Chances are you don't pay much attention to the Legal Services
Corporation, a hold-over from the glory days of the Great Society. This
bureaucracy ekes by on $335 million in federal money - chump change by
Washington standards.
The LSC was created for a good purpose: to provide legal services so
poor Americans could have their day in court. But while taxpayers and
lawmakers looked the other way, the Legal Services Corporation has
fallen under the sway of a radical gender ideology.
The Journal of Family Psychology recently published a study that
revealed wives and girlfriends are more likely to engage in domestic
violence than their male partners. According to researcher Renee
McDonald, 18.2% of the couples had experienced female-on-male violence,
while male-on-female aggression was found in only 13.7% of partners.
This is not news. For the last 30 years, researchers have proven time
and time again that women were
at
least as likely as men to commit acts
of family violence.
But to radical feminists, ideology always trumps the facts. This has
real-world consequences.
When the Legal Services Corporation was created in 1974, the idea was to
help poor people deal with absentee landlords and faceless welfare
bureaucracies. But along came welfare reform in 1996, and the LSC
suddenly found many of its clients were no longer in need of its
services. Time for Plan B.
Plan B was to implement the radical feminist agenda. That agenda says
domestic violence is the tool that brutish patriarchs wield to keep
women in their place.
So at the LSC, the most common type of cases became family issues, "many
of which involve securing protective order to keep spouses and children
safe from domestic violence," according to the LSC's latest
Annual
Report.
Drill down and the full truth emerges. Legal Service attorneys have
"Represented battered women seeking orders of protection, child support
enforcement, and divorces from abusive spouses," according to the LSC's
Press Kit.
What about battered men seeking orders of protection?
The LSC website reveals many examples of taxpayer money being used to
represent women claiming to be victims of abuse - but not a single
example of its funds going to help abused men.
For example, Legal Services funds were used to establish a policy with
the Texas Public Utility Commission so "when women meet with legal aid
attorneys for protective orders, those same attorneys can also provide
practical help in securing affordable shelter."
That news appeared in the Winter 2005 issue of
Equal
Justice Magazine.
Apparently its editors were oblivious to the irony of male victims of
domestic violence being denied equal justice.
The Legal Services Corporation website
highlights
the story of "Debra"
in Minnesota, who claimed to be falsely accused of child abuse by her
ex-husband. LSC attorneys succeeded in dismissing the protection order
and returning the children to her custody.
Apparently poor men are never subjected to false allegations of abuse,
or at least are unworthy of receiving free legal services.
One of the LSC's grant recipients is MidPenn Legal Services in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The firm's latest
annual
report tells of
Deborah Lucas who secured a protective order and won custody of her
child. The report makes no mention of abused men being helped by
MidPenn.
Earlier this month, several Pennsylvania judges revealed that MidPenn
and other local law firms are scripting the statements that women make
to the courts to request restraining orders. This revelation was made to
associates of the North Carolina-based True Equality Network. The judges
expressed concern over the reluctance of local D.A.s to prosecute false
claims of abuse, according to True Equality president Terri Lynn Tersak.
Pennsylvania's sweeping domestic violence law includes, "Knowingly
engaging in a course of conduct or repeatedly committing acts toward
another person, including following the person, without proper
authority, under circumstances which place the person in reasonable fear
of bodily injury."
So a father who makes any effort to see his children could be accused of
placing the mother in "fear," thus putting the man at risk of being
thrown in jail. As a result, caring, decent fathers have simply been cut
off from seeing their own children.
Back in Washington DC, the future of the Legal Services Corporation
looks bright, its financial health now secure.
Because the Violence Against Women Act, recently re-enacted by president
Bush, now allows the LSC to
provide
services to all women who claim to
be domestic violence victims, regardless of their immigration status.
All aboard the domestic violence gravy train.
Carey Roberts has
been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Alliance.
