That’s not cool

http://www.thatsnotcool.com/

New York Times article

This month, three teenage girls, students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., were charged with disseminating child pornography.

They had sent nude pictures of themselves by cellphone to their teenage boyfriends, who were charged with possessing child pornography.

The legal consequences in this case may have been unique, but the behavior is not. About 20 percent of teenagers have posted or sent nude cellphone pictures of themselves, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit group.

Sending nude pictures, whether it is done under pressure or not, is part of a pattern of teenage behavior that the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a nonprofit domestic violence awareness group based in San Francisco, has labeled digital dating violence. The digital violence can include sending nonstop text messages or posting cruel comments on a boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s Facebook or MySpace page. The behaviors can be a warning sign that a teenager may become a perpetrator or a victim of domestic violence, according to the group.

It has gotten to be such a problem — and one that parents are largely unaware of, according to the organization — that it is the focus of a campaign from the Advertising Council, which highlights social issues in public service campaigns.

“This is another generation of domestic violence,” said Peggy Conlon, the chief executive of the Ad Council, which worked with the Family Violence Prevention Fund on the campaign. While the fund has created programs for older teenagers who are experiencing abuse, this campaign focuses on middle-school students, trying to get them to define and stop harassment in a relationship.

“Controlling behavior, unwarranted behavior, behavior where you say ‘no more’ and then there’s a continuation of that behavior, can easily turn into abuse,” said Esta Soler, the president of the fund, which is supported by government agencies like the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women, and corporations like Verizon.

Schools and parents have become somewhat aware of electronic bullying because of widely publicized cases like that of Megan Meier, the Missouri teenager who committed suicide after being taunted on MySpace. But Ms. Soler said abuse within teenage romantic relationships, particularly through digital mediums, was “a huge and basically unaddressed problem in this country.”

Almost one in 10 high school students has been physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research. And one-quarter of teenagers in relationships say they have been called names or harassed by their partner through cellphones and text messages, according to a study commissioned by the clothing company Liz Claiborne, which sponsors antiviolence programs.

About 39 percent of teenagers have sent sexual e-mail messages or instant messages, according to a 2008 study from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com.

“There was this whole world going on that parents didn’t know about that was emerging through how kids used these digital tools,” said Nick Law, the chief creative officer, North America, of the digital advertising agency R/GA, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, which designed the Ad Council campaign.

As the Family Violence Prevention Fund and R/GA researched the issue by setting up blogs and talking to teenagers, they realized the teenagers frequently received digital threats or upsetting requests from people they were dating. But the teenagers were not talking about it, did not know how to handle it and did not know what was appropriate and what was not.

“It was abuse that there was no protocol around,” Mr. Law said. The parents were not aware of the interactions, and the teenagers did not know how to prevent it, he said.

The campaign and its Web site, ThatsNotCool.com, encourage teenagers to set their own boundaries. It is intended to appeal to all teenagers, not just those with serious problems.

“The kids don’t want to be told what’s right and what’s wrong,” Mr. Law said.

On the site, teenagers can send one of 35 “callout cards” — brightly colored messages they can send by e-mail, post to their Facebook or MySpace accounts or download — that are meant to tell someone they have crossed a line.

The messages are sharp. For example: “Congrats! With that last text, you’ve achieved stalker status.”

The site offers an area where teenagers can seek advice, like how to stop a boyfriend from nonstop text-messaging. For more direct advice, the site tells teenagers to call or conduct a live chat with trained volunteers.

R/GA also asked people with existing YouTube followings to create videos for the project. Brandon Hardesty, who does movie re-enactments under the name ArtieTSMITW on YouTube, did scenes about how parents or guidance counselors might react to finding nude pictures on a cellphone.

The campaign is digitally focused, reflecting the way teenagers communicate. Even the posters that will appear in schools, which display some of the “callout card” messages, ask viewers to snap a photo with their cellphone and text-message it to someone.

Google is providing all of the advertising space, like banner ads and search inventory, for the first five weeks of the campaign. Because ThatsNotCool.com is a new site with no existing advertising, Google will be able to measure things like “how many people are driven to the campaign as you add another medium,” said Erin Clift, Google’s director of agency relations for North America. Google wanted the five-week exclusive period to establish a baseline measurement and said it would have results once other mediums were added.

The television, radio and outdoor advertising begin on Feb. 9. The television spot shows a boyfriend dressed in a cellphone costume constantly interrupting his girlfriend’s day with text messages.

All of the communications are aimed at teenagers, not parents. Ms. Soler said the fund was working on a campaign to alert parents to problems, but for now, she wanted to get teenagers discussing them.

“We want to give them the tools to say ‘You can have a healthy relationship, and here’s the road map,’ ” Ms. Soler said.

February 2 – 6 is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention WeekPosted in battered women, domestic violence, violence against women

From the US Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women

To intervene and prevent the cycle of violence, it is important to educate teens about healthy relationships and help them identify services available to them if they experience a physically or emotionally abusive relationship.

Links:
Download OVW’s Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week Poster
National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline
Break the Cycle
Family Violence Prevention Fund’s Teen Program

Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome

Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: Christian Women and Domestic Violence
By Kathryn Joyce, Religion Dispatches
Posted on February 2, 2009, Printed on February 2, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/124174/

What is a good enough reason for divorce? Well, according to Rick Warren’s Saddleback church, divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery or abandonment — as these are the only cases permitted in the Bible — and never for abuse.

As teaching pastor Tom Holladay explains, spousal abuse should be dealt with by temporary separation and church marriage counseling designed to bring about reconciliation between the couple. But to qualify for that separation, your spouse must be in the “habit of beating you regularly,” and not be simply someone who “grabbed you once.”

“How many beatings would have to take place in order to qualify as regularly?” asks Jocelyn Andersen, a Christian domestic violence survivor and advocate, author of the 2007 book Woman Submit! Christians and Domestic Violence, an indictment of church teachings of wifely submission and male headship. As she sees it, by convincing women that leaving their relationships is not an option, these teachings have laid the ground for a domestic violence epidemic within the church.

Andersen writes from personal experience, describing an episode of being held hostage by her husband — an associate pastor in their Kansas Baptist church — for close to twenty hours after he’d nearly fractured her skull. Andersen was raised in the Southern Baptist Convention, where she heard an unremitting message of “submission, submission, submission.” She saw this continual focus reflected in her ex-husband’s denunciations, while he detained her, of women who wanted to “rule over men.” Though Andersen was rescued by her church’s pastor, who had his assistant pastor arrested himself, she says other churchwomen aren’t so lucky, particularly when churches tell couples to attend joint marriage counseling under lay ministry leaders with no specific training for abuse survivors, who instead offer an unswerving prescription of submission and headship, often telling women to learn to submit “better.”

