The federal Violence Against Women Act is up for renewal. This law, originally passed in 1994, provides the following programs and services:
- Community violence prevention programs
- Protections for victims who are evicted from their homes because of events related to domestic violence or stalking
- Funding for victim assistance services, like rape crisis centers and hotlines
- Programs to meet the needs of immigrant women and women of different races or ethnicities
- Programs and services for victims with disabilities
- Legal aid for survivors of violence
The law has already been renewed twice, in 2000 and 2005, always without fanfare. This year, however, opponents object to expanding the coverage to gays and lesbians, and want to limit protection for domestic violence victims who are illegal immigrants.
Please pause and read the following article:
GOP’s Violence Against Women Act would open up undocumented victims to more abuse, on HuffingtonPost.com.
Two sides of the debate
So here, according to the article, are the two sides of the debate regarding immigrant women:
In some cases, husbands would use their control over their victims’ immigration status as a tool of abuse, refusing to sign the proper paperwork or threatening to revoke it.
And
House Republicans say that some women have taken advantage of the confidentiality by fraudulently claiming abuse to acquire residency status.
Which side is correct? Both of them.
Lovefraud has cases that illustrate both sides of the argument. I’ve heard from women from other countries whose abusive partners threatened to get them thrown out of the United States if they tried to leave the relationship. And I’ve heard from men who married foreign women, and as soon as the women obtained their green cards, turned around and accused them of domestic violence.
In both cases, we’re dealing with sociopaths. Dr. Liane Leedom says that half of the people who commit domestic violence are sociopaths, and the other half have sociopathic traits. And, as far as I’m concerned, everyone who commits love fraud is a sociopath. Who else could seduce an unsuspecting partner into marriage and then dump him or her with fake domestic violence charges?
Impotent legal system
The problem comes down to this: Rules are made for people who follow the rules. Sociopaths believe the rules do not apply to them. Therefore, when it comes to dealing with sociopaths, the rules are virtually useless.
Laws do not prevent sociopaths from doing what they want to do. The only usefulness of a law is being able to punish a sociopath afterwards, if the person actually gets caught and prosecuted. And this only works when there is enough evidence, and a savvy enough prosecutor, to keep the sociopaths from talking themselves out of trouble.
Here’s what we all need to understand: When it comes to dealing with sociopaths, everything is different. Whenever the structures of civil society impede their agendas, this subset of humans simply ignores them. They don’t want to be inconvenienced by laws, rules, ethical guidelines, social conventions, customs, manners or interpersonal consideration. They have no moral compass.
Renewing the VAWA
So, when it comes to renewing the law, what’s the answer? I’d vote for keeping the protections strong for victims. But perhaps some of the money should fund training for law enforcement, courts and domestic violence counselors about sociopaths, and how good they are at pretending to be victims when they aren’t.
If an immigrant woman can confidentially apply for a visa to escape true domestic violence, that’s good. But if a woman (or man) falsely claims domestic violence in order to stay in the country, I’m all for throwing her out.
Once again, it seems that there’s always a ready-made excuse for WHY spaths do what they do and WHOM is to blame.
They just frigging ARE….that’s all. Sociopaths just ARE. Blame, excuses, and denial simply allow them to perpetrate continued carnages without fear of any consequences. Oy…………..vey…………….
Getting back to the original article, if people knew what Ps are and how they came to be, then they would realize how useless laws are against these people.
A Plan B would be necessary and/or the laws would need to be substantially changed to give meaningful protection.
The laws are not useless. At least they’re still a tool to try to convict them of wrongdoing. It’s the belief that they can be law-abiding citizens in some future and grow empathy out of nowhere that needs heavy revizing.
That they won’t care about the laws is something I used in a comment on the NPR “justification” article, that proposed employers and others to put it in contract the other will not steal, lie, etc… It’s a given nobody’s supposed to do that, since those are criminal actions. Those who don’t care aout breaking the law, won’t flinch at breaking their contract either.
I meant that the laws are useless if the system or people’s ignorance permits the offenders to get around them.
