Women more likely to be perpetrators of abuse as well as victims

Filed under Education, Family, Gender, Law, Research on Thursday, July 13, 2006.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Women are more likely than men to stalk, attack and psychologically abuse their partners, according to a University of Florida study that finds college women have a new view of the dating scene.

“We’re seeing women in relationships acting differently nowadays than we have in the past,” said Angela Gover, a UF criminologist who led the research. “The nature of criminality has been changing for females, and this change is reflected in intimate relationships as well.”

In a survey of 2,500 students at UF and the University of South Carolina between August and December 2005, more than a quarter (29 percent) reported physically assaulting their dates and 22 percent reported being the victims of attacks during the past year. Thirty-two percent of women reported being the perpetrators of this violence, compared with 24 percent of men. The students took selected liberal arts and sciences courses. Forty percent were men and 60 percent were women, reflecting the gender composition of these classes.

In a separate survey of 1,490 UF students, one quarter (25 percent) said they had been stalked during the past year and 7 percent reported engaging in stalking, of whom a majority (58 percent) were female.

Although women were the predominant abusers, they still made up the largest number of victims in both surveys, accounting for 70 percent of those being stalked, for example.

The reason more college men weren’t victims may be that women in the study did not exclusively date them, preferring men who had already graduated, not yet enrolled in college or chose not to attend college at all, Gover said. “It shows that students who are perpetrating these attacks aren’t just targeting other students on campus,” she said.

It also is possible that some of the physical attacks women claim they are responsible for are actually acts of self-defense, Gover added. “Maybe some of these women have been abused by their partner for some time and they’re finally fighting back,” she said.

Recent studies on domestic violence suggest that whereas in the past victims might have felt trapped in violent situations, today’s women are more likely to understand they have options instead of putting up with mistreatment, she said.

“I think we may also be seeing sort of a new dynamic in dating relationships in terms of women feeling more empowered,” she said. “They recognize they don’t have to be in a dating relationship forever. They can get out of it.”

Child abuse was the single biggest determining factor for men and women becoming perpetrators or victims of either dating violence or stalking, Gover said. Even if one never personally experienced abuse, witnessing violence between one’s parents as a child increased the likelihood of stalking or being stalked as a young adult and it made girls more susceptible to becoming victims of dating violence when they grew up, she said.

The survey found that men and women who were abused as children were 43 percent more likely than their peers who were not mistreated to perpetrate physical violence and 51 percent more likely to be victims of physical violence in a dating relationship. Violent acts included kicking or slapping, pushing or shoving, punching or hitting with a hand or object, slamming someone against a wall and using force to make a partner have sex, she said.

Sexual risk-taking – the age when survey respondents first had sex and the number of sexual partners in their lifetime – was another important risk factor, but surprisingly, attitudes toward women made no difference, said Gover, who did her research with Catherine Kaukinen, a University of South Carolina criminology professor, and Kathleen Fox, a UF graduate student in criminology. Some of the findings were presented at the American Society of Criminology annual meeting in November in Toronto.

The study also was among the first to look at psychological abuse. Examples included preventing partners from seeing family or friends, shouting at them and using threats to have sex. Fifty-four percent of respondents reported being psychologically abusive, and 52 percent said they were victims of this type of behavior. Women were more likely to be psychologically abusive, with 57 percent saying they were perpetrators versus 50 percent of males.

Shelley Serdahely, executive director of Men Stopping Violence, in Decatur, Ga., questions the validity of studies showing women are more violent. “Women might be more likely to get frustrated because men are not taught how to be active listeners and women feel like they are not being heard,” she said. “Often women are more emotional because the relationship matters a lot to them, and while that may come out in a push or a shove or a grab, all of which are considered dating violence, it doesn’t have the effect of intimidating the man.”

Feminists Deny Truth on Domestic Violence

Tuesday , May 30, 2006

By Wendy McElroy

In the last three decades, feminism has revolutionized daily life from the legal system and social mores down to the story books children use in kindergarten. Feminist discussion seems to be 'always' and 'everywhere'.

But I believe the contrary is true. Genuine discussion of feminist issues ended in the 1970s when one school came to dominate and moved to silence competing views both within the movement and outside.

Politically correct feminists maintain that women as a class are politically oppressed by men as a class, which means that every woman is oppressed by every man. Class oppression is the ideological lens through which PC feminism views all issues.

