Domestic violence is in the news throughout the whole year, but especially at this time of the year. It’s the season of domestic violence months, October in some countries, give or take a month, depending on country.

Someone pointed me to two comments by Terri Lynn Tersak, “a professional commercial photographer, the President and CEO of True Equality Network, and a member of the Steering and Legislative Committee of the Maryland based think-tank, RADAR – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting.”

Although the first article shown below appears to reflect in its terminology decades of feminist indoctrination (one always has to look carefully when “people” are being mentioned, as the context of the discussion often leaves no doubt that the non-sex-specific “people” means nothing other than “women” who are victims), it identifies important truths. The abuse business is a big and flourishing industry, it is being used to advantage by advocates and “victims” alike out of greed and for profit, it is involved in criminal activities, and it caters to large numbers of false claims of abuse, to the exclusion of victims who are truly in need.

The article doesn’t mention that men are equally often victims of abuse by women (and of course far more often victims of abuse by other men). Men are twice as likely than women are to become victims of violence. Yet the article did not come close to touching on that, which is an odd omission for an organization that calls itself “True Equality Network” whose CEO expounds on the lack of justice and equitability in the treatment of true victims of domestic violence. Moreover, Terri Lynn Tersak’s article complains much about the abuse of women’s shelters but says absolutely nothing about the lack of abuse of men’s shelters. There is no abuse of men’s shelters because there are none of those. What does not exist cannot be abused. However, don’t male victims of domestic violence who have no shelters at all to escape to deserve a little bit of pity, at the very least from an organization that calls itself “True Equality Network”?

Another odd omission in the article is that children were not mentioned (feminists always religiously avoid doing that in connection with DV). Children are the largest single group of domestic violence victims, and children in families who are being hurt are being hurt by their mothers in the vast majority of cases (just about exactly 70 percent of serious or fatal violence against children in families is committed by the children’s mothers), while the biological fathers of those children rank almost a minuscule last place in the list of the perpetrators of violence against children.

Here is that first article:

VAWA Fails to Protect Women Who Need Protection the Most
October 11, 2006
by Terri Lynn Tersak

[1] http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/1011tersak.html

The second article in her series,

Violence Against Women Act: The Fast Food of Law
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
By Terri Lynn Tersak

[2] http://parens-patriae.blogspot.com/2006/10/violence-against-women-act-fast-food.html

castigates the US Violence Against Women Act and the abuse and misuses of the women’s shelter industry even more than the first one did.

That article seems at first more balanced, or better, neutral with respect to the respective plights of the sexes, but then — about half-way down — comes this statement:

The women of [3] True Equality Network, most of who are themselves victims of severe domestic violence, have spent almost five years in courthouses [4] interviewing over 15,000 plaintiffs in domestic violence cases just before they entered the courtroom. The overwhelming number of those interviewed did not attempt to mask the real reasons they filed a domestic violence claim: control, money, and revenge — for everything you could possibly imagine — everything except acts of domestic violence.

Right. I don’t want to belittle the plight of these women of True Equality Network, but did they notice that the 15,000 plaintiffs in domestic violence cases whom they interviewed just before they entered the courtroom were in the majority women, while there should at least have been one man for every woman whom they interviewed, and that furthermore they apparently never got to interview any children, who should have comprised more than one-third of all of the people whom they did interview?

I guess not, because a little farther down in that article Terri Lynn Tersak stated that “Renowned professors and scientists who have reviewed this study series have said that the study was conducted using proper scientific methods and has produced “…significant findings that need to be widely published and cited.””

No doubt, the study sample examined by True Equality Network produced significant findings that need to be widely published and cited, but that the study sample was taken using “proper scientific methods” is doubtful. The sample she wrote about cannot possibly be a randomly selected one. It must of necessity be a pre-determined and pre-selected selective study sample, a sample whose nature and origin exclude the possibility of making valid projections to the general population.

Even though that study comes awfully close, it may not be quite classifiable as advocacy research (that is a study that deliberately sets out to prove a predetermined outcome), because it may not have set out deliberately to prove a foregone conclusion. It was a study done by advocates for a selective cause using a selective study sample, not a randomly-selected one. The way it has been described in Terri Lynn Tersak’s article and writings linked to from her article, the study has no validity beyond the selective sample of victims it studied.

The study produced a vast amount of anecdotal evidence but apparently no hard statistics that relate to much that happens in the general population.

The next time when True Equality Network undertakes such a study it should ensure proper proportional representation of all groups of victims of domestic violence in their study sample, not just women. Furthermore it should ensure that the sample is randomly selected, not prescreened by the bureaucracy before its members make it into the court rooms.

Nevertheless, although True Equality Network in that article, too, incongruously mentioned nothing about the lack of shelters for men who need to flee violent relationships, its findings about the corruption that has come to infect the whole system are born out by many other reports on that corruption. The details may vary a little from place to place and from country to country, but the principle remains.

Objective observers of the women’s shelter industry will agree with True Equality Network on one thing: [5] The women’s shelter movement is corrupt, an inexhaustible cash-cow for radical feminists and government agencies alike and an expedient tool used effectively for the implementation of the agenda for the planned destruction of our families.