Get Used to It: Ep. 32, "Domestic Violence in the Lesbian and Gay Community"

uh what's up [Applause] [Music] hi i'm sheila james kewell welcome to get used to it this is our monthly show although some of you may watch it more often on issues of interest to the lesbian gay bisexual transgendered community and today we're going to talk about an issue that's been of interest to every single person in the world as far as i can tell at least for more than the last year and that is domestic violence now domestic violence as we normally hear about it is domestic violence in the heterosexual community however it is not only a dirty little secret in every heterosexual community it's a dirty little secret in the lesbian gay community and today by talking about it we hope that we can bring some information that will be of help to you if you're a victim if you're a batterer if you're a concerned family member or friend we want to talk about how these issues are similar for our community how they might be different and we're very happy to have you with us i'm extremely happy also to have you with us since you're our guests and i'd like to introduce our guests today first dr val coleman who is a therapist who specializes in working with both victims and people who perpetrate violence lesbian and gay and has written her doctoral dissertation on this issue of violence and lesbian relationships welcome back thank you thank you for having me this is jan fogelman jan is a doctoral student soon to be dr fogelman his his dissertation will be on the issue of developing guidelines for batteries treatment programs specifically for members of our community and he is the co-facilitator of a group for battering gays and or lesbians at the la community cert gay and lesbian community services center welcome jan thank you that's a lot of mouthful of all titles and things right and i've still got one to go um our third guest today is laura bloomquist who is the the director of the vertical prosecution unit on domestic violence at the la city attorney's office and has seen a few though not very many cases coming to the city attorney's office of domestic violence in our community welcome everybody thank you val let me start by asking you because we probably have thousands and thousands of people watching our show across the country and even though we've as i said we've gotten a lot of uh i wouldn't even call it information but there's certainly been a lot of interest about domestic violence but i'm not sure that people really quite get it uh in terms of just the dynamics generally not only for the lesbian gay community but just out in the world what uh sort of is domestic violence 101a okay what are the dynamics of a uh a battering relationship as you've seen them okay well actually first what i'd like to do so just start with the definition of battering in domestic violence because a lot of people are not you know even sure what those terms mean and i guess a good way to think about it or helpful way to think about it is that battering or domestic violence is sort of the use of intimidation coercion terrorism violence to sort of control or kind of you know assume and use power over someone else to kind of get them to do things that you feel like you would like them to do so that can be a range of things it could be physical violence sexual violence emotional and psychological abuse um or all of those things but it's a pattern of intimidation and control really it would threats would count too so threats wouldn't just count like in the legal definition but it seems as though in in a number of relationships you see that one person is kind of afraid of the other person right but you say well has he ever hit you and they say well no but there's still some dynamic there and the reason he hasn't hit you is because you've done absolutely everything he demanded you do right so there's some aspect of sort of altering your own life to try to keep from having this kind of abuse yeah because if you let's say i i'm someone who is a batterer and you're my partner i may not ever have to hit you but you know if you've done something that displeases me and i give you a look that's really terrifying or very intimidating you know that if you do that again or if you sort of you know step out of line that it could move into physical violence and so you start to feel very intimidated and sort of have that walking on eggshells kind of feeling and start to set it kind of they want to second-guess me so that you don't do anything to upset me but you know the mythology about this is that somebody just went out of control they couldn't control themselves and they hit you and of course they're sorry and you forgive them so that i think again people generally looking in the fishbowl of a relationship say well um it you know i don't i don't get this yeah i think that's a very common misperception in terms of people thinking that the batter has just gone out of control and for the batter themselves oftentimes batters feel like you know i just lost control and it's it's really myself who's being victimized here you hurt my feelings and i'm just you know that's the only way i have to let you know about that or you know try to get back at you in some way but the reality is that battering and the use of intimidation it is about power and control and taking and abusing power and control in a relationship over someone else and oftentimes and i'm sure that you'll talk more about this having worked with batters your batterers make choices in terms of the abuse that they you know do and choices about how to abuse these kinds of things that sometimes they're not so conscious of i know a lot of people say well what is it that causes domestic violence and i like to say you know it would be the same if you asked a question what causes a hammer i mean violence is a tool essentially that someone will use to take power over someone else and of course the most commonly asked question in domestic violence is why doesn't she leave yeah i mean people say people who feel more empowered than victims feel i would get out first sign of something like that boy i would get out why