Tammy Bruce's book "The New Thought Police" (2001) received media buzz as a former insider's expose of how PC feminists smear their intellectual opponents in an attempt to silence and discredit them. For example, Bruce described how PC feminists led a campaign of defamation against the conservative Dr. Laura Schlessinger by misrepresenting her as homophobic.

Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, was quoted as saying, "If she can't be controlled, she must be stopped."

The PC treatment of heretics within feminism has been no less brutal. Indeed, heretics are commonly reviled more than infidels.

Consider Erin Pizzey.

In 1971, Pizzey opened the first battered wives shelter in England, which she ran until 1982. Arguably, the Chiswick Family Rescue was the second domestic violence shelter in the world. Pizzey's book "Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" (1974, out of print) was one of the first to explore and expose wife battering.

Today, the shelter Pizzey founded denies her entry; her name does not appear in its official history.

Pizzey's 'mistake' was to diverge from the theory of domestic violence that feminists at the time insisted dominate all discussion. She believed that men could also be the victims of domestic violence, and that women could be as violent toward their partners as men.

Pizzey's views put her on a collision course with PC feminists who, according to Pizzey's own published account of events, initiated a campaign of harassment and violence against her.

Pizzey described this harassment in an article she published in the Scotsman in 1999.

"Because of my opposition to the hijacking of the refuge movement, I was a target for abuse. Anywhere I spoke there was a contingent of screaming, heckling feminists waiting for me," Pizzey wrote. "Abusive telephone calls to my home, death threats and bomb scares, became a way of living for me and for my family. Finally, the bomb squad, asked me to have all my mail delivered to their head quarters."

One night, the family dog was killed.

Eventually, "exhausted and disillusioned," Pizzey said she went into "exile with her children and grandchildren," leaving England in 1982 to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Pizzey returned to England that same year for the book tour of her next book, "Prone to Violence," which once again ignited a violent reaction among feminists. Pizzey wrote that when she arrived in England for her book tour, she was "met with a solid wall of feminist demonstrators" carrying signs that read "ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS, ALL MEN ARE BATTERERS."

"The police insisted that I have an escort all round England for my book tour," Pizzey wrote in the Scotsman.

There is some reason to believe that "Prone to Violence" has been the target of a campaign of suppression by PC feminists. According to the web site Wikepedia, in 1996 an internet search of the world libraries that can be accessed through the Library of Congress uncovered only 13 listings for the book: an astonishingly low number for a pioneering work that caused a sensation.

Why would PC feminists nearly riot over a book and, then, ignore it?

Because Pizzey advanced a competing theory of domestic violence.

When viewed through the PC lens of class oppression, domestic violence is not an act of violence committed by one individual against another. It is an act committed by men that must be correctly understood within the larger context of women's class oppression.

"Prone to Violence" spelled out some of Pizzey's disagreements with that view.

Disagreement #1: Of the first 100 women who entered Chiswick, Pizzey found that over 60 percent were as violent or more violent than the men they were fleeing. In short, a significant percentage of the women were also batterers or otherwise active participants in the violence.

Disagreement #2: Pizzey developed the theory that many battered women were psychologically drawn to abusive relationships and they sought them out. To PC feminists, such analysis was tantamount to 'blaming the victim.'

Disagreement #3: She explained why the existing model of domestic violence shelters was ineffective. PC feminists were attempting then (and now) to secure ever greater financing for these operations. Sandra Horley, director of Chiswick in 1992, reportedly complained, "if we put across this idea that the abuse of men is as great as the abuse of women, then it could seriously affect our funding."

Pizzey may or may not have been correct; I believe she was and is.

Neverthless, her book drew upon over 10 years at the Chiswick shelter during which time Pizzey dealt with some 5,000 women and children.

"Prone to Violence" is an extremely early and honest overview of domestic violence from a woman with extensive experience of its daily realities. The book cried out to be taken seriously. At minimum, it deserved a thorough rebuttal from its PC feminist critics--not death threats directed at its author nor the ultimate silence it received.

Pizzey is not alone. In America, Suzanne Steinmetz -- author of the book "The Battered Husband" and a co-author of the much-cited "First National Family Violence Survey" -- experienced a similar drama. She and her children received death threats; an ACLU meeting at which she spoke received a bomb threat.

