Unknown Speaker  00:05
This is a panel on strategies for dealing with violence against women. And my name is Lynn chancer, can you hear me now? My name is Lynn chancer. And I am in the Department of Sociology at Barnard College. I teach here, and I'm going to be chairing the panel, and also speaking on it. We're going to have four speakers this afternoon. And if I'm going to take a few moments to introduce us all in the order in which we'll be speaking, our first speaker is going to be Sujata warrior, who is the coordinator of the New York City coalition of battered women's advocates. She has a PhD in geography from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, and has taught about issues of violence against women for nine years, including at Rutgers, Syracuse and a foreigner, right. Okay. And our second speaker is Martha Raman, who is a senior staff attorney, and has worked in the family law unit of Brooklyn legal services for the past three years. She is a board member of the coalition of battered women's advocates. I introduce myself. And then to my left is Helen newborn, who is the Executive Director of now Legal Defense and Educational Fund since 1989. Prior to that position, she was deputy director for human services in the New York City Mayor's Office of operations. And it's also worked with the New York City office of the criminal justice coordinator, and Legal Aid Society juvenile rights division. So we went over the top, it's probably going to start out with a sort of more general presentation and go into some specific, more specific work about legislative measures. And I'm going to talk about some research I've been doing. And then on the words, in the end us back was sort of a more general overview, and then we'll hopefully have plenty of time to have some discussion and questions from all of you.

Unknown Speaker  02:16
So Sue Johnson.

Unknown Speaker  02:18
I'd like to say that this is not a presented individual strategies and how to work with individuals, rather strategies. Okay, I think it's

Unknown Speaker  02:30
a little hard to track.

Unknown Speaker  02:32
Yeah, that's making it

Unknown Speaker  02:35
whatever it is to say the beginning was, I'm not going to present on like individual strategies with individual women rather than more general strategy in the failure of some of the strategies and what needs to do in order to end violence. And the Violence Against Women, as you all know, is a global issue. It cuts across countries, cultures, societies, but and general commonalities, and it's important to understand that their commonality, because the location, culture, ethnicity, time, all of that intersect to give rise to particular forms and patterns of violence against women. And the way I like to use violence against women is a much larger, more broader definition, which includes battering includes rate sexual assault, and other forms of violence, institutional economic, that basically prevents women from achieving self determination. So it could be a number of things, those are critical to remember that a number of various other forms of oppression also intersect where if we have to address the issue of violence against women need to also look at the way racism, classism, ethnicity heterosexism, intersect with sexism to produce different forms. And the reason I opened by saying that is, the result of that is we cannot have a strategy for everyone, strategies will have to be different, depending upon the woman's position, and where she's located amongst a large system of oppression. And also, we need to differentiate strategies at a number of different levels that at the individual level, have a program that the city, the state, federal, and then if you want to look at it. Right now, the critical issue is that you have people working at different levels, but there is no interaction between these levels. There are individuals who are working with women to empower them. Then there are programs that are working with women. There are those individuals who are working in the city, state and federal level to change policy. And often they work in different settings without communicating between each other. So Oh, that the net result is that they have a strategy or a particular policy in place. And it doesn't really work, partly because of the lack of communication between these various levels. Now let's look at each of these levels, you have an individual level where we're talking about empowering an individual and different programs have come up with strategies to work with these women, there are culturally sensitive counseling there is trying to place women in such a way that they are empowered to make decisions regarding their own lives. And clearly, there are programs that are working with these women to change their lives. But often, because of the lack of resources, the way funding is structured, you don't have women around the program don't have access to other kinds of policies that are making it difficult for the programs often to exist. For example, in New York State, the way battered women's programs are funded, they're funded on a per day per person basis. And it's tied to public assistance. The net result is if you're not eligible for public assistance, and all you cannot access public assistance, because you're an immigrant woman, and you're having access, probably because this isn't going to jeopardize your immigrant status. It means that programs are not going to open the doors. Which means programs are not accessible to all women, there are a small group of women. And clearly, these are policies that have been put in place by governments, city, state agencies are not working for it. Now, then you have those individuals who are working who have at one point worked in the programs, but has moved up to work at policy level issues yet, having moved up have no contact with the program. So basically, you have the individual level the programs with those working at advocacy and policy levels, and there's no going back and forth, there's no going back to those who are working at the frontlines. Because they are the ones who know x policy has wisely AB effects. You have no way of knowing that unless you're constantly meeting with those who are actually being faced with that situation lawyers who are actually in the court to see how a particular program has affected

Unknown Speaker  07:30
certain women of certain groups. Because clearly, you have to understand that especially in the context of us, which is, which is a racist a conflict in society. Different policies affect women very differently, you can't overlook that you have a particular housing policy in New York City. Certainly women because they have access to get housing, they're those who want public housing and don't get public housing or public housing is closed off to the zoo. So we cannot just add the pet to battered women will get up and leave the situation needs a situation to go to walk. There's no housing, there are very few shelter beds are only 860/4 shelter beds in New York City and 9092 911 receives 250 value calls. So where do you have women going? And that to remember then within that you get parceled out as to who has access to what. So it's really important that when we look at strategies, we have to a differentiate between levels in between different groups of women. So that what strategy works for one level will not work at another level, if you're talking to policy, city agencies, you cannot go and have a demonstration, it needs to take too many meetings over and over again, reiterating the same point. And working on depression, after study to change that, you're not going to work with the pressure group back, because you're trying to empower that kind of pressure will not work because a battered woman is the only person who knows what her situation is. We might have an understanding of the cycle of violence and power and concern and all of that. But only she can assess what her situation is. All we can do is to make options available for her but then she has to make that choice. You cannot give city and federal agencies that kind of choice because you know the net result of that choice. So clearly that is different. And when push comes to shove, you have tried to work with the city it doesn't work then of course you have to look at other means legal means if that's the lawsuit, and that's what you need to to find. Which also means that those advocates and those working at that level need to come together often it means that different groups need to come together to push and put pressure on state and federal agencies to We'll make policy changes. And I'll give you an example of what the Coalition did and why the coalition sort of came into existence. And then I'll come back to the topic. Clearly, there were smaller, community based programs working to environmentalism, women, from those communities, and the constant pressure from the city, which was affecting the way in which these programs will function came to such a point that anytime the program wanted changes, clearly the city because they're controlling the money could take punitive action, however, coming together as a group, and then putting pressure has very different repercussions. Because it's not a individual program and or an individual. It's a larger group, the Human Resources Administration of New York City, which then administers all the social programs, put took away permanent housing, which is very critical for battered women trying to remake their lines, because if you want to leave a situation, you need a place to go. They took away public housing and made it into an extremely large shelter of 150 beds. They think about that you have 150 bed shelter located. For example, across the street, you'd have 150 battered women, all you need is one bathroom to find out, and you're risking everybody's life. Clearly, when we try to put pressure on the city, the city would listen. But the fact that not just bad news groups, but housing coalition's housing groups and were affected by the loss of permanent housing, the borough president's office all came together and filed a loss. And that loss to put a stop to the city, they will reach converted back to permanent housing. The point the reason I raise that is here, a very disparate groups often add on to each other, the borough president's office abandoned an advocate of housing advocates, often at all, were able to come together for one issue. I mean, often you hear in women's movement, well, you can really talk to the restaurant right

Unknown Speaker  12:11
there. But oftentimes, there are issues where you can talk together and often coming together puts a very different kind of pressure on city agencies, because they realize that, you know, if you're one group or one individual or one program, you can be sidelined. And you can be marginalized. But that often that the margins are often also places of power that you didn't want. To clear, it's important to come together as groups, that also means that it's very important to share information. What often happens in many programs, and among advocates is that if I have some information, there's a tendency to hold on to information because clearly, there's some interest in holding on to information. But it's very critical for programs are often at the edge, to have information that affects not only the way they function, but also the lives that they're working. It's very important that all levels share information.

Unknown Speaker  13:22
And have really an all inclusive agenda, that's often easier said than done. But by sharing information, you can also bring people together to fight for change. And I think since I mean, I'm going to address it to a particular group here, maybe making assumptions which for those who are students in university, what often happens is the idea of theorizing and making theories you forget that there's room where there are experiences which might not often tell the theory and often you hear the theory and practice, there's nothing inherent in either theory or practice that makes it difficult to come together. But rather, I think it's institutional structures that impose certain barriers within theory and within practice, that makes it often difficult for the two to come together. Because you often have people in the academy condition come out and do research and often tickets that are actually people involved. They're the people involved in other people's lives that are in your I can get X number of complications out of writing about bad experiences, but there are actually other women who have had them this year. This was the question often is and a very difficult position because how do you take that research? How do you make it accessible to other people who might not be aware of yet remember that there are people whose experiences you are using? So there's nothing inherent in either of them but often. putting the two together is very difficult, because you have also people who are out in the frontline when they go The point is clearly, clearly the work you do also generates a certain theory, a certain understanding of why violence occurs in various communities. What are the differences? So it's not that students, I think you can bring about joint classes basically. Another question that often comes up in strategizing is the sort of particular ways in which you can help, it's important that communities take charge of the issue of violence against, you can use the legal system, you can use other institutions, you can use the police, but they are you have to remember they're all rooted in the social system. In a system that is sexism, a system that is basically a system that is classed as you can't expect the legal system to be any different. So that you start from the premise, then you can work to change some of that. But you're going to assume that somehow neutral objective is going to deliver justice, it's not going to work. I think there are people who will answer to that. In working with communities, and especially small community and communities of color, it's very important that communities take charge of those issues. The community has to we have to come to an understanding that the community to that community violence against women has to be components that the legal system, the police are all stopgap measures, they are not the answer as much as women are part of the community. If you constantly half of the community, you have to be part of that community. When we ask women to leave, why don't you just pack up and leave? Why are you staying in this situation? That's often the question. We asked them, we never ask them, Why are men coming at them from what it was? Because if you turn it on its head? I mean, clearly the answers are different. But if you keep asking why she's saying that there's also a community maybe asking her to pack up and leave and move out, breaking on their ties and poor communities of color. minority communities, and immigrant communities, it's a very difficult issue, you're giving up many of the comforts many of your family structures to come to a new country and start to live a new life. And then you're faced with a very difficult situation of a while, you can't just ask the President department and go away to what so it has to come back to the community that community has to say that this is unacceptable. When you look at very successful campaigns, for example, cigarette smoking, I'm fairly unacceptable, people have to stand outside and smoke. Clearly, that didn't come about because of a lawsuit. The whole campaign against drunk drivers didn't come up, because there was a massive lawsuit, different lawsuits here. But it came up because it was a campaign to educate the community that this is unacceptable. And similarly, we have to campaign and educate our communities or communities we live and work to say that violence against women is unacceptable. And in that context, I need to raise to part in many

Unknown Speaker  18:18
communities of color. And I also think, in European American communities, the idea of the issue of shame. It's shameful for a woman to err in public that somehow she's been affected by violence. You can't look to the public. So women, it takes a lot for a woman to come up and many years and abuse to come up and say this has happened to me. Now, clearly, that culture and the society has used the idea of shame to keep women in play, and to then put the the burden of the moral fabric of that family or that community on her shoulder. Why is it that that same concept is never used to tell a man it's shameful to

Unknown Speaker  19:11
abuse your wife.