Pastor Holladay takes care in the taped sessions to explain that enduring abuse is not a part of a wife’s call to submit to her husband — a principle that Warren and Saddleback espouse. “There’s nowhere in the Bible that says it’s an attitude of submission to let someone abuse you,” he says in the audio clips. Nonetheless, Andersen finds it telling that the issue of submission always arises in church discussions of domestic violence, “subtly reminding women of their duty to maintain a submissive attitude toward their husbands.”

That this occurs even in Warren’s church, which is derided by more conservative Southern Baptists for its purported cultural liberalism. Andersen sees this as proof of the centrality of male authority throughout mainstream evangelical culture, “which can still be maintained in a controlled separation but is seriously threatened when a woman is given leeway of any kind, for whatever reason, in ceasing to submit to an abusive husband by divorcing him.”

There are more blatant examples of excusing abusive male authority among stricter proponents of complementarianism and submission theology. In June 2007, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Bruce Ware told a Texas church that women often bring abuse on themselves by refusing to submit. And Debi Pearl, half of a husband-and-wife fundamentalist child-training ministry as well as author of the bestselling submission manual, Created to Be His Help Meet, writes that submission is so essential to God’s plan that it must be followed even to the point of allowing abuse. “When God puts you in subjection to a man whom he knows is going to cause you to suffer,” she writes, “it is with the understanding that you are obeying God by enduring the wrongful suffering.”

While Saddleback’s teachings certainly don’t make such an explicit argument for submitting to violence, and Holladay tells abused women they must seek safety before they attempt to reconcile, there is a similar profession of helplessness before biblical mandates. In the audio clips, Holladay protests he could tell women that there was a third biblical justification for divorce, “a Bible verse that says, ‘If they abuse you in this-and-such kind of way, then you have a right to leave them.’” But ultimately, he says, there’s not, and the question of separation versus divorce comes down to a matter of dealing with the pain of fixing a marriage now or later, almost a matter of discipline.

“It’s not like you can escape the pain,” Holladay explains. “You think you are — there’s an immediate release when you get the divorce.” But the pain abused wives escape through divorce will just be traded for pain down the line as they have to negotiate shared parenting duties with their exes, or encounter “old issues” with a new spouse — a seeming charge that the abused spouse’s “issues” contributed to the abuse. “I’d always rather choose a short-term pain and find God’s solution for a long-term gain, than find a short-term solution that’s going to involve a long-term pain in my life,” Holladay says.

Saddleback’s position is “typical evangelical fare on the subject of domestic abuse and domestic violence,” responds Andersen. Typical because, like other well-known and extremely influential evangelical leaders, Saddleback is pushing a message of “leave while the heat is on,” but only with the intention of returning to the marriage when the violence has cooled. This is the message that Andersen tracks from Christian leaders as prominent as megachurch pastor John MacArthur, Focus on the Family head James Dobson, and established Christian radio psychologists Minirth and Meier on the far-reaching Moody Media empire. “Everyone with a lick of sense knows that, in a violent marriage, the heat is never really off,” Andersen tells me. “Everything can be fine one minute, and the next minute you’re dead.”

In the face of prominent leaders who claim helplessness in the face of biblical tradition, Andersen and a small but growing cadre of like-minded abuse survivors are fighting this established conservative wisdom on domestic violence not with secular or feminist domestic violence tactics, but with new theological arguments arguing for abused wives’ rights within a biblically literalist, and in some cases even complementarian, framework.

While Holladay explains that divorcees will not be turned away from Saddleback, and their divorces will be treated as either any old pre-conversion sin if it happened before they were saved, or forgiven as a repented sin if it happened post-salvation, he nonetheless stresses that mature Christians must admit that their divorce “was more for [their] own selfishness than any other reason.”

For Danni Moss, a pseudonymous blogger and formerly-Baptist abuse survivor, this offer of forgiveness isn’t good enough. “I’m not ok with being accepted because my divorce is in the past, and God accepts and forgives our sins. I didn’t sin in getting a divorce. God directed me.”

Moss’ story of entering and eventually ending an abusive marriage reads like a cautionary tale of the excesses of male headship theology. A daughter of missionaries who followed the popular authoritarian teachings of Bill Gothard, Moss says that her marriage was “arranged” by her father, who believed, as Gothard, that parents know what’s best for their children. Following a popular fundamentalist women’s teaching that love is a choice rather than an emotion, Moss dutifully complied with her father’s choice for her. Hyper-criticism that began on her honeymoon turned into physical abuse when Moss bore the first of her and ex-husband “Gary’s” three children. Sexual assaults and marital rape later became commonplace, as did violence towards both Moss and her eldest two children.

Contrary to Holladay’s limited definition of dangerous abuse, Moss found Gary’s generalized violence, in rages and wall-punching, as damaging as actual beatings. After a particularly intimidating episode, when Gary punched a glass door panel and had to be hospitalized to stop the bleeding of his lacerated arm, Moss left Gary for the first time. “I felt God had shown me that the end of violence was death. I’d kept thinking he would die, but here [with his survival], was this chance that he might not…I realized it would be me if I didn’t get out.”

Moss left Gary twice, but twice was convinced to reconcile with him by their Southern Baptist church, which sent both spouses to marriage counseling, seeking to hear “both sides” of the story. In their focus on reuniting estranged spouses, the counselors gave equal credence to “each side,” equating Gary’s complaints about Moss’s “willful” failures in the kitchen with the physical violence that she and the family endured. Moss believes that the teachings that were common in the SBC and independent Baptist churches that they attended underscored this strategy. “We were taught that women were the completers of men, and that therefore God created Danni for the sole purpose of completing Gary. Since my job was to complete him anywhere he was incomplete, I was supposed to already know what he wanted.” After their first separation and reconciliation, this attitude led Moss to take her children to an outside counselor, so that they could work on “not pushing Gary’s buttons.”

