Unfair Domestic Violence Treatment Towards Men

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with the following requirements; between the ages 18 to 59, who had been in a relationship lasting minimum one month within the previous year, had been physically assaulted by their female partners within the previous year, and had sought outside assistance & support. On average among the studied group, the relationships had lasted on average a little over eight years, and 73% of them had minor children. About 60% of the men are married, separated, or divorced. The study found that 64% of the abused men who called domestic violence hotlines were denied of any service and told that they "only helped women." In 32% of the cases, the abused men were referred to batterers’ programs. Another 25% were given a phone number to call that turned out to be a batterers’ program. A little over a quarter of them were given a reference to a local program that helped. Overall, only 8% of the men who called hotlines classified them as "very helpful," whereas 69% found them to be "not at all helpful." Sixteen percent said the people at the hot line "dismissed or made fun of them." The study also detailed some of the received responses from the agencies, one abused man said, “They laughed at me and told me I must have done something to deserve it if it happened at all. Out of all the calls, about 12% of the hotlines accused the man of being the batterer or responsible for the abuse. Of the men who sought help by contacting local domestic violence programs, only 10% found them to be "very helpful," whereas 65% found them to be "not at all helpful." One abused man said, “They didn’t really listen to what I said. They assumed that all abusers are men and said that I must accept that I was the abuser. They ridiculed me for not leaving my wife, ignoring the issues about what I would need to do to protect my six children and care for them.” In disbelief, Dr. Hines posed as a male victim of domestic violence and called every domestic violence shelter in all of the Los Angels and San Diego counties. Her calls yielded the same result from her conducted study, not a single agency would accept her or offer assistance with the exception of one agency. When she asked, “Am I supposed to take "Am I supposed to take my children to a homeless shelter?", they replied, "That’s all we can do."

There are well over three thousand battered women’s shelters and hotlines in the United States. The good majority of these shelters of hotline agencies are receiving major funding from state governmental agencies through the VAVA program. There are only two shelters reserves for male victims of domestic violence in the United States receiving state funds, while other two thousands nine hundred ninety eight refuse or refer the battered man to a local homeless shelter. This discriminatory pattern in funding is outright wrongful and evident. These practices by the states funding policies explicitly prohibit funding for programs serving men and the discrimination is blatant. A lawyer representing several of the shelters claimed, “Women’s shelters receive funding from the state pursuant to a gender-specific funding statute Overall, only 9.7% of persons receiving help were male victims, the remaining 90.3% being female victims. The percentages of male victims for the Legal Assistance for Victims and Transitional Housing programs were much lower – 3.9% and 0.4% respectively.

State discrimination against male victims is not limited to the denial of direct services but extends to public education, law enforcement and judicial training. Male victims are not only ignored but a proactive effort to stereotype men as abusers exclusively and women as victims. Police are trained to look to the male as the "perpetrator". In 1998, a 549 pages manual was published by the US Department of Justice Violence Againist Women Office in an effort to improve the criminal justice system in response to the newly adopted violence against women act. The VAWA provided funding to local law enforcements and training manual that was designed to teach the local government agencies including specifically police officers and prosecutors that address a range of situations and problems communities may face as during an investigation related to violence against women. In this training program, it acknowledge the purpose of the training is in an efforts “make our streets and homes safer for women and their children.” In the very first chapter of this manual, it immediately defined the roles between men, women, suspect and victim, “the vast majority of victims are female and offenders are male”. This definition set the tone of the remaining 32 practices and the written instructions on how local enforcements should condemn men as the perpetrator in this training modules and carry out the same approaches in their future investigation cases where men will always be the criminal in response to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking against women.

Advocates for domestic violence are taught that even when a woman is violent she is really a victim striking back. The public is regularly targeted with education materials designed to re-enforce to the stereotype of abusers as male and victims as female. When men have reported that when they call the police during an incident in which their female partners are violent, the police sometimes fail to respond. Some men reported being ridiculed by the police or being incorrectly arrested as the primary aggressor. Within the judicial system, some men who sustained intimate partner violence reported experiencing gender-stereotyped treatment. In a different study performed by Denise Hines to gain a better understanding how the helpseeking experiences of men who sustain intimate partner violence. The research found 21% of the responding police refused to arrest the partner ( women ), and 38.7% indicated the police said there was nothing they could do and left. More than a quarter of the battered men from research shares the same experience of the police aren’t doing anything to assist in their situation and ignoring or dismissing them. “They determined she was the aggressor but said since I was a man it was silly to arrest her,” and “They saw me as a large male and…took her side. I was at the hospital with bruising and burned eyes from hot coffee thrown in them. They didn’t believe that she did this…and refused to arrest her… The next incident…the police…saw me bleeding they charged her with felony DV but later dropped it to misdemeanor assault because we are not married and do not live together.” Due to the received police training from VAWA with strong gender bias languages regarding the victims and perpetrator, the police are instructed to arrest the person whom the officer believes