Female Abusers

When I faced a court to respond to an Intervention Order, I was a wreck. I had been painfully crippled for more than two years by a deteriorating hip while being increasingly abused by my de facto partner and her daughter.
Following that, surgery had given the hip a new surface made of titanium. The surgery was painful and the recovery took much longer than expected because of complications and uncertainty about the success of the surgery on someone my size -- I weighed then over 340 lbs. -- and the fears that I would have another massive blood clot, I spent 26 days in the hospital. The normal time allotted for this surgery is 7-10 days.
All of this had drained my well.

My ex had sent me into the hospital under threats she would fabricate evidence and have me thrown out of the house. I talked it over with volunteers and the hospital psychologist, and had to admit there was only one way to handle it: To focus on getting through the surgery and recovering. There was nothing I could do about her plans in the hospital.

A few months later, she began her campaign to fabricate evidence. I was still a nervous wreck: long days of anxiety attacks followed by depression, then sleep for days. My body was not going to be denied its time to heal even if I had to find a way to respond in the courts.

Still, I tried.
Literally trembling and weaping, I tried to figure out what charges I was facing. The wording of the Intervention Orders was no help. I'd never done any of those things.
The stories gathered around the Net were simply frightening. Society and the law had already convicted me of everything in that horrible paragraph.

Whether it is physical, emotional or sexual abuse more must be done to protect everyone. As a true feminist (ugh I hate that word), I believe in true equality for women, that means women must be held accountable for their actions. It does not mean we put women in a position of superiority as the chauvinists did in the past with male supremacy. That is only trading patriarchy for matriarchy and both devalue the opposite sex. As a real feminist, I believe we should live in a complementary society, where men and women work together to build a more solid future for future generations. Not a competitive or combative society.

I am ashamed to say when I saw a report on 20/20 about this very subject a few years back I actually laughed at them, I actually thought to myself, “Good for them it is about time women started abusing men after all the times we had to take it.”

If a male had laughed at female domestic violence victims and said good for them, I would’ve been livid but here I was laughing at them. And as ashamed as I am about admitting that, my reaction is pretty much the normal one among society. Men are laughed at when they have the courage to report domestic violence at the hands of women. They are not taken seriously.
Not only that resources for them are non-existent, ever hear of a Battered Shelter for Men? I don’t think so. Domestic violence and child molestation needs to stop being so gender biased, we need to start seeing the perpetrators for who they are and not assume the word perpetrator automatically means male.
National Violence Against Women survey shows 37.5% of victims each year are men. Men are at real risk of serious physical injury.

Here are a few of the comments I got from a website called batteredmen.com. These are some of the injuries and mental anguish these men have endured;

"As I put away the shopping she stabbed me in the back with a 7" knife. I was put on life support. It was several days before my family knew whether I would survive."

“She said "You realise I could kill you and get away with it". She slept with the knife under the pillow.”

"I am 80 years old come Christmas. I am blind. I obtained a protection order against her. --- She laughed at it and the beatings have increased."

(from "Women Predators: When Women Abuse Men" By Dena Leichnitz)

Free legal services only found my predicament entertaining, or frustrating. One supervising female lawyer at Victorian Legal Aid refused to even file for representation because she didn't see that "important rights" were involved. The Permanent Orders requested were for me to be removed from my home and possessions.
After documenting a few more incidents of intimidation and abuse via emails over the next week, she relented and filed for an inept barrister, leaving him too little time to learn the situation. Then she told me she not to bother to return if there was another court case. She said flatly she would not give me any further help.
The young barrister she sent me seemed far more interested in having lunch with the opposing counsel than seeking justice for me.

He probably thought he was being manly, following an old social tradition of berating men who are abused by women.

How would you guys like to don a dress and then ride a donkey backwards down the main street of your town? Everyone could line the street snickering and making fun of you.

I doubt if you would even consider it.

Yet, in medieval France, a man who had been physically abused by his wife was forced to do this so everyone could see how weak he was.

