RONA has been Co-opted in the war against Men

RONA your local building center largely with a male customer base has bought the feminist propaganda that men are abusers and the Domestic Violence Industry needs their money to rebuild shelters.  They will have the effrontery to ask these males customers for a donation.  What the  clearly chivalrous brain trust who dreamed this up  at Rona doesn't know is the initiation of DV is often done by the female in upwards of 70% of situations. Harvard Medical School and the American Psychiatric Association both recently announced a major national study in the U.S. that found half of heterosexual domestic violence is reciprocal and that: "Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women."

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a

Part of their verbiage is found here: http://www.rona.ca/rona/servlet/rona/women.jsp?storeId=10001&jspStoreDir=rona&langId=-1

Help us rebuild lives

Our objective is to raise $100,000 – we can do it with your help

RONA is proud to be associated with an organization that works every day to help women facing serious challenges and give them a second chance.

To highlight this commitment, RONA is launching a fundraising campaign online and at all RONA stores across the country, backed by a commitment to match the donated funds with labour and building materials to renovate women’s shelters.

Supporting the Canadian Women’s Foundation reinforces the role the company plays in society by giving these women an opportunity to rebuild their lives, not only for themselves but for their children as well.

Here's what else RONA doesn't know:  Domestic Violence is pretty much equal in Canada

Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2005. An estimated 7% of women and 6% of men representing 653,000 women and 546,000 men in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a comprehensive Statistics Canada report on family violence.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/Daily/English/050714/d050714a.htm 

Canadian Homicide Stats 2008

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/091028/dq091028a-eng.htm

Total 611, 465 men 146 female
Rate of homicides with firearms has increased 24% since 2002. Handgun use on increase (gangs don't register their weapons)
Women victims 24% - lowest proportion ever
Men Victims 76%
Both the rate of females killed (0.87 per 100,000 population), as well as the proportion
(24%), were the lowest since 1961
62 spousal homicides - no change from 2007
Lowest rate in 40 years
45 women 17 (27.4%)men

Do biased family law regimes in Canada complete with the acceptance of false allegations of abuse as truth, the denigration of dads and men have anything to do with the murder suicides in families?

RONA doesn't know about single moms in the USA and Australia being the most likely to kill or maltreat their children.

Australian Data on Children killed. Total of 16 by mother and new partner and 5 by biological father.

Of the total substantiated cases of abuse in 2007-08, including by parents and where the gender of the perpetrator was determined, 463 were carried out by women and 353 by men.

University of Western Sydney academic Micheal Woods said yesterday that the statistics debunked the myth that fathers posed the greatest risk to their children.

Mr Woods, co-director of the university's Men's Health Information and Resource Centre, said if similar data was available in other States it would show similar trends.

Victims by Perpetrator Relationship, 2007

This pie chart presents victims by relationship to their perpetrators. More than 80 percent (80.1%) of victims were maltreated by at least one parent. Nearly 40 percent (38.7%) of victims were maltreated by their mother acting on her own.

Note the rate by mom and other is 44.4% while dad and other is 18.8%. The rate by the mother is 2.36 times higher than dad. That is 236% greater. Now how to explain that away to those who believe only men are abusive.   

RONA doesn't know these shelters are used for many other purposes including criminal behaviour. At any time 25% of the capacity is shown to have residents not there for DV. Others may say they are there for abuse but may not be as follows. One woman was able to hide successfully from Police for several weeks after kidnapping a child.  They are used by drug addicts who after abusing their families go to these shelters to "unwind" but can access drugs while present, illegal immigrants and bogus refugees  can hide undetected by immigration officers, some are used by transient women as rest stops. No independent financial or operational audits are undertaken and all clients are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. 

DV is a serious issue in Canada but all RONA's behaviour does is support the notion it is a single gender only issue.

There are 569 tax supported female shelters in Canada. There is not one tax supported Domestic Abuse shelter for men.  I'm suggesting men who believe in fairness to both genders, as DV is serious but not gendered, take their business elsewhere. There are lots of building centers to choose from.

Rona is no stranger to male bashing.  Peter Regan took them on in 2007 and the following column appeared in the National Post:

National Post 

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=127768

Excuse my gender

David Menzies,  National Post   


Published: Wednesday, November 28, 2007

To adapt the old Molson Canadian tag line: I am ... an idiot. You read it right: I'm an incompetent goof. A pathetic primate who can barely function in our oh-so-complicated world.

