Johnny Depp and the truth about male domestic abuse victims
Hmmm ... My girlfriend hits me often. But it's neither harmful nor malicious so it it does not bother me. I attribute it to her Southern European origins
James looks nothing like Johnny Depp. For one thing, he is a lot taller than the 5 foot 8 star; and unlike Depp, he doesn’t sport 37 tattoos. But James identifies with much the Pirate of the Caribbean star is telling the court in Virginia (and the millions following proceedings through social media).
The first time James was attacked by his wife, he convinced himself it was a one-off. They had had a row over the quality of a meal they’d shared at the local restaurant. Suddenly his wife rushed at him, battering him with her fists. He was shocked, but thought she must have drunk too much. He caught her hands in his and spoke soothingly until she stopped trying to hit out. Life resumed as normal. Until that is, one night when James was lying in bed, and his wife pinned him down and began spitting on him.
This was back in 2001. It took James six years, during which time he suffered repeated assaults with cutlery, bottles of wine, books and food thrown at him, to finally consult a GP. When he arrived in the surgery, despite sporting bruises and welts all over his arms, the doctor dismissed him with a weary, man-of-the world sigh:
‘Look, for some individuals a degree of physicality is normal in their relationships – perhaps due to circumstances in their upbringing – I see no legitimate cause for concern or action.’
The GP was the first of a long list of practitioners who made James feel like he was either a wuss or a fantasist.
Being one of the more than 700,000 male victims of domestic abuse in England and Wales is a bit like the Man Bites Dog story: arresting, but so counter-intuitive, few can take it seriously. Domestic abuse is routinely portrayed as a gendered crime, perpetrated by men against women. And as Amber Heard taunted Johnny Depp: ‘See how many people believe or side with you’ when you’re a hunk claiming to be abused by a woman. Yet the truth is that one-third of domestic abuse victims are men.
‘The default narrative is that the victim is a heterosexual woman with an abusive partner,’ Mark Brooks, Chairman of the Man Kind charity, says, ‘and this is so widely accepted that many of the men who call us are not sure they are victims of domestic abuse because they have been told for years that men can’t be victims of domestic abuse. But if professionals do not overcome their cognitive bias with respect to men in this situation, how can they help them?’
Dr Elizabeth Bates, at the University of Cumbria, has been interviewing male victims for more than a decade. The men she has spoken to have highlighted the humiliation they suffered, not only at the hands of their perpetrators, but in their encounters with police and social workers.
‘They did nothing,’ one 47-year-old victim told her, ‘I reported abuse to police several times and they took no positive action. Social workers took matters very lightly and even took the perpetrators’ side, as if they didn’t believe me.’
Even specialist helplines could not overcome their scepticism. Another 40-something victim described calling a domestic abuse helpline:
‘They listened and then rapidly the tone changed, and she told me I only thought I was being abused and that I was the abuser and that I needed help dealing with all of the anger and violent abuse I was causing….and that I needed to turn myself in. I hung up, terrified.’
Health professionals are typically apprehensive when it comes to asking patients about domestic abuse. In our report, ‘No Honour in Abuse: harnessing the health service to end domestic abuse’, which examines the issue through a health lens, the Centre for Social Justice found that GPs, health visitors and clinicians routinely failed to ask questions about home life or couple relationships. Domestic abuse was the elephant in the room and health professionals approached it on a fear-to-know basis. This was all the more so when the potential victim was a man.
A survey of 1,368 men attending 16 general practices in the Southwest of England found GPs had never asked them about domestic arrangements, their relationship with their partner or spouse. No surprise then that the men were more likely to seek support from family and friends.
Even doing this is difficult. The stigma attached to being a male victim of domestic violence means that only a fraction will come forth and admit to being abused by the woman in their life, according to Mark Brooks. Yet one in ten men in contact with mental health services were experiencing, or had experienced, domestic abuse.
The effects of abuse on men includes sleep deprivation, increased substance abuse, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and suicide ideation. Coercive control is also present, with reports of starvation, 24/7 monitoring, threats of having their children taken away or losing their relationship with their children: and then there is being forced to penetrate a female partner – a practice disclosed by as many as one in five male victims – that leads to guilt, shame and, needless to say, sexual dysfunction.
Fewer disclosures and fewer resources have left male-focused services and refuges under-represented, under-funded and patchy. Covid-19 lockdowns saw a surge in disclosures by male victims. Mark Groves, CEO of the National Centre for Domestic Violence reported a 50 per cent increase in male victim requests from March to September 2020.
‘The increase in men coming forward is positive but puts a huge burden on those organisations supporting male victims,’ he said. ‘We are lucky to be able to cope with an additional overall 30 per cent increase but smaller agencies seeing increases of 50 per cent are facing massive stretches on their resources.’