These days, Moss doesn’t attend church — not because she’s opted out or waned in her faith, but because she hasn’t yet found a church where she feels safe to trust the male authority. After Moss finally divorced Gary, a pastor told her she should return to her father’s house so that she could be under the proper protection of male authority. Though Moss didn’t, she doesn’t disagree with the directive on principle: a distinction that is an interesting part of the community of Christian survivors that Moss and Andersen belong to. In this community, which has become more active in the last several years, theologically focused, and often biblically literalist, women are working to reconcile their belief in the literal truth of the Bible with language that has long justified male authority and female subjugation in literalist churches. In their efforts to square biblical literalism with self-preservation, they’re crafting liberation theologies of a sort that do not spring from women’s lib, at least as it’s conventionally understood. (Moss laughingly relates her surprise at being criticized as feminist — a label she doesn’t apply to herself at all.)

In Moss’ case, she argues for a distinction between the language of spiritual authority that she can’t deny is part of the Bible she believes in, and actual practiced authority between husbands and wives, which should not involve power hierarchies. In the meantime, she says that good complementarian marriages might not look any different from egalitarian partnerships — though this common standard of “good intentions,” an echo of traditional complementarian insistences on husbands’ sacrificial headship — leaves little recourse for women who end up the bad sort. In the latter, Moss sees the hand of the original misogynist, Satan, prophesied to have enmity with woman ever since the Fall, who strikes at women outside of male spiritual “covering” through the violence of abusive husbands: a surprising twist of the complementarian insistence that women be protected under the spiritual covering of a man. Reconciling the seeming contradiction between this literalist biblical command and her championship of women’s right to leave abusers, Moss invokes a third way out traditionally reserved for widows. Domestic violence survivors are widows of a sort as well, she says, and so likewise can consider themselves married to God and safe under his protection.

Andersen, who also writes extensively on biblical prophesy, has a different theological explanation, one with a seemingly more feministic bent. The story of the Fall should not be seen as a prescription for marriage roles, she argues, with women charged to follow men as punishment for acting outside the chain of command, but rather as the first chapter in a long history of domestic violence of husband against wife. In Andersen’s reading, the story of Adam and Eve is that of Adam’s deadly betrayal of his wife: offering her up for punishment — the wages of eating the apple were death — rather than owning his blame for sin. Women have been responding in a sort of biblical battered wife syndrome, the “Eve Syndrome,” ever since.

Another of Moss and Andersen’s contemporaries, Barbara Roberts, Australian author of Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion, even calls herself a complementarian. Though Roberts believes that complementarianism too often has “an undue emphasis on female submission and too little emphasis on the husband’s duty to protectively lead his wife,” she still agrees with large portions of classic complementarian documents, such as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s Danvers Statement. She holds this belief even as she lays out a theological case for including abuse as one of biblical grounds for divorce: a counterintuitive confluence of ideas, but one which Roberts says is an essential protection for Christian women.

“We know from small studies in Christian contexts, as well as from a great deal of clinical and pastoral experience that domestic abuse is prevalent in Christian contexts,” says Roberts, adding that research has found that Christian women often stay in abusive situations several years longer than secular abused women.

While she sees some churches teaching that “wifely insubmission is the cause of domestic abuse,” as had Bruce Ware, more common is the approach of churches like Saddleback, which allows separation but never divorce for abuse.

“I think Saddleback’s teaching is profoundly and dangerously wrong,” says Roberts, who tried to contact Saddleback twice after the teachings were publicized in early January, offering them her book’s findings that 1 Corinthians 7:15 — a verse commonly interpreted as applying solely to an unbeliever deserting a believing spouse — provides the biblical grounds for abused wives to consider their union nullified. “The key question is not ‘who walked out’ but ‘who caused the separation?’ I believe I have provided a thorough and comprehensive refutation of the view held by people like those at Saddleback.”

Refuting Saddleback’s position on biblical grounds is direly important, says Roberts, to account for the different and additional burdens Christian women experience in weighing whether to leave a marriage. “Devout Christian believers are more intensely bound by their desire to obey God: their very real Savior, who they do not want to displease in any way. Christian victims thus put a positive internal pressure on themselves to ‘stay, submit, pray, forgive, and forget the previous abuse because that would be holding unforgiveness.’” Simply put, Roberts says, “A Bible-believing Christian woman needs a biblical argument for leaving a dangerous marriage because she loves God and wants to obey the Bible…Her scriptural dilemma can only be solved by applying and properly interpreting more scripture to counterbalance and correct her unbalanced emphases and misunderstandings.”

It’s to that end that Roberts and her fellow travelers are amassing a library of resources — novels, personal testimonies, and exegetical material — for women to whom secular reasons for leaving can’t appeal. Perhaps what’s most compelling about the existence of these seemingly contradictory stances on women’s rights, submission, complementarianism, and abuse is the fact that complementarian teachings and domestic violence are both large enough issues within the evangelical church to give birth to such an array of approaches. These including such nascent theological attempts — neither quite feminist nor complementarian — to help give biblically literalist women a safe exit.

Kathryn Joyce is working on a book about Christian conservative women, to be published by Beacon Press.

© 2009 Religion Dispatches All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/124174/

Bent county deputy arrested in child-porn sting

The Denver Post  reported January 26, 2009 that a Bent County deputy was arrested by the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office for investigation of attempted sexual exploitation of a child.

Investigators of the DA’s office arrested Hubert E. Teague, 35, of LaJunta after an investigation lasting about two weeks during which time Teague was reported to have sent sexually-oriented emails to undercover agents and asked for nude photos of an underage girl.

The article reported that in one of the pictures Teague sent to investigators, he was wearing a T-shirt but was nude below the waist.

 He is being investigated for attempted Internet sex-exploitation of a child and attempted sexual exploitation of a child.

Complete story in The Denver Post

SHARE Inc. receives $12,000 Daniels Fund grant

SHARE Inc. has received a $12,000 Daniels Fund grant to support its domestic violence shelter and outreach program.

SHARE, the Morgan County domestic violence program, provides a variety of services to domestic violence victims. Services include 24-hour confidential crisis response, emergency shelter, individual advocacy and support groups for battered women in English and Spanish, children and teen programs for shelter and outreach children, court advocacy for both English- and Spanish-speaking clients, assistance with protection orders and victim compensation, and assistance and referral to other resource agencies within the community.

SHARE also has a two-year transitional housing program for battered women with children and the Safe Haven Supervised Visitation and Safe Exchange Project.

“The Daniels Fund grant will allow us to continue to enhance existing services,” said Director Jacque Morse. “Funds will be used to supplement general operating costs for client expenses and crisis response. The ability to assist families in immediate crisis, as well as provide an avenue for continuing support, dramatically improves their ability to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency.”