Why the lowly self-assessment? No, I didn't invest in Bre-X. Nor do I drive an Aztek. Rather, it's the advertising industry that's convinced me I'ma loser due to one glaring prerequisite: I'ma guy.

For the last several months, I've taken note of radio and TV ads that involve situations involving two people: one a man and the other a woman. In every spot except one (by FedEx), men were portrayed as imbeciles. Even if the script established the male character as a successful business owner, he still came across like the classic Phil Hartman character, Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer from Saturday Night Live. (The defrosted Neanderthal continually grunted that common-place things in today's world -- "flashing neon signs" and "fast-moving cars" -- would "frighten and confuse" him.)

In today's advertising world, unfrozen cavemen abound.

In a recent Toyota radio ad, a male Toyota owner comes across as virtually brain damaged when he addresses a female Toyota customer-service clerk. He can't remember (or doesn't know) what needs to be serviced on his car. He doesn't even know what he wants to drink. Thank goodness for the know-it-all service rep who tells him what needs to be done to remedy his engine (without even popping the hood). She also informs him he's experiencing a craving for caffeine.

A CIBC radio ad establishes "Tom" as a successful businessman. Along comes a female customer who's not in Tom's line of business but, naturally, is an expert when it comes to Tom's trade. She tells him to install a CIBC e-commerce solution in a tone reminiscent of a principal addressing a kindergarten student.

Of note, one man recently had enough of the male-bashing. Peter Regan, a single parent in Calgary, filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) after he took exception to a Rona ad. The spot depicts a female Rona employee dealing with a female customer who laments that her husband never helps around the house. The clerk responds: "That's OK. They [husbands] are all like that." In August, ASC decided the commercial indeed contravened regulations and "disparaged men and/or married men" and asked Rona to remove or alter the ad.

What is the unspoken strategy of having men cast as dimwits? It cannot be random chance. In fact, it's statistically impossible that in almost all ad scripts, the male is the one who is dazed and confused while the woman (or child) is portrayed as an oracle of wisdom.

My hunch: When it comes to getting slagged, men tend to take it, well, like a man. Aside from the aforementioned Rona complainer, men tend to be stoic and silent about such slights.

York University marketing professor Alan Middleton adds another noteworthy point: Since women in many households control the purse strings, ad agencies figure it's not a prudent idea to upset the individual who is likely to make the purchase. Thus, if the script calls for a dolt, it's a no-brainer the man will play the fool.

Indeed, as long as complainers such as Peter Regan remain the exception as opposed to the rule, expect men to be depicted as dumbbells in advertising for decades to come. Then again, what do I know?

d.menzies@sympatico.ca - David Menzies is a Toronto writer and pundit.

Abuse shelters: havens for feminist thought reform

There is a good reason why these shelters require non-disclosure agreements from clients.MJM

January 4, 2010


By Carey Roberts

Feminists will argue until they're blue in the face that women are victims of the Great Satanic Patriarchy. That tenet is laughable when one considers women are leading men on almost every indicator of social welfare.

But give them credit, feminists are a determined bunch. So in their crusade to spread the gospel of female victimization, they have established a network of domestic violence shelters around the nation. These programs resemble socialist thought reform experiments more than anything that can be considered to be professional counseling or crisis intervention.

To gain admittance to such facilities one must of course be female — after all, male victims of domestic violence are unlikely to benefit from a regimen of patriarchal deprogramming.

Second, the woman must make the ritualistic claim of being a victim to abuse. Any type of abuse will suffice: emotional, financial, or anything else that comes to mind. No police report, no medical record, no proof of any kind is required. "Always believe the victim," goes shelter managers' circular logic.

In his classical account of Chinese brainwashing, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Lifton recounts how newly-arrived inmates were assigned to a holding cell where they were subjected to ridicule, abuse, and physical hazing by the more veteran residents.

Such is the all-too-frequent experience of women in abuse shelters. One woman, Eileen Pope, spent months inside the YWCA Hope House in Charleston, W. Va. "I often felt unsafe. There were several physical and verbal altercations between the shelter residents. I had clothing stolen from me," she later related: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/090824

Once they settle into shelter routines, the women come to realize they have become unwitting guinea pigs of an ideological bait-and-switch. At Bethany House in Fairfax, Va., employees would reportedly "infuriate the woman with propaganda." One client at a Massachusetts shelter found the real message was to "accept the indoctrination and embrace my victimhood."

