The OFF THE BOARD article accuses RADAR of attempting "to take funding away from 'discriminatory' women's-only shelters, rather than fighting for resources for male victims of domestic violence and sexual harassment". Had the writer done her homework, she'd have discovered that people have been "fighting for resources for male victims of domestic violence" for decades, and for just as long it's been the people running the women's shelters who've been playing the role of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. Since the late 1970s, women-only shelters have used their huge political clout to prevent the allocation of any resources for male victims, and have made it impossible for men in need of help to find any help.
One example of this is the experience of Pat Overberg, who ran the Valley Oasis Shelter (VOS) outside L.A. for much of the 1980s and 1990s. In a 2002 affidavit18, she recounts the hostile and unprofessional way she was treated by directors of other shelters for the transgression of offering help to men as well as women. VOS was the only shelter in the nation that offered help to men, so many men traveled great distances to get help. Overberg states, "During my tenure as director of VOS I was subjected to continuous abuse by other directors for sheltering battered men." At a government-sponsored fact-finding meeting, the chairwoman, who was also director of a battered women's shelter tried to silence Overberg whenever she raised the issue of the need to provide services for battered men. And although every other issue discussed in the meeting made it into the minutes, the minutes contained no indication that the issue had even been raised."
http://www.mediaradar.org/alert20100301.php
No comments:
Post a Comment