The Daniels Fund was established in 1997 by Bill Daniels, a pioneer in cable television known for his kindness and generosity to those in need. For more information about SHARE Inc., call 970-867-4444 or toll-free at 877-867-9590.

Westcliffe reacts (or doesn’t) to Morman sect in area

 

Video on community of Westcliff, Colorado reactions to FLDS compound in the area.

Carol Lawrence of the Colorado Springs Gazette went to Westcliffe, Colorado to get the reaction from people there to the presence of a FLDS compound outside of town. She was unable to get anyone to comment at first, then did get some statements from a few area residents and the under sheriff.  Quotes from the video:

Brandon Heising: “Hey, to each his own. Freedom of religion, right?”

Craig Feldmann, Custer County Under Sheriff:  “At this point we have no indications that they are doing anything illegal or that justifies us taking any kind of action toward anybody in their organization. At this time they are being treated as anybody else in the county. . . . .”  Later in the clip he is shown saying that the compound is “very clean, very nice, they’ve done a lot of work to it. Real nice place.”

Steve, the Concrete Finisher: “They don’t drink, they don’t smoke, they don’t cuss, they don’t live like that — right?  . . . . Do I have a problem with them? No, I don’t have a problem with anybody.”

Myke and Jim Jones, distant neighbors at the Bull Domingo Ranch  say they are concerned about the young girls and that they believe the FLDS does ”have a tendency to kick out the boys when they are 12 or 13 . . . just kicking them out on the street. . . .if you are going to have six or seven wives, why do you need a bunch of boys running around?” 

One commenter believes the FLDS picks rural communities because they “do not have real good police powers or zoning laws.”  He says the FLDS depends on the state for their wells, so if they are violating the water or sewer regulations, it would be a problem for the state engineer.

Another commenter: “Everyone’s got to do their own thing, right? Whatever makes you happy.”

Wanda Christian felt that some groups move into the Westcliffe area thinking that people there are “not intelligent and don’t know what’s going on in the outside world and they will be able to pull the wool over our eyes.”

When the FLDS compound was raided in Eldorado, Texas, authorities discovered under-age girls who were pregnant and some had already given birth.  This situation is known to be common to all FLDS compounds.  When girls under the legal age of consent are pregnant and have given birth, that in itself is evidence of sexual assault on a child.  So where is the dilemma? What is the problem in communities that tolerate these crimes happening under their noses and excuse themselves from responsibility on the basis that it is “freedom of religion.” 

The safe assumption is that minor girls who are pregnant or are underage mothers live in the compound outside Westcliffe.  There a numerous stories from women who took risks to runaway from the FLDS life.  It is not inconceivable that throwaway boys or runaway girls from the FLDS compound would turn up in our rural communities looking for help. Do we know where they could turn? What kind of help can they get? How will they know where to go?

The comments in the video from the people who weren’t afraid to speak to Ms. Lawrence aren’t very encouraging. And the fact that others didn’t want to speak out at all is telling.

Thanks to Ms. Lawrence for getting this story. Maybe she can contact some of the domestic violence shelters in the area and ask if they are prepared to assist runaway “wives.

Colorado Springs Gazette

Victim privacy at community based DV programs protected by law

If you are a battered woman, what you tell an advocate at a domestic violence program is private and protected by Colorado law.  What you tell a victim assistant who works for the district attorney or a law enforcement agency is not private.

We have had more reports from victims recently that they were barred from getting services through SHARE, Inc. by local law enforcement agencies. 

For example, one victim who asked for a SHARE advocate was told that she could “only have only one advocate at a time.” Presumably this meant the victim assistant provided through the law enforcement agency. 

Critical differences between government-based victim assistant programs and community based domestic violence programs.

There are several important and critical distinctions between services that are and can be provided by government-based victim assistant offices, such as criminal justice and law enforcement offices, and community based programs providing services to victims of domestic violence. 

The most critial difference is that confidentiality of  information given by a victim to a community based domestic violence agency such as SHARE is protected by Colorado law.  Information a victim gives to a victim assistant is not privileged or private.

Obviously, the employer of the victim assistant is the law enforcement agency or office of the district attorney, and the employer has access to anything in the victim file. This information could be used against the interests of the victim, including filing charges against her, or taking other action without consulting the victim that could put her in grave danger. There are also examples in the 13th Judicial District of inappropriate actions victim assistants have taken with battered women, including a case where a victim assistant told the victim she had to fill out a financial affidavit for a bond reduction hearing for her estranged husband who had been arrested for beating her — in other words, directing the victim to help the perpetrator get out of jail and place herself in danger again. 

Other important distinctions include that the primary purpose of victim assistant offices is to ensure that victims of many types of crimes have information about their rights, and community based domestic violence programs like SHARE focus on domestic abuse victims, they have extensive training and expertise in the field, and their services are tailored to the unique needs of their clients.   The full range of services provided by  SHARE includes 24-hour crisis response, help with protective orders, emergency shelter, transitional housing, individual advocacy, support groups, going to court with a victim, children’s programs, a supervised visitation and safe exchange program, and other supportive services provided in English and Spanish. Obviously, these services are far beyond the scope of a victim assistant program.

Because we believe it is important for victims of domestic abuse to understand the basic differences about privacy of the information they give, we have a page about it here and are reprinting it below:

PRIVACY OF INFORMATION GIVEN BY VICTIMS TO SHARE AND OTHER COMMUNITY-BASED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROGRAMS IS PROTECTED BY COLORADO LAW

SHARE firmly supports victims’ rights to confidentiality in all areas of our work.  

Under Colorado Revised Statute 13-90-107 (k), SHARE must hold all client information confidential. This includes information a client tells us about herself and her family. It also includes information about whether or not a person is currently or has ever been a client.  

There are only three exceptions to this law: suspicion of child abuse (SHARE is a mandated reporter), imminent threat of homicide or harm of another or imminent threat to self. As Morgan County’s only Domestic Violence agency, we take the responsibility of safety of information very seriously and welcome client questions regarding confidentiality.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT LACK OF PRIVACY OF INFORMATION GIVEN BY VICTIMS TO GOVERNMENT-AGENCY BASED VICTIM SERVICES, SUCH AS  OFFICE OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY, POLICE DEPARTMENTS, AND SHERIFF’S OFFICES.

