Montréal, 28 octobre 2000  /  No 70
 
 
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David MacRae is a software consultant who works out of his home in St. Laurent, Quebec.
 
THE CONTRARIAN
  
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:
DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL
 
by David MacRae
  
  
          Last Sunday night, Patrick Roy's wife Michèle discovered a basic rule about domestic disputes: if you feel you might need protection from your husband, do not call the police. Their job is not to protect you and they won't do so, except in the short term. Over the long haul, they are likely to exacerbate whatever danger you may be in.
 
          If you feel you need help, go anywhere but to the police. They will not help you. In fact, they will not even listen to you. If you try to explain what you want, they will patronize you and treat you like a helpless baby who is not capable of making judgements about what's right for your own life. They are the experts who know better what is right for you than you do yourself. 
  
          If you want to cool down an angry situation which has gotten out of hand (this appears to have been Mme Roy's objective), go to anyone but the police. The police will escalate the matter. In many jurisdictions, they will arrive in SWAT teams, break down your door and ransack your home. Once inside, they will hunt down any evidence they can find which might indicate that your husband has, or once had, violent tendencies. This will justify treating him as a common criminal. They will forcibly remove him from the house in handcuffs, often with a machine gun in his face. He will be blamed for whatever trauma this may cause to you and your children. 
  
          You see, the police are not there to serve you. Instead, they are agents of the state, the courts and the bureaucracy. 
  
          They serve their true mistresses: the feminist bureaucrats who run every domestic assault unit across North America. Their objective is to demonize men and liberate women from patriarchal oppression. Whether the men are demons or the women want to be liberated is, of course, irrelevant. 
  
A case in point 
 
          In order to meet their objectives, your husband will necessarily be criminalized. He will be charged based on the flimsiest of evidence. Whether he instigated the incident is irrelevant. Who first used physical violence is irrelevant. In fact, whether anyone hit anyone at all is often irrelevant. Whether you want to press charges is always irrelevant. The only thing which counts is that you called 911 and that he is the male. 
  
          Mme Roy's case is a case in point. She appears to have started the argument, although he was the one who escalated it. No one was hurt. No one was even hit. The only damage was to their private property. She did not want to bring the police into their home. Despite this, the police ransacked their house and humiliated her husband in public. His reputation is in tatters and so, to some extent, is hers (how could she live with a man like that?) 
  
          Once charged, your husband will be hit with a restraining order, which will impose an assortment of humiliating conditions on his movements. It may forbid him from imbibing alcohol. It usually will order him to avoid all contact with you and your children until he is brought to trial. Naturally, your needs and desires will have nothing to do with the contents of the restraining order. If you need him to take care of the kids, that is irrelevant. If your finances should break under the strain of maintaining two separate residences, that is also irrelevant. If you should simply want your man back, you will be treated as if you were a borderline mental case. 
  
          You yourself will be obliged to meet with a succession of bureaucrats in the police and legal system. These women (and be sure that they will all be women) are not there to understand your needs and to follow your desires. They are not even there to take your statement in order to charge your husband. He will be charged whether you cooperate or not. The femnocrats have one purpose only – to convince you that all men are evil and that you must leave your husband for your own safety. They will harangue and pester you until finally you agree – if only to make them shut up. 
  
          Once your husband is finally brought to trial, the courts will be « generous » if he is willing to plead guilty. The case will be expedited through the courts and he will get a suspended sentence. Once he has been convicted, he will be allowed back into your life. Your family will also avoid the extensive legal bills that would necessarily follow any attempt to prove his innocence. In most Canadian jurisdictions, his criminal record may also be erased if he keeps his nose clean long enough.  
  
          Between the strong incentives to plead guilty and the fact that any evidence, no matter how flimsy, is treated as proof of his guilt, it is not surprising to find that conviction rates in domestic violence cases are amazingly high, typically well over 95%. 
  
  
     « The odds of a marriage surviving a call to 911 are not good. It's unclear how much this is caused by the initial dispute which lead to the call and how much it is caused by the actions of the state. One thing is clear: when the state gets involved in a family, squabbles turn into wars. » 
 
  
          Once he pleads guilty, he will be forced to take an « anger management » course. Your family will pay for this course. The name is actually a misnomer because it will not teach him how to deal with anger, yours or his. Instead the course instructor, who will be yet another woman, will lecture him about the evils of patriarchy. She will explain to him that all domestic violence is caused by the patriarchy's desire to control women and that he was acting as its agent. He will learn that any disputes you two may have are always his fault. He, like his classmates, will sit through this course in sullen silence because he knows that the « instructor » has the power to send him to jail. 
  
          This whole process will take about a year from beginning to end. Your marriage will be subjected to enormous stresses throughout, from the moment he is marched away in handcuffs until the moment he is returned, resentful and broken. He may blame you for the process, even though you had no idea what you were getting into. You may come to accept the femnocrats' analysis: that he deserved what was done to him. 
  
Yell at your spouse; Lose your house 
 
          The odds of a marriage surviving a call to 911 are not good. It's unclear how much this is caused by the initial dispute which lead to the call and how much it is caused by the actions of the state. One thing is clear: when the state gets involved in a family, squabbles turn into wars. 
  
          If your marriage breaks under the stress, you will usually be in considerably more danger than you were when the process started. Statistically speaking, married women are far safer than either singles or co-habitors. After all, one of the main roles of a husband is to protect his wife and children from danger. 
  
          In addition, you will have your ex-husband to deal with. Ask yourself: whether his original anger was justified or not, do you think this process will reduce it or exacerbate it? Once expelled from his family, your ex may turn to despair. He may decide to commit suicide, leaving you without your checkbook or any help in caring for your children. Worse, he may decide to take you with him. Approximately half of men who kill their spouses commit suicide as well. 
  
          Orphaning your children in this brutal fashion will provide more proof to the femnocrats that other men should be treated even harshly. The legislatures, cowed by the male-bashers in the bureaucracy and such rags as La Presse, will enact even more violent attacks on the home, the family and human rights. As I write this, the Ontario legislature is passing Bill 116 into law. This bill states that a man charged with a second domestic offence must prove that he will not be a danger to his wife in order to be released from jail. This sets the notion of presumption of innocence upside down. How can he prove that he is not a danger? 
  
          The venerable Globe and Mail calls this « good legislation ». It seems primarily to regret that the provincial Liberals lost the 1994 when they attempted to enact a similar act. The Toronto Sun characterized that one quite accurately as « Yell at your spouse; Lose your house ». For some reason the fine burghers of Ontario seemed to think that this was unfair. 
  
          Think seriously about the consequences of your actions before you call the police. It is sad indeed to think that calling for help in your hour of need may be more dangerous than dealing with the situation yourself. Yet the fact of the matter is that you will be putting your marriage in jeopardy. You will incur enormous financial penalties. Your life will be in significantly greater danger. And, while this may not be too great a consideration at the moment you make your call, you will be doing your small part to destroy other people's marriages and liberties. 
 
 
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