The reason: her research indicated that the rate at which men were victimized by domestic violence was similar to the rate for women.

In large and small ways -- from shrill protests to the tearing down of announcements, from blocking university promotions to threats and defamation -- PC feminism has attempted to stop voices it could not control.

Feminism is dying not from a backlash but from an orthodoxy that cannot tolerate real discussion...and never could.

Wendy McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com and a research fellow for The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of many books and articles, including the new book, "Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century" (Ivan R. Dee/Independent Institute, 2002). She lives with her husband in Canada.

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Men are More Likely Than Women to Be Victims in Dating Violence, UNH Expert Says

Contact: Erika Mantz
603-862-1567
UNH Media Relations

May 19, 2006

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DURHAM, N.H. -- A 32-nation study of violence against dating partners by university partners found that about a third had been violent, and most incidents of partner violence involve violence by both the man and woman, according to Murray Straus, founder and co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. The second largest category was couples where the female partner was the only one to carry about physical attacks, not the male partner.

Straus’ new research also found that dominance by the female partner is even more closely related to violence by women than is male dominance. These results call into question the widely held belief that partner violence is primarily a male crime and that when women are violent it is self defense.

“In the 35 years since I began research on partner violence, I have seen my assumptions about prevalence and etiology contradicted by a mass of empirical evidence from my own research and from research by many others,” Straus said. “My view on partner violence now recognizes the overwhelming evidence that women assault their partners at about the same rate as men. However, when women are violent, the injury rate is lower.”

Straus will present his controversial research at the Trends in Intimate Violence Intervention conference in New York City May 22-25, 2006. This research is part of the International Dating Violence Study, a multinational study of violence against dating partners by university students. A consortium of researchers around the world collected data from 13,601 students at 68 universities in 32 nations.

In the paper, Straus calls for an end to the focus on men as the only perpetrators of dating violence, saying the refusal to recognize the multi-causal nature of the problem is hampering the effort to end domestic violence and ignoring half the perpetrators. As recently as December 2005, the National Institute of Justice refused to consider applications for funding that dealt with male victims.

“Changes in policy that acknowledge men are not the only perpetrators of partner violence are needed immediately,” Straus said. “It is time to make the prevention and treatment effort one that is aimed at ending all family violence, including spanking children, not just violence against women.”

Straus is the author or co-author of more than 200 publications, including "Beating the Devil Out Of Them: Corporal Punishment By American Parents and Its Effects on Children." More information on the International Dating Violence Study and papers reporting results are available at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/.

http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm?type=n

PBS Documentary “Breaking the Silence”: Evidently a Conspiracy

Sunday, December 18, 2005

In October, PBS released a scandalous documentary about domestic violence titled “Breaking the Silence”. Despite studied science on the issue, the producers of the show intentionally censored all information contrary to their partisan mission, which we know now was to go to extraordinary lengths portraying fathers as batterers who take custody of children as the final act of abuse.

Breaking the Silence pretends that the system “routinely penalizes women who are victims of domestic violence by favoring their abusers in battles over child custody”. Anyone who knows about how domestic violence laws are routinely applied knows that when a woman files any allegation of abuse, or even fear of abuse, the father is immediately thrown out of the home and has little chance of custody and even visitation.

The tactical purpose of the documentary is to synthesize an epidemic of unrestrained male batterers who seize children from completely unprotected abused women. Perhaps if this documentary were about life in Sudan, they might have a point.

The producers walked into their own trap. One of the supposedly-abused women, who was attempting to seize custody of the child from the father, was found responsible for multiple acts of child abuse in court. Despite being informed of this fact in advance, the producers filmed the documentary according to the prefabricated story board, while refusing to include any perspectives from fathers with legitimate cases.

CPB and PBS Ombudmen Agree That Breaking the Silence Is Flawed

A tsunami of equalitarian organizations and activists rose to the occasion, taking PBS and CPB to task. Glenn Sacks, Carey Roberts, Wendy McElroy, Cathy Young, the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Mark Rosenthal, Fathers and Families, and a cotillion of others called PBS and CPB out on the carpet.

