RA 9262 -STOP THE ABUSE EVEN FROM SIBLINGS

Marie, one of the readers of this blog asked a question? Can RA 9262 be used to file suit

against a brother who is abusive?  The answer is YES. RA 9262 known as the law to protect women and children from violence allows victims to sue members of the family who are abusive.
Go to the crisis center of the DSWD on legarda road cor san rafael st. san miguel Manila.

ATTYSISON2020@YAHOO.COM

JAILING CHILDREN

Argie was a frightened 13 year old and his and eyes filled with anxiety and longing when I arrived at he jail in Metro Manila. Other stretched out their arms and begged me to take them out of the hot poorly ventilated jail cell where they are overcrowded and only see daylight when they are taken out to their court hearing.

The jail officials quickly filled out the custody papers transferring Argie to my custody. While waiting for the heavy steel barred gate of clang open and for him to step out to the cheers and jeers of his cellmates Argie grabbed my hand through the bars and demanded to know ³are the padlocks at Preda, are there padlocks². His eyes filled with dread and tears fearful that he was being transferred from one hell hole to another. But no I reassured him, it’s a free open home. There are no guards and no gates and all the youth transferred to our custody by the court stays of there their free choice I told him. “You can study, learn trades, play basketball everyday, go to the beach and have group therapy”. This was unbelievable, his face remained blank but I was winning his trust.

I went to another jail where the youth had been given a separate cell so small the cell has four shelves up to the ceiling. The minors squat like chickens in a cage. They can’t lie down together. Most mayors have failed to provide a detention home as the law demands.
 
In Pasay city, a new jail is under construction. In Marikina, the minors’ jail is on the 6th floor of the municipal building far from adult prisoners. It is spacious airy and the minors have bunk beds. However, we found two very small frightened 12 and 13 year old boys incarcerated. John-john, 12 years-old, was arrested for playing cards on the sidewalk. His family could not afford the bribe to get him off. In another jail, a small frail and bewildered 13 year old girl was the latest arrival to the women¹s overcrowded cell. Charged with shop lifting.

Then as we brought our relief goods medicines and food to yet another jail, we found another tightly packed prison. This time we had court orders for the release of the two minors. The guard opened the gate of the minors’ cell for us to bring in food and talk to the minors. That was a shock surprise for them. Our social workers told them they would go to Preda. They gaped in disbelief having just seen a TV report on ABC5 about the Preda center the previous evening. The TV in the corridor was the one luxury allowed the prisoners.

The two quickly stuffed all their worldly belongings into little plastic bags and waited for the guard to lead them out. But instead, we were ordered out and the gate slammed shut. Horror registered on their faces. Hopes raised and then dashed cut them to the heart. “No papers, no release”, the guard shouted. Right! We marched back, waited around the office, then got the papers and we took them out into bright sunshine. They were traumatized, silent, skinny, beaten down. A lingering depression was etched on their worried ashen faces. Their arms and legs showed rampant scabies, cockroach and mosquito bites. Later they said they had been raped inside.

It is no surprise then that the U.S. authorities refuse to hand over custody of four U.S. Marines to the Philippine jailers. The four are accused of raping a filipina woman at Subic Bay last November 2005. They would not last a month inside a Philippine jail. They stay at the US Embassy in Manila.

Former President Joseph Estrada is on trial for plunder but is jailed in some luxury, more like house arrest. Now he wants to be placed into the custody of Cardinal Vidal and the venerable Archbishop has agreed. If the court approves that is. Some have it better than others. The children behind bars are just the throwaway children of a society, that just doesn’t care. [End]

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ST THERESE

FROM JULIE YAP DAZA>

    I just want to share that two years ago, I went to see St.
> Therese’s remains when it was put on display in the Carmelite Church. I
> went there because I was curious what was this euphoria about the world’s
> youngest saint whose job is to grant people’s wishes?
>
> So I went with friend Lyn and I must admit the life of the little
> child, Therese, intrigued me. It turned out she was a child who wanted to
> serve her God more than anything else in the world. Thus, in every chore
> that she did: even watering the plants, she performed it like it was for
> her master.
>
> Since all her siblings were Carmelite nuns, she became a nun
> herself, the youngest (12?) to be allowed inside the conven t. So we’re
> talking of a sure "uncorrupted soul". And then she died.
>
> But she left a journal (suggested reading!) which contained all
> her thoughts about God, love and life. Since then she became the saint who
> grants all wishes.
>
> Believe it or not, my wish was granted! Not because I said a
> novena but knowing about her life and reading her works inspired me and
> made me more patient and persevering.
>
> According to religious beliefs, St. Therese was known as: "The
> Little Flower". Whenever you ask for intercession to her for a miracle,
> she will send you a rose in one form or another when the miracle has been
> granted. You may smell roses, receive a rose by visual means, etc.
> REMEMBER to make a wish before you read the poem. That’s all you
> have to do. There is nothing attached. This is a powerful novena. Do not
> break this, please. Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive. There
> is no cost but a lot of reward. Let’s continue praying for one another.
>
> Make a wish before you read this poem…. (Did you make a wish?)
> If you don’t make a wish, it won’t come true.
>
> May today there be peace within.
> May you trust your highest power that you are exactly where you
> are meant to be.
> May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of
> faith.
> May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the
> love that has been given to you.
>
> May you be content knowing you are a child of God.
> Let this presence settle into our bones, and allow your soul the
> freedom to sing, dance, and to bask in
> the sun. It is there for each and every one of you.
>
> Send this to 7 People within the next 5 min. and your wish will
> come true.