Unknown Speaker  19:16
And I think, oftentimes, we tend to also view that, you know, these are traditional communities, tradition dictates that women and men have traditional roles. And often tradition is used to sort of lay the blame, that it's traditions that calling.

Unknown Speaker  19:33
Men are

Unknown Speaker  19:36
considered superior to women across many different cultures. But also there are variations to that. And there aren't within those traditions that we used to say that I'm putting them in effectively also, ideas that can be used and turned around. I'll simply come to a South Asian community because I come from In the South Asian community, the idea of change is used constantly to put women in change. If you leave your husband, you're bringing shame on not just the family or the entire community, I think that idea can be used in the South Asian community to tell them it's shameful

Unknown Speaker  20:15
to do this to your wife.

Unknown Speaker  20:18
And oftentimes, I think in

Unknown Speaker  20:20
some sense, the battered women's movement in this country has lost sight of the touch with grassroots, grassroots community because of the professionalization of men to become social services, video and social services by offering services to battle. And doing that you've lost touch with grassroots movements, have been abusing strategies that we've sort of lost touch with. And I think it's the same as we had the answers. Those of us have all the answers to have all women's problems we can now I think, really look at some of the Third World strategies. If you look at Brazil, Brazil have an entire police women's use in many different parts to deal with crimes against women, and Nicaragua, if you look at the way they treat that they have a centralized contingency if they hear that a particular man has been violent, they'll go there whistle at him every time he walks by, and make life really difficult for him socially. They're not asking the police or the courts to come down. Similar in India, when you have white murders, which in the US is our unfortunate term dowdy that total misnomer, because it doesn't address what it is it is nothing short of wondering why there are people who campaign and who sit in front of these houses for days on end with a banner so that the entire community comes to know that this is one suddenly the day when ostracize. And I think those strategies are there. They are used to some extent in this country. But unfortunately, the fear of libel is sort of tiny, Brown University women's groups used, they put it up, put up the names of rapists, but now they're faced with a lie down. So that's always the danger here. But I think we have to be creative. But the entire point of my talk is that it cannot be a creative solution. It has to be different creative solutions that are sensitive to the communities in which you're from.

Unknown Speaker  22:39
I'm just gonna stand here because I feel like I'm talking to a judge. So I project better, you know, I, as Lynn said, I work at Brooklyn legal services. And I just wanted to briefly explain what that is, in case some of you don't know, because it's very much from that perspective that I'm going to be speaking the perspective of my clients. Brooklyn legal services, as part of the larger Legal Services Corporation, which was begun in the Johnson administration, for Legal Services Corporation was the same thing that bush and Reagan tried to defund. And it serves generally clients that are 125% of the poverty level are under so most of my clients are on public assistance, or they're around. And I work at their their offices all over the city. I work in Brooklyn, it's the largest office, we serve, almost all of Brooklyn. And, you know, all the office does a whole host of things from public assistance work to HIV work to some health work. I do family law. And it's within that context that the issue of battering comes up we do in the family law units, something like 300 divorces per year, we do some custody, some visitation issues, and also work in the foster care area. So we give priority to battered women and all of those different problems, those different respects. So that's, that's where I'm coming from. And so my remarks will mostly be directed from that perspective. And also, you'll meet you might find there from the perspective of women and women with children, because very many of my clients have children have a family. So I mean, the first question that I want to pose today, as a lawyer is is a legal response, meaning a litigation response or legislative response, an appropriate, strategical response to violence against women. And I think the answer is sometimes yes. And sometimes No, and we should keep that in mind. Similar to remarks that Sujata made. I think it's often appropriate to approach things from a litigation strike. IG tried to change the law, bring on some class action lawsuits and that sort of thing, which my office does. Often it's better to do community responses, advocacy. wack, wham. I mean, those things are very important, all of those elements in the fight against violence against women. You know, I think that lawyers just sort of tend to think that law is, is the appropriate response for everything. And it's sort of the the saying that if you have a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail, you know. So I think that it's really important to keep in mind that all of the things we'll be talking about today are in Florida. So given that I'm gonna talk about some legal strategies that I've been working on, and, and then some legislative strategies, and then some non legal work that I've done with the coalition and elsewhere.

Unknown Speaker  25:58
That for litigation strategies first, I think that the primary you all know what an order of protection is, that's the primary tool that a battered woman has in this city, certainly to it to get legal help in her struggle to be safe. And unfortunately, we all know the saying it's just a piece of paper. I believe that it can be more than that, I believe. And I've seen it that if we move to enforce these orders of protection, then they can become something more than a piece of paper. And I'll tell you why. In in I mean, it is a it is a piece of paper. And it's even weirder than that, in the sense. It's a piece of paper that says, Here, sir, you've committed a crime, don't do it again. I mean, that's essentially what an order of protection is. I go into family court all the time and get orders of protection for my clients, you can get an order protection family or criminal all I'm only talking about family court, because that's what I do. In family court, you can get if you if we returned to court on your order of protection, a judge has the authority to jail, the abuser if it's found, by fair preponderance of the evidence that he is, in fact, violating the order of protection, that person can go to jail for up to six months in family court. That is an important piece of information. Because it often is that this woman wants time away time to restructure her life, and does want him to be punished. But the problem is, is that women do not go in on violations afforded protection, they get the initial order of protection, if that sometimes they stop at a temporary order of protection. And don't go back. And I find that troubling. And I think it's it's troubling, not not because they're coming in and saying I just didn't want to do it, that would be one thing. And that would be a choice that they made. I think it's worse than it's a lack of information that that what to do with this piece of paper. So information is a really important thing. And we need to to get that piece of information out there that it's not just a piece of paper that it can be enforced. And we should take it up and and really use that to tell judges who by the way, often don't jail, even though they have the authority to do that it's very hard to get an abuser actually jailed in family court. But if if there was an onslaught of women saying, you know, I prove my case, I want him jail, then the judges would be held accountable. If we took some of these cases up on appeal, where they weren't jailed, where it was proved that they were violating your affection twice, three times four times and weren't jail. I think the judges could be held accountable. It's very hard and family court. You know, this, some of the in some of the women judges are even worse than the men I have to tell you. So that's my first litigation strategy is pursue the orders of protection, get the information out there that it does not have to be just a piece of paper. Okay, and move on to the second piece of litigation strategy I have been working on from my office. But, you know, when we think of these different strategies, I think we need to think very practically, about the needs of the women that will work. And not just not just about what some politicians need for their next soundbite. And by that I mean that it's become this this area of domestic violence has become a hot issue for some time. politicians. You've got Andy Stein fighting with Ronnie Eldridge. And now David Dinkins is going to is going to create a new task force on domestic violence. I mean, there are some of the falling over themselves to get into this issue, I think we have to be very careful that we use them rather than they're using us. And there's a little there's, I think we should, we should stay tuned to them.

Unknown Speaker  30:28
So, with that in mind, keeping in mind what it is our clients, me, I have found from our work our matrimonial work, that many battered women once they have made the choice to leave, then need divorces. And in this state, if you're a family court, and you're involved in a custody issue, you end below certain certain income, you are entitled to right to counsel, you're entitled to a free attorney, in family court. And Supreme Court where all divorces take place, you are not entitled to counsel. It is not provided for you, even though you've been served with divorce papers, you are basically on your own unless you can afford an attorney. And this is true, even though custody may be an issue in that case. So what I have done been doing is assisting women who fall within our income guidelines, with papers, pro se papers, papers by themselves, to asking the court to appoint them counsel these divorce proceedings. And it has been it's been a conscious effort to challenge judges, because they have the authority on a discretionary basis to appoint counsel. It's just not a constitutional right. Each and each indigent litigant gets so I have been helping with these posts a papers. The first one that I did was very successful. The woman was appointed counsel in these are issues where custody is an issue, the woman was appointed counsel, and the judge actually issued a written decision, saying that if it had this case, been in family court, she would have given appointed counsel there. So what's the difference? Let's appoint counsel here. It was on that basis that he made his ruling. But you know, the others have not been so successful, and I'm appealing them. And, again, the conscious effort is to see how will the courts deal with this onslaught of women asking for counsel on what is clearly a problem in the statute that, that in family court, they wouldn't be appointed counsel here and supreme with the same issues involved or not being appointed counsel. So um, and I raised that because you know, these women have i While it's not always the case, and women who are not victims of domestic violence for profit by this also good many of our matrimonial cases involve somehow victims of domestic violence. So those are just a couple of litigation strategies. I think we you know, need to think creatively about what it is our clients really need. And and many, we have a hotline three days a week, women calling up with with need for counsel. And it's just very paltry out there. The the attorneys available for indigent women in New York. I want to move on to a couple of legislative strategies that has been discussed in about a women's community in New York. And the first one is, is a little controversial. In fact, in family court, many battered women who who have been in abuse in an abusive relationship where their children are, have been abused sexually or physically. And they find them their children being being removed by the Child Welfare administration, find themselves in court being charged with neglect meaning, even though the the father or the male involved in the family had abused those children, and they had not, they are being charged with what is called failure to protect, meaning that they had not done what they what the court feels they should have done to provide a minimum degree of care. And an example of this A recent example is of course in Tino case where a woman had been involved in a very long, abusive relationship involving many hospital stays. She'd been beaten up very severely. And it turned out that the father of her children had also been sexually abusing her children without her knowledge. He was brought up on abuse charges. She was she was brought up on charges of abuse, or it was sort of in the alternative failure to protect her children. You know, this was this involved incidences where he was taking pictures of them lewd pictures and in and sexually abusing them. So