It did not take long for ombudsmen from PBS and CPB to agree with us. Ken Bode, the CPB ombudsman found that "there is no hint of balance in Breaking the Silence". The PBS Ombudsman, Michael Gettler opined “My assessment, as a viewer and as a journalist, is that this was a flawed presentation by PBS. I have no doubt that this subject merited serious exposure and that these problems exist and are hard to get at journalistically. But it seemed to me that PBS and CPTV were their own worst enemy and diminished the impact and usefulness of the examination of a real issue by what did, indeed, come across as a one-sided, advocacy program.”

PBS published an article in Current, glossing over the major flaws in the documentary. The focus is quickly shifted away from the core issues we raise –- which are that the documentary is deeply unbalanced, partisan, sexist, and a fakery of science. Current conveniently changes the subject, pretending that the brouhaha is merely over whether parental alienation syndrome (PAS) exists or not.

Whether or not parental alienation is a diagnosable psychological disorder is not an issue we have raised. We are interested in the fact that parental alienation often takes in divorce and custody situations, most often disrupting the child’s relationship with the father. It should be noted that even the leading critics in the “syndrome diagnosis” debate agree with us that parents often alienate children in divorce and custody situations. The issue we raise is the maltreatment of fathers, science, and facts surrounding divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, and parental alienation that masqueraded as documentary on domestic violence, intended to ensure that men are not afforded equal standing to be custodial parents in the event of divorce.

Censorship, Multiple Abuses of Science, and Absence of Journalistic Ethics

Dr. Richard Gardner defined parental alienation as ”any constellation of behaviors, whether conscious or unconscious, that could evoke a disturbance in the relationship between a child and the other parent”. Breaking the Silence is, in itself, an act of parental alienation aimed at all fathers. It is intended to cover for or rationalize-away the alienating behaviors of mothers -- even mothers known to be abusers – and generate irrational public fears and discrimination against fathers in public policy and law.

Dr. Murray Straus, the leading authority on domestic violence objected strongly to misuse of his research cited out-of-context in the NNEDV Guide to “Breaking the Silence”. The intent of the guide was to create an illusion that fathers are responsible for the substantial majority of spousal and child abuse.

Lasseur flatly justified censorship of all fathers perspectives (reasonable or otherwise), on the insupportable grounds that the fathers perspective is generically “destructive”. Read: when you are getting paid a half million dollars by radical feminists to do a partisan documentary, you only cite liturgy from the feminist “bible”.

Lasseur’s alternate (and equally indefensible) excuse for his decision to entirely censor the father’s perspective pretends that censorship is somehow more balanced than giving the father’s perspective short shrift; ”If we had featured the stories of one man and five women who had been victims of domestic abuse, statistically we would have overstated the problems of men in this area. Nevertheless, we recognize that men are also victims and men are also sometimes victimized by family courts, but the fact is that many more women are victims”.

Despite the torrent of valid criticism of the documentary, Dominique Lasseur, the producer of Breaking the Silence, clings defiantly to his indefensible film. He states in the Current article, “we believe that the comments and concerns that have come in so far [concerning the documentary] are often not based on the full and complete content of the program”. The reverse is true: the content of the program was intentionally not full or complete, as the producer has admitted in his prior two statements. We strenuously object to the fact that the producer intentionally censored information and perspectives that do not explicitly adhere to the radical feminist propaganda he attempts to transmogrify into social policy and jurisprudence.

The Current article also features an evasive exculpatory statement by the producers, but nothing by anyone legitimately criticizing the film. Here, the producer cites the long-debunked feminist myth “while women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner”, as his excuse for committing an hour of journalistic hate crimes.

Lasseur has generated a number of nebulous statements in defense of his film. None of them would win in debate class because he has never directly rebutted the points of our remonstrance.

Evidence Of Conspiracy

Our complaint is now much more serious than before. I have uncovered evidence that the producers of Breaking the Silence were aware that it was not an honest film.

Lasseur is planning another documentary aimed at establishing judicial accountability when judges do not acquiesce to the demands of radical women’s organizations. He is apparently working with Meera Fox, an attorney and executive Director of Abuse Solutions located in Berkeley, Ca, who among other things works the issues of domestic violence and child abuse as a trainer and presenter for public policy symposiums. Fox is evidently working with street-level women’s operatives, including the Mothers Research and Resource Center (MRRC), located in Gilbert, Arizona.