doesn't she leave well it's a very complicated complex situation really and what um you know for one thing batterers actually have many tactics that they use to sort of you know achieve enhanced power and control over their partner isolating the victim intimidating threatening calling names sort of both physical means and very psychological means so what happens for the victim is that they often feel like you know there is no way out and they become sort of really locked into this psychological control with the batter and i think that there are two helpful ways of thinking about it one is about the cycle of violence which lenore walker first identified you know sort of the late 70s and i can sort of go through that and explain what that is um please the cycle of violence is sort of a cycle that we frequently see in relationships and that the violence increases in frequency and severity over time and i guess you know one way to think about it is how when you know you get involved with someone initially there's sort of a you know kind of bonding and the person that you're involved with is very charismatic very loving very caring you come together for what seem like really good reasons and then there's some tension that may start to build and often in battering relationships what you see is the batter becoming a bit more controlling and um you know sort of more possessive a little bit jealous and at first that may feel very flattering to the partner um you know they want to be with me all the time that feels really great they don't want me to be with them right you know they're jealous isn't that cute right you know i feel so special and wanted um and then what happens is so that's sort of the initial phase up here then you move into sort of some tension because you know all of a sudden you realize that you're being restricted in a way um or there might be some little fights that develop intention building in in the batterer too and there's this barely controlled kind of temper right becoming very angry about you know feeling like you know your attention is directed elsewhere um i told you not to talk to those people or why are you going out with her you know that upsets me why don't you want to spend time with me those kinds of things um and so there's tension that's building in the relationship and then there can be what's sort of called a minor incident which may be a fight or a verbal argument doesn't have to be physical at that point but it could be and then after the minor incident there's a more serious incident usually and that often if the minor incident has been some sort of verbal argument the major incident may be some physical violence such as a push or a shove it could be a batter you know coming home and sort of having a very bad stressful day wanting dinner to be ready not wanting you to be on the phone talking to your friend exploding blowing up throwing things hitting you those sorts of things ripping the phone cord out of the wall and then after that incident there's a honeymoon phase now this has a lot to do with why people stay in the relationship that in that honeymoon phase the batter expresses a great deal of sorrow it's very apologetic and often my experience anyway has been that for many batters that's they genuinely feel sorry about it they sort of feel like you know i don't know why i got so out of control you know but if you hadn't have done if you didn't do those things that made me so upset you know i don't like it when dinner's not ready on time or when you know something you did yeah people often say that to you too right well he did what did you do what'd you do to make him mad right yeah right and so you know what happens is that the battered spouse or partner starts to feel like wow maybe it is something that i did i better stop you know that makes him or her so upset why do i keep doing those things and they start to change their behavior and they start to feel like the batter is maybe really going to change because they're so apologetic they're bringing flowers they're saying you know i'm not gonna i won't do that ever again so there's all this hope and there's this reuniting that happens you know and the other thing that goes along with that that we've learned from sort of hostage syndrome is that there's also this intense bonding that can happen between the person that's terrorizing a victim and the victim where they feel like they're actually being taken care of and we see it with child abuse as well you know where the child is being abused but the person they have to turn to as a protector is also the abuser and that happens all the time in domestic violence also an enormous dependency it by the batterer i mean i it's interesting to me as the cycle escalates after the honeymoon period the tension builds again there's a more serious incident another honeymoon more serious but at the moment that also from my experience a reason why a victim may not leave as well is that just when they decide they're going to leave it becomes very dangerous for them and the batterer may threaten to kill himself or her can't make up his mind or maybe the children right i mean a lot of very serious threats and of course almost 2 000 women we know are killed every year in battering incidents um let me ask you jan you you agreed with a lot of what val has said about batteries you work specifically with batterers tell me tell us a little more if you can about the dynamics of i mean what's going on it's it's much easier for me to sympathize with the victim i feel like this batterer is some kind of criminal and of course as we'll find out in a minute he is or she is but what's going on with the batter what's that dynamic about the battery often feels like a victim himself or herself and and they feel like it's the other person's fault and that tendency to blame some other person and to lay responsibility on the other is a very common thing for matters to do well if only he hadn't said that i wouldn't have had to hit him or well i just i just panicked and and i felt like i just had to do something to get him to stop yelling at me and and that kind of says well it was his yelling that