Senate Republicans have prepared an alternative to a bill to update the Violence Against Women Act, reports Politico. The GOP was in a gender-gap political predicament after all Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted against the bill. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was recruited to help craft a new bill for her party. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said female GOP senators “present a softer approach even though they’re very tough people.”
Sensing political advantage with 61 co-sponsors already for the Democratic bill, Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday called it “sad” that there was a debate over the measure in Congress now. And Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is leading her party’s campaign efforts, said it was Democrats who were “standing tall” on behalf of women in the debate over the Violence Against Women Act. When the Violence Against Women Act heads to the floor as soon as this week, Hutchison — who is not on the Judiciary Committee — will offer an alternative that gives Republicans something to vote for while they vote against the Democratic version.
A federal grand jury indicted four white men in a racially motivated attack on an African-American last summer at a bus stop, the first prosecution in the Houston area under a tough hate crime law, the Houston Chronicle reports. The 2009 federal law gives prosecutors expanded authority to go after hate crimes. With a maximum 10-year prison term, the penalties are more severe than state law.
The men are accused of viciously assaulting Yondell Johnson, 29, who was waiting for a bus when they allegedly approached him and asked if he had the time. They quickly began to use racial epithets and pummeled him as he lay on the ground in downtown Houston. They are accused of using the N-word as they beat Johnson. The four were charged under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which gives the FBI authority to investigate violent crime, including violence directed at the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, as well as crimes committed because of gender, race, color, religion or national origin. "It's not only a significant enhancement of civil rights legislation, it also provided an additional tool for law enforcement to use in investigating civil rights violations or violent crimes that are rooted in hate," said FBI agent Stephen Morris.
An attempt by North Carolina district attorneys, backed by Republican legislators, to derail the state's two-year-old law allowing statistical evidence of racial bias to overturn death sentences appears to have failed with the governor's veto of their bill yesterday, reports the Raleigh News & Observer. It was Gov. Bev Perdue's 15th veto this year, and one that will likely be raised by opponents during her campaign for re-election next year.
While eight of Perdue's vetoes have been overridden there appears to be little chance of that this time. House Republicans would have to lure five Democrats to muster the 72 votes necessary for the three-fifths margin. Answering a public records request by the News & Observer, the governor's office released correspondence on the issue. Of nearly 300 emails and eight letters provided, all but four urged Perdue to veto the bill.
The FBI's hate-crime compilation for last year found 6,628 incidents, about the same as the 6,604 reported in 2009. The incident total included 8,208 victims, which encompass individuals, businesses, institution or "society as a whole," the FBI says. Some 43.7 percent of "single-bias" incidents were motivated by race, 20 percent by religion, 19.3 percent by sexual orientation, 12.8 percent by ethnicity/national origin bias, and .6 percent by physical or mental disability.
A reported 4.824 offenses were crimes against persons and there were 2,861 reported crimes against property. Of the 6,008 known offenders, 58.6 percent were white and 18.4 percent were black.
The FBI still is trying to determine how anti-Muslim bias crept into its anti-terrorism training program, NPR reports. Last week, the bureau sent out...
According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), there are as many as 100,000 active missing persons cases in the United States at any given time. If you went solely by what you read in the media, you’d probably assume that most of these cases involve pretty white women.
After a brutal assault at a Maryland McDonald's on young transgender woman, advocates believe legislators will enact a law designed to protect transgender people, reports the Baltimore Sun. Since two teenagers beat Chrissy Lee Polis last month, a brawl apparently incited by her using the women's restroom, millions around the world have watched the punches and kicks online in a video shot by a McDonald's employee.
By the thousands, viewers have signed petitions, planned rallies, and turned a spotlight on the plight of transgender people. If the incident "doesn't show we have prejudices and preconceived notions, I don't know what will," says Del. Joseline A. Pena-Melnyk, who has repeatedly sponsored a bill that would protect Maryland's transgender people from discrimination where they live and work. "This has put us to shame." In the decade since Minnesota became the first to do it, 12 more states and the District of Columbia have passed some sort of anti-discrimination law that applies to transgender people, those born one gender who better identify with the other. An additional 134 cities and counties have followed suit.
A recent report detailing domestic violence within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities in the United States during the year 2008 found a dramatic increase in fatalities and reports of police misconduct. The report, "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Domestic Violence in the United States in 2008," compiled by The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, also found an uptick in domestic violence among LBGT immigrants.