As is the case with most non-professional street-level feminist advocates, MRRC is rather loose-lipped about what it is doing, revealing feminist Schadenfreude that can often be witnessed when internal information accidentally falls into the public eye. The MRRC website demonstrates what the entire chain of actors was really thinking and doing behind-the-scenes of Breaking the Silence.

Both Meera Fox and Dominique Lasseur are apparently aware they are fabricating yet another false documentary, and that collecting supportive anecdotal footage might not be an easy task. The MRRC website contains an apparent confession [emphasis added]: “Dominique is passionately interested in continuing his work in this area, as he can see how raising the public's consciousness about this problem and indeed, creating a public outcry about it, will be key to achieving the reforms we seek in Family Court …. I know you will all agree that this is a project that would be worth its weight in gold if he [Lasseur] can pull it off. He envisions marketing a series on Family Court failure to Court TV, Frontline, America Undercover, or all three, if we can get him enough information, footage and support. The reason he met with me about this project is because I know all of you and he was hoping I could rally you troops to help him with his project.”

The phrase "worth its weight in gold" likely reveals Meena Fox’s end-goal as a feminist attorney in steering courts to liquidate fatherhood, seize family assets, and children. Is there any other substantial benefit she could possibly be chasing? We think not. "Pulling it off" is a term commonly used in planning bank robberies, political subterfuge, and other illegitimate activities. The statement that Lasseur is actively pursing the same target, and driving the execution of it all, suggests that he is on the same page.

We have archived this web page for future reference, since it will probably be deleted by the time you read this article.

The business relationships between the Mary Kay Foundation, the producers, PBS, and feminist activists appear to constitute a profitable conspiracy against men in marriage and society. The actors used the profits of cosmetics to finance a false and inflammatory documentary, transmitted via the federally-supported public television network, thus allowing feminists the largesse to easily end marriages behind the closed doors of courtrooms for arbitrary and even irresponsible reasons. This can be done successfully only if radical feminists can project all family problems on the husband, thus seizing chattel control of family, assets, and income.

Breaking the Silence plays into the larger multi-billion-dollar conspiracy of the “no-fault” divorce industry, that has bilked about half the fathers in America out of their earnings, savings, and social position as husbands and fathers. Divorce hurts far more women than it helps. In fact, divorce has left more women and children in poverty, without health insurance, and at risk than any other event in American history. CPB does not understand that it can help more women and children by helping spouses work through the normal problems and processes of marriage and aging than it does by perversely magnifying feminist agenda into a cause celebre for mass divorce.

Dissembling Science to Suit Feminism

Both MRRC and Meera Fox repeatedly refer to mothers as being the “protective parent” {archived copy]. In their usage, “Protective parent” means that motherly interference with the father-child relationship is expected to take place on ideological grounds alone. Read: parental alienation is “protective” when committed by a mother, but destructive and to women and children when committed by the father.

The conversion of parental alienation into a label with two vastly disparate meanings based solely on gender of the actor, and the tactical reason for using this label, has certainly been discussed with Lasseur given the fact that it is core terminology for Fox and MRRC.

In their review of Breaking the Silence, CPB and PBS must take note that “Protective parent” is a clearly fraudulent substitute label for parental alienation. This leaves Lasseur with no foundation in credibility to now justify the legitimacy of his recipe applied in Breaking the Silence.

MRRC makes wildly-expansive claims about the results of its “National Protective Parents Survey”, reciting many factoids about divorce and domestic violence known to be either unreliable or false. Elsewhere on the MRRC web site, Meera admits that the survey includes only 157 respondents (apparently all are women). As is the norm for feminist activists, the MRRC website is loaded with anectodal stories, emotion, and factoids; and lacks any evidence of scientific balance or credibility. It is quite clear that MRRC is a highly-unreliable partisan information source that any responsible journalist would immediately avoid, but which Lasseur is apparently actively engaged.

A major thrust of the pending documentary is to create the illusion that abusive fathers seizing control of children is somehow an American epidemic. This is absolutely false. According to The US Census Department, in 2003 single mothers represent 80% of all single-parent households, single fathers only represent 20%. If fathers seizing control of children in divorce is pandemic, the statistics would be reversed. If anything, the statistics prove that mothers seizing control of families is a problem – a fact reflected by the fact that father-absence has become our greatest social problem since 1960.