I didn’t mean the laws are useless for everybody. They have made a difference because they’ve brought awareness and have given some people power to fight against perpetrators. Some people obey them.
But they aren’t going to stop somebody who has no respect for the law.
No, the laws aren’t useless and neither are the peple who enforce them, uphold them and ratify them.
It is a problem though that these systems move a lot slower than the abusers and that there are people who take advantage of them which costs those who are abused credibility up front.
Eventually, the law does catch up because it is relentless. But, in the meantime a lot of damage is done.
Since the system can and does make mistakes, it is a real problem to sort out who is believable and who isn’t.
Sadly, it has not been my experience that law enforcement and the courts are relentless.
In fact, my experience has been that they are both pretty indifferent and in fact often enabling when it comes to Ps.
Since psychopaths are addicted to power, it follows that they seek to influence people in positions of power or they seek those positions for themselves.
That means that they have infilterated the system thoroughly.
The first thing that my spath does upon moving into a town, is to scope out the cops. He gets friendly with them, plants seeds etc… Not just low-level cops, he goes to the highest levels he can, the sheriff in one town, the mayor’s elderly daughter in another town. This is so he can find their weaknesses and con them into doing illegal things then use that against them. Now they’ll protect him when he demands it.
This is what he’s done to me. All the cops who should have been protecting me were on his side. And he found a meth addict who had enough ability to become a cop and he helped him do that. Now that meth-spath is married to my sister and works for homeland security.
The problem is inherent in the system. It puts power into the hands of individuals but the responsibility is spread out among the ranks. Believe me, if RESPONSIBILITY was laid upon each member of the legal system, that is to say if they were HELD RESPONSIBLE for their actions, we would see a lot less spaths in positions of power. Responsibility is their kryptonite.
G1S, my personal belief is that the Law is not subject to “empathy,” if that makes any sense. There’s “What Is,” and “What Should Be,” and I’ve rarely seen the two meet at any angle.
The Law isn’t necessarily concerned about how or what a victim might “feel” as a result of their experiences unless it’s a Criminal or Parole issue. Even then, it’s an ongoing fight for victims to defend their own victimization. “Well, if you didn’t want to be attacked, WHY were you walking on the sidewalk at that time of night?” Or, “If the abuse was SO bad, why didn’t you just leave, then?” Often, the victims are damaged even more, and I think that might, perhaps, be a factor in whether or not crimes go unreported.
In Civil cases, there is NO empathy for victims, on any level. At least, that has been my personal experience. There’s a “preponderance of the evidence” which translates into “He-Who-Has-The-Best/Most-Documentation-Wins,” but that only goes so far. Sure, I could “win” a Civil suit against the exspath, but he would then simply declare Bankruptcy and the Judgement would be “excused.”
I believe that the U.S. Laws were meant to be “fair,” and they are, for the most part. But, there seems to be little punitive consequences in cases such as mine. No need to go into great specifics, here, but it’s quite probable that the exspath is going to skip off into the sunset without experiencing any true and honest consequences for anything that he’s done. And, while that galls me to no end, it is what it is and cannot be amended.
I should hope that, at some future date, sociopaths/psychopaths are held accountable and face harsh consequences for their actions. As it is, it seems that our current cultural climate rewards bad behaviors with celebrity and notoriety.
Skylar, we posted over one another, and I hear you! In OUR town, a cop actually orchestrated his estranged wife’s murder during their turbulent separation and staged the whole thing down to self-inflicted knife wounds that were noted to BE “self-inflicted” by all attending physicians and Staff. The man simply walked away with the replacement Mrs. Victim without anything harsher than “leave-without-pay” until the trial was done.
I agree, Skylar – in many cases, the inmates are running the asylums….
Truth,
Isn’t there a whole section of this website devoted to how the law, law enforcement, and the courts have failed victims of sociopaths and psychopaths?
Empathy has nothing to do with it.
It’s been the law and nothing has been done.
I saw nothing “relentless” on the part of the law in your personal descriptions that you described.