For over a decade the Los Angeles County domestic violence
establishment has ignored the entreaties of men's
activists to recognize and provide services for abused
men. In response, the National Coalition of Free Men Los
Angeles recently filed a sex discrimination lawsuit
against 10 taxpayer‑funded County shelters. It is our hope
that this lawsuit will finally end the County's shameful
neglect of those whom domestic violence researcher Richard
Gelles calls the "missing persons of domestic
violence"‑‑male victims.
Research shows that the
need for services for male victims is acute. According to
the three largest studies of domestic violence ever
conducted, men comprise at least 35% and perhaps as many
as 50% of domestic violence victims. In "References
Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male
Partners: An Annotated Bibliography," California State
Long Beach University professor Martin Fiebert lists 138
scholarly investigations (111 empirical studies and 27
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
100,000.
Research shows that women
compensate for their smaller size through their greater
use of weapons and the element of surprise, and that only
a small percentage of female domestic violence is
committed in self‑defense.
While official statistics
indicate that men are responsible for over 70% of partner
homicides, they do not properly account for two of the
most common female methods of killing‑‑hired killings
(which the FBI classifies as "multiple offender killings")
and poisonings (often misdiagnosed as "heart attacks").
When considered along with the much greater number of
unsolved murders of men, these push the number of males
murdered by their female partners close to the number of
women murdered by their male partners.
According to Gelles,
co‑author of Behind Closed Doors: Violence in American
Families, abused fathers are in a particularly agonizing
position. They can't leave their wives because this would
leave their children unprotected in the hands of an
abuser. If they take their children they can be arrested
for kidnapping and would probably lose custody of their
children in the divorce, again leaving their children in
harm's way.
In the highly publicized
Socorro Caro murder case, for example, Socorro abused her
husband Xavier so badly that he almost lost sight in one
eye. Trapped and not knowing what to do or where to go,
Xavier endured the abuse, one time warning his wife "one
day you are going to do something that cannot be undone."
A short time later Socorro murdered three of their four
children.
Despite the need, the
reaction from the Los Angeles County Domestic Violence
Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to
advocates for male victims of domestic violence has been
indifferent at best. In early 2002, NCFM‑LA and the
domestic violence advocacy group Stop Abuse For Everyone
submitted a proposal to the Council which called for a
task force to address the issue of abused men. The Council
never even responded to this proposal.