MRRC and the documentary attempt to create the illusion that men are responsible for all family violence. The vast majority of credible studies and papers prove that women initiate slightly over half of all serious spousal altercations, and are responsible for over 2/3 of all serious child abuse. Breaking the Silence takes a position opposite of these facts by citing a variety of unreliable feminist studies.

When observed from an aerial view, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Breaking the Silence was an act of parental alienation, collectively committed by all parties involved the creation and dissemination of the documentary. This places additional responsibility on CPB and PBS to make a robust and accurate documentary, to undo the damage it has done.

Many Organizations Expect Responsible Decision by PBS

PBS has taken a surprisingly long time to publish the results of its inquiry. At worst, this could be “stonewalling” (as they say in management science parlance). I do not see any justification for further delay. The issues are bright and clear.

There is no evidence suggesting that this documentary is well-founded either in truth, science, or balance. It is merely a question of whether PBS has the simple corporate candor to set the record straight and make an acceptable compensatory documentary to correct the damage it has done to public attitudes towards men.

PBS cannot take the position that it is innocent. At least on PBS affiliate was actively working with local feminist activists to place the film as training material to influence legislation and court decisions. PBS affiliates were also providing free advertising directing women to local feminist activists. CPB and PBS have done great damage by allowing Breaking the Silence to be aired on hundreds of stations, completely unvetted by leading experts on domestic violence and parental alienation.

PBS now has a distinct responsibility to issue a balanced documentary, which should feature balanced, well established scientists on family violence, such as Dr. Murray Straus. It should openly include the situations of fathers who are most often the target of parental alienation. PBS must also implement a stringent pre-release review policy for all programs covering marriage, divorce, domestic violence, and child abuse, since they have often been similarly misrepresented by both NPR and PBS in the past.

Given the seriousness of this situation, I anticipate PBS will respond responsibly. In the event they do not, we are all fully prepared to pursue this issue, using all ethical means at our disposal, for as long as it takes until PBS finds reason to be responsible.

Fathers will no longer sit for being abused by the media. Nine years ago, I organized the first national protest in the history of the men’s movement, over the movie “First Wives Club”. The protest, hastily organized in eight days and held in 26 cities across America, was covered briefly in Time Magazine. A segment was filmed for Hard Copy. Universal Studios immediately cancelled the sequel, which was already in progress, and has avoided these waters ever since.

Our 2001 “Bridges for Children” father’s day informational protest was held in 226 cities around the world. Our movement is much stronger today. The Violence Against Women Act [HR 3402] now requires appropriate funding for services for men living in violent environments. Many women have walked away from radical feminism to advocate for healing and marital responsibility within the legitimate marriage and family-rights movements. Structural discrimination against men in education, home, and family is now common knowledge, and a major issue for forthright media outlets and state legislatures. Times have changed, and so must CPB.

If PBS fails to honor its public mandate, Congress should end all funding of CPB and PBS. CPB is using public funds to broadcast perverse feminist social re-engineering propaganda to illegitimately influence legislation and judicial decisions.

Secondly, if PBS fails to act appropriately, everyone considering membership or making a gift to CPB or PBS, should take note that their monies may be misused to spread hate and arbitrarily destroy marriage, fatherhood, and the futures of thousands of women and children.

David R. Usher is President of the
American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition

posted by David R. Usher at 12:03 PM
http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/usher/2005/12/pbs-documentary-breaking-silence.html

The FRO under scrutiny

by Leslie Whatmough,

August 31, 2005

http://www.womenspost.ca/articles/familyparenting/the-fro-under-scrutiny

Leslie Whatmough

On June 9, 2005 the McGuinty government announced the passage of Bill 155, legislation that promised to “increase enforcement, improve fairness and enhance efficiency at the Family Responsibility Office (FRO).” However, the legislation did not address the problem of accountability and, as things now stand, the FRO is a threat to every Canadian affected by a government–regulated support and custody arrangement system. Think of George Orwell’s 1984 and you’ll have a good picture of how issues are handled at the FRO.