PROTECT YOURSELF FROM RAPISTS

(more…)

SUPREME COURT ORDERS RETURN OF PLDT SHARES TO GOVT.

SC orders return of PLDT shares to gov’t
Sat Jan 21,2006
FROM MANILA BULLETIN

The Supreme Court yesterday ordered the return to the government, as ill-gotten wealth of the late former President Ferdinand Marcos, of the 111,415 shares of stocks in the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) consisting of shares of the Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC) registered in the name of Prime Holdings, Inc. (PHI).

In a decision written by Justice Conchita Carpio Morales, the High Court granted the petition of the government, through the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), “to the extent that it prays for the reconveyance to the Republic of 111,415 PTIC shares registered in the name of PHI.”

It said “on the basis of the evidence, therefore, President Marcos owned PHI and all the incorporators thereof acted under his direction.”

The 111,415 shares were claimed by the government from the estate of the late businessman Ramon U. Cojuangco and his wife, Imelda O. Cojuangco, PHI, and Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos.

At the time the PCGG filed a civil case for reconveyance against the Marcoses and his so-called cronies with the Sandiganbayan in 1987, PTIC controlled 28 percent of the outstanding shares in PLDT.

It was not stated in the 35-page decision whether the PLDT shares ordered returned to the government were the same shares sold in 1996 by the Cojuangcos to Manuel Pangilinan for a reported 0 million.

Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban and Justice Reynato S. Puno, Leonardo A. Quisumbing, Ma. Alicia Austria Martinez, Renato C. Corona, and Romeo J. Callejo Sr. concurred in the decision. Puno and Quisumbing concurred merely in the result.

Those who dissented were Justices Cancio C. Garcia, who drafted the decision which was used by the court as basis for deliberation but whose draft was outvoted by the majority members of the court, Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez who wrote a separate dissenting opinion, Consuelo Ynares Santiago, and Minita Chico Nazario, who both joined Garcia in his opinion.

Justices Antonio T. Carpio, Adolfo S. Azcuna, and Dante O. Tinga inhibited themselves.

Resolved by the High Court were five consolidated cases involving the PHI shares held by the estate of Cojuangco. The cases arose from the PCGG’s civil case filed with the Sandiganbayan and from the ruling handed down by the anti-graft court in 2002.

Four cases were dismissed by the Supreme Court for lack of merit. The fifth case, that which was filed by the PCGG, was resolved in favor of the government.

Sought for recovery by the PCGG as alleged ill- gotten wealth of Marcos were PTIC shares consisting of 76,779 shares in the name of Ramon Cojuangco; 21,525 in the name of his wife, Imelda; and 111,415 in the name of PHI. In 1987, PTIC was registered as the biggest stockholder of PLDT.

On May 6, 2002, the Sandiganbayan dismissed the PCGG case for lack of merit and granted the motion for summary judgment sought by Mrs. Cojuangco.

When its motion for reconsideration was denied, the PCGG elevated the case to the Supreme Court. Alfonso T. Yuchengco and Y Realty Corp. filed their petition for intervention.

Three of the five cases had been pending with the High Court even before the issuance by the Sandiganbayan of its partial decision on May 6, 2002.

Narrating the background of PHI, the High Court said the company was incorporated on Oct. 5, 1977 with Jose Campos Jr. (son of Jose Yao Campos), Rolando Gapud, Renato Lirio, Ernesto Abalos, and Gervacio Gaviola as incorporators.

It said in 1977, the corporation elected Gapud as president. On Dec. 20, 1977, a total of 54,349 PTIC shares were registered in the name of Cojuangco. On Jan. 27, 1978, Cojuangco and Luis Tirso Rivilla signed an agreement with Gapud to sell the PTIC shares to PHI and on April 20, 1978, a total of 111,415 common shares of PTIC representing 46.12 percent of the outstanding shares of PTIC were transferred to PHI.

The High Court noted several changes in the composition of the board of PHI and several transfers of shares of stocks owned by the stockholders.

It said the Cojuangcos, Mrs. Marcos, and the PHI agreed with the PCGG that the PHI has undisclosed owners “but their only disagreement being who this owner is.”

It also said that both the Cojuangcos and PHI proffered that the real owners were the Cojuangcos, but the PCGG said it was the Marcoses.

