By Lyn87

Jane Velez-Mitchell did a segment on CNN with regard to two recent shootings at spas. Both involved men who had Temporary Restraining Orders (TROs) imposed on them by the courts.

She interviewed Diane Rosenfeld, “who is an attorney, and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, and she is one the nation’s top experts in restraining orders.”

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/10/22/exp-jvm-wisconsin-shooter.hln

Ms Rosenfeld immediately began to prove that “attorney” and “lecturer at Harvard Law School” does not equate to “expert” on anything, especially the impact of TROs. Ms Velez-Mitchell ridiculously claimed to have covered “millions” of such cases, and never mentioned the inconvenient truth that most perpetrators of domestic violence are women, and BY FAR most lethal violence against children is perpetrated by mothers and/or their new “bad boy” boyfriends. Rather than this alleged “expert” correcting her with… you know… facts, she led off with an even more ridiculous statement of her own, “My thoughts [as] an expert’s are that domestic violence homicide is so predictable as to be preventable.”

She claimed that she could have predicted the outcome of these individual cases in advance based on the fact that the women made allegations and the men had access to weapons. REALLY? Since anyone can get a weapon, this “expert” obviously thinks that every case in which a woman makes an allegation against a man will end in male-on-female homicide. This is what passes for expertise at Harvard Law?

The solution propounded by this “expert?” Glad you asked. Basically it involves two simple steps:

1) Always believe the woman.
2) Always punish the man.

Sound familiar? It should.

Ms Velez-Mitchell set her up with a follow-on question about domestic homicide that only involves men killing women, explicitly stating that they do so because of “obsession.” Needless to say, when the sexes are reversed we hear very little about “obsession” and a lot about “provocation.”

Again, rather than being the expert CNN supposedly hired her to be and correcting Ms Velez-Mitchell’s mischaracterization, Ms Rosenfeld did a neat little two-step on her unsuspecting viewers. She began with this statement, “The women said they were threatened with murder.” (So far, so good: women say things all the time – some of them are true.) But then she completes the loop of deception a few seconds later with this, “The threat to kill a woman in an abusive situation is the top threat that screens you in as a very lethal case.”

As if a woman saying “I feel threatened” is the same as her being in mortal danger in actuality.

It is not — and this is one of the 800-pound gorillas in the courtroom. Women claim to be in danger all the time when they are not, and courts by the thousand hand out TROs like candy at Halloween. No adversarial process. No chance to tell his side. No meaningful appeal — only much later; AFTER he complies (and after he loses custody of his children).

A TRO is a serious matter. A VERY serious matter. When men with guns tell you that you may not live your life as you wish, that you must leave your own house, that you may not see your own children, and that you must surrender your firearms, it should only be done as an absolute last resort. And it should require a LOT more evidence than a crying woman making an uncontested allegation.

Here it is: women routinely get TROs as a strategic move in a break-up, or just to “teach him a lesson” when she doesn’t get her way. And why not? Courts will “err on the side of caution” even when it means taking extreme action with no evidence against a man… against a defendant who is often not even aware that he is on trial, much less permitted to mount a defense. And let us not mince words here: when a judge (not even a jury) is considering whether to drastically restrict your freedoms you are a defendant in a criminal trial – using different legal terms does not change the essence of the proceeding nor your role in it.

Rather than being impartial finders of fact under law, these courts are rubber stamps for the demands of women at the expense of men. They unilaterally and suddenly take away men’s freedom, humiliate them, and disrupt their lives based on nothing more than the unsupported accusations of hysterical and/or manipulative women. And it’s not a bug: it’s a feature. Make no mistake — that is what feminists – including this “journalist” and this “expert” – want.

Far too often courts are complicit in what is really a power play within a relationship. The party that is typically physically weaker gets to use the muscle of the state to force hubby to do her bidding. Since TROs are granted without cross-examination or any weighing of the facts, we have effectively set up a system where one group of people may make demands while another group is legally obligated to obey without question. And those demands can be about anything – all she has to do if he doesn’t take out the garbage is tell a judge that, “He frightens me.” After a few weeks of living in his car he’ll figure out that “taking out the garbage” is now his legally-enforceable duty. If this is functionally different from chattel slavery, I fail to see how.

There really are a small minority of cases where a man unilaterally abuses a woman: a VERY small minority of cases. Our legal system is now spring-loaded to assume that every crying woman is the victim in such a scenario. However, women have proven that, given the option to “go nuclear,” many will abuse it. They need to lose that power. Courts need to stop passing out TROs like hall passes in grade school and force complainants to show significant evidence, subject to cross-examination, before taking the extreme step of imposing prior restraint on a man who has not been convicted of anything.

If they did that the number of TROs would drop to a tiny fraction of what they issue now, and police could concentrate on real threats. The result would probably be fewer domestic homicides. Of course feminists will not support THAT – what’s a few corpses compared to the legal ability to force men to do the bidding of women, especially since they can use those corpses to further their narrative?