They have legal power to extort money from Canadians, but are not responsible or accountable for their actions. Last year an FRO staff member decided not to wait for a court date to review the financial status of an out-of-work truck driver and took it upon themselves to suspend his license because he was, understandably, behind on his payments, having lost his job earlier in the year. Although he was looking for work, the FRO cut off the only way he knew of to earn a living. His suicide note explained how he’d lost all hope. Is this what we want FRO to be doing? It is one thing to chase after “dead-beat dads” (this philosophy is an integrated part of the FRO mandate), but what of the majority of people who pay regularly and lose their job or run into tough times? Should they too be stripped of their civil rights?

The FRO is a government agency and thus immune to extortion laws governing Canada.

The title, Family Responsibility Office, is misleading. Families are made up of connected individuals with complicated histories. To have a responsibility to a family is to have a responsibility to each individual member within the unit. Theoretically, the FRO should be an impartial third party in divorce and custody settlements introduced solely for the purpose of enforcing judgment, much like a collection agency.

According to the official FRO website, “This mandate requires FRO to be neutral in any dispute between a payor and a recipient.” The FRO has the power to enforce court orders for the benefit of the recipient, but if its system is neutral then shouldn’t enforcement be based on court decisions and none taken if the payor no longer has a source of income and is in the process of having it reviewed by the courts?

Instead, the structure of the system is adversarial and automatically assumes that the payor is irresponsible and deceptive. For the sake of comparison, note the tone in this letter sent from the National Student Loans Centre to all loan recipients: “If at any time during the repayment of your loan you experience financial difficulty causing you to have trouble in meeting your monthly payment obligations, please call us. There are options available to help you.” These options are not available to FRO payors. In fact the website states “If a payor no longer has an income source or stops working, the payor must continue to make support payments to the Family Responsibility Office.” Exactly how they are to do this with no income is a mystery.

The payor is expected to return to court to have his support obligation amended to accurately reflect his current situation. But the FRO can, and often does, decide that the court process is taking too long and will take enforcement action against the payor, without a trial or hearing.
Enforcement action can include seizing a bank account, suspending a driver’s license, reporting the payor to professional licensing bodies, seizing and selling a payor’s assets, suspending a passport, reporting a payor to the credit bureau, collecting funds from any federal benefits, jail time of up to 180 days, and identifying information about the payor can be posted on a public website. Also, there are fees associated with every enforcement actions, for example a fee of $400 is charged to the payor if the FRO suspends their driver’s license. Is it any wonder they don’t want to wait for the courts when they have such a lucrative administration structure in place? The fee structure takes money out of the hands of the children the office was set up to protect, especially when they charge a parent who has lost their job and their income. If it weren’t a government organization these actions would be viewed as extortion.

According to Statistics Canada, there were 70,828 divorces in Canada in 2003. For every divorce involving children there had to be a legal proceeding to determine custody and support arrangements. This is an expensive process. The Canadian government is capitalizing on this system with an agency that ensures that parents paying support will be forced to revisit the courts every few years as their financial status changes. Those who try to challenge the system are punished with huge administration fees (payable to the FRO) and even jail time.

At the time of separation, unsuspecting Canadians are encouraged to enroll with the FRO, the agency empowered by the Ministry of Community, Family and Children’s Services, because it is supposed to simplify the support payment process. The reality is that once families have enrolled, all money is channeled through this agency, which profits from the interest earned while the funds sit in the coffers for weeks, even months, during the administrative process. The children and parents the FRO are supposed to be helping do not get any of the interest earned.
There are also some very real concerns about the civil rights of Canadians with respect to some of the FRO enforcement powers. Prominent Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby expressed his concern about posting payors’ identifying information on a public website: “Canada does not usually allow public humiliation of its citizens. I worry about that.”

In a press release dated June 17, 2004, Ontario Ombudsman Clare Lewis reported that after years of neglect, positive changes are coming to Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office: “positive movement has finally been made towards acquiring new technology that will better serve clients...we are finally on the right track.” Families dealing with the combined pressures of financial distress and the loss of the family unit do not need more technology; they need intervention, mediation and affordable legal action.

There is no question that if a payor is in a financial position to pay, but trying to avoid the responsibility, then enforcement action is necessary. But the assumption that payors who get into arrears do so willfully falls into the same line of thinking as guilty until proved innocent. Penalizing payors who are struggling financially and threatening their livelihood by taking away their driver’s license, putting them in prison, or destroying their reputation will not help the children who are at stake in a divorce. The FRO was originally set up to solve the problem of deadbeat dads. It was politically charged and thus untouchable, but at what point do we say: stop? At what point will its power have gone too far?