really caused this uh not my hitting him or her and and so that they they often feel um the fear of abandonment like well i've got to keep them from leaving if they leave me i will be gone so there's a strong dependency element there by the batterer feeling dependent on the on the partner to stay and also a lot of possessiveness when you were talking about isolation yes i've noticed that a lot of times the battery will say your mother's a troublemaker i don't want you talking to her anymore those friends who are you know supportive um they're troublemakers i don't want you seeing them anymore do you find that with in terms of them also blaming other people who have pulled the victims away uh identifying they seem to be experts at identifying other support systems for their partner and getting rid of that support a lot of it includes homophobic type things like reminding the partner of you have nowhere to go there's nobody who's going to listen to you a social worker is not going to believe you in this in the states where it's still a crime to be gay and lesbian uh admitting domestic violence is tantamount to admitting to a crime itself so it it just reinforces the idea the law is not going to be there for you a judge is not going to believe you and of course in heterosexual relationships because we haven't yet talked about sort of our similarities and differences but in in general there's this same feeling where a batterer will say well they're not going to help you the courts won't help you i'll get the kids you know the police aren't interested in this they're going to think you're lying and he's very cool when the police come and cheat of course is a wreck because the victim is a wreck from from the violence so it actually works all quite a bit in favor of the battery it does but you're working with people who have come to a group they're not sent to your group i mean the court actually does now sort of sentence people to go to groups but not gay people right they come or at least not to the center so they come to you voluntarily why do they why do they come to you usually it's it's uh out of the remorse often after having done something and really recognizing that they hurt or damaged the the partner they're truly sorry and regretful so a lot of people also come to us out of uh repeated failed relationships where they realize this is continuing to not work for me something's going on here maybe it has to do with my anger those little explosions they have sometimes now is there a program that works for batters yes works and it needs to be long-term uh-huh it needs to uh really focus on challenging the person's use of these tactics to control their partners but also getting at that feeling of victimization that almost every batterer comes in with and recognizing the validity of it while challenging their use of tactics on other people but then long-term support like like alcoholics or drug users need long-term support even if it's just to check in once in a while people need some place to go to get validation and encouragement and support not to revert to controlling patterns well now the question is we heard about the dynamic does the law really help or not we'll be back in a minute pick up your telephone right now and call the number on your screen find out how you can enrich your family values by learning about your gay children we had no idea what the gay community was like learn how these parents deal with their fears about attending parents flag meeting one of my biggest fears was that i would see someone that i knew call the telephone number on your screen right now and see how these parents have taken themselves to acceptance and beyond because that parent does not know the positives yet about the gay community hi welcome back to get used to it i'm your host sheila cuell and today we're talking about domestic violence in the lesbian gay community not a subject that you hear very much about so we're happy to be able to do at least an hour on it we talked with val coleman about the dynamics of battering with jan fogelman about batterers sort of profile and the group that he co-facilitates and now talk to laura bloomquist from the city attorney's office in los angeles about the law this was a secret a sort of a family secret generally for years in heterosexual families the law didn't want to intervene you know families were not to be interfered with but finally i think contiguous with the women's movement in the 70s women started saying no you know it's my law too right i think it really ought to work for us will you tell us a little bit about what the law at least in california will do in terms of domestic violence well certainly for the as as it will do for the heterosexual it will do for the homosexual assuming that you have a willing law enforcement agency and a willing prosecutorial agency california has specifically three laws that are normally used one is 273.5 which is our spousal abuse law and we call it spousal abuse but it doesn't have to be spousal abuse actually it is someone who cohabits with another that's recently it up until recently that was specific to heterosexuals it was a man and a woman now that has been removed from the law and it's anyone who cohabits with a couple other little provisos in it but a gay couple living together would certainly qualify under that and when you say 273.5 that's the penal code i'm sorry that means it's a crime it's absolutely a crime it is a crime to hit or use physical force against anyone period what and that's of course always been a crime under the battery statutes and you can't commit a battery on someone but over the years with spousal abuse coming to the forefront 273.5 was added to the california statutes which takes a six months high or six month maximum on a 242 of battery and now makes it a year and adds several other things with it domestic violence counseling and that kind of thing so we we have at our disposal a battery statute a statute for cohabitat abuse and one for dating relationships where you haven't lived together or don't live together but um it elevates it to the year maximum and in addition of course we it not