Unknown Speaker  35:30
that's what the mother was was charged with. Now the attorney in that case, the attorney for the mother presented a defense, the defense was as follows. This was a battered woman, she had learned had this learned helplessness he presented two expert witnesses saying that, in fact, she she fit the definition of battered woman, she was a battered woman, because of XY and Z, and therefore, the charges against her should be dismissed. The problem with this defense is that the law defines neglect as a failure to provide adequate or minimum degree of care to her children. So this defense basically set her up. I mean, the neglect definition is, is is just that. And it's a strict liability statute, meaning that it by asserting that defense, he basically set her up for a finding of neglect. So, you know, not unexpectedly, the court found that as a as a battered woman, the mother had lost the ability to protect yourself and therefore her children. So the very defense that the most attorneys raised on that case, and in any other case, like and if you present a battered women's defense, the court found that neglect statute imposed this kind of strict liability upon her and found neglect. So what can we do about that? We have discussed the possibility of some legislative work to change the definition definition of neglect to exclude battered women in this type of situation. And that's what some people are thinking about. That's one legislative strategy that people are working on because it affects a lot of women, a lot of women in abusive relationships, find themselves particularly poor women, and I should have prefaced all this was saying that family core is essentially poor person's core, and a poor woman's core. I mean, it is disproportionately the litigants there are of color, and poor. Because if you have enough money, just hire psychiatrists or send your kid to Andover saw as problems and family. The second legislative work that has been thought of in is actually there's a proposed bill to this effect is that in many states, the law requires battering for spousal abuse, to be taken into account in all custody determinations. In other words, that it's right in the statute, that battering should be one factor that the judge looks at in determining who is the more fit parent in California that's required and the court when determining supervised visits, determining visitation has to take into account, if one person has an order of protection in that relationship. The other person automatically by the statute, will have to have supervised visitation can't even visit the child without some supervision involved. In in Los Angeles, in Louisiana, there's a presumption that no parent who has a history of perpetuating violence can obtain custody. And then that presumption can be overcome if the if the parent goes into some sort of program, but in what I'm saying is they're actually in the statute New York does not have that. New York's custody statute says nothing about spousal abuse. So as a result, unless spousal abuse is is directly affects the child, meaning the child was sort of involved in the violence to him or herself. spousal abuse is not taken into effect in determining custody. And you can imagine the kind of results that that happened as a result of that. I mean, there's one really good case recent case called Farkas, which was heard before Judge will the same judge she's hearing what Give me a case in which he made spousal abuse, a significant factor in his custody determinations. In fact, what he said, and I'll just quote him here is that a party who systematically abused as a spouse physically and emotionally is not a fit custodial parent. This is a super language to be used then later and in briefs, etc. I mean, it's just not really heard of in New York, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker  40:28
Yeah, he's a good judge. So, so that legislative change I'm speaking about is to do like these other states and include battery as a factor in making a custody determination. Now, there's another side to this, some argue that if you're going to include battering, then you've got to include the 38 other things, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, how can we just include battery? And not all the other factors that should be considered? I think that's a persuasive argument. You know, I think I don't think it's a crazy out of Atlanta shark. And and I think we have to look at it and see how a statute like this works in other states, why does it work in other states, if in fact, it does work in other states. So that's just another another legislative work that needs to be done. And just briefly, some non litigation strategies. The coalition I know and others in the bedrooms community here in New York, I certainly having dealt with it firsthand, feel very strongly that there needs to be more programs for battered women and specifically, supervised visitation areas in many, many domestic violence situations where children are involved, the woman is not safe. When she encounters the Father, in a visitation arrangement, and many visitations arrangements are made as part of orders of protection, orders of protection. So in what happens is there's an encounter whenever this visitation schedule is set up, and it's a setup for the woman really, to encounter her batter. Even if there's been an exclusion order, meaning he can't come in the house, he she has to bring him to the visitation area or or he comes and gets the child. And it's a real problem. And there are one or two, literally one or two supervised visitation programs in New York City. And it's really it's just, it's just a dearth. And it's a it's something that, that bad women in New York very, very desperately need. So that's something that through the coalition and through other organizations we've been advocating for. And I also really want to say just one word about judicial accountability. I think there's a serious problem in New York City with some of the family court judges, who really don't understand the problem of domestic violence and are not interested in understanding it and refuse to come to trainings about it. I think that we have to somehow get involved in judicial selection family court judges are selected, appointed, not elected, and somehow have to get involved in the appointment of those judges, and ask them questions about domestic violence. Do they understand really the issue? Or are they going to stand up in front of a courtroom and say, you just want the sort of protection to get leverage in your divorce action, which I hear and it's just it's not a tenable a tenable situation. And I have to say that in many cases, those women, those judges are women, not men. I mean, it is not an answer to just say, let's get more women on the bench. Because it it goes, it goes across gender lines, okay.

Unknown Speaker  44:21
I introduced my soap before. My name is Lynn Chancellor, I teach in the sociology department at Barnard. And at risk of sounding hopelessly academic when you start teaching for too long, so you start worrying that every time you talk, you're going to sound like you're in the classroom, but I am going to take this personal lesson talk about some of my own research at the moment, particularly with regard to issues of race and concentrate a little bit more specifically on rape, but using some research I've been doing on rape as a way of talking I think more broadly about certain patterns that come up in an number of types of violence against women. The research I'm doing is on highly publicized cases, which include one case of sexual harassment during the Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas case. In all US American society, hypothesize cases, there's some sort of gender assault in all of them. But I'm also doing a number of rape cases, including the the William Kennedy Smith case, the mike tyson case, the Central Park Jogger case was an older case, I had done some work on the New Bedford case, which was the basis of the movie The accused. And I'm going to go up to the Glenridge case, which we've talked about this morning, and I got brought in by all the newspapers today, without the verdict, which I think feminists have very good reason to, to be bemoaning. The I'm focusing on those cases, for several reasons on one level wouldn't say, well, their own representative, and so far as the high levels of publicity are not what happens in the huge overwhelming majority of cases. On the other hand, I think that these cases, and part of the reason I'm doing this research have started to have a great deal of symbolic significance, and are seen as in fact, a test center and affecting how we feel about what's happening in our society. What happened to Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas cases, her son Bala, and is seen in terms of saying something about how easy or difficult it is for for all women to bring sexual harassment cases. And similarly, why are wider feminist groups monitored? Because, Richard, what's happening in the Central Park case? So one of the themes of this research is that there's some symbolic significance above and beyond that these cases become sort of displaced forms of politics, and particularly politics that have to do with gender issues. And I think also with gender, class and race issues simultaneously. Let me start again, by concentrating mostly on rape, and talk about the fact that, again, that rape is, as I think many of us, many of you in this room probably already know, is often fought by criminal justice officials to be a perhaps one of the most, if not the most underreported crime, general statistics that have been culled from a variety of sources, including some Diana Russell's work across WOODRUFF And Ross and some FBI data talks about a woman being raped every three minutes in the US, of American women alive today. Figures upset one finger says a 25 million either have been or will be raped at least once in their lifetime. Diana Ross, Russell reported from a study she did a woman in California that a small girl right now has a one out of nine chance of being the victim of rape sometime in her life with regard to the situation of of women on college campuses, just to bring it more, less academic and more.

Unknown Speaker  47:58
Home that rape is the most prevalent serious crime committed on college campuses. According to victimization surveys, one of four college women have been attacked by would be rapist attempted rape, one in seven raped, that four out of five victims know their attackers. So we're talking about very, very convicted victimization, self recording studies talking about the commonality of date rape situations in particular. And yet at the same time, and I think very disturbingly, and something that we should talk about in the discussion period, less than 5% of college women report incidences of rape to the police, while more than half Tell no one of their array. So we have statistics on the one hand that talk about the tremendous commonality of rape, we also know and a campus right to know, I don't know if you know that the SEC 99 of federal law, which which requires universities and schools to report, any sort of violence on campus is shown very, very low reporting, reported rate. So one could say that our I think, should be very, very disturbed about on the one hand, these commonality statistics and on the other hand, the fact of such low reportage, which leads to feeling that the degree of fear and intimidation that still exists for women as a whole in the society has to be tremendously enormous. I made myself a note as I was listening to Martha Graham and I think was correctly talked about lack of information. But there's also this enormous sense of fear and its enormous sense of intimidation, that I think we have to really take very seriously and begin to think what in the world do we do about that? How do we change the larger cultural conditions, meaning this morning's plenary session about feminism to me, this sub topic, right really relates to the situation of feminism as a whole because I I think unless we change the entire context in which gender relationships take place, a situation of fear and intimidation, which unites the particularities of whether we're talking about that, or whether we're talking about race, whether we're talking about harassment, there's something similar, which is it takes place in a larger context where I think a sense of fear is still terribly common. Okay, so, again, when we ask the question, why is rape so infrequently reported? And I wanted to focus a little bit on what if any general lessons can be learned about why this is the case? Why this what happens that that women feel so intimidated? And I think concerned about whether some sort of reprisal will be forthcoming? What can we do to become aware of how the prosecution of rape, like with many other forms of violence against women, often becomes the occasion for a second assault against women, what's been called a second assaults not only the crime, the crime itself, and what was a tripping attack, but also a second assault, what happens when you in fact, bring prosecution charges, and it's the fear of that second victimization, the second assault, which I think have goes far to explain, explain the discrepancy between the commonality of the crime and how often it is, in fact, reported. So let me start with a few overall theories of why rape exists in society that have their common, I think, in literature and understanding of rape, and then go into some specific results of research on the cases the highly publicized cases I was talking about. Um, there's two very common overall theories of why rape exists in our society, particularly in this society, American United system status ID anywhere. One, who does Susan Brown Miller's theory in the book against our will, which many of you may be familiar with, where brown Miller talks about rape as a form of social control that has exerts an intimidating influence on all women, whether or not a particular woman has herself been the victim of an attack or attempted attack.

