Dead Women Walking - (with link re: Smart Meters)

[Peace Voyager]

Greetings,

Many weeks ago, I sent a request for assistance to this list regarding this friend's need for help with injured dogs after an auto accident. I'm sorry I did not get to responding to one your requests for an update. Here it is, and then some. Her situation is still quite sad, and unfortunately I am connected in a similar, very sad way as well.

As someone who has for many years taken a strong stand and every vital social and environmental issue; I know too well how law enforcement and the courts are willfully blind to the injustice of people who speak out like me; and in some instances even work to harm them as well.

If any of you are motivated to want to make a difference; please contact me directly.

With gratitude,

Colleen Fernald

DEAD WOMEN WALKING, PART 3: NOWHERE TO RUN - TIME FOR A REVOLUTION
.
By Ruth Hull

.

Across America and particularly across California, women are beaten
again and again. They run to the police but are lucky if they don't
wind up in jail for their opposition to being beaten. Even after
women are victorious in obtaining domestic violence restraining
orders, they lose everything. Judges, who gave wives the restraining
orders against their brutal husbands, turn around and eagerly give
batterers all the property rights they want -- even when those
actually owning the property are not part of the proceedings.

After a victim gets a restraining order, there is nobody to stop the
batterer from living in the crawl space above his victim's living
quarters and nobody to prevent him from coming back and killing his
victim. "Restrained" batterers can critically injure their victims
and then cut the health insurance of those victims, leaving the
victims to die horrible deaths.

The government has policies in place that are used by batterers to
stalk or kill their victims or their families. Batterers are allowed
by governmental agencies and judges to imprison relatives of the
victims and endanger the lives of their children. There is no help
for victims, but there is a lot of state and federal assistance
available to help batterers succeed in killing their victims.
Domestic violence is the number one killer of young women in the
United States. Our government and its leaders have made it so. It
is time for a change or for a revolution.

PUBLIC LEADERSHIP THAT ENCOURAGES MISTREATMENT OF WOMEN

From John Edwards to George W. Bush, our leaders have shown that it is
OK to trash the lives of women and gain in popularity as they do so.
Even at the local level in Orange County, neither party has any
respect for women. Republican District Attorney Tony Rackauckas (who
was put in office by an alliance of the Democratic and Republican
Party leadership in Orange County), will not prosecute the most
terrifying cases of domestic violence. If he goes after anyone in a
domestic violence situation, he goes after the victim. Frank
Barbaro, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County, also seems
to feel that victims are responsible for the violent beatings they
incur. At the March 28th meeting of the Democratic Party of Orange
County, Barbaro showed no hesitation in launching an orchestrated
attack, blaming domestic violence victims for the actions of their
assailants.

FEDERAL LAWS THAT HELP BATTERERS KILL THEIR VICTIMS

Under federal law,

(1) A batterer may suspend or cancel the phone service of his victim.

(2) A batterer may get full disability for injuring his hand as he
knives or kills his victim while the victim, if she survives fully
disabled, is frequently only entitled to the same benefits as an
ILLEGAL ALIEN,

(3) There is no program in place that will allow a domestic violence
victim to gain a job or keep her home or often even get food for her
children. In fact, the laws are mostly to the contrary.

In most families, the husband has his name as the lead on the phone
bill. Under federal law, this gives him the power to suspend the
cell phone of every member of his family. Without a phone, the wife
cannot call for help when her "restrained" husband comes back to kill
her.

Of the single-income families, the vast majority involve the male as
the sole bread-winner. This means that women in those situations,
even if they worked to put their husband through college, often have
not paid enough quarters into Social Security to get full Social
Security Disability when their husbands beat them into a disability.
The husbands on the other hand could collect full disability as a
result of injuring themselves while killing or nearly killing their
wives.

It is the single-income situation where women are most often
imprisoned in relationships without recourse. They know that, if
they leave, they will take food and shelter away from their children
and probably end any chance that their kids could get into college. No
loving mother would leave and subject her children to that if she saw
what was coming.