in the criminal law as every other state we have available restraining orders that you can go to the court and get and now there's a consideration required in custody determinations in terms of the judge having to look at domestic violence in the relationship and then make some decisions about how custody is going to be allocated but the city attorney's office prosecutes crimes that's essentially that's right and actually a violation of any court order is also a crime so you can get a temporary restraining order and a violation of that restraining order is a separate crime in and of itself and stalking too which is a separate crime i think california was the first state to enact a stalking statute because the experience of victims often was that they might not be hit after they've sort of gotten away but every night you know the guy standing in front of the house or they're being followed and they and it's it's like a threat oh it's very much a threat i mean as a matter of fact the law defines it as a credible threat and that it's not just somebody hanging out on your doorstep it i mean there's an ominousness to it right and that's the thing i love about this law is that every year it more reflects the victim's real experience right and it was so hard to convince people that that was an important thing you know to put in so how many cases do you prosecute in the city attorney's office in la over the course of a year domestic violence in and of itself right approximately 13 to 15 000 would we just we're just doing new statistics but it appears that statutes all together are various branches somewhere between 13 and 15 000. so it must be pretty prevalent in society i mean you value probably have some statistics yeah i can give you an idea what the research has shown in terms of heterosexual couples um and it's a wide range because of course with research we always end up with various ranges um but anywhere from i think it's 28 percent to 55 percent of all couples um there has been domestic violence some acts of violence repeated acts of violence and there's also been research on gay and lesbian domestic violence and is that very different um it's actually fairly comparable the rates of those studies show a range of between like 25 percent to 48 percent so really we're looking at very comparable rates between the two so laura when you um prosecute batterers or accused batterers do you prosecute them in front of a jury yes well it's that's dependent upon whether or not the defendant wants to select a jury he can go in front of a judge and a judge alone or he can ask for a jury trial normally it's left up the people have a right to a jury trial as well but normally it's the defendant who makes a selection now you hear a lot about recalcitrant witnesses people complaining or the mythology out in society or law enforcement saying we were here four times we arrested the guy and then she wouldn't be a witness so why should we do this but you've made a different decision in the city attorney's office about prosecuting without a witness yes we have um we have found that somewhere and this is a matter of experience for me and we have no hardcore statistics on it but somewhere around 75 percent or better 75 to 80 85 percent of our victims are what we call recanting which means that once they get to the courtroom they've been subpoenaed in now they get to the courtroom and now the injuries are as a result of falling down the stairs opening the refrigerator fridge refrigerator door into my you know into my head or whatever it is or very often i started it it was all self-defense i picked i was threatening him with a lamp he had to hit me what what the outcome to that is that we have no willing victim we have no witness to get on the stand and now verify what the arrest report says i mean the arrest report says that they arrived police arrived she was hysterical she was you know had a red swollen cheek and maybe a black eye she tells them my husband did this over an argument over money or whatever the argument is or in gay relationships over whatever i mean it's all the same kind of things well i have the same kind of issues um then that changed we no longer have anyone to testify to that it's um our position that we are pursuing the cases as if we have no victim and that is that we are going to prepare our cases for the likelihood that she won't be testifying on our behalf and so we will go via what's called spontaneous statements which are her initial statements to the police officer photographs that the officer has taken at the scene calls which are usually very helpful because they're very true i mean at that point she's screaming and she's yelling and you know and she wants some kind of help right then and there her statements to the officer anything or any obviously any other witnesses or corroboration that we could we can find but we're not going to count on having her which means we're going to go more and more people get very angry at victims for not testifying but my experience with them is i mean they're righteously afraid often they're threatened um that's what i i would think what any smart batterer would do you testify against me and you're dead right and that can be by phone call and that's not very obvious to the prosecutor or whatever well they're frightened i mean there's no doubt that a portion of them are fighting a whole lot of them are very angry at you for for um upsetting their life all they wanted to do was to stop this that night that saturday night at nine o'clock they just wanted somebody to come by and say cut it out and then they wanted to go on to and and now they find themselves in the middle of a criminal prosecution and they don't want it well also this is their relationship i know absolutely we know and we it's sort of a joke i guess you know in the lesbian community that our relationships never really end no matter what happens and i mean that that kind of bonding yes in both gay and lesbian relationships is i don't know i don't mean that it's stronger but to some extent because often we're isolated from other parts of the world or from our families we're even more kind of