Unknown Speaker  52:17
So that rape peers is the gender element here becomes primary in brown Miller's interpretation that she sees rape is a form of social control that has the intention of controlling or having some intimidating effect on the freedom ability to exert our human agency of all women. A second theory, which is also I think, interesting and important came out of some work of criminologist and Julian Herman, Schwinn dingers, wrote a book called rape and inequality, in which they talked about rape as a form of displaced aggression, that for the Schwinn dingers rape was not gender was not the primary reason behind rape. But but that when in fact men experience other forms of social discrimination, gender oppression, gender, subordination society, because we raise subordination, class subordination, that a sense of alienation code from those other forms of alienation might then come and effect and effect how likely it is that rape would occur. So gender becomes more secondary. Now, there's been much debate about the Schwinn ding or type of hypothesis, because what we know is that rape exists across class and cross race. It's not at all specific to any one group of people who have men in society, since the majority of rape is, is committed by men against women. Nonetheless, I think that the point about different race and class backgrounds, which is mostly been used to talk about why men commit rape is also in very important in terms of women's situation with regard to prosecuting, rape and other forms of sexual violence, that it certainly seems that 20 fingers the Schwind fingers eagerness to take not only gender, but race and class also into account is very important when we ask the question, how and why is it so difficult for women to bring charges and that also raises some of the work with highly publicized cases? One very high level New York City Police Department official who I interviewed about the Central Park Jogger case said to me basically admitted that hadn't been his term was a black prostitute who in fact, had been raped in Central Park. Of course, there wouldn't have been covered. Of course, there wouldn't have been the same kind of response, as there was to the fact that the media started talking right away about the fact that the Central Park Jogger was this part of her identity did come out very quickly, was a investment banker who had worked at Salomon Brothers. And this guy said to me, I thought was tremendously obnoxious. He said, Well, this happened to you as university professor, you know. So it's not only class position, it's also, you know, do you have any What What is your status are you seeing as being a status, but if you weren't, and by implication, if you were poor, if you were working class, if you were minority, then the attention would not have been paid. Kimberly Crenshaw, in an article, wonderful article in this volume, Toni Morrison edited volume about Anita Hill also points out in the case of sexual harassment, that the situation of Anita Hill as a woman, as an as a woman, who is African American, that there really isn't a way of talking in our society about the difficulties for a woman, we all say women and minorities, right as two separate categories. But always if a person experiences both those types of social subordination simultaneously, how much more difficult it is for that person to in fact, be bringing charges because of the double history than double this believability, that double kinds of impugning that person's credibility, not only as a woman, but as a member of that just brought up that pace that the New York City police official was telling me about that it's very hard for a woman of color, I think, to be bringing any sort of charges and that this also would frame one's understood frame or understanding of situations in which it's difficult to bring charges. Okay, so I wanted to move into what kinds of situations in fact make it difficult for women to bring to prosecute charges in what sort of situations do women tend to be blamed for their own victimization? There's something called attribution theory that many of you may know this kind of classic form of looking at situations or, or giving people surveys and saying, What can under what conditions do tend to hold victims responsible for their own victimization. And this was been done in rape cases, but also there's been attribution studies and battering cases and other cases and with rape, there are five classic findings of attribution theory from mentioned to you, and then go on to some additional ones that came out of my research. Because I found that the attribution theory unfortunately, to be remarkably true when I applied it to the cases I'm studying. The first one is that a woman tends to be blamed for her own victimization and rape cases differentially, if the attack should take place in a bar type situation, or where alcohol is present. Some of you may know of Peggy Sandy has written about gang rapes in fraternities where, in fact, if the woman was, had been a knee braided, that that may be, in fact used against her. Women are often held more responsible for their own victimization, if the attack took place in one's own neighborhood, and or by someone with whom one was acquainted. So maybe you could ask me in the question period, why that is, but it's as though if you know the person and if it happens close to where you are, then somehow there's this kind of social bias that you must have brought it on yourself somehow that means that it's less likely that a rape actually occurred, and more likely that the woman somehow provoked it that you must have consented. I think that's the peculiar and very sexist kinds of assumptions that underlie that kind of blaming of the victim. And then lastly, and I think very, very importantly, is that attribution theory also found that where there's any evidence of quote unquote, traditional non traditional behavior, right, or quote, unquote, previous bad reputation, sexist in and of itself on the part of the victim, that there may be, in fact, victim blaming going on. So if you recall, HC the movie The accused, which was based on the New Bedford case, there was an effort to show the Jodie Foster character to I think very much play the role of someone who in traditional and sexist gendered terms was supposedly acting quote unquote, provocatively. And the movie tried to say, well, rape very decidedly occurred here anyway, because people assume that if, if the way the woman is dressed, if so called bad reputation, which is a sexist category, we don't have a similar sort of thing for men, or if she was engaged in somehow untraditional, gendered behavior. In the actual New Bedford case a woman had left her children at home and gone out to get cigarettes and have a drink. So it was later used against her. What was she doing? Why did she leave her children at home talking about bad, bad mother? You know, the bad mom other sort of excuse. So all those conditions seem to in fact, I think increase the likelihood that women are blamed. Now what I've been finding on the highly publicized cases that I've been dealing with is that there are some additional additional factors that have not been studied in attribution theory that also need to be taken into account. Again, I found attribution theory to be very correct because the cases I studied definitely show that backgrounds are still very much brought into play of the woman bringing a charge, whether it's a Anita Hill, I noticed Anna Quinlan is talking at 430 I don't know if Anna Quindlen wrote a wonderful article about Anita Hill as perfect victim, right that there was every effort to find some way of discrediting Anita Hill looking into her background the best they could come up that she might have had a rock Romania, anyone know what a Rado mania is rato mania is if you have fantasies that some guy really is interested in you, and you know, then you project onto him that he really, you know, thinks that you're going after him, which if you remember, in that case, John, was a target, target and testified that Anita Hill really had fantasies about Clarence Thomas, they couldn't find anything else. They couldn't find anything else, because here's this woman who's a law professor, etc. On the other hand, in the case, I studied Patty Bowman in the William Kennedy Smith case, I don't know if you follow that all sorts of things were dug out and used against her about her sexual background against her. Whereas in the Tyson case, originally the first time around, I don't know if I'm gonna have enough time to do the questions. But the Deseret Washington was initially portrayed as a woman who was on her way to college, who was going in a beauty pageant, which goes along with a sort of American Dream theme, who was middle class, very important aspect of how she was depicted. And in fact, not that much in Her background was brought out in that case to be used against her. So so the attribution theory about background, I think, is seems to be pretty accurate. What it doesn't often take into account that there's also a factor of how the one a woman's relative background is compared with the the other side. So that often in highly publicized cases, there's a sense that the central

Unknown Speaker  1:02:26
minority males who in fact, very stories we're talking about, they're not their class background, they're not being in a high status, position and class and race factors. I think we're very much used against them. Also, William Kennedy Smith was seen in comparison to Patty balm, and here's a fine young man, as people told me, it was called Willie, people were outside the courtroom saying, well, Willie, such a nice guy, how can you possibly do this? Whereas Patty Bowman had also left her kids at home, right, people said, and it was a party girl, and you know, she wasn't working and was being supported. She was well to do so. It's not just class. It's not only class, but Patti Bowman wasn't working. She didn't have she left her kids at home, she was seen as somehow shiftless. Whereas in the in the Tyson case, you had also a decided comparison between compare the way Tyson was, was viewed, not only in comparison to Patty Bowman, but also to William Kennedy Smith, that had a tesserae, Washington was seen as a middle class young woman who was going through a beauty pageant, whereas Tyson, I did a survey about this, his boxing profession was seen as probably lending itself to aggressive behavior. He was also a street kid, a thug, and a variety of class and race, I think ways of talking about him, differentiated him from the way in which desert Washington was seen. So there's that kind of comparative aspect to it, that I think affects how and if women are blamed. There's also an example in a more ordinary case of a young woman who was raped, or or she's charged, she was raped. And I think there's some evidence in that case of InterFraternity, who tried to bring charges against someone who was the president of his senior class, and who was seen as you know, tremendously respectable and by comparison, and which made it that much more difficult to press charges. There's also a question of a gold digger phenomenon that's now being used. It's quite interesting to say that women whether you're talking about the Amy Fisher case, where this was brought up, and the judge said to Amy Fisher when he sends her I'm giving you the worst possible sentence because what were you doing getting involved with book contracts and movie contracts profiting from this case, Deseret Washington is now being told also that she