The High Court pointed out that “the Sandiganbayan, therefore, was not to look for proof beyond reasonable doubt, but to determine, based on the evidence presented, in light of common human experience, which of the theories proffered by the parties is more worthy of credence.”

“The evidence presented by the parties shows that the preponderance clearly lies with the Republic, but the Sandiganbayan grossly misappreciated it, and, therefore, committed a reversible error,” it said.

It said it is not disputed that “Jose Yao Campos is a former Marcos crony who, after the February 1986 EDSA revolution, surrendered to the government substantial assets which he confessed to have held in behalf of Marcos.”

According to the High Court, “after Campos organized PHI for the Marcoses, he entrusted most if not all of its business transactions to his close associated Gapud, the president of PHI who himself confessed to have acted as a Marcos nominee.”

“The credibility of Campos’ testimony stands, and his sworn admission that PHI was a dummy corporation organized by former President Marcos constitutes convincing evidence that PHI was beneficially owned by Marcos,” it said.

It pointed out that Gapud, one of PHI incorporators, affirmed Campos’ sworn statement in his own deposition which “substantially corroborates the statements of Campos and further establishes that PHI was a dummy corporation of the Marcoses.”

It also said the testimonies of Campos and Gapud were also corroborated by lawyer de Guzman who used to be the counsel of United Laboratories controlled by the Camposes.

“The statements of De Guzman clearly support the thesis of the Republic that PHI is a dummy of the Marcoses, it having been completely organized by the associates of Campos, who had categorically testified to having organized PHI for the benefit of President Marcos,” the High Court said.

“On the other hand, there is hardly any evidence on Cojuangco’s role in the organization of PHI to substantiate the thesis that the same was beneficially owned by him,” it said.

“Clearly, the Republic’s thesis that President Marcos is the beneficial owner of PHI is deduced from established facts which, weighed by common experience, engender the inference as a very strong probability. Only a Marcos ownership can make sense of the circumstances surrounding the origins of PHI,” it pointed out.

In another case, the High Court said the rule of Marcos was described as a “well-entrenched plundering regime of 20 years” and noted the “magnitude of the regime’s organized pillage and the ingenuity of the plunderers and pillagers with the assistance of the experts and best legal minds available in the market.”

It added that the “evidence presented in this case reveals one more instance of this grand scheme. This court – guardian of the high standards and noble traditions of the legal profession – has thus before it an opportunity to undo, even if only to a certain extent, the damage that has been done.”

SAINT PADRE PIO HELPS CLIENTS WITH LEGAL PROBLEMS

This article that I wrote appeared in the January 15, 2006 issue of PANORAMA MAGAZINE of the MANILA BULLETIN

I have heard of Padre Pio from various quarters , articles and books on his life.
Padre Pio lived a long life, fifty years of which he carried the stigmata wounds of Christ .
He died in September 1968,and this means he lived in the 20th Century. He was canonized on fathers day of June 2002 in the Vatican City ceremonies which I watched
On cable television.
Even before he was declared a saint, Padre Pio who was made blessed, has been a constant guide, inspiration, brother and intercessor to me, our family and of my clients
who were charged with various criminal cases or have problems in their marriage.

Let me share with you how I got to experience the intercession of Padre Pio in clients who have legal problems.

In the late 1990s, a client who was charged with estafa introduced to me to pray to Padre Pio for intercession.
The client asked me to accompany him to the bank in Manila wherein he and this two (2) complainants agreed to meet for the settlement of their case and sign a compromise agreement.
We waited at the bank at the appointed time. None of the complainants appeared.
He suggested then that we go to the offices of the two complainants.
We went to the office of the first complainant who willingly signed the compromise agreement.
We then went to the office of the second complainant. The second complainant did not want to talk to my client, as he was furious and angry and did not want to sign the compromise agreement.
My client then asked me to join him in prayer for the intercession of Padre Pio in his case.
He lead the prayer and I joined him in prayer asking Padre Pio to talk to the guardian angel of that angry complainant. He asked for a change of heart and forgiveness.

We prayed for about ten to fifteen minutes outside this complainants office. Thereafter ,
I was surprised to see this guy come out of his office with a different mood, as he was no longer angry, and he asked me for the compromise agreement as he was now willing to sign the compromise agreement.
The compromise agreement was signed and the case was settled.

That was an amazing turnaround of attitude. That convinced me that henceforth, I shall introduce Padre Pio to every client who is

BOOK ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE PHILIPPINES AND FUNDING FOR CRISIS CENTERS AND BATTERER INTERVENTION PROGRAMR

I am writing a book on domestic violence in the Philippines. I have met battered women. I want to interview battered men too. Where do we bring the victims and the perpetrators of violence. There are crisis centers all over the country that cater to women and children. Where can we bring the men so they can be rehabilitated. We have to flesh out right away the batterer intervention program, setting up the facility for male victims and female victims. The men who are victimized are silent but manifest anger and violence in their lives. We have to address this NOW. The Social Welfare department is mandated together with other government agencies listed in Republic Act 9262 to set up such a program. Calling on the private sector to help, as surely among our midst are colleagues , officemates who need help. Please help fund such facilites as part of your community outreach. Let me know in what form you want to help. attysison2020@yahoo.com

CHEATERS IN SCHOOL BUSTED IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS

900 university cheats busted
From: By Paula Beauchamp
January 10, 2006

HUNDREDS of students have been expelled, suspended or punished at Victorian universities for cheating and academic rorting.