dependent on that person is is the dynamic as we've talked about it in terms of how violence happens and why it happens um any different in our relationships val the reason i ask is because the final mythology really i want to talk about in terms of this is well this is about gender men are so empowered in the world and men are violent and they express themselves aggressively women are you know raised to be passive and they don't have the resources in the world and all of the actual real true gender differences that can help that dynamic in a heterosexual relationship so that we know 96 97 percent of batterers and heterosexual relationships are the men yes but here we come to our community now this doesn't quite work we've got two women we've got two men how is it different yeah well it is in many ways it's the same in terms of the cycle of violence the you know physical abuse that occurs all those tactics many of them are similar but yes it's very different in terms of that it doesn't fit into what we have conceived of as being the causes of domestic violence that have to do with the patriarchy and gender and the power of men over women and the reality is that again going back to the definition that it's really not about male female it's about power and control over another person and there is no you know sort of difference therefore in terms of who gets to necessarily hold that power um and what we tend to see in gay lesbian relationships as well is that you know it could be the partner that's bigger and stronger or more butch who may be battering it could also be a partner that's you know sort of more feminine or smaller in statute it doesn't have to her stature it doesn't have to necessarily go along any kind of gender or gender role lines and there are many people who sort of have this sort of butch femme mythology that you know gay and lesbian relationships there's a butcher right it's all about these roles and that so if someone's abusing it's got to be a butch and they're abusing a femme and it really cuts across all kinds of you know different classes races roles etc and i think again it's it's not at all about gender in and of itself it is about you know in the head sexual domestic violence heterosexism and sexism allows men to hold the power into better women and homophobia is a tool in our community that helps keep the silence and helps people sort of maintain and abuse power and control over their partners um jan you find that in your group as well i mean that in terms of who has committed the abuse and the relationship well we really have to do a lot of work at assessing who is doing what because there is no clear general gender differentiation here in heterosexual couples like 98 percent of the the victims are women and injuries are to women and that just doesn't hold up in same-sex domestic violence because both men are aggressively physical or no they might not be but it's two men and nobody can just identify the man as the abuser or with two women the more butch or either woman has the abuse does that make it harder for people to kind of tell their story oh yeah and it's very difficult for men either heterosexually battered men or or gay men to admit having been abused yeah i think that's general i think it's very difficult i think for people at large to demean themselves or feel that their their dignity has been you know attacked in some respect and they have to get i know on a witness stand people have to get up and say i've been a victim and that's you know that's something that's kind of demeaning and it's embarrassing and it's amazing for everybody and it's especially embarrassing for men it seems to admit they've been injured or abused absolutely and especially if they're a bigger maybe more masculine looking man it can being hit by a smaller man it makes it even more difficult for them to admit that i'm larger but i'm still the victim but we found interesting i mean interestingly enough we found that males about five percent of our cases are female um defendants and in heterosexual cases is what i'm talking about the males are virtually a hundred percent recanting they virtually will do anything to avoid getting on the witness stand and saying i'm a victim and i certainly i can't see any different why it would be any different than you know when you have two men dynamics of two men well but there are differences too in terms of coming out i mean coming out as a victim is a there's so much shame involved and this is sort of double that yes because you're not just coming out as a victim essentially you're coming out now not only to the greater world but to some extent really to yourself the other thing and i don't know i know your research was about lesbians but i think lesbians and maybe gay men as well tend to think that our relationships are really better yeah you know we just we we um we put them on a pedestal in terms of how well we're not like that we're not they're going to be we're not i mean women are loving women that's gentle oh boy we got nothing lesbian utopia so what have you found in your research in addition to this that you want to talk about but about women's sort of responsibility or feelings about themselves well yeah i guess you know i think that there has been this whole sort of need to kind of keep it in the closet so to speak because it does violate this idea that we've had about how you know our relationships are egalitarian we don't have the same power issues that you see in heterosexual relationships and women aren't violent and aggressive um and so it has made it very hard i think in the lesbian community for women to really acknowledge the violence that's going on that either they're perpetrating or that it's being perpetrated or even that they may see being perpetrated in in a friendship you know but there's a couple where there's violence going on because it blows that sort of myth of the lesbian community and the difference that we have we have this corner on you know this egalitarian perfect relationship out of the water and so it makes it very hard then to have to come out and acknowledge that we have some of the same struggles that heterosexual