A mother, in today's political climate has far too much power over the lives of their children and the children's father. This power can be, and is, misused. Abusive women know the bond that a good father will have with his kids. For an abuser, this bond is a perfect weapon and can be wielded with devastating results. Let me illustrate this point with excepts from an actual e-mail received here at man2man*:

"She got pregant and I thought she would settle down but she used to threaten to take the baby away if I did something she didnt like. She said the police would believe her if she told them I wanted to hurt her and the baby."

This raises two important questions:

1. What effect did her behaviour have upon the child?

2. How was this woman able to carry out this despicable and appalling act without fear of legal reprisals?

Let me answer the first question by quoting again from the same e-mail:

"She told my little daughter I was a bad man who wanted to hurt her and now my daughter wont talk to me. I love my daughter and would never hurt her but now I cant even see her."

Not only was this man robbed of the most important relationship of his life by his abuser, but his daughter has been fed a diet of the abusers hatred and has now become a vicarious extension of her mothers abuse. This is a far cry from the positive image of mothers that advertisers, politicians, newspapers and television try to convince us is the only image that mothers have. This is an image of a very sick woman that needs a lot of psychiatric care and a little girl robbed of her father and, therefore, half of her natural role model. Worse still is the thought that if this cruel and heartless siren does not receive treatment, there is an excellent chance that she will go on to abuse many other men. If one of those men is violent also, the implications for the child are horrific. The father who wrote the e-mail had obviously considered these implications, he wrote:

"She left me in the end and went off with another bloke. It didnt last long anyway. I am scared that one day some bloke will hit her and hurt my daughter if she hits him like she hit me."

Why did this father not fight back or leave? Again, let me allow him to speak for himself:

"It was hell George. I never told noone because noone would belive me anyway. My mate found out about her hitting me when she told him and he said I was a wally and a fool for letting her do it. But I said I had a baby daughter and I could not leave and just go. He said I should give her a backhander to shut her up but I knew if I did I would go to prison and she said she would tell people I abused my daughter if I ever hit her."

Note what he says: His friend told him to fight back (abuse her). He refused because he knew that he would go to prison. His abuser has no such fear. Worse still, he knew his partner would tell police that he threatened to abuse his own child and she would be believed. Implicit in this remark is the knowledge that he would not be believed. His case would not be properly investigated and his abuser knew it. That is too much power for most people to cope with but it is a Godsend for abusers!

What would have happened if she had called the police and made an accusation of child abuse against him? The first thing to happen is that he would have been arrested. If the police believed the accusation there is an excellent chance that he would have been charged and brought to court. He certainly would have been removed from his house and separated from his daughter. He would become a local figure of hate and so would probably have to move if he got bailed after the charge. He may also have been remanded in custody and faced the fury of other convicts or found himself in protective isolation (solitary confinement) in the prison. His name, were he to be convicted on his partners say so, would be added to the child protection register. If he was not convicted he would still be classified as a risk to children and prevented from ever working with kids. He would almost certainly lose his livelihood also. In other words, his life would be utterly destroyed by a female abuser who is only too well aware of the power she has over the man in her life. Naturally the female abuse statistics would also go up one more notch.

He has only two real choices in our "civilised" society: He can leave with the knowledge that his daughter will be left with an abusive woman, or he can stay and continue to be abused. He cannot take his daughter from the house because he may well be charged with kidnapping if he does. His abuser also knows that if he takes her daughter and she cries, in apparent great distress to the social workers and policemen, he will be hunted down and the little girl brought back. In theory, the law in the UK says that if you have reasonable cause to believe that a child is in danger you can remove the child to a safe place. In practice, for many men this is almost impossible to do.

His position, had she not left him, would have been intolerable. Of course, if he ever did crack under the strain and fight back he would have become another abuse statistic and his abuser would walk away without having to answer legally or socially for her crimes.

But wait! There was another choice that I had not considered. He could have reported her.

"Men dont get believed about this and its wrong. So most men dont say nothing because they wont be believed if they do say something."

The author of this e-mail has a perception that even if he did report his abuser, he would not be believed. His abuser, as we saw above, had reinforced this perception within him. In the case of a female victim of abuse, this perception would be hard to cement in the victims mind because most women are aware of the enormous amount of help available to them. For male victims however, no such support structures exist, either within the law or within society. Consequently it easy for abusive females to program their victims to believe that they will not get help even if they do report their abuse.

Fortunately, in the United Kingdom awareness of the problem of male abuse victims is painfully slowly growing. Again, in theory, the law should protect men and women alike. In practise, as every male victim knows, it rarely does come to his aid. However, I must point out that I have met Solicitors who have successfully prosecuted non molestation orders against women.

Let's move on to consider question two. This question was, "How was this woman able to carry out this despicable and appalling act without fear of legal reprisals?"

