TO:

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

SUBJECT:

Revise New DOJ Guidelines and End Illegal Domestic Violence Discrimination Against Male Victims or Favoring Female Perpetrators

BODY:

United States Department of Justice,

Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, USDOJ, Vanita Gupta,

Debra Murphy, USDOJ,

Thank you for your service of our nation.

The USDOJ recently released guidance for law enforcement officers, saying:

The guidance, “Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence,” provides a set of basic principles to ensure that gender bias, either explicitly or implicitly, does not undermine law enforcement efforts to keep victims safe and hold offenders accountable.

IDENTIFYING AND PREVENTING GENDER BIAS IN OUR RESPONSE TO SEXUAL ASSAULT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

December 17, 2015 Courtesy of Vanita Gupta, Head of the Civil Rights Division

http://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/identifying-and-preventing-gender-bias-our-response-sexual-assault-and-domestic-violence

The guidance is here:

Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence http://www.justice.gov/opa/file/799476/download

The guidance seeks to end gender bias in policing, and urges law enforcement officers to gather more facts, both of which I applaud.

However, it is immediately obvious that the guidance, in all instances, encourages law enforcement officers to keep digging for facts when faced with an apparent female on male domestic violence incident, by construction encourages them to bias their investigations based on gender, and by construction implicitly denies the existence of female on male domestic violence.

Furthermore, the guidelines, while ostensibly intended to fight gender bias, never acknowledge the existence of gender bias against male victims and favoring female perpetrators in domestic violence policing. A list of incidents previously reported to the USDOJ including the OCR is available to you at:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MRActivism/new

Most recently, a father in Washington State was arrested for being a victim of domestic violence perpetrated by his wife, and after prosecutors dropped the unsubstantiated charges against him, he was unable to obtain a safety plan for himself and his children, because he was told "They only know how to do them for women."

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3u18yk/action_opportunity_end_illegal_vawa_hhs_and_usda/

I continue to urge the USDOJ to investigate this and other incidents of illegal discrimination against male victims of domestic violence and favoring female perpetrators.

These guidelines discriminate against males as a gender, and by sexual orientation against bisexual and straight males who are more likely than gay males to face female on male domestic violence. These both appear to me to violate the nondiscrimination provisions of the USDOJ VAWA reauthorization of 2013.

Accordingly, I urge you to revise these guidelines to acknowledge the existence of discrimination against male victims and favoring female perpetrators of domestic violence in policing, and to move to investigate such discrimination in accordance with the interests of justice and your lawful duties.

I urge you to act with kindness towards boy and man victims of sexual and domestic violence, faithfulness to the law, and truthfulness with the public, protecting all victims, and acting in the interests of justice. Victims depend on you to protect them from crime.

Until you do, boy and man victims of sexual and domestic violence who also face illegal discrimination must hope for justice, and persevere.