A Herald Sun investigation has found such cheating is rife – at least 962 students have been caught in two years.
Among those punished were would-be lawyers and medical professionals training at the state’s top universities.

The economics, business and commerce faculties at Melbourne and Monash universities recorded the highest number of student cheats.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation show scores of students were kicked out of courses while others were fined up to $500 or suspended for up to five years.

Hundreds more were investigated but not punished.

Advertisement:
The documents, released by eight Victorian universities, show at least 962 students were penalised for cheating between 2003 and mid-2005.
The total is believed to be much higher, but not all university records were seen by the Herald Sun.

Academics say the internet has made cheating easier. Anecdotal evidence from lecturers suggests plagiarism is rising.

“Our members are concerned about the whole issue of the academic integrity of work submitted by students,” National Tertiary Education Union spokesman Paul Kniest said. “The internet has definitely added to that.”

Students caught cheating in exams had attempted to sneak in calculators, hide notes, store information on erasers or stick it on rulers.

The documents also reveal:

A MELBOURNE University architecture student was expelled after cheating in two exams.

A STUDENT from Melbourne University’s medical faculty was also expelled for cheating.

TWO Monash students who cheated in business exams by smuggling in notes and a book are due back at uni this year after two-year suspensions.

A CHEATING student from Victoria University was banned from re-enrolling in any course at the university for at least five years.

A SWINBURNE University student submitted an assignment that belonged to another student.

A GROUP of eight design students at Swinburne’s Prahran campus were penalised for copying a journal and part of an assignment.

A number of students were also penalised for falsifying academic results and forging academics’ signatures.

Mr Kniest said most universities had introduced anti-plagiarism software and some had made its use compulsory.

Licences to use the most popular anti-plagiarism software, Turnitin, have been bought by at least 25 Australian universities to try to catch students who fail to cite references for information cut and pasted from the internet.

A University of Melbourne Turnitin study found plagiarism fell by half over two semesters when detection software was used.

Up to 11 per cent of students in the classes screened were found to have plagiarised part of their work.

However the study urged caution because its findings were based on a small number of classes and limited data.

National Union of Students president Rose Jackson said it should be remembered that the vast majority of students did not cheat.

“Most who plagiarise are found to have done so unwittingly or through ignorance, particularly in the case of international students,” Ms Jackson said.

She said that time pressures on students – who now worked longer hours to meet university costs – could lead to referencing mistakes or encourage them to take the easy route.

“We hear some students say, ‘I know I did it, but I didn’t have a real choice’,” she said.

“It was either skip work, hand the assignment in late or just hand it in with an incomplete bibliography and hope they don’t notice.”

Ms Jackson said it would be foolish to deny that the internet had made it easier to plagiarise.

“There is no doubting it,” she said.

BATTERED HUSBAND CONTROVERSY

The Battered Husband Controversy
Anti-feminists often claim that men and women are equally the perpetrators of, and the victims of, domestic violence. They then attack shelters for women as sexist, and feminists as liars. This essay looks at research and statistics, and debunks the myth of equal violence. A full list of citations and further reading is provided.

What Behind Closed Doors really said
The 1985 follow-up study

But what about Current Controversies on Family Violence?

Problems with the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS)

What are the real figures on husband battering?

What about murder?

What’s the result of the myth?

Citations and further reading

Introduction
Research by Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, Suzanne Steinmetz, and others is sometimes used to “prove” the claim that men and women are equal victims of domestic violence. This “proof” is used to attack feminism and services for battered wives.

Straus and Gelles have both expressed concern at the misuse of their research findings to attacks services for battered women. Gelles (1995b) has described claims of equal numbers of victims as “misogynistic” and “a significant distortion of well-grounded research data”.

Gelles (1995a) lists the equal violence claim in his collection of Domestic Violence Factoids:
Women are as violent as are men, and women initiate violence as often do men. […] Those using this factoid tend to conveniently leave out the fact that Straus and his colleague’s surveys as well as data collected from the National Crime Victimization Survey (Bureau of Justice Statistics) consistently find that no matter what the rate of violence or who initiates the violence, women are 7 to 10 times more likely to be injured in acts of intimate violence than are men.” (My emphasis)
Typically, such claims mean presenting the results of Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz’s survey using the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), as published in Behind Closed Doors: Violence in American Families (1980).

Claims based solely on CTS studies that husbands and wives are equally violent ignore a great deal of conflicting evidence. Also, the ability of the CTS to give a complete picture of domestic violence has been much challenged.