Unknown Speaker  1:04:52
said that she in fact, had signed up for to turn back Sue Tyson. So there's a sense going into whether women had other motivations not necessarily gender related for bringing charges to, in fact discredit their motivations. And that this is a new thing that I think has come up with highly publicized cases in particular. And lastly, there's an issue of whether in fact, names and publicity is used in cases. There's an ongoing debate which we could get into in the question period, again, as to whether or not one ought to use names in highly publicized cases. I myself feel very strongly against that, because I think it's part of a second assault that's that's forced on women, very often. The argument on the other side is that it might de-mystify rate, right, because rape is treated differently than other cases. But my own feeling is that an environment in an environment where women are already so fearful and subjected to secondary assaults, it's especially important that this not be imposed on them as part of a second of a second assault, a second victimization. So it brings up an important question as to what can we do about a ways in which there still are a number of things used against women in as they try to prosecute cases? On the question of using names, it seems to me very important to publicize, to write to discuss from a feminist perspective, the fact that all of the above conspire to create a cultural environment in which women are still afraid. Secondly, I think and more importantly, the feminist monitoring of rape cases, particularly highly publicized, and symbolic ones, which has already happened started to happen, in some cases, needs to continue. I think, because of if protests occur, as they did in the Glenridge case. I think it really begins to have some effect on that public environment. In the paddy boat in the William Kennedy Smith case, there were no it's very interesting. There was no feminist presence, when in fact, at the local level in Florida, most dreadful things were in fact being said about paddy bone, there was practically no feminist presence there at all. The Tyson case is an interesting example. Some of you may know that the case has been reopened. And the latest issue of penthouse has a cover story written by Alan Dershowitz, who's Tyson's new lawyer, and the title of that story is the rape of Mike Tyson. And it has my taste and space on the cover, which I think is very problematic from a race and gender point of view to because was who's usually on the cover of 10 tassets. Usually women's bodies, right? And now there's a way in which it's bringing together I think, at a subliminal level, race and gender supposedly to defend Mike Tyson. But the article could have been called racism in the case of Mike Tyson. Right. But to call the article, the rape of Mike Tyson is to completely lose the specificity of what in fact happens to women. So I think in the Tyson case also brings up how what do you do in a case like that, where race and gender tend to be played off against one not one another and put in competition? How do we find a way of, of defending a woman's ability to not to bring charges without fear without feeding into

Unknown Speaker  1:08:36
racism that might have in fact occurred in the way in which Tyson was dealt with in the media and in Indianapolis, which happens to be the home of the Ku Klux Klan are one of the early places with the Ku Klux Klan. And there's a lot of evidence of, I think, racist inequities in the way that Tyson case was treated. How do you deal with both? And how do we find a way as feminists of monitoring this so that it doesn't get terribly confused in our culture, the way the Anita Hill case pits right gender versus race all the time when so many of these cases involve both race and gender components that we don't yet know how to talk about, I think simultaneously without losing out on one of the the areas when the cases do in fact become complex. So lastly, going back to Brown Miller and and stopping is that if indeed rape is a form of social control that affects all women, as brown Miller says. So sexual violence cannot be fully understood, except if placed in the larger context of a society in which male dominance is continues to be pervasive. Therefore, I think it's critical to realize that there are connections between different forms of sexual violence against women, and that we need to have a feminist movement that's active on a range of issues. The same sort of victim claiming that I was describing in cases of rape is by no means limited to rape at all. I've noticed similar blaming patterns in battering cases where there might be a sense of looking into what was the background or neglect, etc. There's certainly in cases of homicide, some of you might remember in the Robert Chambers case that even where a woman had been killed, there was a desire to get Jennifer Levin's diaries to see if she had been involved in s&m sex of some sort, or if you remember that, so to look into her sexual history after even someone had been killed, that, that there's certainly in sexual harassment cases, there's something similar in efforts to discredit Anita Hill as what we find in rape cases. So that I think it's important that action to recall that actions directed against sexual violence have to be placed in that larger context with which I began. Four, the more we change the overall cultural environment. The more women perhaps I hope, on that optimistic note from this morning, do not have to feel the kind of fear and intimidation that leads to a discrepancy between what we now know is the commonality of sexual violence against women, versus the the underreporting the lack of reporting. And I think, the tremendous fear about reporting. So the good news that comes out of this and wonderful news is that at least we're talking about this at least we have takeback. Tonight, at least when we talk about the Year of the Woman this morning, there's still an effort to make fun of the clear the woman to say it's not enough. That to me is the good news. The the simultaneous downside of this is that we have to keep plugging away at it because that's the atmosphere of fear. I don't think it's been touched. But we have to keep calling attention and monitoring the kinds of biases, I think simultaneous gender, class and race biases that lead to the perpetuation of that of that discrepancy, thank you.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:12
I'm Helen newborn, I'm executive director of the Defense and Education Fund, which if some of you don't know, it's a separate organization from the national organization, large national lobbying Washington based grassroots organization, we were started by some of the founders of now to be the litigation legislation, public education arm. We're in New York. So we function separately, although obviously we work on a lot of issues together. And it is frustrating for all of us service providers and advocates alike been working on issues of violence against women to know that even after two decades, what we're seeing is a rise in violence rather than it going down. And you've heard some of the statistics, the rate of rape. Another one is just to raise the rate of rape has risen nearly four times the rate of the general crime rate, and the assaults against young women have risen 50%, while assault against young men have gone down 12% In the last few years. So there's a really very different dynamic. And I know they mentioned that one in four women on college campuses are likely to be sexually assaulted. Somewhere between two and 4 million women are battered every year. I mean, the numbers are really astounding. The national victims Association did a survey of rape victims in 1990, and came up with a number of about 700,000. And that number itself was very different than the Justice Department's own number, which was 1/5. So we're not counting anywhere near the numbers of crimes that are actually being committed. And when the national victims association with that 700,000 rapes and even more astounding statistic was that about 61% of the victims were under 18 When they were raped, and indeed, three out of 10 of the victims were under the age of 11. And again, as we mentioned, practically about 80% of women who are assaulted No, they're no the rapist know the person who assaulted them. So it isn't, and I know you all know this, the person who jumps out of the bushes, it's, it's someone you dated, it's someone you're living with. It's someone you know, it's a neighbor, it's a family member. And I think that many women say that that kind of an assault is worse. The harm they suffered, the trauma they suffer is worse than the assault by a stranger. Because the assault by someone you know, has not only the assault element, but the trust the fact that you have trusted or knew this individual and simply cannot amend Majan why someone would would commit this crime against you. So clearly, violence against women is at epidemic levels in our society, and we haven't figured out truly what to do and I don't think there's a quick fix, because I think the campaign to end violence against women will only end when we truly think about changing the nation's attitudes toward women and the very act of violence itself.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:15
Now, now, Legal Defense Fund has been working on this issue for about 20 years. But in the past two or three years, we got specifically involved in something that's called the Violence Against Women Act, which is legislation that Senator Biden sought to introduce in 1990. And the bill in its earliest phase as well, we don't talk about it was pretty awful. And he invited us to testify and provide technical assistance. And so we and many other groups have been working very hard to create a piece of legislation that would be useful on the federal level. And in fact, there's a task force now, about five or 600 groups working on it. The bill is very broad based, and it covers a lot of issues. It provides funding for rape counseling and treatment, it provides funding for prosecutors in a kind of a proactive way to get them to do something better. When you talk about the second assault by the system when the system is treats you. It's because prosecutors and, and police and everybody within the system have such notoriously bad attitudes and stereotypical attitudes about victims. And so that they they do not treat the victim properly, they don't want to come forward, if heaven forbid, they do come forward, they are truly abused by the system again. So there's a lot of funding in this bill, to create a proactive incentive to go out and do it right, you'll get funding if you create a model program with these criteria in it. Same thing for domestic violence, a lot of funding for domestic violence, not only for shelters and care. But again, for better prosecution and treatment of women within the system. There's funding for rape education and counseling on campuses, it's tied to a reporting requirement that campuses must look for what's actually going on on campus and define it as an assault and define it as rape rather than the way they do, which is to duck it so that people have no idea the level of violence on college campuses, there's also a lot of funding for judicial education. Something that now Legal Defense Fund has done a lot of is train judges about their own biases. And as Martha mentioned, some of the biases are held by women, women, just because they're women are not bias free and carry the same impact. A lot of people say in terms of juries that they'd rather have men on a jury in a rape case than women any day, because women have a whole denial mechanism built in, it wouldn't have happened, if she was nice, I'm nice, I wouldn't be out there, I wouldn't hang out in that place, I wouldn't wear that kind of an outfit. It's a protection, it says it can't happen to me, right won't happen to a nice woman that only happens to a slot. And so you have to project onto this victim everything negative you can possibly think of about her. So we have to understand that those kinds of stereotypical attitudes are out there. So there's funding in this bill for training of judges, both at the state and the federal level, even more training than there already is. There's also some, there'll be an effort to improve the life of battered immigrant women, which is a class that's it's kind of unique, these are women come to the United States, they're not citizens, the man they're living with is beating them, they cannot leave that situation until they can develop some sort of status here as a citizen or with a green card. And they usually need the batter to get the green card. So we're trying to revise the law so that they can go around that route, and simply come into, you know, whatever hearing I don't even think it's a court hearing, but make a statement that, indeed, they're being battered, not have to prove it with all kinds of psychiatric evidence and whatever, but simply state it and make a showing by preponderance of the evidence that it's happening. And then they won't need the permission of the batter to become to regularize their status. So that's another group. And well, obviously legislation can be helpful and can deal with some of the problems that women face. Especially importance to us because of all our work on discrimination against women, generally, is that the bill would grant women the right to sue in federal court for a violation for compensatory and punitive damages, if they're victims of violence based on their gender, saying that if a crime of violence has been committed against them, because they're a woman, they can sue, because it violates their civil rights, just the way we have civil rights laws that say, if someone assaults you based on your race based on your religion, on your ethnic background, why not? If you can show that it was a crime committed because you're a woman? Well, actually, there's been a lot of resistance into in defining violence against women as a gender based hate crime. And it has some history. It's not just this legislation several years ago, there was legislation just to count basically to count hate crimes to define them, and then to keep records of how many hate crimes are committed by the FBI and they would not include on gender,

