A more inclusive shield for domestic violence survivors
New York State has moved to reform legal protections for people in violent relationships—and given a nod of recognition to advocates for youth and gay communities. Recently passed legislation will expand protections for people abused in relationships other than marriage, enabling same-sex and teen couples to seek civil protection orders against alleged abusers.
Historically, as the Times reports, New York’s legal system has allowed such protective measures only for a narrow set of relationships: “spouses or former spouses, blood relations or the other parent of an abused person’s child.”
Critics argued the previous system paved the way to crisis, since people outside those categories might find it impossible to obtain government protection until the violence had escalated to a criminal level. The new legislation, which Governor David Paterson said this week he would sign, broadens the eligibility range for civil protection orders, and also allows a relationship to be considered “intimate” regardless of whether the couple has had sex.
The measure was pushed by a coalition of community groups, including Day One, an organization that focuses on teen dating violence, and the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, which organizes around anti-gay violence as well as domestic abuse issues.
The blog Feminste notes that the news about the legislation comes on the heels of a report examining high rates of teen dating violence, which shows that a large percentage of youth lack awareness of how to spot or seek help in an abusive situation.
One Feministe blogger hopes the legislation will foster a more nuanced recognition of the dynamics of same-sex relationships:
“We can’t pretend that same-sex relationships create instant equality, eliminate power dynamics and erase the chance of intimate partner violence. That only serves to limit the resources available to LGBTQ survivors of abuse and force them into silence and even shame. The LGBTQ community must recognize that this is a problem for us as much as it’s a problem for straight people, and we must respond as a community by acknowledging and condemning abuse and supporting survivors.”
In expanding relief for abuse survivors, the state’s legal system seems to be acknowledging the reality that the scourge of relationship violence does not discriminate.
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Comments (4)
Who pays for the personnel necessary to implement this law? It will require petition takers, process servers and a huge added workload to a court and enforcement system already streched to capacity. No new money is included.
It would have been worth it to include long term domestic relationships which the victim wanted to try and preserve. However, increasing the pool of eligibles for orders of protection to anyone involved in an intimate relationship will simply dilute services to those who really need it.
The current system was already failing. Now a larger number of applicants will be drawn into the long lines seeking orders of protection and those people will be getting a piece of paper that is essentially worthless.
And politicians will be patting each othe on the back.
Hoestly it all well and good, but so many use these orders as tools to shape their relationships. These orders are so important to those that are truley being assualted or stalked but too many use them as punishment or vindictivley yet return to these relationships the next day.
Society as a whole is plagued by the few who have so little personal responsibility for their action or for their inability to end abusive relationships.
For those who really need them they are the one's being shortchanged as resources are diverted to the train wreck relationships who use them as punishment.
The imputus for the bill was a push by Empire Pride Agenda, a radical homosexual extremist group to further weaken the institution of marriage and lay more ground work for homosexual marriage.
This legislation re-defines a family to what ever one wants it to be. Now a family is any relationship under the Family Court Act. There was no prohibition by anyone from seeking or obtaining a order of protection in criminal court. This is clearly an attack on the traditional family.
www.nassaucivic.com
The insidious DV industry will only be halted when the pool of victims is enlarged to include heterosexual male victims of female batterers.
Once this point is reached, the political appetite for these destructive programs will finally be sated -- as no politican will want to acknowledge that men can be victims of women. No one will want to fund such a program.
So, let's all try and hasten this on its way so this sad experiment in social politics will finally come to an end -- perhaps in our children's lifetimes.