From: dgross@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Dave Gross)
Newsgroups: soc.men
Subject: Men's Issues Newsbriefs #60
Date: 7 Nov 92 18:16:06 GMT
Reply-To: dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross)
Organization: Mousebat, Follicle, Goosecreature, Ampersand, Spong, Wapcaplet,                 Looseliver, Vendetta & Pang


	* Survey finds women likely spousal abusers
	* There's another side to the child support issue
	* Killings of children are on the rise; mothers kill most
	* Biased statutory rape laws are under scrutiny

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	From: dave@blacksea.uucp (David Drinnan)
	Source: The Ottawa Citizen
	SURVEY FINDS SPOUSAL ABUSE SURPRISE
	----------------------------------------

WINNIPEG (CP) - Almost 40 per cent of women polled in a survey said they had
physically abused their spouse, considerably more than the percentage of men
making the same claim.  The research turns the popular belief about family
violence on its head and will likely be "hotly challenged", says Rena Summer,
one of the study's authors.

Even the researchers were surprised, she admitted Thursday.  "These findings
should cause people to rethink the whole nature of spousal abuse in terms of
criminal justice, in terms of arrests," said Summer, a doctoral student in the
University of Manitoba's family studies department.

The findings run counter to extensive evidence that women are the main victims
of family violence, said Huguette Leger of the National Action Committee on
the Status of Women.  Leger pointed to the many criminal charges laid against
men for beating or killing their partners, and the expanding network of
battered women's shelters.  Men might be less likely than women to admit
abusing their wives, perhaps because they consider it normal, she suggested.

"There's something funny there that doesn't fit the reality and facts," Leger
said.

The $600,000 study, funded by a grant from Health and Welfare Canada, found 39
per cent of the women surveyed admitted to some kind of physical abuse of
their spouse or live-in boyfriend.  Of the men, 26 per cent said they had
abused their partner.

Abuse was defined as anything from threatening to throwing something to
hitting with an object.  The more violent the attack, the larger the
percentage of women who admitted to it, Summer said.

The survey's first phase, carried out in 1988 and 1989, polled 447 randomly
selected men and 452 women in Winnipeg who were married or living with someone.
It focused on alcohol use and included only six questions on violence, but the
initial results prompted Summer to add six pages of questions on abuse in the
second phase.

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	From: shedevil@vix.com (Anne P. Mitchell, JD)
	Original article by Tom Goff
	Source:  Daily Review 8/11/92
	THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CHILD SUPPORT ISSUE
	---------------------------------------------

California's new child-support law has a critical mandate:  Elevate child
support payments to levels that will raise families headed by single moms out
of poverty and help shift the cost of raising kids from the welfare system
back to the parents.  

The new payment formula will raise average monthly awards 25 to 70 percent as
it seeks to restore some sanity to a system blighted by shamefully low support
levels and non-compliant fathers.  Before the law, California ranked among the
nation's lowest states for child support levels.  It now ranks in the top 10.

There is no arguing with the need for this law.  Even the fairest payments
sometimes cannot cover the care and education of children.  But there's
another side of the coin.  And that's what we do here at the Deadbeat Forum,
look at both sides.  Its's too early to tell whether higher payment levels
have driven many financially strapped or "deadbeat" dads into hiding.  For
sure, a new court order isn't going to make somebody who's already paying zero
pay more than zero.

Moreover, securing payment from those men will still be difficult, despite new
enforcement tactics provided by the law.  Fugitive fathers have been known to
hide for years under aliases or false social security numbers.  Budget-
strapped district attorney's offices will be hard pressed to come up with the
manpower to process new petitions from low-income mothers, let alone chase
down deadbeat dads.  

Perhaps more than anything else, the new law presents a fresh front in the
divorce wars.  The heavy artillery is already flying.  Fathers' rights
advocates warn that a portion of the law that restores financial credit for
visitation may encourage custodial parents to thwart visitation attempts,
already a common-place tactic in the power struggles that follow divorce.