Limited resources to tackle domestic abuse sets up damaging competition between supporting female and male victims. Groups supporting women have the advantage of an argument that packs an emotional punch: harrowing images of battered wives are all-too familiar, but a bloke cowering in a corner as his wife approaches him with a burning hot iron, not so much. Yet the lack of support for male victims, let alone male perpetrators and, probably the least supported of all, female perpetrators, fails women as much as men and their children most of all. Refusing to engage with the perpetrator allows them to go on abusing: one in four male perpetrators will go on to abuse several more women in their lifetime. Refusing to support the male victim risks perpetuating the cycle of abuse that can trap children into repeating their parents’ behaviour.
A recent survey carried out by the For Baby’s Sake Trust found that parents who experienced domestic abuse as children were more likely to experience domestic abuse as grown-ups and shame is the biggest barrier to seeking help.
‘This helps to explain the kind of support that mothers and fathers need to break the cycle of domestic abuse for themselves and their children,’ explains Amanda McIntyre, CEO of the Trust. ‘Parents want to give their baby the best start, but when they grew up with domestic abuse, their support needs to address unresolved trauma from their own childhood.’
The Trust’s own intense (and often months-long) therapeutic intervention has been engaging perpetrators and victims when they are expecting a baby – the most ‘teachable moment’, according to their practitioners. A King’s College London evaluation described the programme as the first to address key limitations in responses to domestic abuse. They are transforming parents’ and babies’ lives, reducing levels of abuse in 70 per cent of cases, according to an evaluation conducted by the university.
This kind of work is vital, though all too rare. We at the CSJ are calling for a parallel strategy in healthcare and charities to provide equally strong support for female and male victims of domestic abuse – and for male and female perpetrators.
The jury is still out on whether the Depp-Heard trial has raised awareness sufficiently about this issue for male victims of domestic abuse to step out of the shadows. But leaving one in three victims of domestic violence to fend for themselves simply because of their sex cannot be right. It’s time to ditch our preconceptions.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/05/johnny-depp-and-the-truth-about-male-domestic-abuse-victims/
**************************************************Sussmann Jury Nullification Marks the End of American Justice as We Knew It
Roger L. Simon
American justice isn’t only dead, it’s decomposed. Long live totalitarianism!
We can join the world now. Au revoir, American Exceptionalism. We are China. We are Putin’s Russia. We are the European Union, drifting ever more swiftly into Davos globalism and the Great Reset. We are the Ayatollah’s Iran. We are Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and then some.
Most of all, goodbye to the rule of law. Was it ever there? I seem to have vague memories.
The jurors in John Durham’s trial of attorney Michael Sussmann—which resulted in the Clinton campaign lawyer’s acquittal—will be remembered, by those allowed to remember, if any, as the moment our already decaying justice system went completely south.
The D.C. jurors, revealed in the voir dire to have been completely biased in the first place, demonstrated that the English language itself—and the evidence available therein—was of no interest to them. They not only nullified a possible verdict, but they also nullified English by ignoring the email that Sussmann wrote then FBI attorney (now Twitter stalwart) James Baker the night before their meeting.
“I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. I’m coming on my own—not on behalf of a client or company—want to help the Bureau.”
Baker testified that Sussmann told him the same thing in person, yet billing records, and much subsequent activity, clearly show that Sussmann was lying. He was working for Hillary Clinton via the Perkins Coie law firm. Several years of ugly U.S. history flowed from that.
Did the jury care? Evidently not. Their decision was close to immediate.
The jurors’ justification, assuming they bothered to use it, of the questionable “materiality” of Sussmann’s lies has some small justification, but only up to a point. Yes, the FBI’s feelings for Donald Trump were already somewhere between repugnance and revulsion—as evidenced by many emails we have seen and probably even more that we haven’t—but if we are to believe that makes Sussmann’s lie irrelevant, we are also to believe there wasn’t a widespread conspiracy in which he was very willing participant against the candidate and then president, an entente cordiale, as they say.
Surely there was.
And that entente cordiale was among the most despicable acts ever performed by Americans against their fellow citizens.
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'I can still hit a golf ball 280 yards after seven YEARS of hormone therapy - there's a lot of testosterone left over!'
Caitlynn Jenner doubled down on her criticism of trans swimmer Lia Thomas being able to compete against girls, saying on Wednesday that she still has a male athletic advantage even after seven years of hormone therapy.
Jenner, 72, appeared on FOX News on Wednesday morning, a day after Thomas gave her first on-camera interview. She said she does not blame Thomas for taking part in the sport and that she supports her right to transition, but that it's down to the NCAA to make stricter rules.
'Just one year of hormone replacement therapy is not enough. I've been on, for seven years, full transition hormone replacement and I can still hit the golf ball 280, 290 yards. There's a lot left over.
'And so I'm not blaming her, I'm just blaming the system right now - that has to be seriously looked at,' she said.
Thomas, 22, has caused a storm in the sporting world by competing as a woman after beginning transitional hormone therapy aged 19. Before that, she had competed as a man.
As a woman, she has bumped UPenn seven places up in the NCAA league tables at this year's championships. Now, she says she wants to compete in the Olympics and that she should be allowed to.
