heroes to be perfect and pure.  the hero falls off the pedestal if he has a shadow side.  With that kind of standard, we won’t have any more heroes.

In his fine book, I May Not Get there With You, Michael Eric Dyson argues that King’s character cannot be understood through isolated incidents or a fixation on flaws.  Character must be understood through the long view.  King stands up well when his public accomplishments are balanced against his private failings.

As for the charge that King was a communist, the accusers lack a shred of supporting evidence.  King was not a party member or sympathizer.

Yet in fairness to his accusers, one caveat is in order.  King was a dangerous man.  He actively opposed the status quo of his day.  It is this radical dimension of King that we risk losing as his image is sanitized.

A Challenge To Us All

Had he remained alive, King would have been terribly disappointed with our blind denial of racism, our indifference to the poor and our excessive militarism.  He would have been appalled at our self-satisfaction.

All holidays have become thin excuses for three-day weekends.  It is ironic that opponents think the King holiday is unworthy.  How about Columbus Day or Presidents Day?  Compared to these holidays, the King holiday is a model of relevance.  At least it connects to real unresolved issues.

The focus on the King holiday should not be to create some cult of personality.  The best way we can honor King is to engage the issues he engaged.  In our own lives, we can make the fight against racism and poverty our own passionate reality.

*  We are failing kids by punishing them rather than nurturing them into healthy, mature adults

Adult problems with teenagers are an old story.  Every older generation complains about the younger generation.  But something new has been happening.  Adults are scapegoating teenagers and blaming your misbehavior as a principal cause of crime and violence.  A philosophy of heavy-handed punishment, not rehabilitation, has become the dominant legislative and judicial trend.

More and more states are prosecuting juveniles as adults.  Since 1992, 45 states have passed or amended legislation making it easier to prosecute kids as adults for a wider array of charges.  We have also been lowering the age when kids can be prosecuted as adults.  Many states have set the age at 14, but Vermont actually allows 10-year-olds to be prosecuted as adults.

Surprisingly, these harsh changes have occurred at a time when statistics have shown a decline in the national crime rate for serious violent crimes committed by youths.  The drop was 33 percent from 1993 to 1997.

During the last 10 years, the number of people under 18 held in adult prisons in the United States has doubled.  About one-third are there for property or drug offenses, not violent crime.  We are sending kids to adult prisons knowing that young prisoners are at greater risk for physical and sexual assault.  We also know such placement is a training school for more crime.  Yet, we do not stop.

There is a stereotype that some teenagers are beyond hope, not like us.  Allegedly, they are time bombs waiting to go off.  Anecdotal evidence offers up a generation of Ecstasy-ingesting predators skateboarding toward instant gratification and cultural illiteracy.  Writer Mike Males has dubbed them the scapegoat generation.  We need metal detectors, video surveillance, curfews and early warning systems to spot the bad apples and protect us.  On the basis of fear, we concoct a “get tough” social policy to sanction and punish teens.

The perception that kids are dangerous has been fed by sensationalistic events like Columbine and Jonesboro.  Even though Justice Department data show that schools are actually safer than ever, there is a perception that the opposite is true.  While the odds of being shot at school are minuscule, a 1999 Gallup Poll suggested that three-quarters of Americans think it is likely that a shooting will occur at their local school.

“Zero tolerance” policies at schools have become widespread.  Schools impose swift and severe punishment for offenses that previously would have been seen as minor transgressions.

Nationally, there are many examples of this trend.  Consider the case of the third-grader expelled for getting into a scuffle on the playground during tetherball.  Another third-grader was suspended for putting an allegedly threatening message in a fortune cooking for a class project.  Then there was a 9-year-old who was suspended for bringing to school a manicure kit with a 1-inch knife.

My personal favorite:  the 13-year-old Texas boy who was assigned to write a Halloween horror story.  He wrote a story describing the shooting of a teacher and two classmates.  The boy got a perfect grade plus extra credit for reading his story aloud in class.  The only problem:  In his story, the boy used real names.  When parents of the classmates complained, school officials notified juvenile authorities.  Sheriff’s deputies removed the boy from school.  After he had spent five days in juvenile detention, the charges were dropped.

Here in New Hampshire, I have seen some police treat teenage boys like they are prospective hardened criminals.  The New Hampshire equivalent to racial profiling is teenage boy profiling.  A group of teenage boys driving around, especially at night, appears to be problem cause for a police stop.  There is an automatic assumption:  Teenagers equal trouble.