The ladies, many of whom are poor, are ordered to attend classes featuring repetitive mantras like "domestic violence is all about power and control." The focus of these sessions is the Power and Control Wheel, a pedagogical device that recalls V.I. Lenin's famous dictum, "We must be engineers of the human soul."

Social isolation being requisite for proper consciousness-raising, the women must also agree to cut off communications with their abuser. Safehorizon in New York City goes one step further, requiring its residents to "sever relationships with family and friends," according to the organization's website.

Such policies call to mind Robert Lifton's account of the experience of one concentration camp survivor: "Our souls were entirely open. It was complete confidence. We could trust the government."

Ritual denunciations were an important feature of Chinese brainwashing camps, with inmates called upon to censure their fathers for horrendous yet vague crimes. Abuse shelters likewise demand their residents denounce patriarchy and its putative evils.

A quarter to one-half of women in abuse shelters are currently abusing alcohol or drugs: http://www.radarsvcs.org/docs/RADARreport-Are-Abuse-Shelters-Helping-True-Victims.pdf . But don't expect to find any substance abuse treatment programs on site. That would be much too bourgeoisie.

Shelter residents enjoy no right to privacy. I have heard from women about confidences shared with shelter workers that were later passed on to Child Protective Services and other shelter residents. One woman revealed, "Nothing was confidential and what I discussed with staff was being discussed with clients."

Complaints are verboten because they betray reactionary resistance. The miscreants may be summarily exited from the facility. At Womencare in Bellingham, Wash., a blind woman had who been forced to assume a new name to escape her abuser had her identity outed when she filed a complaint about lax safety procedures: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/080715

Not surprisingly, shelter managers do everything in their power to keep law enforcement officers at bay. At Another Way in Lake City, Fla., a former employee wrote, "I, on numerous occasions reported illegal drug use that I had witnessed take place on Shelter property and often my complaints were ignored. We always knew not to call the law unless you were prepared to be unemployed."

Given these experiences, it's no surprise that women opt to return to their abuser rather than continue to subject themselves to this grandiose government-financed brainwashing experiment.

© Carey Roberts

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/100104

IN BC ~ The Liberal Government ~ Liberals backtrack over cuts to victims' support

from Mike Murphy sender time Sent at 09:54 (GMT-04:00). Current time there: 09:54. ✆ to provletters@theprovince.com date 1 October 2009 09:54 subject BC Liberals backtrack over cuts to victims' support $440,000 shortfall caused big uproar mailed-by gmail.com

09:54 (0 minutes ago)

The Editor
The Province
200 Granville Street, Suite #1
Vancouver BC
V6C 3N3


http://www.the province.com/news/Liberals+backtrack+over+cuts+victims+support/2048892/story.html

Dear Editor:

The restoration of funding to the whiners in the DV Industry was done quickly. I also noticed the BC Liberals practice the same kind of gender segregation and bias as does the McQuinty Liberal Government in Ontario. Neither the BC Liberals or the Ontario Liberals seem to think men and boys can be abused- I guess cause were men. Isn't that called gender bias which is unconstitutional.

I guess a man's vote is less equal to a woman's vote in the election process and the strategists know they are more likely to lose votes from women by withholding money the government doesn't have. In other words to provide the funding it has to be borrowed.

I don't begrudge those women who are abused, and that does not include all who receive services from these shelters, but when will abused men get assistance. We do exist. Domestic Violence is a serious problem but when you ignore 50% of the population there is a serious gap in equality. For background I am including a letter I recently wrote to the feminist Minister of Women's Issues in Ontario, Deb Matthews, who has $208,000,000.00 at her disposal for women only - none for men. I will be launching a Human Rights Complaint against the Liberal Government and the local DV shelter here in the coming months. I recommend men do the same thing in BC.

This ignoring of female abuse toward men , which is pretty much equal between genders, has to stop. Did you know female abuse against children is far greater in many western democracies than from their biological father yet all these shelter advocates would have you believe otherwise?