Jenner - who competed in the Olympics as a man and started transitioning in 2015 - said that she does not blame Thomas for the row she now finds herself at the center of.
'I thought she did a very good job and this is not Lia Thomas' fault. 'She played by the rules and she did a good job. Really, my concerns are with the NCAA. Their rules have to be a lot more stringent. They have to be more difficult.
On Twitter, she added: 'The woke world we are living in today is what has allowed for Lia Thomas to compete and take away medals from biological women.'
Thomas thinks she should be able to compete as a woman. She says that if she is banned, other biological women who have larger hands and feet and are taller than competitors should be too.
In an interview with Good Morning America yesterday, she said: 'I don't need anybody's permission to be myself.
She also said anyone who says she isn't allowed to compete as a woman is transphobic, regardless of whether or not they support her right to transition. 'You can't go halfway and be like "I support trans people but only to a certain point. If you support transwomen and they've met all the N.C.A.A. requirements, I don't know if you can say something like that. 'Trans women are not a threat to women's sport,' she said.
In a later interview with ESPN, she doubled down. 'Trans women competing in women's sports does not threaten sports as a whole because trans women are a very small minority and the NCAA rules regarding trans women competing have been around for 10 plus years and we haven't seen any massive wave of trans women dominating,' she said.
She dismissed the controversy surrounding her place in the women's category, saying she is now happy. 'There's a lot of factors that go into a race and how well you do. The biggest change for me is that I'm happy and sophomore year where I had my best times competing with men, I was miserable.
'Having that be lifted is incredibly relieving and allows me to put my all into training and racing.'
Teammates have anonymously spoken out to criticize UPenn and reveal that they were 'silenced' by the college.
In a new documentary about gender ideology that will air tomorrow night, the anonymous teammates said they were told never to question Lia's place and warned that doing would seal their fate. 'Lia’s swimming is a non-negotiable,' one swimmer says she was told by an unnamed college executive.
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Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Texas Social Media Anti-Censorship Law
The Supreme Court voted 5-4 late on May 31 to temporarily block a Texas law that prevents social media platforms from censoring users based on their political views.
Known as HB 20, the state law makes it unlawful for tech platforms to restrict or remove content based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person” or “the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression.”
The statute also requires the platforms to establish procedures users can use to appeal a platform’s decision to “remove content posted by the user.” The law applies to platforms that have more than 50 million active monthly users in the United States.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the bill in September 2021. The case is Netchoice v. Paxton, court file 21A720.
The applicants are two trade associations representing big tech—Netchoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA). The respondent is Ken Paxton, a Republican who is the attorney general of Texas.
Silicon Valley giants oppose the legislation, claiming it is unconstitutional.
After the new ruling CCIA president Matt Schruers praised the order. “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute,” he said in a statement.
“This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law.
“We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law,” Schruers said.
“The Supreme Court noting the constitutional risks of this law is important not just for online companies and free speech, but for a key principle for democratic countries. No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”
The emergency application was filed with the high court on May 13. The opinion was released at the end of the business day on May 31.
The decision cut across the court’s ideological lines. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer joined with conservatives John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to slap a hold on the law. The five justices did not explain why they voted to approve the order.
Netchoice and CCIA characterized HB 20 in the application (pdf) as an attack on Silicon Valley companies.
The statute “is an unprecedented assault on the editorial discretion of private websites [like Facebook.com, Instagram.com, Pinterest.com, Twitter.com, Vimeo.com, and YouTube.com] that would fundamentally transform their business models and services,” the document stated.
“HB20 prohibits covered social media platforms [many of which are members of Applicants NetChoice and CCIA] from engaging in any viewpoint-based editorial discretion.
“Thus, HB20 would compel platforms to disseminate all sorts of objectionable viewpoints—such as Russia’s propaganda claiming that its invasion of Ukraine is justified, ISIS propaganda claiming that extremism is warranted, neo-Nazi or KKK screeds denying or supporting the Holocaust, and encouraging children to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior like eating disorders.
“HB20 also imposes related burdensome operational and disclosure requirements designed to chill the millions of expressive editorial choices that platforms make each day.”
Alito rejected the social media platforms’ arguments in his dissent, saying whether the companies’ will ultimately win their case “under existing law is quite unclear.”
“It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies,” the justice wrote.
“This application concerns issues of great importance that will plainly merit this Court’s review. Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news,” Alito wrote, referencing a Pew Research Center report from a year ago that stated that more eight out of 10 Americans obtain news from digital devices.
Describing HB 20 as “a ground-breaking Texas law,” Alito wrote that it “addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”
A federal district judge previously enjoined Texas from enforcing the law but a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed that order on May 11, as The Epoch Times reported.
Attorneys representing Texas told the 5th Circuit that social media platforms “control the modern-day public square, but they abusively suppress speech in that square.”
A federal judge blocked a similar Florida law, finding it unconstitutional.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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