Unknown Speaker  1:20:02
they absolutely refused. They said, Well, we keep assault and we keep crying. You know, we keep rapes and we keep these numbers. And many women's groups maintain that women are being assaulted and abused based on their gender. And they, they simply wouldn't go along with it. So we're not able to count that. And one of the reasons why we think we're struggling with the civil rights violation, in other words, saying you could go into federal court to sue for damages, compensatory and punitive damages, civilly. One of the responses we get when we say we want to do that, they say, Oh, that would be absurd, because there are so many crimes of violence against women, it would overwhelm the federal courts. Sounds a little bit like doublespeak to me. I mean, if in fact, they're acknowledging that the crime is so important, why are they denying the remedy, but they're terrified. I mean, we're getting we're hearing this from judges, for the most part, and from conservative groups that they won't let us create this civil rights remedy because it would overwhelm the federal courts. Well, because violence is often committed, most often committed by someone known to the victim, they again, say it's not really a hate crime, because it's somebody known to the victim. And truly, I do think it's somehow part of our culture. Because we live in a society that gives men permission to hate, and to abuse and to force women to submit to their will. And I think that one of the reasons we minimize violence just generally as a society is because women's lives are not valued. And violence is so commonplace in our world that we're basically numb to it. We don't really want to take a hard look at the institutions and the systems that support it. And we don't want to acknowledge how widespread it is, and how the perpetrators truly live among us, and our people that we care about in our daily lives, and at every level of society. So I think we really have a total organizing responsibility here as a society to and certainly as women to say that men don't have permission to rape and to better and to abuse women, and that every one of us in our society believes that women's lives are as important as men's lives. And just again, using the examples we've talked about women going to college risk flunking out, just as men do, but when women when the most cited reason that freshmen women leave college is because of acquaintance rain. I believe this is sex discrimination. We know that women who are out at night are at risk of being mugged just as men are. But if women are also at risk of being mugged, and then raped, I believe that is sexual discrimination. Women who live on ground floor apartments, risk intruders, but if those intruders come in, and not only steal their jewelry, but rape them, that is sex discrimination. And I think women have a civil right to be free of violence based on their sex, and that perpetrators of that violence should be held accountable. We ought to have the same rights to work late at night, in a chemistry lab or cleaning, we ought to be able to run in the park with our dogs, and play with our kids, we ought to be able to go to a bar or a party and come home with nothing more than a hangover. We ought to be able to live in a building that isn't a fortress. And we ought to be able to walk out of a relationship, without fear for our lives and for our children's lives. Because it is indeed when you lead that batterer that you are most at risk of being killed or harmed. And I would like to come to a day where when you go into court and poured a crime, that's what he was wearing. And

Unknown Speaker  1:23:49
there are a lot of organizations that have begun to develop initiatives to prevent violence against women, including education, in lower grades and on college campuses. And I think we all know that violence doesn't start as adults, there are attitudes built when we look at sexual harassment, it's really sort of at one end of the continuum. And, and rape and violence is on a continuum. And we've talked a lot about sexual harassment and how that what that's all about. And one of my best phrases is men don't wake up at 21 and start harassing women in the workplace. This is learned behavior, and they learn it at home and they learn it in schools. And girls as young as nine and 10 are writing to our office now and telling us about the sexual harassment that they're suffering. And so men learn very early and very young that they can treat women this way that they can get away with this kind of behavior. And women learn that boys will be boys and men will be men and they have to put up with we really have to stop that and turn it around. You've mentioned some of the crimes the specific cases but sure all of us in New York remember the St. John's assaultive a few years ago, and those guys got off, and maybe the Glenridge rape is suing them. Yeah, maybe the Glenridge rapists were convicted. But what kind of a sentence are they going to get into fairstein? The last time I spoke spoke also about a sodomy case that had happened in New York, where the woman of was, had been, she was mentally retarded, but she had and had also been victimized when she was younger. And the judge when he started to pronounce sentence said, well, it didn't happen to her before. So it wasn't really very much of a big deal. And then, of course, the Lakeland boys in California who assault girls and combat has notches on their belt. And they've been all over the TV and are getting a whole lot of, I think, horribly inappropriate press. So we went, we do live in a society where boys will be boys. And we have learned that this is the way men are. And I believe there's a lot of connection between when you think of the St. John's Ray for what's going on in fraternities, the and the Mike Tyson, the sexual prowess and athletics, we teach men in groups to win, we teach them to score, and that's how they talk about sex did you score last night, and that's a concept that means somebody wins, and somebody loses. And it's always the girl. And so we have this in our society, this acceptance, and we praise men who achieve and succeed, and when at sports. And then don't say to them that they're not allowed to have that same kind of behavior off the playing field. And I think the St. John's guys role in the hockey team together or something that's very common. So I guess that's, we don't, we have to acknowledge that legislation and litigation aren't going to be perfect and are not going to stop men from hating women. But I do think that we can use these tools perhaps to stop them from hurting women. Because if it becomes costly enough for men, when they abuse women, if they are ridiculed, rather than cheered, when perhaps it cost them part of their paycheck, to pay back, or if their fraternity loses its accreditation, because of their violence. If companies start to have to pay, or realize how much they're paying for women who are part of the workforce who are victims, they say it's five to $10 billion a year. Companies pay for absenteeism and lost productivity on women, women workers, because they are a victim, either of assault or battering in their lives, when companies realize the cost to them. And hopefully, when the men we live with and work with, and those who are policy leaders realize it will cost them more love and affection, and indeed, hopefully our votes. If they don't help us, then maybe our message will be heard. And we'll be moving toward a society where we will understand that this form of discrimination simply can't continue anymore. Or you can

Unknown Speaker  1:28:15
have some time left happily for questions.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:17
To questions. My

Unknown Speaker  1:28:19
first question is to

Unknown Speaker  1:28:21
newborn. You mentioned that the use of the interventions of violence against women has increased in these last few years, though, and is it that the number of infants has increased? Or is it just that the reporting is increased?

Unknown Speaker  1:28:37
I'm sure reporting has increased. Because of that, it isn't always easy to know whether the incidents have increased. But there is there is a sense that yes, both incidents and reporting have increased. In all of these areas, and in harassment and discrimination and violence, just generally, the reporting rate is somewhere between five and 10%. Those numbers are so low, it's just very hard to know where reality is. I would also say that many women put up with violence and particularly sexual harassment for years because of the guilt that they felt that they somehow brought this out, and particularly in the date rape situation. Or again, it's how you dressed or how you looked or you shouldn't have been out. I mean, if a woman is out late at night, or man is out late at night, and he's mugged and he's wearing a camo hair coat and carrying a beautiful leather briefcase, nobody says You asked for it. You're carrying this, you know, you lower that person out of the shadow to steal your briefcase. Why if you're a woman do they say well, it was because you were out late at night or because of the way you dress? Well, women have, you know, they absorb that. I mean, they call it internalized oppression. Women feel that sense of guilt. And so there's been so much under reporting, I don't think we know.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:57
I was gonna also add to that that could lead As you know, from having studied a little like the criminal logical literature on that question, that here's two ways of tying crime. One is through UCR records or through rest, statistics, etc. And that there has been some increase, but then there's also self reporting, we do household surveys and victimization survey, etc. And it doesn't seem like there's a real increase on people don't from based on the victimization surveys as well, what people don't know exactly how to interpret or one, Susan Faludi S type interpretation is that has there been actually an increase that may, in fact, come from just out of the fact that women over the last 20 to 30 years have been challenging, you know, is there a sort of backlash against and a desire to hold on to old traditional, you know, for male prerogatives of power? Anyway, I'm sorry, my

Unknown Speaker  1:30:48
control, because I think

Unknown Speaker  1:30:51
a warrior in your book has a little bit of fun. What's being done now to kind of, like, try to prevent abuse from happening, because so often, we always hear about what's done after the fact. And I just wanted to know, if you could talk a bit more about like, is this, you know, becoming more common for for teaching?

Unknown Speaker  1:31:15
Just beginning, I mean, we're starting to think about curriculum. We're starting public education campaigns, there's a very big public education campaign that's starting now Family Violence Prevention Fund. It's creating a domestic violence campaign that's called there's no excuse for domestic violence. And I saw some of the preliminary ad agency things they're going to use, which are fabulous. I don't know which ones will come out. But I mean, just examples of posters. With a woman with her face totally battered. And the the line at the bottom that says, attaboy, you know, is it you know, macho men do this. And and people are shocked when, hopefully, when they see that or statements, that if the noise upstairs was was your neighbor playing music too loud, you'd go up and do something about it. And in other words, making people realize that this is in their lives, and they aren't doing anything about it. And there's really no excuse, and trying to turn it around to the man not, as we historically have done, tried to figure out how to get women out of the situation. It's always been an after the fact.