Government-based victim services such as victim assistant programs provided by an office of a district attorney, a police department or county sheriff’s office, are not covered under the privacy statute.  Information given to a victim assistant employed by one of these agencies is not confidential and can be shared with others in law enforcement.

http://shareinc.wordpress.com/confidentiality/

U.S. District Court Judge Charged in Superseding Indictment with Aggravated Sexual Abuse and Abusive Sexual Contact

WASHINGTON – A federal grand jury in Houston returned a superseding indictment today charging U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent, 59, with aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact and obstruction of justice, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division announced. Kent was previously indicted on Aug. 28, 2008, on one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse and two counts of abusive sexual contact of a clerk’s office employee.

The superseding indictment charges three counts based on alleged offenses involving an additional victim who is also a court employee. The first two additional counts charge Kent with aggravated sexual abuse and abusive sexual contact. The third count of the superseding indictment charges obstruction of justice related to an inquiry by a special investigative committee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit into a complaint of judicial misconduct filed against Kent by the clerk’s office employee.

The case is being prosecuted by Senior Deputy Chief for Litigation Peter J. Ainsworth and Trial Attorneys John P. Pearson and AnnaLou T. Tirol of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, which is headed by Section Chief William M. Welch II. This case is being investigated by the FBI.

An indictment is merely an allegation. Defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-crm-009.html

Justice Department Sues New Mexico Community College for Sexual Harassment of Former Employee

Friday, January 9, 2009

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-crt-022.html

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice today filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New Mexico against Luna Community College, alleging discrimination against former employee Charlene Ortiz-Cordova in the form of sexual harassment by a supervisor that resulted in a hostile work environment.

“Title VII protects women from discrimination in employment,” said Grace Chung Becker, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Department of Justice will vigorously pursue cases when employers fail or refuse to take appropriate action to stop sexual harassment in the workplace.”

The Department’s complaint alleges that the supervisor, Luna’s former president, subjected Ms. Ortiz-Cordova to sexual harassment over the course of several months by making unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature, unwanted sexual gestures, and repeated sexually explicit comments to her, among other allegations. The complaint further alleges that Luna failed or refused to take appropriate action to prevent and correct the sexual harassment.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin or religion, and prohibits retaliation against an employee who opposes an unlawful employment practice, or because the employee has made a charge or participated in an investigation, proceeding or hearing under the Act.

The Department of Justice is committed to the vigorous enforcement of Title VII. The Department’s lawsuit against Luna is the first Title VII suit it has filed in 2009. Last year, the Department filed a total of twelve Title VII suits. More information about Title VII and other federal employment laws is available on the Department of Justice Web site at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/emp/index.html.

New report: Understanding & responding to girls’ delinquency

From the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention

http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/220124.pdf

3.4 Million people report being stalked

WASHINGTON – An estimated 3.4 million persons identified themselves as victims of stalking during a 12-month period in 2005 and 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced January 13. About half of these victims experienced at least one unwanted contact per week from the offender and 11 percent had been stalked for five or more years.

Stalking is defined as a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. Individuals must have feared for their safety or that of a family member as a result of the course of conduct, or have experienced additional threatening behaviors.

Individuals were classified as stalking victims if they responded that they experienced at least one of seven types of stalking behaviors on two or more separate occasions. The most common types of stalking behavior reported by victims were receiving unwanted phone calls from the offender (66 percent), receiving unsolicited letters or email (31 percent), or having rumors spread about them (36 percent). Nearly a third of victims reported that offenders were equally likely to show up at places with no reason to be there or wait for the victim at a particular location.

Technology has become a quick and easy way for stalkers to monitor and harass their victims. More than one in four stalking victims reported that some form of cyberstalking was used, such as email (83 percent of all cyberstalking victims) or instant messaging (35 percent).

Electronic monitoring of some kind was used to stalk one in 13 victims. Video or digital cameras were equally likely as listening devices or bugs to be used to track victims.

Nearly 75 percent of victims knew their offender in some capacity, and about one-tenth of all victims were stalked by a stranger. Stalking victims most often identified the stalker as a former intimate (22 percent) or a friend, roommate, or neighbor (16 percent).

Depending upon the severity of the stalking, victims suffered a range of emotions as they experienced stalking. The most common fears cited by victims were not knowing what would happen next (46 percent) and being afraid the behavior would never stop (29 percent). Nine percent of stalking victims reported that their worst fear was death.

About 130,000 victims reported that they had been fired or asked to leave their job because of the stalking. About one in eight of all employed stalking victims lost time from work because of fear for their safety or to pursue activities such as getting a restraining order or testifying in court. More than half of these victims lost five days or more from work.

This report is based on the largest data collection of stalking behavior to date. Data were collected by the Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, and was sponsored by the Office on Violence Against Women. The SVS data collection was conducted over a six-month period in 2006. All survey respondents age 18 or older were eligible for the supplement.

The report, Stalking Victimization in the United States (NCJ 224527), was written by BJS statisticians Katrina Baum, Shannan Catalano, Michael Rand, and Kristina Rose of the National Institute of Justice. Following publication, the report can be found at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/svus.htm.

For additional information about the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ statistical reports and programs, please visit the BJS Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs.

Female genital mutilation in the U.S.

From Womenshealth.gov
What is female genital cutting (FGC)?
Female genital cutting (FGC) is the collective name given to traditional practices that involve the partial or total cutting away of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genitals, whether for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons. Historically, it has been also called “female genital mutilation” or “female circumcision.”

When is FGC carried out?
The age at which FGC is performed on women and girls varies. It may be performed during infancy, childhood, marriage or during a first pregnancy. FGC is typically performed on young girls who are between 4 and 12 years old, however, by a medically untrained person-often an older woman-from the local culture or community. Increasingly FGC is also performed by trained health personnel, including physicians, nurses and midwives.

Where is FGC practiced?
FGC is practiced predominantly in 28 countries in Africa.  Eighteen African countries have prevalence rates of 50 percent or higher, but these estimates vary from country to country and within various ethnic groups.  FGC also occurs in some Middle Eastern countries-Egypt, the Republic of Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Israel-and is found in some Muslim groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and India.  Some immigrants practice various forms of FGC in other parts of the world, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and in European nations.

How many women and girls in the world have been affected by FGC? In the United States?
It is estimated that 130 million girls and women have undergone FGC.1,2,3 Approximately 2 million are subjected to this practice each year worldwide.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 168,000 women and girls in the United States had either undergone FGC or were at risk for FGC in 1990. Of these, 48,000 were girls younger than 18 years old.