Often batterers lure professional women into this situation by having
them stay at home to raise and/or homeschool the kids until they are
no longer employable due to the long absence from the workforce. It
is about control and disrespect. Often the batterers wait until they
have their victims right where the want them and then the beatings
start

Two years ago, I spoke to a homeschooling mother who had left after
violent beatings. Her daughter was about to graduate from homeschool
but could not even get a ride to the California Homeschool Network
graduation ceremony. Friends often wash their hands of domestic
violence victims, saying that they brought it upon themselves or it's
not their lives. The mother related that her daughter's brilliant
future as a concert pianist was destroyed by the mother's decision to
leave the violence. She said that any chance of her daughter
attending college had ended when she walked out. She felt sad about
her daughter's situation and was tempted to return for more beatings
for the sake of her daughter. This story is the norm among
stay-at-home moms who have to decide whether their own life is worth
more than their children's health and careers. Most mothers love
their children so much that the answer is unequivocally that they
would stay and gladly die to protect their children's futures. Such
loyalty is never rewarded. If they live long enough to get their
kids into college, loving mothers are treated as if they are little
better than moldy trash.

A lot of times, society blames women for their situation but domestic
violence expert, Dr. Lundy Bancroft explains in Why Does He Do That
that victims of domestic violence are never enablers and that they
really do not have choices. Enablers are people outside the
relationship who accept the batterers with open arms when the violence
becomes apparent.

By the time women imprisoned in the stay-at-home scenario are ready to
go back out into the workforce, there are usually no jobs available to
them and they are ineligible for regular Social Security or disability
benefits. Even if they worked 24/7 for their husbands, unemployment
benefits are unavailable. The U.S. Government treats these
unemployed women as if they don't exist in calculating their
unemployment figures.

There are no federal programs that allow battered women to get HUD
grants to fix their property, refinance loans to save their property
or obtain a job. To obtain food stamps, women generally have to get
their violent husbands to voluntarily come into the food stamp office
and present their identifications and proofs of earnings. Why would
a man who wants his wife dead voluntarily help her get food stamps?

There is no legal counsel available through federal or state law for
battered women. Battery victims have fewer rights than the most
brutal of killers. Attorneys will not take cases pro-bono for
battered women and so battered women are powerless, waiting for their
batterers (who now have all the rights) to come back and finish the
jobs. If a victim is rich or can borrow $60,000 from a deep pocket,
she has a chance. Otherwise, there is little hope.

STATE LAWS AND AGENCIES THAT HELP BATTERERS KILL THEIR VICTIMS

A California Public Utility Commission mandate assists batterers by
helping them to track their victims' movements so they will know
whether their victims are at home or away. This allows them to
better plan the time to either burglarize the victims' houses or
finish what they started before the victims left.

The new smart meters allow anyone who has looked at the outside of a
house's power meter to track the movements of the person or persons
inside. From a remote computer, the batterer/stalker/would-be-killer
can see when the lights are on, where in the house the power is being
used and when the power is turned off for the victim to leave or go to
bed. It is an excellent tool for stalkers. Battering husbands would
have been close enough to their own houses to look at the look at the
codes on the outsides. Even a stranger, a Charles Manson type, could
casually drop by, take a peek and then sit and wait at his computer
terminal. When the meter shows the victim leaving, he can enter and
wait for her return. The Public Utilities Commission has mandated
that these be in every home in California.

District attorneys turn the other check to batterers. Women are
often prosecuted for defending themselves against rapists and would-be
killers. For example, in South Orange County two women on
different occasions were pulled into the bushes by an assailant.
Instead of looking for the assailant, the women were almost prosecuted
for accusing a MAN of attacking them.

In Sonoma County, a beautiful woman was raped by her former husband.
The police did nothing as is the usual case in California. Later she
was attacked again. He had a phone. She did not. She went to the
police station to report the crime and was arrested because he called
them while she was en route to report his attack on her. Though this
man was in possession of, and possibly also involved in child pornography, a probable pedophile, there was also evidence and witnesses to his possession of illegal drugs (not even kept locked up) and prostitution, he was given
full custody of the minor daughter. I know the victim. She is one
of the most honorable, caring women you could ever meet. She has a
small, slight build and doesn't look like she's physically strong
enough to fight off a small, weak man.

Many victims have told me that they also discovered the police were
not interested in taking reports of batteries when they asked for
help. I and my daughter personally reported my husband's violence
and our concern that he would kill me to the police on multiple
occasions. No report was taken back then. One of the times I
called 9-1-1, my husband called them back and said it was a child
playing with the phone. Another time, he told them this in person
and they accepted his statement. At another point, after people in a
shopping center and/or neighbors called the police because they feared
for my safety, the police showed up and spoke first to my husband.
Then one of the officers tried to explain to me that my husband's
violence was caused by invisible physical problems he had and that I
should be more understanding of his violent temper. They did not
want to take a report. At Yosemite, a woman, who intervened, was
verbally attacked and almost physically attacked by my husband.
Though she reported it to the ranger, nothing was done.