What Behind Closed Doors really said
The authors of Behind Closed Doors did not conclude that wives and husbands were equally the victims of domestic violence. They said:

“This study shows a high rate of violence by wives as well as husbands. But it would be a great mistake if that fact distracted us from giving first attention to wives as victims as the focus of social policy.” (Emphasis in original)
The researchers pointed out that:
The CTS survey doesn’t tell us if violent acts were in self-defence.
The CTS survey shows that “husbands have higher rates of the most dangerous and injurious forms of violence (beating up and using a gun).”
An earlier study by Steinmetz showed that abuse by husbands does more damage.
Violent acts by a husband are repeated more often than violent acts by wives.
An earlier study by Gelles showed that “a large number of attacks seem to occur when the wife is pregnant”.
“Women are locked into marriage to a much greater extent than men… and they often have no alternative to putting up with beatings by their husbands.”
Gelles reiterated this conclusion in Intimate violence in families (1985):
“It is quite clear that men are struck by their wives. It is also clear that because men are typically larger than their wives and usually have more social resources at their command, that they do not have as much physical or social damage inflicted on them as is inflicted on women. Data from studies of households where the police intervened in domestic violence, clearly indicate that men are rarely the victims of “battery” (Berk et al, 1983). Thus, although [the CTS figures] show similar rates of hitting, when injury is considered, marital violence is primarily a problem of victimised women.”
(p79-80 - “A note on husbands as victims”.)

The 1985 follow-up study
Ten years after the original 1975 CTS survey, Straus and Gelles (1986) conducted a second survey, to see if rates of domestic violence had changed. This survey found the same similarity in rates of reported violence by husbands and wives.
While rightly emphasising the need to recognise women’s violence, the researchers pointed out that these results should be carefully interpreted. They noted that:

Because men are usually stronger and more aggressive, a violent act by a husband is more likely to cause pain and injury than the same act carried out by a wife.
A great deal of violence by wives against husbands is retaliatory or in self-defence.
They also expressed concern that their original 1975 survey had been used against battered women in court, and to minimise the need for shelters for abused wives.

But what about Current Controversies on Family Violence?
Current Controversies on Family Violence is a collection of essays on various aspects of domestic violence and rape. In his chapter, Physical assaults by wives: a major social problem, Murray Straus argues that violence by wives deserves attention and is no more acceptable than violence by husbands.

He reviews the research which shows equal rates of violence by husbands and wives, and questions whether women’s violence can be explained as self-defence. He also speculates that wives’ violence might increase the probability of husbands’ violence (while being careful to point out that this is only a hypothesis, and that it could be misused to unfairly blame women.)

Straus reiterates that regardless of the rates of hitting, women suffer greater physical, financial, and emotional injury from domestic violence, and should continue to receive “first priority” in services and prevention. He once again expresses his concern that “the statistics are likely to be misused by misogynists and apologists for male violence”. He is adamant that he is a feminist. (Gelles (1994) too describes himself as a feminist.)

Problems with the CTS Survey
The CTS is both much used and much criticised (Dobash et al, 1992). Here are three important problems with taking CTS results at face value.

Forgotten violence
The CTS does not include rape or other sexual assault, or violent acts such as choking, suffocating, and scratching. Also, it excludes violence which begins after an abused partner declares their intention to leave - as it often does. Stalking is omitted. And, obviously, marital murder cannot be measured by self-report surveys.

Out of context
The CTS counts up violent acts only. It does not tell us whether the acts were in self-defence. It does not tell us whether they were a single incident, or part of a pattern of violence. It does not tell us whether the act was intended to hurt the other person; a joking kick or a slapped hand are counted the same as a violent kick or blow to the face. It does not tell us whether the victim was injured, or how badly. (Dobash et al 1992)

Szinovacz (1983) points out that couples sometimes engage in “mock physical aggression”, such as throwing pillows, with no intention of hurting one another, but it’s left up to the interviewee whether to report a tossed pillow as “threw object”. This ambiguity might lead to harmless horseplay being reported as real violence.

Interspousal reliability
Husbands’ and wives’ responses to the CTS don’t agree. The Behind Closed Doors study interviewed one member of each family, the wife or the husband. Szinovacz (1983) checked the validity of this approach by interviewing couples, and found that couples’ accounts of their violence, measured by the CTS, didn’t match much better than could be expected by chance.

Wives and husbands disagreed considerably both about what violence was used, and how often it was used. For example, though some men and women said they had “beaten up” their partners, and some men and women said they had been “beaten up”, no couple contained one person who said they’d done the beating and one who said they had been beaten!

Szinovacz also found that when couple data, rather than “aggregate data”, were used, there was 50% more violence from husbands and 20% more violence from wives. Husbands tended to report less of their own violence than their wives indicated; wives were somewhat more likely than husbands to admit to their own violence.

Similarly, Jouriles and O’Leary (1985) found that agreement between partners given the CTS was “low to moderate”.