Where and when did FGC originate?
Practices involving the cutting of female genitals have been found throughout history in many cultures, but there is no definitive evidence documenting when or why this ritual began. Some theories suggest that FGC might have been practiced in ancient Egypt as a sign of distinction, while others hypothesize origins in ancient Greece, Rome, pre-Islamic Arabia and Tsarist Russia. Up until the mid-20th century, some physicians in the United States wrongly performed clitoridectomies for a variety of clinically unsound reasons.

More from Womenshealth.gov

Meeting Women On Their Terms | RHRealityCheck.org

Meeting Women On Their Terms | RHRealityCheck.org

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[This article is about reproductive rights. However, we cite it here to demonstrate the value of community education in changing attitudes about domestic violence in immigrant women.]

Although domestic violence is still a problem in both communities, women in the Dominican Republic reported often feeling as if they had to resign themselves to a situation of violence due to their economic dependence on their partners. Women in the U.S., however, reported being aware of their rights and options in a violent situation, and felt more empowered to get themselves out of a dangerous situation.

The importance of community and conversation cannot be overestimated – and is ultimately one of the best tools that we have when approaching public health.

Meeting Women On Their Terms | RHRealityCheck.org

Iowa Violence Victims May Pay a Price for Budget Shortfalls | RHRealityCheck.org

Iowa Violence Victims May Pay a Price for Budget Shortfalls | RHRealityCheck.org

Posted using ShareThis

Iowans facing domestic violence or sexual assault are currently able to access crisis counseling, shelters and long-term support from a local program within driving distance. But if the state doesn’t soon find a way to maintain the $4 million that funds the programs, all that could change.

Local sexual assault and domestic violence programs rely on a combination of state, federal and private funds to maintain operation. Although the state provided funding for these programs as early as 1979, a number of changes and tight state budget years have dramatically eroded available state funding.

In 2002 the state budget to support these programs was eliminated, and nine programs were forced to close or merge. Subsequently money was taken from the Iowa Attorney General’s Victim Compensation Fund as a stop-gap measure that would allow the remaining programs to continue operating. But the Victim Compensation Fund can no longer support the domestic violence and sexual assault victim assistance programs.

Realizing that the Victim Compensation Fund would not be able to serve its intended purpose — providing assistance to victims of violent crime — and continue to fund the domestic and sexual assault assistance programs, the Iowa attorney general’s office, the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault began pressing state officials several years ago for an independent budget line item.

While mindful of the current budget crunch, the dependent agencies also know that fiscal year 2009 will be the last year that Iowa’s domestic violence and sexual assault programs will receive $4 million via the Victim Assistance Grant line item.

“Something has to give,” said Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller. “We have advised the Legislature for several years that the Compensation Fund, which comes from various fines and penalties paid by criminals, would not always be able to fully fund both programs. Now we’ve hit that crunch time. We need the Legislature’s direct appropriation of funds again — as it did in years past — for the crucial network of local programs all over Iowa.”

Miller, who led a news conference Wednesday at the State Capitol, said the 31 programs are located in 27 counties, but they serve the entire state. Despite the budget crunch, Miller said the current funding levels must be maintained.

“It is difficult for me to ask for this funding in these hard financial times, but I believe this is a matter of justice and a matter of safety,” he said. “It’s a matter of justice because Iowa has a long record of assisting victims of crime, and not just punishing and rehabilitating criminals. And it’s a matter of safety and security and recovery for victims.”

The programs, according to Miller, provide “indispensable, life-saving services” that include helping victims with safety plans, finding safe houses for women and children, guiding people through the criminal justice system and helping those who fall prey to violent crime cope with the unforeseen costs of being a victim.

Budget requests, filed by the attorney general’s office in October, include a $3.2 million direct appropriation to the programs, ending the mandated link to the Victims Compensation Fund. The attorney general’s office would retain the legal authority to transfer money from the fund to the local programs, but only if such transfers were fiscally possible.

“This would put the Compensation Fund on a more solid footing and would permit the Office to pay victims their full benefits on a prompt basis,” wrote Miller in his October request letter.

Miller also requested an additional $850,000 for local crime victim service programs. This would provide $850,000 for fiscal year 2010 that was moved in fiscal year 2009 from the Forfeited Property Fund to the grant program fund to replace lost federal support.

According to Beth Barnhill, executive director of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, rural Iowans will likely feel the brunt of any program cuts first.

“The programs most at risk are the rural programs that are heavily reliant on state funding,” she said. “They are unlikely to have local resources to make up the shortfall.”

Last year the Crime Victim Compensation Program served 5,249 Iowa victims of crime and paid $7.2 million of their out-of-pocket expenses. The expenses included things such as victim counseling, medical care, funeral and burial expenses, child care required for court proceedings or medical treatment, and compensation of wages lost due to crime-related injuries or court appearances.

During that same time frame Iowa’s local domestic abuse and sexual abuse programs served 26,934 victims — 20,042 women, 5,294 children and 1,058 men. The programs provided 100,814 nights of safe shelter to 4,416 victims and children.

Local programs provide emergency shelters, counseling, medical advocacy, crisis hotlines, guidance for victims going through criminal justice proceedings and many other individualized services. Most of the local programs serve large geographical regions — some up to six or eight counties — with small, low-paid staffs of dedicated professionals.

On Sept. 27, 2007, the Iowa programs participated in a 24-hour “snapshot” or requested services in the state. The count from that day showed that services were provided to 813 individuals. But there were an additional 114 requests for services that could not be met because of a lack of resources.

“Lisa” describes help she received from SHARE

SHARE lends help in domestic violence

By Dan Barker

Editor’s note: This story is one in a series about the member agencies of United Way of Morgan County. Donations may be sent to the United Way of Morgan County, P.O. Box 1425, Fort Morgan, CO 80701.

Times Staff Writer

Domestic violence comes in many forms.

For “Lisa,” who did not want her real name revealed, it was mostly verbal abuse, although there was physical abuse, too, she said.

After years of this, “I had no self-worth,” Lisa said.

She and her family were homeless, sleeping in cars at times, never sure of what would come next and never felt safe, she said.

But the help of those who work at SHARE, the Morgan County domestic violence program in Fort Morgan, she has been able to leave her alcoholic, drug-using, abusive husband and pull her family together, Lisa said.

At first, that was through transitional housing until she could afford a place of her own, she said.

She is even going to Morgan Community College now, she said.

SHARE workers talked with her, a children’s program helped the kids and there were times when the children could do special things like go to Water World in Denver, Lisa said.

SHARE also had someone to stand by her during court hearings and to help her do legal paperwork, she said.

It is more than just having a place to go, though.