Nearly one in seven women who sought abortions at a large family planning clinic in Iowa reported at least one incident of physical or sexual abuse in the past year, a new study, "Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence Among an Abortion Clinic Population," found. Published in the American Journal of Public Health researchers at the University of Iowa, College of Public Health and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland studied 986 patients over the course of a year.
Yet, native women are more likely to report abuse than their counterparts finds the first study of on this population. The report which was conducted by Urban Indian Health Institute surveyed 7,643 women.
The rising number of U.S. female correctional officers has spurred allegations of sexual misconduct behind bars. But the chief of their association calls it a ‘slap in the face.'
When Nevada Correctional Officer Tamara Bartel worries about prison sexual misconduct, she’s not always thinking of what happens between the inmates under her care.
As more women break the once all-male preserve of jail and prison correctional officers, reports of sexual misbehavior between female staff and prisoners have surfaced across the United States. And that particularly concerns Bartel, who is president of the National Association of Female Correctional Officers, founded in 2008.
“It’s a slap in the face to those of us who go to work and do our job,” says Bartel, 49, an officer in a high-security lockdown housing unit that is home to 119 male inmates at Nevada’s 1,600-bed Lovelock Correctional Center.
According to data from the American Correctional Association, more than 150,000 women worked as correctional officers in 2007, up 40 percent from 1999. Thousands more serve as nurses, counselors, maintenance staff and administration staff in prisons, jails and youth facilities around the country.
The reports about misconduct, particularly by women, threaten to overshadow the many improvements correctional officers and experts believe women have brought to the field.
A Moderating Force
“We used to think that we can act crude, and cuss, and do all sorts of negative things because it’s a prison,” says Susan Jones, 49, warden of the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado. “Women moderated that.”
But Jones adds that professionalism, good communications skills and a softer touch are not qualities inherent, or limited, to women staff.
“I have run into women who are very tough, very vulgar,” Jones said. “Women aren’t the pure race.”
Sexual misconduct in the world “behind the wall” has received increasing attention since 2003, when Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The law mandated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) take surveys to gauge the scope of the problem.
The conversation about sexual abuse is not new, but for years it has focused largely as rape among inmates, or sexual coercion by male guards in female facilities. When the surveys indicated sexual misconduct by female staff represented a disproportionate amount of the incidents behind bars, the results surprised many in and out of the correctional community.
A 2007 DOJ survey found that female staff in state and federal prisons accounted for 58 percent of the 38,600 alleged cases of sexual misconduct reported (anonymously) by inmates in state and federal prisons—representing 2.9 percent of the inmate population. In a 2010 DOJ survey of youth in detention, 10.3 percent reported sexual contact with staff. More than nine times out of ten, they said female staffers committed the violations.
But the fact that the number was surprising was also an indication of double standards towards women who enter the corrections field, argues Brenda Smith, a law professor at American University who specializes in prison issues.
Smith sat on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to outline recommendations for stopping prison sexual abuse. The Commission, which submitted its report to the Department of Justice in 2009, emphasized abuse is preventable through leadership, rigorous oversight and the active participation of institutions willing to look candidly at the issues cropping up behind their four walls.
Sexual misconduct by women is one, Smith said, and given the major changes in the profession in the last two decades, the numbers should not be so surprising.
Women make up about 25 percent of officers in federal prisons, and more than 40 percent in some state facilities, according to federal and state statistics. The Department of Justice found that women officers, counselors, nurses and other staff fill about two of every five positions in juvenile facilities.
Bartel, like many of her peers, was looking for a job with decent pay and good benefits. Trolling the Internet one day, the California native, then 24, with an associate degree in criminal justice, came across a listing for openings at a new prison in Nevada. Fifteen years later, she is one of the prison’s two senior female officers.
And like many women officers, she works in a unit in which the 119 felons she guards are male. While the demographic of staff has shifted, about 90 percent of the more than 2.3 million people who live behind bars are men.
24/7 Contact
The 24/7 contact with inmates creates a challenge for training as well as monitoring guards and staff. “I have seen in the course of my career cases of every stripe,” says A.T. Wall, director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. “Some look like traditional sexual assault. Some look like love. Some look like convenience and mutual gratification.”