Mike Murphy
Sault Ste. Marie ON P6A 6J8
Promote Bill C-422 Equal Shared Parenting

Hon. Deb Matthews
Minister Responsible for Women's Issues
14th Floor 56 Wellesley St W
Toronto ON
M5S 2S3 via fax 416-212-7431 and email dmatthews.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org

September 23, 2009

My Dear Minister Matthews:

I was made aware today you and the Liberal Government will be keeping a gender based perspective on IPV. I am very disappointed with this decision and understand you will be speaking about it at the Durham Region’s Intimate Relationship Violence Empowerment Network 4th annual forum in Whitby, ON, October 2/09.

Given the Liberal government will be taking this official stance despite the science showing IPV is mutual and close to equal, is initiated by females more often than males - as high as 70% in some studies, males are injured and killed as well as females, that children are murdered and maltreated more often by their mothers in Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia I can only conclude your government puts a premium on being female and discounts males. That is unconstitutional!

I would respectfully request a copy of the Minister’s speech as part of my research into preparing a Human Rights Complaint against the Attorney General, Ms. Matthews, Premier McQuinty, and the local DV shelter who refuses to support battered men.

In addition I note most of the members of the Council who advised the Minister on this decision have a vested interest in the status quo as they are indeed recipients of tax payers money. I also note one of the speakers at this forum is an academic from the UOIT, Molly Dragiewicz.

This Professor is a noted feminist ideologue and a recipient of your largess in obtaining contracts to produce information forming the basis for your conclusions to keeping the status quo. She too has a vested interest in this approach as it is less threatening to getting contracts from your $208,000,000.00 allotment of tax payer’s money targeted exclusively for women. Was this contract and others awarded to Dragiewicz, and her colleague at UOIT, sole sourced or was there a tender involved? I would like to know your policy generally and specifically with the one that has led to your official announcement of using a gender based approach.

Let’s do a little math using Barbara Kay’s figures given as a rebuttal to your assertions on a National Post story in December 2008. In 2006 there were 605 murders in Canada and 78 were spousal homicides. Women numbered 56 - 6 fewer than 2005 but males jumped 12 to a total of 21. You spend $208 million on women annually according to your response to Ms. Kay below – none is allocated specifically for men. For every female death you have $3,714,286 available and, of course, none for males. I use the larger figure to demonstrate the apparent willful blindness of your government. You have indicated women die more often, are injured more often, 6 times more likely to seek medical attention etc. Some of these figures had no attribution and they are suspect as men do not report their injuries very often (between 10 & 17%), the higher figure from StatsCan and so the female numbers become less comparable even if they have scientific credibility.

Not all spousal homicides are reported as such. Women are devilishly clever at killing their spouses and sometimes these killings are reported as something other than DV. Just in your riding we saw a murder/suicide by a female police officer who killed her partner then herself. This was not classified as a spousal homicide but should have been. If a new boyfriend is coerced into killing the husband, if a contractor is used, if undetectable methods are employed, or if it just plain appears as accidental it will not appear as a spousal killing. I would further want you to understand that there could be as many as 2,000 deaths of men by suicide per year due to family court marginalization (children are awarded to mom in a 9-1 ratio and dad becomes an ATM) plus false accusations of rape or violence that ruin men’s lives. That is a serious number. All deaths are tragic but I believe the pendulum has swung way too far to the left giving your government a truly feminist oriented agenda at the expense of males.

You have also used cherry picked Coroner’s reports showing, and I quote, females were the victims in 95% of domestic violence fatality cases. See the official numbers above.

Guess who gets involved on these death review committees with the Coroner. Yes, a representative sample of the same tax supported people you are speaking to on October 2, 2009 multiplied Province wide. Do you see where this is going? You have a beholding group of people operating DV shelters who are never audited, either financially or operationally, who make clients sign “non disclosure agreements, (why is that?) who make out reports to send to the government recording the “official” numbers of women helped but, as a rational human being, who can believe them if they aren’t independently audited. I also make note they provide no services to battered men, and yes we do exist. Your government is already beset with scandals is this another one in its infancy?

Your response to Barbara Kay follows:

Re: Fed On Myths, Preying On Men, Barbara Kay, Dec. 6.

"It's important to address Barbara Kay's assertions that were raised on such a significant and solemn occasion, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. In response to her statement that "emotion, not reason or facts, drives the domestic violence industry”, there are facts to support that domestic violence is not gender-neutral.