Lisa’s husband always put her down, saying without him she would be helpless, and she needed to learn she could survive on her own, she said.

Those at SHARE gave her the assurance that everything would work out, Lisa said. She would make it and be OK.

The children had sessions with the children’s specialist and Lisa would meet with Director Jacque Morse once a week.

She learned to understand domestic violence issues and that she was not the only one to go through these kinds of experiences and feel that way, Lisa said.

“They were a tremendous help in helping me feel secure,” she said.

Almost three years later, the kids are growing and happier, no longer afraid to look out windows, Lisa said.

They are settled into a home, which is a big change, she said.

She had support from her church to leave, but it is not that simple when a person has no resources, Lisa said.

Nor is it easy to stay the course.

Lisa left and went back to her husband over a three-year period before she had the support of SHARE and Centennial Mental Heath Center to help straighten her out, she said.

She’s tried to get the word out to people she knows in similar situations, but they are often reluctant despite being told not to be afraid, Lisa said.

“They don’t realize what’s here for them,” she said. “I’m just thankful for (SHARE).”

Abuse like she suffered can last a lifetime and SHARE is always there to boost her confidence, Lisa said.

That kind of help can empower a person to make it through, she said.

SHARE has a confidential 24-hour crisis line and an emergency shelter for women who need to escape domestic violence, Morse said.

Those who call can be sure that their identities and what they say are kept in confidence, which does not happen with public resources like law enforcement, which is required to keep public records, she said.

It provides individual support and advocacy, as well as support groups in both English and Spanish, Morse said.

SHARE will go to court to support women during legal hearings and trials, and refer them to other agencies which can help them, she said.

There is a child and teenage program for kids in the emergency shelter and SHARE will help people find transitional housing, Morse said.

The newest addition to SHARE is the Safe Haven Project, which offers supervised parenting time and safe exchanges for children, she said.

It began last year and has been “very successful,” Morse said.

It is a family-friendly setting where parents can prepare and share a meal in the kitchen, choose games or toys to play with and have both a secure indoor and outdoor setting, she said.

It is open Monday, Thursday and Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. by appointment only, Morse said.

Supervised parenting time is $10 an hour and a safe exchange costs $5 per exchange, although there is a sliding scale for fees, she said.

Call 970-768-9214 or 970-867-4444 ext. 29 for an application packet.

It takes seven to 10 days for scheduling.

Source: Fort Morgan Times

Freep: Sexual assault on women in Michigan prisons

Series in the Detroit Free Press on sexual assault on women in Michigan prisons:

Chapter 1 (Sunday): _Sexual assaults on female inmates went unheeded_
Chapter 2 (Monday): _The trial begins with everything at stake_
Chapter 3 (Tuesday): _Breaking the silence_
Chapter 4 (Wednesday): _A jury surprise_
Chapter 5 (Thursday): _A new life?_

Rape in Prison: The Forgotton Women

By Womanist Musings

Reprinted with permission from Womanist Musings

In the US the attitude when it comes to crime is lock up the prisoners and throw away the key.  The prison industrial complex has become a huge part of the US economy.  Once the bars slam on the cell few care what goes on behind the m.  It is assumed that people are there for punishment and not rehabilitation; and therefore what occurs is almost always legitimized to some degree.

Women in prison represent a very vulnerable section of society.  At the mercy of prison guards and fellow inmates, many have been subject to horrific incidents of abuse.  With terrible crimes attached to their names few will take their complaints seriously. 

According to Freep.com, “A class-action lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections has already yielded verdicts reaching an estimated $50 million, when interest and fees are included. And that’s only for the first 18 women. With most yet to testify, and lawyers for the state insisting they have no intention of settling, Michigan’s beleaguered taxpayers could face hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.”

Women in Michigan were being raped repeatedly for years and the state did nothing.  As I read the testimony of Toni Bunton , I found myself filled with a rage that was difficult to control.  No matter what crime this woman has committed in the past no one deserves to be raped.  The state is of course refusing to settle the case, because to do so would mean admitting that they are culpable in the continual rape of women.

 

The state had a simple defense: These women are prisoners, and prisoners lie; if something did happen, it was the act of a few rogue guards; and if something did happen, the women didn’t report it. So how could the Department of Corrections prevent what it didn’t know was happening? The state said it thoroughly investigated any allegations it knew about and the claims of abuse were exaggerated.

“To say the department just sat back and did nothing, just let everybody run the place is just totally false,” Allan Soros, an assistant attorney general, said at the first trial.

Nonetheless, a series of human rights reports throughout the 1990s said sexual assaults on female inmates were rampant and corrections officials tolerated the climate.

It seems that because these women were/are prisoners their word was immediately suspect.  Why did the state not consider the risk that these women were making coming forth with their complaint in the first place?  Due to the power division in any prison a guard has the ability to make life extremely difficult for a woman that would dare make a rape accusation.  To even accuse a guard of rape is to place oneself in a precarious position. 

The Michigan Women’s Commission reported in 1993 there was an alarming level of sexual abuse and harassment by state prison guards.

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice found “pervasive” sexual abuse in Michigan women’s prisons.

In 1996, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting sexual harassment, sexual abuse and privacy violations by guards and other employees in Michigan prisons.

The report, based on interviews with prisoners and prison rights advocates, cited rapes by guards in a “highly sexualized and excessively hostile” environment.

Sexual abuse in prisons is not new.  Male prison guards have been known to leverage their positions of power for sexual relationships and then claim that the women involved consented.  When someone has the power over whether you eat, sleep, or even use the bathroom, how can you consent to a sexual relationship?  You have absolutely no personal power and the relationship is unbalanced.

What occurred is not a series of isolated incidents but rather a highly structured assault of women by men.  The state  decided that these women must be locked away from society; and therefore it took on the burden of ensuring that they are safe.  It is not enough to simply provide them with the basics and forget about them as though they suddenly are not human beings. 

Why were male guards allowed to watch over female prisoners?  Why did the state not closely monitor their behaviour to ensure that no abuse of power was occurring?  Why did it not heed the multiple reports that were issued detailing sexual assaults?  The answers to those questions are really quite simple.  These incidents involved women that society has decided are no longer valuable bodies.  Rape is something we believe that happens to innocent young virgins and not someone who has run afoul of the law.  These women were not considered of any worth and therefore what happened to them was deemed inconsequential.