These findings cast some doubt on the reliability of the CTS to detect violence, because it depends on self-reporting. Szinovacz suggests a number of reasons for discrepancies in husbands’ and wives’ reports of violence, including reluctance to admit to violent acts and ambiguous questions. She suggests that a husband may not report or even remember a wife’s useless attempt to hurt him, and that men might be reluctant to report their own use of “female” tactics such as kicking or biting.

What are the real figures on husband battering?

Relying solely on old CTS surveys which indicate equal violence by husbands and wives means ignoring a large amount of conflicting evidence. (Dobash et al, 1992). Here’s some of it.

The US Department of Justice (February 2003) reports that women were 85% of the victims of intimate violence (other than murder) in 2001. Previously (October 2001), the Department had also reported that “Women accounted for 85% of the victims from among the more than 790,000 victims of intimate violence in 1999″.

The National Violence Against Women Survey found that “approximately 1.5 million women and 834,732 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.” Almost 25% of women, and 7.5% of men, had been raped and/or assaulted by a date or partner at some time in their lives. Women who were assaulted by an intimate sustained a higher number of assaults, and were more likely to have been injured in the most recent attack, than men who were assaulted. In addition, the study found that “503,485 women and 185,496 men are stalked by an intimate partner annually in the United States.” (National Institute of Justice, 2000).

According the US Department of Justice (1994), “Annually, compared to males, females experienced over 10 times as many incidents of violence by an intimate. On average each year, women experienced over 572,000 violent victimizations committed by an intimate, compared to approximately 49,000 incidents committed against men.”

The Study of Injured Victims of Violence (US Department of Justice, 1997) surveyed injuries treated in hospital emergency departments. 4.5% of male victims had been injured by an intimate, compared to 36.8% of the female victims. Of the 243,000 people who had been injured by an intimate, 39,000 (16%) were men and 204,000 (84%) were women. (In 30% of cases, the relationship between the injured person and their attacker was not identified.)

In 1978, the US state of Minnesota began an inquiry into whether men needed the same kinds of shelters and social service programs as battered women. Out of 966 reports of domestic violence (mandatory from all legal and medical agencies), 95% were husbands bashing wives (Minnesota Department of Corrections, 1979). In 1981, the Minnesota Department of Corrections found that only 4% of 3900 reports were of women battering men (Watkins 1982, 38)

Using police and court records for one year, Dobash and Dobash (1978) found that men and boys were responsible for 97.4% of all violence between family members.

The 1999 General Social Survey, held in Canada, found that 8% of women and 7% of men, married or living in a common-law relationship, had experienced violence from their partner at least once. But the violence was far from equal. Women were much more likely to have been beaten, choked, raped, or to have faced a knife or gun. “In addition,” reports Statistics Canada (2000), “women in violent unions were almost five times more likely than men to fear for their lives. They were three times more likely than men to report having been physically injured by the assault, and they were five times as likely to have required medical attention.”

In a study of calls to police in the UK during one day, 80% of victims were women attacked by men. (Hopkins, 2000.)

A random phone survey of 3,061 adult residents of Perth, Western Australia, in 1994 recorded 266 reported incidents of domestic violence. Only three men were victims in incidents involving a partner. (Two of the men may have actually been witnesses, not victims, or caught up in an incident involving someone else’s partner.) (Ferrante et al 1996)

The Family Violence Professional Education Taskforce (1991) is unequivocal. “Studies overseas and in Australia consistently indicate that women constitute the large majority of victims in family violence. In Australia, all available data on family violence show that men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence in the home.” For example, they note the results of phone-ins around Australia: women were 98.3% of victims who called in Queensland, 92.1% of victims in Western Australia, 94.4% of victims in Victoria, and 98% of victims in Canberra.

In a 1988 study of domestic violence cases reported to Queensland police, an offender was identified in 84% of cases, and where identified, 85% were male. (Queensland Domestic Violence Task Force 1988)

Do men report their wives’ violence?
Are men deciding not to report their wives’ violence, out of chivalry or embarrassment? The evidence we have doesn’t support this assumption. For example, Schwartz (1987), analysing nine years’ worth of US National Crime Survey data, found that 67.2% of men and 56.8% of wives called the police after an assault by their spouse. Rouse et al (1988) also found that men were more likely to call the police, and Kincaid (1982) found that men were more likely to press charges and less likely to drop them.

Dating Violence
Research into violence between dating couples shows that “while both boys and girls may be victims, girls are injured more often and males more frequently use violence deliberately to exert control, while females are more apt to perceive themselves as acting in self defense.” (Bonnefil 1992.)

Escaping Violence
Not only are battered husbands much rarer than battered wives, they generally need less assistance to escape their situation. Pagelow (1984) points out that unlike women, most men aren’t physically or economically prevented from leaving a violent spouse. Men’s greater average strength gives them more options - defending themselves with violence or without violence, or leaving the premises.

What about murder?

In the USA in 1999 and in 2000, women were 74% of the victims in murders committed by intimates. (US Department of Justice, October 2001 and February 2003.)