Unknown Speaker  1:32:15
But I also think throughout to answer your question, two things have answered the last one first. And then the other one that I think there's a lot of, from the coalition, many of the groups that are part of the coalition, we do a lot of community education, we go up to the community, talking to the various communities, educating them on not just, you know, the whole issue of violence, how we learn it, and how we socialized into accepting one fix accepting the violence and the other perpetuate, perpetuating it. It's also that we realize that we have to really go into schools, because more and more, you realize there's a lot of dating violence that happened to very young ages. And unfortunately, a lot of the programs are targeted for adult women. So that you have this whole group of young women who are faced with violence with nowhere to go, because the state that goes into money, state doesn't fund programs to work with young women who are faced with this situation. So clearly, we have to go out there and educate people. There's one like the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which is a much larger campaign, but it also means you have to go out there and talk to people. And the best way to educate people is people from the same community. And you know, if, for example, I go into an African American community, it just doesn't resonate. If it's important that people from the community do that education, we talk about reporting. One of the interesting things if you look at the way communities when you educate communities, and you talk to them about this violence, and especially immigrant communities, well, we never had violence when we were in our country. It's all because you know, this society is so violent and violent. And I've always wondered, Where is the truth? I'm sure it's some it's not to say that, for example, in India, this doesn't occur. Clearly there is information that says the Kurds, but we have to recognize also that more and more we are using violence as a means to resolve conflict. And so it is true that to some extent, the US is more violent, but not to say that in other societies and cultures, it doesn't excuse often it takes a very different form. It's much easier to recognize physical violence. You have a black, I have a few broken ribs. Yes, there is but you know, economic violence, sexual violence, emotional violence is no way you can recognize I have to say a case. Just to digress I had this friend of mine who was a PhD, he had a PhD she was teaching. It took her 10 years to realize that she was facing emotional abuse because her husband was also a professor and always was very concerned about herself. You know, Bella, you know, maybe you shouldn't really go to bed. She got a job somewhere, a really good job. So maybe you shouldn't really go. Because if you went there, what could I do? You know, I love you a lot. Don't go there. Finally, at the end of 10 years, she realized that her life was limited to just her room. And her house, she wasn't allowed to go to the grocery store, it was all done in a very cold loving way. And it sort of was very, because she never had a black eye. And lo, and she just couldn't realize what was really happening to her. So that some of that is very difficult to extricate, and people just figured out what's going on. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  1:35:36
I'm very surprised that you just focus on basic roots, the basic roots of violence in our society, which are violence against children in the family situation, talking about underreporting of raping violence, and they even have the slightest idea because they are battered, right? That they weren't raped, they assume it's their fault. Where did they learn that they learned that family situation, that this basic myth that families that mommies and daddies love children? You were talking Martha about which parent battered the other characters the assumption that the better parent wouldn't better the child in turn? You know, even the questions that we asked the you know, the child is the batter victim. That's how the school system obligation, something nasty on questions. I mean, we can talk about race, we can talk about battered women, we can talk about violence, and it's on the basis of this where it has recorded, you don't touch the fundamental myth that the families are raising children. I think that that's really the only way we can get at this.

Unknown Speaker  1:36:52
Right? Well, I just want to say, I mean, I certainly would never be one to say that the traditional family is the only entity to bring up children. There's a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of educating all of us about rearing children and violence. But the cases that I was talking about are situations, I mean, both situations exist, certainly abuse takes place, where it is not just the better, but the passive person in abuse happens, I was speaking solely to the, to the situation, which also occurs. And we should be concerned about whether a woman herself has not committed the offense, but is in fact being battered twice, once by her spouse or father, for children, and again, by the system in that she is not the responsible party. So I would never say that there that the situation you spoke of doesn't exist. But my personal opinion is that it's it's not as prevalent as the ladder situation I

Unknown Speaker  1:38:05
was talking.

Unknown Speaker  1:38:09
I'd like to identify myself only because I like to know where the people are. And I'm Sheila, I'm using letters committees, we've had their literature gave up on the Southside gymnasium. Just just a preparatory lead. I appreciated my use of the good chairs of the meeting. You said you can have a discussion and question period. Because I think what you just said you've had a question period, it implies a this hierarchy of the gorillas gender lowering ones. And I know that certainly is in our attitude here, because a lot of us have experienced attachments. I would like to talk to you to get some feedback. But I have to first make a couple of remarks. I don't know if anyone here was actually the whack meeting a couple of weeks ago, when the program is Mother Courage. And it was organized by my direct and sponsored by wack and the speakers were from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, with anybody else there. And a women from the Philippines, South American Nicaragua, Somalia and the United States, speaking against rape, and so on. I'm not going to go into detail that was really quite horrifying. But one of the things that was missing for me was that there was any connection such as some of human nature today with the kind of society which is this has been quite a defeat, racism, sexism, heartbreak. Okay, so this morning Again, and as interesting as the talks were, but I have to say this has taken me seven years not to be nice all the time.

Unknown Speaker  1:40:13
And I missed that acceptor, one or two references to anything that has to do with the basic organism of the society that we live in. Now that being today, let me just refer to my length. Here, when was talking about change of culture? Okay, and race and gender, I think everybody was talking about violence and poverty and race and gender. But so what I would like to hear is some feedback to this port report that my colleagues and I have just written, that has to do with, as long as we don't think of the strategies which are important, crucial, and just really fascinating. To see what we can do with them, as long as we don't think of them has ever, you know, and you emphasize the creativity in relation to the concrete situation dealing with the strategies have been, as long as we don't see these strategies, and you talked about legislation and legal at crucial. But as we don't see that as the end, and we think in terms of the total transformation of society, because sexism, racism, poverty, war, imperialism, which is what for the speed is connected with the with the knee with a total transformation of society, and I have not hearing that at any of the endless meetings I've been going to, I wonder what the fear is? Thank you. That's awesome.

Unknown Speaker  1:42:05
I don't think it's a fear, I just take it up. I don't think it's a fear. I think the feminist movement has been characterized by a lack of analyses of race and class.

Unknown Speaker  1:42:16
Okay, it's nothing, I don't think it's a

Unknown Speaker  1:42:19
fear. It's just that, you know, what appears in the mainstream the mainstream feminist COVID has been accused of not dealing with race in class. And I think the same jump case is a good point. Because when, when that case came up, there were now wasn't there, none of the mainstream feminist groups were there. And then when the first verdict came out, and the three men were sort of let loose in the last guy was dead. And when we all went, the it was so polarized between African American groups and all the mainstream feminist groups, because they have failed to address the issue of how race and sexism came into play in that case. And it's I don't think it's anything new. But I have to say that, with the push coming from a lot of women of color groups, it is changing within among people who want to just you. And I think the coalition is a good example of sake. We very clearly stated in a mission that you cannot address violence against women, if you do not address its intersections with race and class headers. I mean, we never talked about sexism here at all. I mean, we have assumed that abusers are male. I mean, there are both gay abusers as well as that's been abusers, so that it's an intersection of all of them. We tend to use men and women because it's sort of easier groups to fall into. The capitalist. Yeah, everything everything, I think, yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I was just going to

Unknown Speaker  1:44:00
add to this, but that I was glad you brought up Bosnia and the whack who was outside at lunch. And I was interested that none of us here. I mean, we all were talking about everything mentioned that, because what I mean, you know, we're talking about rape and violence against women, and how do we begin to genuinely we're giving the figures about the enormity of violence against women, all of us in the United States. And then you think about the bottom of the bottle you have a slobbing situation with the systematic and the nature of of rape, being in fat State is one of the first ones to start over, not state sanctioned read. It's really extraordinary and the figures are enormous. How do we make connections between what we're talking about here and that situation? And speaking about widening the framework, and it really it does make one think about the broader aspects of society and risk of I wrote a book recently it's called sadomasochism. Today Live, which was attempting to, in fact, talk about sadomasochistic society, which unfortunately, I also think does apply to sort of trans culturally in certain situations. But were in fact, there are aspects of a number of the types of violence we talked about, which relate to the way we've organized society. And I think, unfortunately, very fundamental levels, which goes back to the family being one of those levels as well. And something that I think people don't look at as much as they should. Back there and

Unknown Speaker  1:45:35
talk about it. And I was just wondering, you were talking about emotional abuse. And what she said was that, it started out with emotionally going out and just yelling and screaming, slamming doors, and more of a path control thing. And where she got a lot to start out when he does, I think, you know, knowing somebody's family I think, okay,

Unknown Speaker  1:46:08
very quickly, I would just quickly draw off the board, easier to do it, this is a tool that I think all better than its trainers use, epicenters, you have power and control, okay? Now, if I know, we were in each of this, you can put, for example, economic abuse, sexual abuse, you have physical abuse, you have money, let's say economic, sexual, physical, emotional, you have psychological and you can even plug many different things into it. And one of them is isolation. Throughout all of this, in the outer wheel, you can have you know, punching things clapping, calling names, all of that, it's sort of the reason, it's good to have this way to say it could be any number of this, it could start with emotional and physical, it could start with physical and the physical ones might stop, but the emotional violence might escalate. And usually what happens is that you have a tension building stage that goes gets into the actual physical, you know, the sort of, let's say, violence act, and then you have a period of honeymoon. Okay. And it's this, when the question that asked, Why do women stay, it's this part of it the honeymoon stage, because when I believe that things will change, if a man can be loving, one minute, and your abuser can be loving, one minute, but then very soon, it changes into something occurs, and then there is an actual act of violence, it's the only thing that keeps changing over a long period of time is that this honeymoon part gets shorter and shorter, and shorter and short, so that, you know, violent episodes escalate, and the time between them shrinks. You can start with, you know, emotional abuse that lead to, you know, serious physical abuse, start with just a punch, the, the, the isolation factor is really critical. Because the idea is you have power and control over a person, and you isolate her from her family. Now, if the family starts to push in some way to say, look, this is what's happening to you. If, if they're in the honeymoon phase, and you'll start intervening, you're not helping the situation, you're in fact, pushing her further into that relationship. Because you have to remember that different women have different time frames at which they're ready to take some kind of action, the XY and Z, the important thing to remember when working with battered women is each battered woman situation is different. We cannot make judgments on what's actually happening. The thing you can do is to be supportive and say, what's available out there. But when she does that, how she does it has to be hard. If you even ask his family members, when we push, we're putting ourselves in the same position as the abuser because you're dictating to her what she ought to be doing. Yes, yes. I mean, how I mean, if you know that, that is the whole family knew and the family was very supportive of her, then clearly, you're gonna go and say, let's go. I mean, that's not what the abuser wants, the abuser wants to control. But