Federal incentives exist to make children fatherless

Phyllis Schlafly

May 9, 2005


Why has Congress appropriated taxpayer money to give perverse
incentives that break up families and deprive children of their
fathers? The built-in financial incentives in the current
child-support system have expanded the tragedy of fatherless children
from the welfare class to millions of non-welfare divorced couples.

Americans have finally realized that providing generous welfare
through Aid to Families with Dependent Children was counterproductive
because the father had to disappear in order for the mother to receive
taxpayer-paid benefits. Fathers left home, illegitimacy rose in
alarming numbers and children were worse off.

AFDC provided a taxpayer-paid financial incentive to reward girls with
their own monthly check, food stamps, health care and housing if they
had illegitimate babies. "She doesn't need me, she's got welfare"
became the mantra.

Congress tried to reform the out-of-control welfare system by a series
of child-support laws passed in 1975, 1984, 1988, 1996 (the famous
Republican welfare reform), and 1999.
Unfortunately, these laws morphed the welfare system into a massive
middle-class child-support system that deprives millions of children
of fathers who never abandoned them.

As former President Ronald Reagan often said, "The most terrifying
words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm
here to help you."

People think that child-support enforcement benefits children, but it
doesn't. When welfare agencies collect child support, the money
actually goes to the government to reimburse it for welfare payments
already given to mothers, supposedly to reduce the federal budget
(which, of course, is never reduced).

In 1984, Congress passed the Child Support Enforcement Amendment. It
required states to adopt voluntary guidelines for child-support payments.

In 1988, Congress passed the Family Support Act, which made the
guidelines mandatory - along with criminal enforcement - and gave
states less than one year to comply. The majority of states quickly
adopted the model guidelines conveniently already written by a
Department of Health and Human Services consultant who was president
of what was shortly to become one of the nation's largest private
collection companies, which makes its profits on the onerous
guidelines that create arrearages.

The 1988 law extended the guidelines to ALL child-support orders, even
though the big majority of those families never had to interact with
government in order to pay or receive child support. This massive
expansion of federal control over private lives uses a Federal Case
Registry to exercise surveillance over 19 million citizens whether or
not they are behind in child-support payments.

The states collect the child-support money and deposit it in a state
fund, but the federal government pays most of the administrative costs
and, therefore, dictates the way the system operates through mandates
and financial incentives. The federal government pays 66 percent of
the states' administrative overhead costs, 80 percent of computer and
technology-enhancement costs, and 90 percent of DNA testing for paternity.

In addition, the states share in a nearly $500 million incentive
reward pool based on whatever the state collects. The states can get a
waiver to spend this bonus money anyway they choose.

However, most of the child support owed by welfare-class fathers is
uncollectable. Most of them are either unemployed or have annual
incomes less than $10,000.

So, in order to cash in on federal bonus money, build their
bureaucracies and brag about successful child-support enforcement, the
states began bringing into the government system middle-class fathers
with jobs who were never (and probably would never be) on welfare.
These non-welfare families have grown to represent 83 percent of
child-support cases and 92 percent of the money collected, creating a
windfall of federal money flowing to the states.

The federal incentives drive the system. The more divorces, and the
higher the child-support guidelines are set and enforced (no matter
how unreasonable), the more money state bureaucracies collect from the
federal government.

Follow the money. The less time that noncustodial parents (usually
fathers) are permitted to be with their children, the more child
support they are required pay into the state fund, and the higher the
federal bonus to the states for collecting the money.

States have powerful incentives to separate fathers from their
children, to give near-total custody to mothers, to maintain the
fathers' high-level support obligations even if their income is
drastically reduced and to hang onto the father's payments as long as
possible before paying them out to the mothers. The General Accounting
Office reported that in 2002 that states were holding $657 million in
undistributed child support.

Fatherless boys are 63 percent more likely to run away and 37 percent
more likely to abuse drugs. Fatherless girls are twice as likely to
get pregnant and 53 percent more likely to commit suicide. Fatherless
boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and
twice as likely to end up in jail.

We can no longer ignore how taxpayer money is providing incentive for
divorce and creating fatherless children. Nor can we ignore the
government's complicity in the predictable social costs that result
from more than 17 million children growing up without fathers.

©2005 Copley News Service

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