According to Statistics Canada, women experience more severe forms of violence, more often, than men. Women are twice as likely as men to be injured as a result of spousal violence, six times more likely to seek medical attention and three times more likely to fear for their lives.

And according to the Chief Coroner's Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, females were the victims in 95% of domestic violence fatality cases. That means women were victims in 19 of every 20 domestic violence deaths. That's not gender-neutral.

Our response must, and does, recognize this reality. With our community partners, we support women and their children escaping violent situations. Each year, our government invests more than $208-million in services that support and protect women from violence, including our $87-million Domestic Violence Action Plan.

Stopping domestic violence is everyone's business. And its existence is not to be trivialized and distorted " .

Deb Matthews, Minister Responsible for Women's Issues, Toronto.

National Post Published: Thursday, December 11, 2008

=========================================================================================

Professor Don Dutton of UBC also supplied a response to your comments as follows:

Another view on domestic violence

Saturday, December 13, 2008

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1071290

Re: Women's Issues Minister Responds, letter, Dec. 11.

This letter from the Ontario Minister for Women Issues is typical of the misleading information that plagues Canadian policy on domestic violence. Partner homicide is extremely rare, and the Ontario Death Review Committee cherry-picked cases that would support the Ministry's view of domestic violence. The Ontario cases are ones that the committee decided were domestic violence, and do not include all cases of homicide, as the system selects out female precipitated homicides as "manslaughter" or lesser charges.

When one compares the committee's finding -- that 95% of partner homicides are male perpetrated -- with actual research, the picture changes dramatically. An analysis of all U. S. partner homicides from 1976 to 2001 reveals a 2:1 (female victim: male victim) ratio for 50,000+ partner homicides. Canadian data show a spousal homicide ratio from 1974 to 1990 to be about 3:1 (female victim: male victim) -- and this translates to eight husbands killing their wives (out of one million couples) and 2.3 women killing their husbands.

Put somewhat differently, 999,992 men and 999,997.7 per million women do not kill their spouse -- I would say that is not then a gender issue. If such a minuscule group of either gender kills, then something else beside gender must be involved. Government ministries that repeatedly misrepresent domestic violence statistics to perpetuate their existence do no favours to taxpayers, be they male or female.

Don Dutton,

professor of psychology,

University of British Columbia,

Vancouver

=================================================================================================

Domestic Violence is a serious issue but it will not get resolved using the gender based approach. How can it when only one side of an issue is dealt with rather than the whole. Just imagine if Doctors only looked at one possible scenario of many to heal us. In any problem solving exercise a wide array of possibilities is examined. To ignore 50% of the problem, be that a male or female, is to throw good money after bad. Your government spends a great deal of money on only women’s issues. Where are the results?

I look forward to your governments defence of my Human Rights Complaint and I also hope this debate will be very public, as it should be. I will issue press releases when I am ready to send it in to the OHRC. The complaint will be personal, representing only me, but the results may have a benefit for all men in this province, and if the dominoes fall, eventually all battered men across Canada.

Do you want to be the Minister and government defending a one sided single gender approach, forced into submission by your own HRC, as California was by a court verdict last year, or will you change your policy and treat men and DV with equality?

Yours truly

Mike Murphy ,

(Sault St Marie Ontario)

Liberals backtrack over cuts to victims' support

$440,000 shortfall caused big uproar

The Province September 30, 2009

The B.C. government backtracked Tuesday and restored $440,000 in funding to organizations that provide domestic-violence counselling.

Solicitor-General Kash Heed made the announcement in a news release, after his government faced a wave of criticism in recent days for slashing funding to women's groups.

"These programs are vital to preventing domestic violence because they provide counselling and support to vulnerable women and children," said Heed. "By moving to protect these important frontline services, we can support victims and minimize future risk."

In August, the Liberal government consolidated $16.47 million in domestic-violence funding under the Ministry of Public Safety and the Solicitor-General. Although it has tried in recent days to promote the move as a funding increase, the province had actually cut $440,000 in what it called "budget pressures."

Domestic-violence support groups across the province blasted the government for the reduction, saying the lost money threatened programs to help counsel children who have witnessed violence, along with outreach programs to help battered women.

The criticism fell on the same day last week as a damning report by B.C.'s child and youth representative, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who said the province's system for handling domestic violence lacks proper co-ordination.