In the eyes of the law, it makes little difference whether there is coercion or not. Prisoners cannot legally give consent. Sex between an officer and an inmate is a felony. Moreover, intimacies can also be dangerous.
“Sexual misconduct is the most combustible form of boundary violation,” adds Wall. “It’s especially serious if you are trying to run a safe and secure prison.”
In March 2010, Tasha Lass, an officer at Travis County jail in Texas, testified that she had developed a relationship with inmate Milton Gobert, who has since been sentenced to the death for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. She smuggled a $40 pre-paid cell phone to Gobert, who then asked for a gun with a silencer so he could escape. “He just made me feel needed,” Lass testified during the sentencing phase of Gobert’s trial. She was at the time a 17-year veteran of corrections.
A Texas jury indicted Lass in May for having a romantic relationship with an inmate. She faces 10 years and a $10,000 fine if convicted. Cases like hers have left many questioning how to gird female prison workers against the full range of hazards of the job.
Warnings about sexual misconduct were included in the 160 hours of officer training that Lori Miles received before going to work at Ohio’s all-male Toledo Correctional Institution in 2006. “Females were told not to carry on more than a two-minute conversation with the inmates,” recalls Miles, who is in her 30s.
Miles left corrections in 2008, after an inmate attacked her during a routine cell check. But it wasn’t the physical danger that soured her on the job. The problem with her training, according to Miles, was that it failed to give her a sense of what she would face in the world behind bars. “I don’t feel I was properly mentally prepared for it,” she says.
As more women enter the ranks of corrections officers, and exposed to the “complicated, sexualized” world of prisons and jails, institutions are still adapting, says Martin Horn, a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
But still, adds Horn, “what’s remarkable to me is how infrequently bad things happen given the gargantuan frequency of interactions.”
It’s a message that seasoned professionals like Tamara Bartel hope prison officials and the general public will remember whenever cases such as Tasha Lass’ make the headlines.
Lisa Riordan Seville is a freelance writer and reporter based in Brooklyn, NY.
A Federal Law was Supposed to Curb Disruption and Violence at Abortion Clinics: But Has It?
DENVER- John Dunkle paces along a narrow alley waiting for his cue.
As clinic escorts hoist heavy blue tarps to shield patients from the phalanx of anti-abortion protesters assailing them, Dunkle springs into action.
Megaphone in hand, the spry 72-year-old stakes out the door barking lurid catcalls at women entering the Allentown Women's Center.
By day's end, the retired English teacher will have bolted across that alley at least a dozen times.
Until one day when the scene took a much more sinister turn.
Days after the May 31 execution-style murder of Wichita physician George Tiller by an anti-abortion extremist, Dunkle sidled up to a clinic escort and asked:
Which way would you rather die — by bullet or the slow torturous death of a knife?
So goes the abortion wars. What could be sloughed off as callous behavior in the midst of heated debate is causing renewed alarm among law enforcement experts.
Menacing behavior is on the upswing nationwide and is proving to be emblematic of a growing extremism against clinics by militants emboldened by Tiller's death. Currently, federal authorities are investigating more than two dozen cases of suspected violent criminal acts or serious threats, according to law enforcement insiders.
And that trend is prompting officials to question the effectiveness of the federal law created to serve as a deterrent to clinic violence.
Playing cat and mouse
In the years following the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade affirming legal access to abortion services, organized protests grew in number and intensity.
In 1994, after decades of escalating extremism, President Bill Clinton signed the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to provide both civil and criminal remedies to stem clinic violence and blockades.
The law prohibits "certain violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with persons seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services." The new rules also defined federal penalties for clinic property damage and destruction that had been the early aim of radical abortion foes primarily through bombing, arson and vandalism.
The intent of FACE was also to provide needed clarity for local law enforcement agencies on the often murky degrees of separation between constitutionally-protected free speech and public safety threat.
Even as the law was initially vigorously enforced violence-prone abortion opponents have adapted to test its limits.
Dunkle's scrapes with the law offer a telling roadmap.
In 1994, he was arrested along with 20 members of a nomadic extremist group, the Lambs of Christ, for physically blockading a Rochester, N.Y., clinic by chaining themselves to a junked car dropped near the door. It took police and firefighters hours to extract the protesters. The protesters were charged in federal court with a miscellaneous civil rights violation, collectively fined $20,000 and ordered to stay away from the clinic.