And although the law is aimed mostly at low-income parents who have the most
to lose when an ex-spouse stiffs them on payments, middle and upper-income
fathers who have never missed sending monthly support checks are fuming about
their ex-spouses appeals for more money.  They're bitter over what they see as
an unintentional boon to ex-spouses who don't, they say, need bigger checks to
support their children.  They're calling it hidden spousal support.

Take the case of Bob D. of Castro Valley.  Bob is by no means a deadbeat.  In
the eight years since his divorce, he's never missed a payment and has kept
his end of the joint custody agreement.  

But immediately after the new law went on effect, Bob's ex-wife, since re-
married and the majority custodian of their 12-year-old daughter, filed for a
70 percent payment increase -- even though, Bob says, her standard of living
is about the same as his.

"It's a well-intentioned law," Bob acknowledges, "But at no time did I think
this was going to be an attack on the middle-income folk."

That's the voice shared by men on the defensive who dread the impact of higher
award amounts.  In the case of Bob, also re-married, "We were planning a
family, but the immediate bottom line is that we're just going to have to put
that on hold if they get the increase."

Bob is fighting his ex-wife's petition.  More precisely, he's paying legal
fees while lawyers and the family court judge argue over numbers literally
being plugged into the new state formula on a courtroom computer.  

That's what fatherhood has come to for men like Bob, numbers in a computer.
If it sounds like an electronic war game, it is.

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	Source:  Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1992
	Original article by Ann C. Roark
	KILLINGS OF CHILDREN ON THE RISE IN L.A.
	-------------------------------------------
The number of children killed by their parents and caretakers jumped by nearly
33% in Los Angeles County to 61 victims in 1991, the highest level recorded
since such statistics have been kept, according to two studies released today.
Prepared by the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, the studies
also show that 120,358 children in the county were sexually or physically
abused, 11% more than the previous year.

In addition, the studies found the number of babies born addicted to drugs --
because their mothers took drugs during pregnancy -- rose to an all-time high
of 2,551, up nearly 9% from a year ago.

Mothers are to blame for much of the increase in child homicides, the council
found.  Though mothers were criminally charged in fewer than 30% of the cases
reported in 1989, they were the alleged perpetrators in nearly 40% of the cases
in 1991.  Fathers and other caretakers made up the other 60%.  Typically the
victims were either beaten to death, thrown to the floor and their skulls
crushed, shaken violently or drowned.

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	Original article by Mike Clary
	Source:  Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1992
	SEXIST STATUTORY RAPE LAWS UNDER ATTACK
	-------------------------------------------
In July, Florida Judge Jerry T. Lockett dismissed statutory rape charges
against a man as violations of the state privacy amendment, which three years
ago was found to guarantee a minor's right to an abortion.  Lockett wrote that
"if a minor is sufficiently mature [such that the law has to] accept her
consent alone to an abortion, surely she may consent, as a matter of law and
privacy, to the act which led to the necessity for the abortion, i.e. sexual
intercourse."

This ruling was in the same Florida county that was the origin of the much
publicized case in which 12-year-old Gregory Kingsley severed all legal ties
to his natural mother.

Statutory rape laws, which typically state that all sex with females under
a certain age is considered rape (consent being no defense), are a classic
example of sexist criminal law.  In some states, the law is gender-neutral
but is enforced in a sexist manner -- in other states, like California, the
law itself "protects" young women but not young men.

The California statutory rape law, which applies only to females under age 18,
was upheld in 1981 when the U.S. Supreme court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that
it did not discriminate against a Sonoma County man who challenged its gender
bias.

The state has filed notice for appeal in the Florida case, and some legal
scholars expect it to end up in the United States Supreme Court.
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Homeless:   Single men                   165,000 - 231,000  (H.U.D.
            Single women                  32,000 -  45,000  statistics)
            Family members                53,000 -  74,000
From: mikep@hpmwtd.sr.hp.com (Mike Powell)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 04:24:01 GMT
Subject: Re: Twilight Zone Logic
Organization: HP Santa Rosa Site (SRSD MWTD)