In Canada between 1979 and 1998, three times as many wives were killed by husbands as vice versa. (Statistics Canada, 2000)

From 1989-1991, 19.3% of intimate murders in Australia were committed by women. (Eastel 1993) “Marital murder in New South Wales is, as it was 100 years ago, a practice largely confined to men: 73.3% (217) of the 296 spouse killings were committed by husbands; 26.7% (79) were committed by wives. Thus women were three times more likely than men to be killed by their spouse.” (Wallace, 1986.)

What’s the result of the myth?
“While no one would want to minimise the plight of men in this situation or deny them assistance and support, workers and activists throughout the domestic violence field know from everyday experience that it is simply not true that as many men are abused by women as vice versa. There are no refuges for abused men, and no widespread demand for anyone to establish one. One phone line exists in the country which men who have suffered violence can use as well as women, and one small house for such men existed for a matter of weeks at the end of 1992.” (Hague and Malos, 1993)

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, it is women who are being routinely and severely victimized by men. To be sure, abused men do exist and must be protected, but the incidents of husband and boyfriend battering are rare.” (San Diego Police Department, 1996)

It’s my belief that many of those who distort or misrepresent this research don’t primarily want to help abused husbands, but want to attack women and feminism, and shift the spotlight of blame away from men. Showing that “women are just as bad” takes the pressure off men to take responsibility for their behaviour.

As Straus and Gelles (1986) and Saunders (1988) note, reports on battered husbands are used to attack help for battered wives. Pagelow (1984) mentions two battered women’s shelters which have been denied funding because of these attacks. Attacks on help for battered women may put men’s lives at risk; one possible factor in the recent decline in women killing husbands and boyfriends is women’s improved ability to escape domestic violence (Paulozzi et al, 2001). Activists who genuinely care about men will fight for more resources for men, not fewer resources for women.

How can we help battered husbands if we don’t have the true facts about their experiences and needs? According to Pagelow (1984), battered husbands need counselling and legal advice rather than shelters. Providing the help that abused husbands need should not mean attacking resources for abused wives.

Gelles (1994) has written about attempts to silence researcher Murray Straus, who has even received death threats. As victims of such tactics ourselves, feminists should reject and condemn such behaviour. Rather than putting aside research findings because they’re being distorted and misused to hurt women, we should make clear the real facts about those findings.

Abused men deserve better than to be used for political points scoring. They should have sympathy, recognition, and help - and they don’t need to be 50% of the victims to deserve it.

Citations and Further Reading
Footnotes

“Domestic violence” means repeated attacks by one sexual intimate on another. For more on this, see my Introduction.

“Intimates” are “sexual intimates” (Eastel, 1993), “spouses, ex-spouses, boyfriends, or girlfriends” (US Department of Justice, 1994). They do not include other family members such as children.

The Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) is a questionnaire which asks respondents to think back over the last year to disagreements with other family members, and to say how often they committed one of the listed acts. Eight of these acts are physically violent - “threw something”, “pushed/ grabbed/ shoved”, and “slapped or spanked” are classified as “minor violence”; “kicked/ bit/ hit with fist”, “hit, tried to hit with something”, “beat up”, “threatened with gun or knife”, and “used gun or knife” are classified as “severe violence”. (Straus and Gelles, 1986)

VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (voip)

Simple setup for VoIP

DECEMBER 06, 2005

WIDESPREAD broadband internet use has opened the door to massive savings on ordinary telecoms.

As usual with a popular new technology there are many ways to skin a cat.
The softphone approach (with the phone just some software and a headset connected to a computer) is popular with travellers, while those who want a permanent connection at home or in the office may choose a hardware box - a device such as the Engin Voice Box Series 2, that sits on top of a landline and connects to both a typical home handset, and via ethernet directly to a broadband router.

The advantage of this setup is that you can use your ordinary landline handset or DECT cordless to make and receive calls locally or around the world.

Many providers such as GOtalk and Skype provide toll-free, untimed voice connections (Skype to Skype) for users anywhere in the world, but costs apply when you want to call someone’s landline or mobile.

Cleverly, this has been arranged so that in most cases the caller pays only for the connection from the out point (where the call materialises in the real world of telecommunications) usually for the cost of a local call.

Hardware configurations range from the straightforward to the seriously technical.

Here we look at two versions that were, with just a couple of hiccups, seriously easy to set up and use.

Engin Voice Box Series 2

WHILE it sounds like it might be some sort of computerised larynx, the Engin Voice Box 2 is in fact a voice over internet protocol application.

It follows on the heels of the company’s Voice Box 1, and adds some new features, most spectacularly something called Anywhere Connect.

Using this feature, you can make cheap voice calls over the internet from a mobile or landline.

You just dial into your Engin Voice Box from wherever you happen to be.

After keying in a password you are then free to route the call through your Engin box (for the price of your connection to the box) to anywhere in the world.