While the case has focused on the culpability of the state I cannot help but wonder why it is that the individual men are not being held accountable.  These men are rapists and they are roaming the streets free and clear today.   Will it take the rape of a woman who is not a prisoner by one of these guards for the state to realize the danger that they represent?  Some of these men are repeat offenders and they are not being punished.  Yes the state is responsible for what occurred.  They failed to protect these women but the men who committed these rapes need to be taken off of the streets for the safety of all.

What happened in the prisons of Michigan is a shining example of what occurs the moment we decide that certain bodies are disposable and without value.  Incidents like this secure my belief in the importance of acknowledging that all bodies matter.  These women were violated and abused because we decided that a past action rendered them unrapeable.  These women were violated because patriarchy believes it exists with the right to abuse women for sport.  It is my hope that this lawsuit will help prevent other women from undergoing the same fate.  At the very minimum the state and all those involved should come to the understanding that everyone deserves to live a life free of violence.  It is hypocrisy to lock someone up for committing a violent act and then turn around do violence to them.

Reprinted with permission from Womanist Musings

 

Police culture and community based DV programs

What happens when police departments don’t want to cooperate with local domestic violence programs? Is the burden to collaborate or explain the lack of a good working relationship placed on the domestic violence program, or the law enforcement agency?

In our experience, the law enforcement agency, as part of the system, is afforded credibility, while community-based domestic violence programs must work hard to establish credibility, no matter how long they have been in existence.  When there is an inability to establish collaboration or a breakdown in a relationship, the community-based nonprofit agency seems to bear the burden of justifying or explaining the problem and attempting to repair and maintain the relationships necessary to maintain the funding they need to continue to serve victims.

This is an incongruous situation when we look at two fundamental issues:

1.  Domestic violence programs were created because law enforcement agencies were not serving battered women. Police viewed domestic violence as a private family issue, not a crime, and men who beat their wives were rarely arrested or prosecuted.  When the domestic violence movement began, police did not like being confronted to change their policies on responding to women victims.  Over the years, as laws, policies, and attitudes began to shift toward collaborative community response to invention and prevention of domestic violence, many rural local law enforcement and criminal justice leaders continue to resist this change and appear to resent the presence of domestic violence advocacy programs.

2.  Police culture. Police training especially is designed to strip the individual’s previous identity and “make” a police officer. The police uniform, badge and gun are universal symbols of power and authority. When the individual puts on the uniform, he assumes the authority that goes with it. He expects and commands obedience and respect from the public.

Donning the uniform and wielding the power of the job contribute to what is known as the “police personality.” Some officers leave the police personality on the job, while others carry it everywhere, all the time.

Police culture teaches a law enforcement leader how to control a situation by manipulating the people involved.  A policeman or sheriff who does not like to work with women from a community based domestic violence program may use these skills to manipulate the relationship.

For example, if an advocate gives advice to a victim that a sheriff does not like, or is assertive when advocating for a victim or issue, law enforcement personnel, including Police Chiefs and Sheriffs have been known to threaten to “punish” the program and advocates by refusing to sign cooperative agreements necessary for funding proposals, refusing to alert advocates for crisis calls, deciding they will no longer make referrals to the program, threatening to call a funding board to cut off funds, and even by saying that the advocate program has somehow “obstructed justice,” and implying that charges will be filed against them.

In one very egregious case, a lame duck district attorney brought program employees before a grand jury to indict them on felony charges. After months of extreme distress and financial expense, the charges were dropped and the judge found prosecutorial misconduct on the part of the former district attorney. Later DAs in the same judicial district could reference the indictment as a method of trying to intimidate women working with the program. In other words, “if you don’t toe the line, we can indict you and make your life miserable.”

These are just a few examples of the type of threats, manipulation, and intimidation that have been carried out by law enforcement agencies and district attorneys in eastern Colorado over a number of years of  community based domestic violence programs being implemented and providing services to victims.

When funding agencies require law enforcement approval or cooperation for domestic violence program grants, they participate in and perpetuate the manipulation and abuse of women running domestic violence programs.

The police culure, particularly in rural areas, must be acknowledged and addressed whenever community collaboration efforts are undertaken.

NEXT: The role of the District Attorney in setting the tone and example for working with organizations providing victim services.

Woman honored for developing gathering circles in rural areas

LAFAYETTE TOWNSHIP — It might seem idyllic.
http://gazettextra.com/news/2008/dec/15/elkhorn-woman-honored-rural-advocacy/
Living in the cozy farmhouse on the hill and making a living raising crops and livestock. What could be more peaceful?

The problem, rural Elkhorn resident Mary Bub said, is that what goes on inside the walls of some of those picturesque farms might be closer to nightmare than American dream.

Bub, 64, founded the Wisconsin Rural Women’s Initiative, a non-profit organization that promotes wellness and social interaction among farm women. Among other things, the organization creates and maintains “Gathering Circles,” discussion groups that help farm women who are feeling isolated vent with their “rural sisters.”

Instances of depression and domestic violence are high among rural women and often go unreported, Bub said.

“We just want to empower women to be the best they can be,” Bub said. “The hard part, when we try to get funding, is people don’t believe they (rural women) are a hidden population.
Complete story

Take Back The Tech – Twittering activists

This website gives a review of how to use twitter for community activism, including working to end violence against women.
http://www.takebackthetech.net/frontpage

There are many ways to quickly communicate and inform your friends and networks about what you are up to. We are mostly familiar with communication tools like instant messengers and SMS text messages.

Twitter is another platform that connects you with your community and friends, and enables you to publish and share brief updates. It is also known as a micro-blogging service, which simply means publishing brief (140 characters-long) text journal entries. As a Twitter user, you can send and receive updates to and from your social network not just through the Twitter website, but also through SMS, RSS, email and an ever growing list of applications that integrates with it.

Twitter has been strategically adapted as a tool for activism for live reporting of current situations to ensure safety through visiblity, to connect groups of people in critical and emergency situations, in organising campaigns, to seek support during police arrests during a protest and more. The simplicity and ease of using Twitter to publish current updates quickly, widely and cost-effectively has made it especially useful and valuable to those without access to broader forms of dissemination channels.

How can Twitter be useful in situations of violence against women? Imagine if you are a migrant domestic worker who have little opportunity to leave the house you work in, or use the internet. With a Twitter network between an organisation working on vaw or between members of your community, you can publish alerts by sending an SMS to your Twitter account when faced with violence by your employer, and immediately inform an external support community for emergency help.

Today’s action invites you to play with Twitter, and explore how it might be useful for activism to end violence against women.

http://www.takebackthetech.net/frontpage