After my restraining order, my husband, and another batterer he had
trained, camped out in my mother's house. When I tried to see my
mother, fearing she was in danger, he used my restraining order
against him to keep me away from my mother. The police told me he
had the right to do this because, since he couldn't be within 100
yards of me, that meant I had to stay away from my mother's house when
he was there. She didn't want him there and he had told me she would
be dead before we got him out but that didn't matter to the police.
After all, if I had a restraining order against my husband, why would
I try to see a mother I thought was in danger of being harmed by him?
The police did not care about any danger my husband might pose to
my mother. Batterers like my husband are not the concern of
authorities in my county. The police and authorities seem to be
there only to oppress the weak, confiscate their property and assist
violent batterers when necessary.

Another Orange County victim with a restraining order against her
husband was surprised to find that he had spent a year camped out in
the crawl space above her house. The police weren't interested in
doing anything about it. According to the police, domestic violence
restraining orders are civil and they don't enforce civil orders.
That's not true that they are civil, but without the police to enforce
them, they are unenforceable.

State agencies are not equipped to assist wives who are victims of
domestic violence. Once a girl turns 18, the state doesn't care who
beats or kills her.

Domestic violence shelters are caught up in making money with workers
back-stabbing each other in an effort to keep their jobs while over
95% of the women in the most danger are turned away to risk death.
If you have family you care about or dogs, the shelters don't want
you. When you check on your family or dogs, your batterer might
follow you back to the shelter.

Domestic violence victims often turn to pets for love and they must
discard these pets along with any relatives they might have in order
to enter a shelter. When someone whose ego is beaten down rescues
herself, she isn't likely to throw away the one who loves her the
most- even if it is a dog, a cat, a bird or a distant cousin.

The ultimate insult is where the victims are forced to pay the bills
run up by their batterers. Organizations that try to collect from
victims for their batterers' debts include: Chase, Discover, Wells
Fargo, the City of Santa Ana, the Orange County District Attorney's
office, the Mouton Niquel Water District, San Diego Gas & Electric
Company, the Gas Company, and Cox Cable.

BATTERERS HAVE ALL THE RIGHTS IN A DIVORCE CASE

In divorce court, the spoils go to the person who can afford the best
attorney. Absent a quality attorney, no victim can legally prevent a
batterer from violating the restraints in the divorce summons, prevent
a batterer from harassing or killing her in violation of the domestic
violence restraining order, or prevent a batterer from liquidating all
the victim's assets or the assets of her family and putting her or her
family's money where it cannot be found. Without a good attorney, no
judge will tell a batterer "no" to any of these illegal actions.

No family law attorney in the State of California will represent a
domestic violence victim unless she is rich or has access to lots of
money or unless he thinks he can get it from one of her relatives.
One of my friends got a result she wanted. It took her $60,000
borrowed from relatives. $20,000 is not enough as attorneys take the
money from victims and then do nothing for the victims. I personally
gave an attorney $2500. That attorney took the money for essentially
no work. The firm was gone with the funds in less than four days.
Later, another attorney found me, but he wouldn't do any work at all
for my side of the case or even inform me of important court
appearances. Based on his comments, after four months of no work for
me on his part, it was apparent that his plan was to split my mother's
money with my husband and my husband's attorney. I stood firm to
prevent that from happening and he no longer represents me. If you
are a victim and you only have $2500 or $25,000, cut your losses and
forget about the case. That's the most common advice of people
familiar with the system. That's not enough to make any California
family law attorney care.

Legal Aid is usually available to violent batterers but not their
victims. After the restraining order, the first place a batterer
goes is Legal Aid. It doesn't matter if he is poor or rich. Either
way and even if he is ineligible for Legal Aid, the victim is placed
on a list banning her from using the services of Legal Aid in her
county for the rest of her life.

There is a California law that requires the judge to take domestic
violence into account when setting support. It is California Family
Law code section 4320 (i). Judges ignore this law. Absent an
attorney, the wife is unlikely to get enforcement of this law.
Picture this, it is not uncommon for battering husbands from 30+ year
marriages, in which the wives stayed at home taking care of the kids,
to walk away with paying no support out of six figure salaries while,
at the same time, getting away with disabling their wives and
preventing the wives from working and from even having food money.
This could not happen if judges were more conscientious about
protecting the rights of domestic violence victims.

If you have kids, watch out. Judges often give batterers custody of
the children when the victims enter domestic violence shelters. The
stated and well-known principle is that a domestic violence shelter is
no place for children and judges consider children better off with
violent batterers than in shelters.