Except, the permanent injunction, like others before FACE, did little to thwart the protesters. The Rochester clinic and others in western New York would be the scene of violent and repeated clashes with local police for years to come despite repeated injunctions, unpaid fines and brief jail stints. The mayhem unleashed by extremists also provided cover for increasing violence that resulted in the deaths of four people and wounding of five at clinics in Buffalo, Brookline, Mass., and Pensacola, Fla., in 1994.
Over the next dozen years, Dunkle continued his protests while building connections to one of the most virulent extremist groups, the Army of God, a shadowy network that advocates a paleo-conservative Biblical justification for the murder of abortion providers.
In 2007, Dunkle publicly resurfaced in northeast Pennsylvania and once again came to the attention of federal authorities. The devout Catholic posted on his blog that a Philadelphia-area physician should be shot in the head to prevent her from providing abortion services. He was charged with a FACE Act violation and slapped with a permanent injunction barring him from making death threats or otherwise intimidating clinic patients and staff.
But it seemed to have little effect.
Now, when Dunkle and his megaphone aren't holding fort outside Lehigh Valley women's health centers, he's reveling in the exploits of other ideological extremists.
He operates a website that mimics one operated by the Army of God. On it he features serialized manifestos and unrepentant letters from anti-abortion protesters imprisoned for murders, bombings, arsons and attempted attacks against clinics. A point noted by a U.S. District Court judge in his 2007 injunction ordering federal authorities to periodically monitor Dunkle's site for compliance.
Federal prosecutions don't keep pace
The situation prior to the FACE Act and in the ensuing 16 years following its enforcement points to a grim reality for reproductive health clinics, staff and patients.
Prior to FACE, the National Abortion Federation tallied 1,641 violent incidences and 8,110 disturbances at clinics between 1977-93. The most violent acts — homicide, kidnappings, stalking, arsons, bombings, butyric acid attacks and clinic invasions — are nearly always attributed to anti-abortion extremists directly connected to or inspired by militant Christian organizations.
Since 1994, the Justice Dept. has prosecuted just 19 civil and 45 criminal cases. The prosecutions have overall been very successful — 62 convictions, one pre-trial diversion and one dismissal because the defendant was deemed incompetent to stand trial. Yet, they pale in contrast to the thousands of incidents reported.
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorneys are currently prosecuting four cases and notched another conviction Apr. 28 in New York City involving a blockade of a long-targeted clinic in Manhattan. They will be sentenced June 10.
The incident and prosecution trends also reveal another truth in enforcing the FACE Act. Some types of violations, like bombings and arson, which alone carry heavy federal sentences have decreased significantly while other crimes are skyrocketing. Again, signaling an evolution in the violence-driven protesters' tactics to thwart local law enforcement efforts while continuing their mayhem.
Bead-holders versus bomb-throwers
Anti-abortion activists may be united in their anger over Roe but they occupy two very distinct camps. Motivated by a sense of personal morality, flocks from mainstream Christian churches and affiliated institutions invoke their constitutionally-protected free speech rights to express their opposition. Largely peaceful, the protesters often recite rosary prayers, sing hymns or try to distribute well-intended but medically inaccurate literature outside the clinic.
The more zealous of the bunch resort to shouting at patients about abortion alternatives — a tactic dubbed "sidewalk counseling" by proponents. In broad terms, the "bead-holders" prefer to legally challenge Roe v. Wade by incrementally restricting abortion services through onerous state and federal laws.
The other end of the protest spectrum is so radicalized that even the most staid law enforcement insiders and religious figures are increasingly describing their actions as domestic terrorism. They are bomb-throwers, literally and figuratively.
A May 1988 RAND Corporation report on domestic terrorism provides one of the earliest mentions of militant anti-abortion groups as threats to national security. The analysis notes that during the early 1980s these groups were among the most active terrorist movements in the United States.
Nearly ideologically-driven "anti-abortion terrorist cells" conducted nearly 50 percent of all domestic terrorist activity in 1984 and 1985. Groups like the Army of God, Lambs of Christ, Missionaries for the Preborn and the various Operation Rescue splinter groups created from internecine power struggles, all espouse the violent rhetoric, paleo-conservative theocracy and hyper-militancy typically used to describe armed anti-federalist militias and racist groups. And, like other terrorist groups, they are highly networked.