Though we have touched upon this question already I want to look at it in more depth. Imagine a scenario where the police are called to a house where there is a report of a serious domestic fight occurring. When they arrive they find a man bleeding from a head wound and a women crying in great distress. Also in some distress is a young child crying at the foot of the stairs. The woman demands that the police remove the man from the house. Even though the man is obviously hurt and bleeding and the woman is carrying no marks, in almost every case it will be the man who is removed from the property. The police cannot question the child because that is not legal. They may know that it was the woman who was abusive but they also know that it is easier to remove the man. If they remove her and she has no where to go they face accusations of heartlessly throwing a woman out on the streets.

If the woman is abusive she will often be very cunning and untrained officers will probably not recognise her behaviour as manipulative. Let me illustrate this again from the e-mail:

"She smashed my car up on purpose and put a brick through the windscreen. When I got home she hit me with an iron and a cup and threw a plate at me which missed and went through the window. Then she started screaming and told the neighbours I was trying to kill her and the police came and told me to get out of my house."

This abuser was well aware of the effect a distressed female has on us all. She was exploiting our natural desire to rush to her aid. A desire that is so ingrained in us that it can block our reasoning capacity and cause us to fail to see and react correctly to evidence that is right in front of our eyes. This exploitation is particularly effective in court rooms and lawyers know it.

This passage from the e-mail is very revealing if we look at it closely. It tells the story of a woman who has lost all control. This lack of control has caused her to go on an orgy of assaultive and destructive behaviour. We can almost see what happened next in her mind. She suddenly realises that her behaviour has become public. Her neighbours and passers by could not fail to notice that she has attacked a vehicle in the street or drive and then thrown things through a window. No doubt screaming abuse at the top of her lungs also. (Though the e-mail does not mention it at this point, it does say that she was verbally and physically abusive to others at a party shortly before this incident. Therefor it is reasonable to conclude that this verbal abuse also continued at home). Now there are witnesses to her behaviour and she needs to find a way out of her predicament quickly or she risks arrest herself. The perfect answer is to become a victim.

She crosses to the now broken window and begins to scream for help claiming her partner is trying to kill her. In today's social climate where we are being bombarded with images, stories, plays and television programs all telling us that men abuse women and all are silent on female abuse, it is not difficult to see what conclusion the neighbours came to. They called the police to rescue this "poor woman." When the police arrive the "He's trying to kill me" story covers her in almost every way. It explains the blood on his face: "I was trying to protect myself from my abusive husband officer." It explains the broken window: "I was trying to attract attention because he said he was going to kill me." The car is more difficult to explain but the chances are that the policemen/women have now been totally sucked into "protect the female" mode and will not even consider it as an area worth more questions being answered. Angry and disgusted policemen are unlikely to listen to an "abuser" claiming his partner has already disrupted a party and attacked people there. I know from bitter personal experience that police officers have a one track mind on the issue of female abuse. To be fair, this is not entirely their fault. Like all of us they carry the same disgust for male abusers. They are not trained to look for male victims because, like the rest of society they have not yet accepted that it happens to men, or, if they have, that it happens as often as the scientific evidence proves.

To test these attitudes for yourself, enter an Internet chat room at random as a woman/man and bring up the subject of female domestic violence. It will not be long before you encounter total disbelief, mocking amusement and/or utter hostility. Leave and re-enter as a woman/man and bring up the subject of female victims of abuse and note the total and opposite change of attitude. I have done this myself and the results are shocking.

Female abusers know that the law will protect them and even help them to continue their abuse. They know that if they go to court some lawyers will actively encourage them to claim abuse because its a sure fire winner in custody cases. They know that the police are untrained in dealing with them and a good cry will soon have them eating out of their hands. They know that the politicians, police and judges are blinded by the same demeaning "protect the female at all costs" attitude that everyone else has. They know that people think that a child is safest with its mother, despite the evidence to the contrary, but unsafe with its father because society is being actively programmed into thinking that way by radical feminist pressure. They know that men are not believed when they say they are victims. As long as they continue to know these things they will continue to abuse both men and children. They will continue to use children as weapons of their abuse and they will continue to get away with it.

Isn't it time to stop letting them get away with it?

I will leave the penultimate word to "Billy"

"I have a new girlfriend now and she is great and really cares for me. I love her and she loves me. Thanks for helping men see they are not the only ones it has happened to. Men must try to get the law changed so they can see their kids because its wrong what some nasty women do. Not all women are nasty but a lot are and they hate men and want to hurt us. MPS should do something but they wont. You know what they are like. All liers the lot of them and scared of women most of them. I dont waste my time voting for them and this lot are no better than the last lot. Just diferent faces."

Perhaps we have to make the politicians and judges hear us by shouting ever louder until they do. One thing is for sure, we are not going to go away.

George Rolph is National Domestic Violence Co-ordinator for the charity ManKind, Chairman of the South East (UK) branch of ManKind, and founder of man2man.

* The e-mail has been reproduced exactly as it was received and is not corrected, though all identifying passages have been removed for the purpose of maintaining confidentiality.

This article is for free distribution as long as the web site address of man2man (http://www.man2man.themenscenter.com), and my name are properly credited. It is offered without copyright as long as it is published in full and without editing on Internet sites or my permission is sought before editing occurs.