The restraints in the summons prohibit the husband from transferring
property or from canceling insurance. For victim after victim, this
is simply not enforced. My son said my husband's attorney had advised
him that my husband could get away with violating the law and the
courts would let him, and it turned out my husband's attorney was
correct. My health insurance was canceled while I was in the cardiac
intensive care of the hospital right after a heart operation. My
husband sent a harassing message to me after surgery while I was
recovering. I could keep my insurance if I could pay for it. Of
course, he had taken all my money.

At least, I just had a heart problem which could result in sudden
death if things went badly. Some of my friends, who lost their
insurance after they got their batterers out of their lives, had some
really horrible conditions, like cancer. It is important to note
that pre-existing conditions of a serious nature mean the victims are
uninsurable when their batterers cut their health insurance. Without
medical care, too many victims just wait to die. Isn't this exactly
what the batterers want? Our public officials will do nothing to
stop this injustice. Is this a form of eugenics? Survival of the
batterers?

Often the intent of batterers in crippling their victims by paying no
support, by canceling the insurance and by physically handicapping
them is to punish them, hoping the victims will return and apologize
or die and be no further problem. Most victims go back at least
twice because the justice system is so favorable to the batterers and
battered wives generally have no choice if they want to live. THIS
victim would rather die than go back.

Sometimes the husbands cancel the car insurance and then the brakes or
the steering goes out, leaving the wives without any way to get to
work. This is especially effective if the husband has also cut the
wife's health insurance, making it difficult for her to hike 30 mile
distances over hills to work every day. In much of California, mass
transit is non-existent.

Often the restraining order is a token thrown to the victim. When I
got the temporary restraining order (which preceded the permanent
restraining order) against my husband, the judge crossed off my
mother's name and address. This allowed my husband to camp out in my
mother's house along with another person he was training to become a
batterer. Finally, when we rescued my mother, they had starved and
dehydrated her, broken her dentures, crippled her, stolen her
identification and looted her accounts. During the restraining order
hearing, the judge had sealed the photos of my face and body because
they were so graphic. Why did he let my husband stay with my mom?

Later this same judge gave my husband an ex parte order allowing him
to sell a piece of property in which my husband had no equity. My
mother owned all the equity after the first and second deeds of trust.
My mother was not notified of the hearing and neither was I until
after it was over. The clerk was ordered to sign my name to the
sales documents. My husband's ex parte was supported by false
declarations under penalty of perjury so the judge's actions were not
entirely arbitrary. However, that same judge had previously stated
in court that my husband was not credible. A title search attached
to the false declarations showed my husband had no equity in the
property. Fortunately, my husband's realtor never sold the place and
legally could not, in spite of the ruling, without my mother's
signature. So instead of having to pay restitution, my batterer has
proven that batterers can nearly kill or cripple their victims, take
their life savings and be financially rewarded by the legal system.
There is no downside to trying to killing a woman in the State of
California.

Back to Sonoma County, the young girl who was forced to live with the
pedophile hated the arrangements so much she slashed her wrist.
The judge in that case refused the wife's request for a psych
evaluation of the daughter to protect the girl. Instead, the
mother/rape/battery victim was ordered to undergo her own evaluation
while the girl was forced to stay against her will with the
abuser.

In Orange County, a domestic violence victim is having to fight to
protect the trust of a disabled woman she is helping. The argument
of her batterer is that he should get anything his victim has access
to and apparently the judge could rule in the batterer's favor on
this.

In Northern California, a domestic violence victim who survived to
become a public official previously lost her house, her car and her
health insurance due to bias of the judicial system in favor of
batterers over victims. She has noted that the system is stacked
against women.

NO SURVIVAL HELP FROM STATE AGENCIES FOR CHILD SURVIVORS

College students who come from a background of domestic violence get
no support as they try to survive college. Because of funding cuts,
the University of California at Berkeley throws students out of the
dorm after four semesters. This forces these students to find
apartments close to the university in a violent crime area in order to
continue attending the school. However, apartment owners will not
rent without co-signers. Since batterers often wreck the credit of
their wives and get revenge on their families by refusing to help
their offspring, children from domestic violence backgrounds risk
being thrown into the streets to live as homeless students so they can
continue to attend Cal (Berkeley). This is because neither the
University of California at Berkeley nor the State of California will
back the students up to the apartment owners -- even if the students
have high grades and full financial aid or other resources that would
cover the cost of the apartments. Leaders who have failed to respond
to faxes and emails about this issue include: Dianne Feinstein,
Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown and University of California, Berkeley,
Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. Over the phone, Dianne Feinstein's
office expressed a complete disinterest in preventing top students
from becoming homeless because a domestic batterer would not co-sign
for their living quarters. Dianne Feinstein is running for
re-election in 2012.