Unknown Speaker  1:49:39
I just want to make a point, because I think the power control issue is so important, and really has to be the dominant theme. When we talk about how to take this out of the individual case out of the individual assault into society at large, and even raised the issue of Susan Faludi in the backlash that's why the power and control is what we're really Talking about all through the sexual assault and domestic violence area. And so as women have achieved a certain amount of independence and have asserted themselves and develop more independent lives, there may indeed be some skete, some backlash. But the basic concept that men have always had is that they are in control. It is their world, they lay the ground rules. And so all of these issues that we're talking about, it's never what you wear, or what you said, or whether dinner's Cook, it's all of these other. They're all excuses for the power and control issue. And that I think, is the message if we can all get out there. It's also good to make a change,

Unknown Speaker  1:50:43
just that one slight thing to that just quickly, but also a sort of feminist theoretical point here, which is that what I teach them is through that there's something very specific about gender subordination, which is different than class. And there's different than race and different that ever each, each type of oppression has its own specificity, even though they interrelate. But it's remarkable about gender oppression, early feminists made this point that there's no other form of oppression, which has as its fundamental structural feature, that you sleep with it, you're having incredibly intimate sexual and emotional relations on a one on one privatised basis with this person who, with whom you're in a power relationship, you just stop and think about that simple thing, it's really extraordinary. Because in terms of how difficult it would be, when this person says, I love you, and you know, so you keep wanting to believe that that person loves you. And it's just, it would make it tremendously difficult to in fact, leave such a situation. But I also think the isolation means that one has to, I think Sujata, saying, respect the individuality of each situation, and the timing for each person, but also try to create other counter not just family, but, you know, a sense that there are we have to work on the system who gave us is extraordinary about 864 bit and the fact that we don't really take this seriously, as this social problem that is that if all the women in this situation wanted to live there, there's no place for them to go, which means we haven't even begun really, I don't think to take this problem and terms of creating code. I mean, if a problem is isolation, we have to deal with a collective way. You know, in some way,

Unknown Speaker  1:52:23
I just briefly, I mean, the way that I try and conceptualize this is I'm sure you have been in relationships where you've gotten along well, and then you have fought and then you've gotten along well, and and it's the same thing only a little bit writ large. I mean, it's it's in all our lives, it's just in a different on a different scale. So and in each of those different stages, the woman or the the person needing help needs different things, and you have to be aware of

Unknown Speaker  1:52:53
that. Yeah, you hear noise are unable to play loud music, reversed his next decline. Opinion users, it wouldn't be as fast to stop. And I know a lot of people do that. Because they say that, well, we will just not do that we have to be, you're gonna call me in those years, she'll be right back tomorrow, whatever the situation resolved in what has happened a few times. And every time you do a situation, it's like,

Unknown Speaker  1:53:29
well, you know, that's, that's part of the team, if you go back to the theme that the Family Violence Prevention Fund has come up with is no excuse. That's really kind of your excuse for not getting involved. Also, she won't do anything, she'll leave, and then she'll come back. The truth is, we don't know. And the system doesn't work all the way around the circle, she doesn't feel supported, that's part of it. So she doesn't leave, she doesn't have a place to go. Because there aren't enough beds, she's gonna go into a criminal justice system that's going to blame her, every piece of that system is going to have an excuse, I'm going to say she didn't really want to prosecute, she doesn't really want to leave, you know, so it just becomes such a cycle. And it's not that it is the neighbors responsibility alone. But it's just that we all have to get involved. We have to address this as a societal problem. We tend to think it's somebody else's family. I don't know the answer. I'm not that smart. I'm not therapist, I can't help. And I guess the, the hope is in a public education campaign, that everybody will at least take one step forward and try to be a little more supportive and open to helping people, even if even if each one of us doesn't have the answer, because we don't if I

Unknown Speaker  1:54:40
could add to that, too. There's also the question of seeing, I mean, there's still this ongoing thing about domestic violence or well as private, it's a private matter. So the cops are gonna say, I'm not gonna get involved there. It's a private matter and we have to define it as a public matter. That's when you know, we're talking about the fingers that has to be seen differently. And I think that's that's an important problem. And the way we still we still haven't quite gotten people to really say this isn't just a private matter. And then I also thought of listening to what I think So John, one of you said, why do we assume she's got that, you know, this this incredible emphasis on When is she going to get ready to leave? What about the why isn't it and what other crime I mean, really think about this person is beating you up, isn't even there? You're why are we focusing on her rather than him. And that also becomes, we started to see it as a more public problem, you start to socially reconstruct how we are used to thinking of it. I'm sorry, I just want to answer

Unknown Speaker  1:55:33
one thing on your question. I think there's the issue of safety really, is one issue of safety. For the woman, and for yourself, I mean, that their notice situations are the same. If you live there, and you know that this situation has occurred over and over again, you can accept what goes on, you know, the best thing might be you might not want to get involved in you might not want to call the police because you know that this particular abuser is, you know, might have been a drug lord connections, what have you. So you need to assess it. The way to work with it is you know, if you meet the woman, at some point, you can be supportive and say, I heard this if ever you need anything, you can come to me or here's a number you can call and there are no there are shelter, numbers, hotline, numbers, all of that. That's all you know, if it's up to 10, maybe you will make the decision to call the police and say this is but but that has to be assessed in the context of your you know, your life. But picking up on what Helen says, well, we all have a support system that we can count on. And we can all say that this is criminal, you're not in the state yet. That's that's fine.

Unknown Speaker  1:56:42
I mean, I think just providing a woman in that situation with a list of options that she might not know about, is very helpful. And then over time she can think about and, you know, I think and to provide people with the maximum amount of choice in their situation is really critical, because she knows best how she can make herself safe.

Unknown Speaker  1:57:13
I think a lot of people love most women, and why don't you? And their doctors asked them about why. Why an ashtray? Or what kind of or, and it's just for the invite, when there's clear signs of the fears, and managed by the abuser into the family room. And that's the word question about what what has happened to her. And the abuser holds for him while she's trying to and what a question. And sensitivity to the to them upon adopters is really critical. Right now in California, we are pushing for legislation to require that for licensing of doctors, you must have coursework in college in domestic violence or spousal abuse from primary. And we have and for those that's for new doctors, for doctors for that you have continuing education courses. And it could be that also nurses need some training. But I think that online hams are overwhelmed. Like the criminal justice ban. They tend to even ignore the term they know they're being abusive nurses may notice that being abused. Don't ask questions like oh, we'll just come back again. There's a lot of but I think that's a really critical community to get into. Because obviously, they know these are not safe to jeopardize. The reason to focus on the winner is to get them to think possibly for really serious fun. Just a quick follow up. I'm physician actually. And what's real sad is that we are educated on child abuse. But no one ever talks about the abuse of money. And sadly, emergency rooms are so overwhelmed that oftentimes I've seen a lot in ER, who would come in with some somatic complaints. And I knew that there was something more there but the time did not

Unknown Speaker  1:59:49
50 More people waiting outside and it was three o'clock.

Unknown Speaker  1:59:52
But but you know it took a long time to even get the doctors in ers to focus on the child abuse and this is really just the next day Chairman the AMA is barely beginning to address it, but they are and it that's exactly the issue we 1015 years ago, we just began to look at child abuse. And now every doctor knows about it,

Unknown Speaker  2:00:11
I want to, I think that with managed care and what you're going to have, you know, certain time slot allotted to each patient, you're going to have that sort of problem, and more. So I think that's an issue we really, really have to pay attention to in the new healthcare system that's coming in. In

Unknown Speaker  2:00:30
fact, it's interesting that in New York City, sorry, had the whole manual on procedures that came on after the AMA came up with it on one doc training for doctors, apparently doctors are reluctant to do training because you know, that it, it eats into their time. And there are many hospitals that have no clue that such a procedure in such a guy even exists. I forget the actual process of installing the training, but many of us are pushing the price to administration to you know, staff to do that kind of thing. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  2:01:03
Did you want? To your friendship with a rapist with aids can be charged with contempt. And your think it's still debatable.

Unknown Speaker  2:01:36
It can be charged. I just don't know unnecessarily if it can be if he's going to be convicted on that. But yeah,

Unknown Speaker  2:01:44
I don't know the answer that I'd like to point out. But you did remind me about a case. If any of you hear of this horrifying case. I think it was a Texas case where a woman and you talk about attribution of blame what is where a woman in fact, was in a situation where she asked the the rapist to use a condom, and then that was used against her to say that this must he must have consented. really extraordinary. Yes, you had your hand up

Unknown Speaker  2:02:15
once against women is one thing as a civil rights issue. what your job is, and why not? There's a lot of doctors more visible or receive positive institutionalized right data that is within that situation, can a poor woman have a civil suit, where poverty and class issues become a gender issue? Next, another problem would be also back to the heterosexism that is gender issues of gender and knowledge. One of the skills situational for the counselor was made by heterosexual issue here was that is that gentleman as being able to demand the right gender notions of what matters and what and well, that man, so sue me, right as a gender discrimination, gender discrimination, so I get those issues every class and those issues are how we want a positive while in class issues.

Unknown Speaker  2:03:18
Well, any, anytime you develop something sort of like a civil right like this, first of all, we would not want to create a law that was not gender neutral, we believe it should be gender neutral. We just see women as a victimized class who have no, no way to to seek damages for the for the harm that's been done to them, particularly when the criminal justice system fails. And as it often does, so we don't know. I mean, you don't know when you create this kind of legislation, who or how or how creatively, people would be able to show that they were victims, and that I think that that, but we haven't even allowed that to grow. I mean, it's so unfortunate in the criminal justice system, it is rarely relevant. It's never asked why this man raped this woman. So we don't even know for sure, although many women's rights advocates say that all rate is gender violence. The truth is, those kinds of questions have never been asked and we'd have to really develop a body of law around all of the issues that she's

Unknown Speaker  2:04:18
talking about, considering that that position of poverty has caused disproportionate to the poor and that poverty and that seemed that that is poverty in the budget. And can we use a class issue of civil suits discrimination against women? Very creative.

Unknown Speaker  2:04:49
Well, I certainly think you have a good point but we've got a we've got a ways to go