Proselytizing with self-published manuals on arson and bomb-making techniques, they fuel their adherents with fiery, convoluted fundamentalist Biblical interpretations.
Throughout the now 22-year-old report RAND specifically names the Army of God as domestic terrorists — the group to which Dunkle and Tiller's murderer Scott Roeder have allied themselves. Further, the analysis found that law enforcement officials frequently dismissed evidence of an armed, organized anti-abortion network that threatens national security.
Today, that's no longer the case.
Over the coming days, RH Reality Check will explore the FACE Act. We'll be asking tough question about its effect as a deterrent to clinic violence and obstruction. State, local and federal law enforcement officers are talking candidly about jurisdictional issues that impede arrests and prosecutions. And we'll assess the rise of militant anti-abortion groups and potential new solutions to ensure public safety.
NEXT: Anatomy of FACE. How a violent anti-abortion protester has terrorized a clinic for more than 30 years — and why he's still there.
This piece, which appeared in RH Reality Check is one of a series of original criminal justice journalism projects around the country produced by 2010 John Jay/H.F. Guggenheim Fellows. They were coordinated with editorial input by Joe Domanick, Associate Director of the John Jay College Center on Media, Crime and Justice. We thank the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation for their generous support of this project.
Although overall homicides have declined to levels not seen since the 1960s in many places, domestic violence cases appear to be increasing, reports Women's eNews. While the FBI does not break out statistics for domestic violence, state anti-violence coalitions and the Washington, D.C.-based National Network to End Domestic Violence report the increase. Experts say economic hardship is a key factor in the increase in domestic violence across the country.
Last year, Wisconsin had about 59 domestic violence deaths, up from 36 in 2008. In Maryland, 75 individuals were killed in domestic-violence related crimes, up from 52 deaths in 2008. In Philadelphia, where the overall homicide rate declined by 23 percent, domestic homicides were up 67 in 2009.
What does the future hold in store for domestic violence? October, the National Domestic Violence Awareness Month reminds us to reflect on the changes that have been made and keep striving towards our goals. People want to see an end to the use of violence as a means to control women and children, as a public health epidemic, and as a violation of human rights. Yet, domestic violence continues to plague households and communities across the country.
One in four women experiences intimate partner violence in her lifetime, reports the National Center for Victims of Crime. Women ages 20 to 24 have the highest level of physical violence from an intimate partner. And, it turns out, it starts even younger. About 10% of students nationwide report being physically hurt by a boyfriend or girlfriend in the past 12 months, found the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fortunately, experts have taken notice, and are taking steps towards controlling domestic violence. For one, we are paying more attention to teen dating violence. A 24-hour National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline was launched in 2007, with the help of sponsor Liz Claiborne, Inc. Research is underway to further our understanding of this field and prevention programs are starting to be implemented in schools.
Second, several areas are being investigated in domestic violence, but two issues stand out. One is coercive control. Coercive control is more than just physical violence, often counted by the number of assaults; it involves ongoing coercion, intimidation, isolation, and control. The emphasis is on violations against the person’s freedoms – what they can and can’t do. Another issue involves strangulation. According to the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, “Strangulation has only recently been identified as one of the most lethal forms of domestic violence.” Strangulation can serve as a potent threat to a victim and is considered a precursor to homicide. Nonetheless, only about 26 states make strangulation a felony; others consider it a misdemeanor.
Lastly, other issues have gained national attention recently, such as domestic violence being used as a “pre-existing condition” in health insurance, the link between domestic violence and pet abuse and domestic violence victims losing their jobs or becoming homeless.
But there is a bright spot on the horizon: On October 1st of this year, President Obama nominated Susan B. Carbon as the Director of the Office of Violence Against Women. Carbon brings a wealth of experience from working in family court, on commissions, and as head of a council. With her knowledge of how battered women fare in family court, it is hoped changes occur that help victims retain custody of their children. Her appointment confirms the Administration’s effort towards helping survivors retain their jobs, health insurance, homes, pets and children. But most important, it provides the hope that the Federal Government will commit the funding and resources necessary to accomplish this huge, but vital, agenda.
Joan Dawson serves as a Secretary and Board Member of Guatemala Human Rights Commission and a Board Member of a domestic violence campaign. She's also active in the Battered Mothers Custody movement.