This newspaper recently ran a story about the new cottage industry profiling teens at school.  High schools are hiring psychologists to assess the violent threat potential of students.  the idea is to assess risk factors so as to predict the degree of threat posed by particular students.

One Illinois school’s profiling checklist included use of abusive language, cruelty to animals and writings reflecting an interest in the dark side of life.  Other schools have scrutinized T-shirts and jewelry.

The United States has the highest rate of children and adolescents living in families below poverty guidelines in the industrial world, the result of spending fewer public resources on children than any other industrial nation.  Neither political party is willing to face the adult responsibility for youth poverty.  Another way to look at our school funding debate in New Hampshire is simply the reduction in adult support for children’s education.

No society congratulates itself as much as we do.  “We’re number one” is practically our national motto.  Yet we are failing kids by punishing them rather than providing the support systems and nurture they need to grow into healthy, mature adults.  Sociologist Edgar Friedenberg once wrote, “Adolescent personality evokes in adults conflicts, anxiety, and intense hostility (usually disguised as concern).”  Those words still capture our reality.

A credo of past generations has been to invest in the young so that kids could have a better future.  That is a tradition we should return to and honor.  No one can deny that there are bad kids who will never be rehabilitated.  However, we need to see kids as individuals with inherent worth and value and act accordingly.

It is true that restraining orders have not prevented some women from being murdered.  Kimberly Luele, Dawn Gagne, Jean Glover – these New Hampshire women, among others, all had restraining orders at the time of their death.  but does that mean civil restraining orders are a waste of time or a poor substitute for criminal prosecution?

In assessing the effectiveness of restraining orders, it is necessary to look beyond headlines at a broader sampling of cases.  Researchers recently talked to many battered women, inquiring into subjective feelings of well-being and safety after the victims obtained court orders.  They also looked into how often abusers violated restraining orders.

The study by the National Center for State Courts relied on interviews with 285 battered women from Denver, Wilmington, Del., and Washington, D.C., and with court and law enforcement personnel, and on examination of court records.

The study suggests that high-profile murders obscure many everyday successes.  The study found that 75 percent of domestic violence petitioners had increased feelings of well-being after an order was issued.  The percentage rose to 85 in follow-up interviews six months later.

Although many of those surveyed felt safer because they had left an abusive situation, advocates warn that the period after a victim obtains an order can become more dangerous.  Safety planning is necessary.

While the potential for danger should not be underestimated, the study suggests that restraining orders are by and large an effective deterrent.  After six months, 65 percent of the survivors interviewed reported that the abuser did not violate the court order, and only 8.4 percent reported physical abuse during that time.

In Denver, where the police were more likely to arrest abusers, the rate of new physical abuse after six months declined to 2 percent.  women with children reported more violations than women with no children.  violent abusive men with criminal histories were more likely to violate restraining orders.

The partners of violently abusive men reported more positive feelings of well-being after obtaining restraining orders, even though these men were more likely to violate the orders.  The study suggested that the process of obtaining restraining orders bolstered many victims’ feelings of self-esteem and security.

Evidence also pointed to the effectiveness of a temporary restraining order even when a final order was not obtained.  More than a third of the women surveyed stated that they did not seek a final order because the batterer stopped bothering them.  An additional 10 percent reported that the batterer left the area after the temporary order was filed.  The court process, even a temporary order, apparently deterred a significant number of abusers.

Other reasons final orders were not obtained will be all too familiar to those who work with victims in domestic abuse cases:  2 percent of those who obtained temporary restraining orders did not seek a final order because of abusers’ threats and another 2 percent were persuaded by the abuser to drop the case.

Interviews with those who sought protective orders revealed that their abusers generally shifted from physical to psychological abuse in the six-month period after an order was issued.  Most commonly, victims received phone calls at home (16.1 percent) and at work (17.4 percent).  Nine percent of abusers violated orders by showing up at the survivor’s home, and 7.2 percent reported being stalked by an abuser after six months.

The study notes that restraining orders do not operate in a vacuum; the quality of support services for domestic violence survivors makes a critical difference.

The report’s authors recommend that courts inform women of all the services available in the community to help them.  Most women received help, if they received any at all, in the month before obtaining the order.  Typically they were supported or sheltered by friends and relatives.

Rather than exercises in futility, this study supports the conclusion that restraining orders make a significant, positive difference for a great majority of victims.  The effectiveness of restraining orders may well depend, however, on the specificity and comprehensiveness of the relief granted, as well as on how well the victim and law enforcement agencies are prepared to enforce them.

Certainly, there are no guarantees that no harm will come to those who seek protective orders, but, in the vast majority of cases, this study suggests that restraining orders work.