Women's groups were pleased with the government's reversal Tuesday.

"That's great news," said Carolyn Fast, executive director of the Victoria Women's Transition House Society. "And I definitely think it's the right thing to do. It certainly helps us. It's not huge dollars but it's one more thing."

Heed also extended funding for a victims'-services worker at the New Westminster Police Department's domestic violence unit. The position, set to expire at the end of 2009, will continue until March 2010 due to $11,000 in extra funding, Heed said.

-- Canwest News Service

© Copyright (c) The Province

Dad Gets Custody; Sues Oklahoma Dept. of Human Services and DV Shelter

This is an interesting case written up by Robert Franklin of Fathers and Families about the impact a DV shelter can have on susceptible women. It reminds me a little of the Stepford Wives but in this case there seems to be a dependency of the client for long term supervision and care by the DV industry participant Donna Grabow. Given all these facilities get clients to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep their indoctrination methods secret and as I want to do a similar expose at some point in time the fact finding with respect to this shelter will be interesting.MJM

September 17th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

For a long time now I've wanted to get a peek inside domestic violence shelters to see what really goes on in there. Unfortunately, I've had to make do with tantalizing glimpses. One example of that came with the study done in the state of Thuringen in northern Germany of the DV shelters there. I posted a couple of pieces about the study here and DV shelters in Germany generally here.

What the study and the article reveal is a lot of what we already either knew or suspected. Staff at shelters tend to have been indoctrinated in the feminist view of DV that only men are perpetrators and only women are victims. That view assumes DV to be a political act of power and oppression as opposed to the result of psychological disorder. As such, the "treatment" provided by DV shelters more closely resembles political indoctrination than any effort to actually help victims. Indeed, as the German study finds, DV staff are largely uninterested in helping victims of DV. In fact, their goal is often the separation, whether by divorce or otherwise, of the woman and her husband/partner.

It is against such a backdrop that this case arises. The link is to the final order of a family court judge in Oklahoma. The facts seem to be that Crystal Hall suffered from some form of mental/emotional/psychological impairment. She contacted Safenet Services in Oklahoma claiming that she and her five children had been abused by her husband and the children's father, James Hall. Apparently, Safenet through its executive director, Donna Grabow, urged divorce and the two went shopping for the court they thought would be friendliest to a woman claiming abuse.

Over the course of 28 months, James Hall apparently underwent a total of seven evaluations by various state agencies, all of which found him to be a fit and loving father with no evidence of abuse of either his wife or his children.

The court ordered the children placed in the custody of James Hall and further ordered his wife to pay child support, given that she is mentally capable of, and is in fact, working.

But in reading the court's findings, notice a few things. First, notice that the court finds that, after 28 months, there has been no discernible improvement in Crystal Hall's psychological state. Second, notice that Crystal Hall has become seriously co-dependent on Donna Grabow and Safenet who come to her house three times each day, seven days each week to make sure she takes her medication. Despite having an automobile and being able to work, Crystal Hall does not in fact drive herself to and from work; Donna Grabow or another member of Safenet staff does. Third, notice that, although the court granted her visitation rights, Crystal Hall has made no effort to visit her children for over a year. Fourth, notice that the Oklahoma family court judge has forbidden Safenet staff from ever contacting the Hall children, one of whom asked the judge to "get Safenet out of our lives."

It's admittedly hard to be on the outside looking in at a situation like this, but the facts found by Judge Dean look suspiciously like what we're learning about the goings on behind the closed doors of DV shelters.

My guess is that, in the Hall case, we have a mentally unstable woman who fell into the hands of a more or less typical DV shelter. There her claims of abuse were accepted unquestioningly and she was urged to divorce and told she would get custody. She was also told that whatever problems she had were not her fault, but rather that of the power relationship between her and her husband. To combat that power she was convinced to rely on the power of Safenet and Donna Grabow who forthwith became her all-purpose support system. The refusal of the court to grant her custody, I would guess, has been interpreted for her as simply more proof of the power relationships of which Crystal Hall is a victim. The children, being the instrument of that power are best left out of her life.

All that of course is speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that it's true.

And we may get an opportunity to do just that; James Hall has filed a civil suit for damages against the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, Safenet Services, Inc. and Donna Grabow. The discovery process in that case may provide us our most revealing view yet of the inner workings of the domestic violence industry.

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4209