(from "Male Abuse" by Joy Stevens)
Even in my muddled state of mind, I realized I wasn't going to change the prejudices of society. But in the hopes of adding my voice to many others, I opened a blog and documented the abuse I had suffered.
It wasn't easy. Every character I typed had to be done with trembling fingers. I typed until my mind fogged with pain that rose from deep within me, viscerally, until I couldn't type any more. Then I rested, and returned to the blog to add another, and another, of the painful memories of the past few years.
One of the reasons I did the blog was that none of the authorities was interested in my side of the story. Not one policeman (or woman) bothered to interview me in over a year. No one else thought my story was worth listening to, other than those people who lived nearby and saw my state of mind and what was happening.
In fact, the only people who were interested in my side of the story were the opposition, who were only seeking means to misrepresent what I said.

The court is not the place to change society, I realized. I had to focus the court's attention on what was going on in this situation.
So I prepared a statement for the court. A short, 4-page statement of what had happened, my reactions to the events, and what I hoped to gain from the court. Later I came to realize that this was an affadavit.
On a federal court form for Interrogatories, I prepared about 40 questions for my ex. Initially, because it was taken from the blog, there were 65 or so. I realized that would be too many, although even those questions hardly covered all the incidents, and cut it back.
I gathered statements from the neighbors and people who had known my ex and me for years.
I gathered letters from professionals who had witnessed my state of mind -- two psychologists and my GP.
In case some other issues came up, -- all of which my ex had used as threats over the years -- I tried to put together documentation to support my statements, and to expose her intentional lies.

As I read more and more into the processes of defending oneself in court, I realize that despite my depleted mental state, I did a pretty good job of preparation -- for what that's worth.
When I got into the magistrates' court, the magistrate simply refused to look at any of it; and cut short the questions after ignoring the facts that had been drawn out in the first few questions.

What was the magistrate doing? He was obviously not seeking the whole story; nor was he looking for 'best evidence.'
This magistrate was tacitly following the reasoning of any man who has to explain how to deal with a female bully. Female bullies commonly enlist the help of others to do their dirty work.

How can he protect himself from a female bully who, in the tender years of her adolescence, has already discovered how easily she can manipulate the bigger boys to do her dirty work? Perhaps she’s learned from her mother, or another female role model how easily she can manipulate the system as well! Obviously the three stage system cannot be applied here because the girl knows she can cause him a lot more trouble using nothing more than her mouth.

For the time being, I have told my son to ignore her, avoid her like the plague, never speak to her without a witness present, and even then only to say “Please leave me alone!”

“But then she’s are going to think I’m afraid of her, and so will those three guys she got to come after me!” he complained

“Think about it,” I replied, “Who’s really afraid of her? The guys who do what she tells them to do, or the one who walks away from her?"

(from "When the bully is a babe", by Stu Weineke)

As a boy, you are expected to "just walk away", from your homework, lunch money, or favorite bike; or even take a beating from her cronies. It's just considered a part of growing up by most men.
Unspoken in all this is that such injustices will not occur in the adult world, where all adults , regardless of gender, must obey the law and respect one another.
As an adult, a man is expected to "just walk away" from his home, his possessions, even his children and his dreams.
Why?

As a famous psychologist once said: "Show me the boy, and I will show you the man."

Is it reasonable to expect a magistrate not to operate his (or her) court based on schoolyard principles? Intuitively, it should be, but the reality is different.
I was facing a state magistrate in a lower, local court. Anyone can be appointed as a state magistrate, even if they have no prior legal training or experience. They're often political appointees to repay some sort of electoral favor. It's a sort of work-for-the-dole job. Something to keep someone busy or amused.
To expect the 'learned and proper' administration of the law by someone like that is just silly.
Add to that the fact that there is no effective oversight from anywhere, and you have a recipe for injustice that many lawyers know too well.

As much as I had prepared to show ambient abuse, verbal abuse and physical assaults, documented the situation with medical reports and bank records, and illustrated repeated misrepresentations by the other side in the court and sworn statements, it was incomprehensible to such a magistrate.

The lessons of my experience are:

• Know what issues are befor the court
• Prepare your affadavits, questions and testimony
• Know the court
• Present your case carefully
  
• And realize that sometimes no matter how well you do all of the above, it can mean nothing.

It all comes down to the prejudices of the court. Before a magistrate, there is no assumption of innocence.
Barristers and solicitors know all of these lessons well. That's why so many submissions for what seem like reasonable orders are met with the answer: "You'll never get that.", and the lawyer refuses to even ask.
The present system, especially at the state level, is simply a tool for extortion and abuse. A fair judgment from the state courts is an accident.
Such courts are an open invitation for female abusers.