Vice-President Joseph Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500-0004
Dear Vice President Biden; July 20, 2009
Statistics and reports abound on domestic violence and abuse in the USA and around the world, all coming to the same conclusion; global, systematic torture and genocide of women and children is occurring on a daily basis. What these reports do not explore nor divulge, however, is the reasons to why this phenomenon occurs and why the numbers are exponentially increasing rather than decreasing.
Unfortunately, governments and governmental agency’s only responses to this “cancer” is politically correct rhetoric, additional legislation and signing of international treaties followed by ineffective tasks force, commissions, and agencies.
You yourself were one of the authors of the VAWA-I Act and more recently of a global initiative under the same guise. Apart from the limited political success the VAWA-I enjoyed, the US Supreme Court’s decision holding part of the Act unconstitutional and limited ratification at State levels, its real impact on the eradication of domestic violence is doubtful.
If the impact of this Act has been dubious on a national level, it is unlikely that it will have much effect in an international arena. Passage of laws cannot and will not initiate change as long as government institutions fail to effectively uphold the laws which they passed.
The reality of the situation is that corruption, nepotism and antiquated judicial procedures are so integrally a part of judicial systems that new legislation means absolutely nothing in the entire matrix. As I have found in my research over the past 2 years, the victims of domestic abuse most exposed to injustice within the judicial systems are the wives and children of law enforcement officials, judicial civil servants, lawyers or anyone involved in the judicial process.
First, there exists a higher than average amount of violent, domineering men who seek employment within law enforcement positions and who consider domestic violence normal or light compared to the violence they observe on the streets. Second, there exists an enormous “old boys/family club” attitude amongst law enforcement officials and judicial civil servants making protection and cover ups of “indiscretions” by colleagues common place.
In A Promise to Ourselves by Alec Baldwin, he correctly states that “Family law is a racket. It is a racket within which the principal players have convinced even themselves that they are serving innocent children as well as the public. However, the only people they are truly servings are themselves… The people who are to blame are the lawyers, the therapists, the legislators, and, most insidiously of all the judges. They are the cogs in a closed system, one that they have allowed to evolve principally for their own enrichment, financial or otherwise…. How much of what we currently tolerate inside a family law courtroom is the result of institutional greed, bad legislation, corruption, and politics?”
And, contrary to popular belief the same "racket" goes on in domestic violence cases, the consequence for the victims, however, go far beyond monetary concerns.
If politicians wish to effectively address the problem of domestic violence it would be more effective to pass legislation that brings accountability and liability to corruption and irresponsibility within judicial systems, rather than inapplicable legislation against domestic violence.
In closing I quote Common Sense by Thomas Paine and by which I defend my right to question not only the long standing tradition of abuse of power towards women and children by governments, societies and perhaps most grievously within the home.
“a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) .. and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either…. As no Answer hath yet appeared, it is now presumed that none will, the Time needful for getting such a Performance ready for the Public being considerably past. Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN (WOMAN OR CHILD.) Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.”
Common Sense by Thomas Paine, Philadelphia, February 14, 1776
Quenby Wilcox
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