The Voice Box 2 was easy to set up, at least for making calls, although the box itself must be connected simultaneously to a standard wall phone line, to a power source, to a DECT cordless or landline phone, and via an ethernet cable, to a router with an active broadband connection.

If you happen to have all those things you can be making your first net phone call within minutes of opening the box.

My broadband-connected computer and router are in a room with no phone connection to the outside world, which meant stringing a whole lot of RJ11 cable down the stairs and around the corner.

Once that physical problem was solved, the documentation that came with the Voice Box 2 made light work of the rest of the connection process.

It prefers your router and the Voice Box to be turned off for set up.

Then it’s just a matter of connecting the router, the phone, the line and the power cable and turning everything on.

As always with a brand new technology, that’s the moment when you kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Bingo, with no configuration or fiddly setup troubles, the Voice Box whirred a little, its green light flickered, I’d swear it emitted something like a digital cough, and before you could say, “Get me Memphis, Tennessee”, my trusty old DECT cordless phone had a dial tone like no other.

This otherworldy dial tone was a satisfying harbinger of cheap calls to follow, via the net, anywhere from here to Timbuktu.

There is nothing quite so satisfying as a brand-new technology that just works. Happily, for making outward calls, the Engin Voice Box 2 is in that category.

However, when it came to receiving calls (which is also the key to the famous Anywhere Connect feature), my luck didn’t hold.

Received calls were a no show — just a funny engaged signal was the best I could get.

A call to tech support, which was answered in the middle of a working day within about five minutes, revealed that the problem was my router, which apparently contains a firewall all its own (who knew?) that was blocking the incoming calls.

Helpful Phil at Engin tech support was prepared to walk me through the whole process of reconfiguring the firewall. I played along with the first few phases of this, which involved getting an automated read back of the numbers in the router’s internet protocol address, but we hit a snag when a password that I didn’t know existed (never mind what it was) was required to proceed.

I could have got this from my internet service provider, and friendly Phil was prepared to wait on the line while I called them and waited in their queue, but I chose to be satisfied with cheap calls from home.

If I were going to be a real customer, though, I’d make those calls - a small price to pay for dirt-cheap international calls for the foreseeable future.

SPECIFICATIONS
Price: $229
Features: Switchback keeps connection if power fails by switching back to landline. Landline Ring Through allows two incoming phone numbers on one handset.
Web: www.engin.com.au
Score: 4/5

NetComm V100

MYNETFONE’S NetComm V100 VoIP Telephone Adaptor package is aimed at people who want a minimum of messing about to set up themselves up for internet telephony.

The $129 package comes with a NetComm V100 voice over internet protocol adapter, an ethernet cable, RJ11 telephone cable, a comprehensive quick start guide, power pack and CD-ROM with a configuration utility.

To get into net phone calling you will need to add a broadband internet service (cable or ADSL), and a router with its DHCP server running, and any ordinary old analogue telephone handset or cordless phone.

Out of the box, the V100 is set up for the Mynetfone VoIP service. A basic Mynetfone account with an internet protocol telephone number and $5 worth of calls is included.

The V100 unit is about the size of a small, dial-up modem (96mm by 30mm by 115mm) and doesn’t chew up much desktop space. It features three blue LEDs on the front to indicate whether broadband link is working, whether the phone is active, and the power state.

The review unit was set up on a system with Optus cable broadband as the internet access provider, a D-Link wireless broadband four-port router and a basic analogue handset.

Installation is simple. Plug the phone into the RJ11 socket on the back of the V100, run the supplied ethernet cable from the port on the V100 to a spare port on the router, plug in the power and then wait a few seconds while the unit initialises.

Pick up the handset and you should be rewarded with a dial tone.

At this point, calls can be made for free to other internet protocol accounts or out to the public switched network, where charges apply. Local calls on the PSTN are 10c, untimed, while national calls are 10c per minute, capped at $1.50 for 100 minutes.

International calls start at 2c per minute.

One gotcha with the basic account supplied with the package is that while others can call you VoIP to VoIP, PSTN callers cannot reach you. Enabling calls from PSTN callers means shifting the Mynetfone account to the next plan up.

With the broadband network used for the review on idle, calls to the PSTN were clear and devoid of the echo effect than sometimes dogs net phone services.

The next test involved pumping some traffic through the broadband connection and then making a call.

The two PCs on the network were both put to work downloading a large file and playing some streaming video. With the broadband service under load, another call was placed to the same PSTN number and this time call quality was affected.

This call sounded muffled, with a hint of echo, but was still audible.

The V100 was also tested using a wireless network adapter, which allows the unit to be situated away from the router. Calls were clear under light network loads but were very muffled, with echo, under heavier loads.

SPECIFICATIONS
Price: $129
Features: Basic, easy set-up package for cheap calls on broadband. No quality of service smarts, so not suitable for businesses that need a professional image.
Web: www.mynetfone.com.au
Score: 4/5

- Ian Cuthbertson (Engin), Stuart Kennedy (V100)

The Australian