While at Berkeley, it was guessed that my daughter had whooping cough.
Though she was a student, the health services at the college did not
provide for a test for this potentially life threatening illness.
She wound up taking antibiotics based on guesswork.

She had once had full coverage but my husband cut her health insurance
in violation of restraints in the divorce summons. Though he broke
the law, nobody in the state enforces that law.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO ANIMALS

Batterers often take out their hatred on animals. Dogs are often
protective of victims and batterers will want to get the sympathetic
animal out of the way.

My two favorite dogs Venus and Cynthia (named after Cynthia McKinney)
are dead. Through a series of events seemingly aimed at crippling me
or ending my life, they lost their lives. Both of these dogs had
attended Democratic conventions and met top political and government
leaders. Venus (pictured in this article) was especially fond of
Cynthia McKinney and that is why Venus's first and only daughter was
named after Congresswoman McKinney. Before her death at less than a
year of age, Cynthia had also met her namesake and had really taken to
her.

Venus hung on for a little while and there was a good chance of saving
her. I took Venus to the 24 hour San Francisco Veterinarian
Specialty Clinic on Alabama Street, where there was a veterinarian
neurologist. They refused to treat her or even let her stay
overnight without thousands of dollars up front. The amount they
wanted was a fraction of the amount of support money my husband owed.
I called my son and asked him to tell my husband that we would be
even if he would just pay them that smaller amount that night to keep
Venus at the hospital. The answer was a refusal, even though it
would have been a drop in the bucket for my husband. I, my friend and
Venus were forced to leave the animal hospital because I could not
come up with that money late night. Without a car, I wound up
wandering the streets of the Bay area begging other veterinarians to
save my dog's life. Venus died. She and her daughter Cynthia were
the kindest, most loving dogs I have ever seen. For me, there loss
is the part of this tragedy I will never get over. From then through
now, I have continued to wish that I could trade my life for the lives
of my dogs. This is not a negative statement about my feelings for
myself but a statement about how special those dogs were. Picture
how it would feel to lose someone you love and later see the person or
persons you feel are responsible laughing about your loss.

WHAT IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

Imagine living every day not knowing whether you will die before the
day is over. Imagine being told over and over again everything you
do is worthless. Even worse, imagine believing it as most domestic
violence victims do. Imagine wanting to leave but knowing that your
loved ones will become collateral damage if you even try. Imagine
living with the constant voice and violence of the man on the
following youtube video, which is of an actual and typical incident.
Picture that this is not a one-time incident but happens every time
you ask to see a doctor or for anything else or try to leave.
Imagine this scene continues day after day after day. Imagine
knowing there is no escape. Because there is no escape if you love
your children or the people in your family or your dogs.

You can choose not to listen or to turn it off. You don't have to
find out what one in every four American women goes through. But a
domestic violence victim cannot turn down the volume or put this on
pause. For domestic violence victims, there is no safe way out and
this never ends until they choose to jump into the fire, risking death
and loss of everything and everyone they love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZobHXLL4mLk

Then realize this. The leaders you voted for in the United States
and California Governments do not care if he kills you. Has even
Kamala Harris done more than pay lip service to opposition to domestic
violence? Of the local leaders, I've found one who cares. She is
in the San Pablo City Council. If you don't live in San Pablo, then
don't count on your local leaders, either. The police don't care if
he kills you. The judges don't care if he kills you. As a domestic
violence victim, you are all alone.

REVOLUTION TIME

One in every four men is a violent batterer. This statistic applies
whether you are looking at Congress, the U.S. Senate, the California
legislature or the slate of California Executives. This is why these
leaders will do nothing to end domestic violence but mouth words and
platitudes. Most women who get into office feel a duty to concede to
a man's agenda, much like a domestic violence victim conceding to the
wishes of her violent husband. If these female office-holders fail
to live up to a man's agenda, they will be put down, made fun of or
otherwise trashed. This whole set-up leaves domestic violence
victims without any champion.

With all the women dying every day in the worst epidemic in American
history, maybe it is time for revolution. We women can let our
leaders know we're fed up. We can make this the number one issue in
every election and run our own candidates who aren't afraid to tell
the truth. The question for leaders will not be "What WILL you do"
but "What HAVE you done and has domestic violence stopped in your
state or district?" We women have the power and right to demand
results, not words. There are more of us than them. We can put
those who fail to act into permanent retirement if we band together.