couples do in terms of power and control and then it also means the fear of being pathologized by the larger heterosexual community so it can become very hard well in your uh research too you tell a little about how you conducted your research because i think you interviewed well what i did was i did it was actually surveys that i sent out um and i just asked for lesbian couples who'd been together six months or more and i got 90 samples back that i was able to use 90 couples and each partner filled out a questionnaire separate from their partner and i looked at a variety of things in terms of frequency and severity of violence different dynamics in the relationship you know work all those kinds of the basic things as well demographics and out of the 90 couples um 42 of the couples there were had repeated acts of violence you know this was just random this was just random put it out it was just random and so and that's 46.6 of that sample i just put it out there um didn't say it was about domestic violence are you saying just any kind of any physical force physical push all the way up but you didn't really need it right yeah it was repeated acts over the past year they had to be have been you know done more than once and of those couples where there was physical violence there was also a great deal of emotional abuse all you know intense psychological emotional abuse that was going on and some sexual abuse and so could you match up the responses of the two partners because i'm interested is there's a lot of denial and i'm just fantasizing that one of them would set out all of this life is wonderful on the other one i'm getting pummeled yeah exactly right well you know see i i had them matched in a way and what i looked at that does kind of get at what you're talking about is sort of what was the consistency rate like in the because i broke them up into groups right couples where there were repeated acts of violence and couples where they weren't and what were the consistency rates of reporting like between the partners in both groups and in the violent group there was significant inconsistency between partners you know where one person was reporting you know this happened to me i got beaten up five times she beat me up in the past year the other partner would be saying no it only happened once that sort of thing so a lot of inconsistency in that way and the other thing that i found was a higher rate of alcohol and drug abuse in the violent group and you know some other variables that are sort of complicated and you know there there also is a mythology that somehow alcohol and drug abuse causes violence but i know that among people who have gotten sober who feel like well that takes care of that i'm sure not going to be violent anymore fine to their chagrin that they still are that this is not maybe the alcohol or the drugs can help you get over your inhibitions against doing this kind of violence if you have any or you use it right uh and victim self-medicate as well right but it becomes an excuse right i mean in sober couples we know that this also goes on right so aids and hiv diagnosis are also cited as as excuses that a lot of men gay men use for the victim both both of them use drugs and alcohol as well as hiv status to excuse violence in terms of well he was just diagnosed or he just got the diagnosis of aids of course he was upset right why should he not have hit me or you know i i told him i didn't like it or or something like that right the victim uses it as as well as the batterer oh i just couldn't help it i just gotten my my diagnosis how could i have not been upset jan this is this is interesting um two i wanted to check something with you um a friend of mine who works with uh hiv-positive women has found that sometimes men will be sexually violent when they're hiv-positive straight men or bisexual men and as an aspect of assault or violence will have forced sex with them unprotected and they then become hiv positive do you see anything like this in the or that you've ever seen in the gay community that batterers will will be less caring about safe sex uh as an aspect of their abuse of their partners we haven't seen that in our group probably because we do a volunteer population i don't like that would be an awful thing to admit too in a way and i and i'm not sure whether people really see it um but you know that that aspect of it it sort of exacerbates the uh it's another kind of violence that can be done to a person because it's a pretty extreme kind of violence i mean you're talking about possibly killing them ultimately yes infecting them the the book entitled men who beat the men who love them really talks about the effect of aids in hiv in gay male battering and discusses that aspect of it but we haven't seen it want to come back to all of this we're going to take a break don't go away there's still another oh 20 minutes more [Music] why would anybody give someone they don't know a gift they do it because this gift saves lives [Music] and the need for it is desperate [Music] please give blood there's a life to be saved right now call the american red cross at 1 800 give life hi welcome back to get used to it today we're talking about domestic violence in our lesbian gay community yes there is some we've tried to keep it a secret for various reasons but there is some um we were talking about sort of the way domestic violence manifests itself in in our relationships particularly the we try to keep it all a secret we're afraid of coming out but what about the rest of the world in terms of the way they look at our relationships laura do you see many cases come to the prosecutor's office well um recently there's been a change in california law that eliminated the opposite sex requirement under 273.5 there was a requirement that the parties be opposite sex now it's just people who are cohabiting with a intimate relationship and some permanence i see that that's going to make a difference it's going to make a difference because this that is what's called a wobbler in our state which means it could be a felony or a misdemeanor and it requires the police to make an arrest if there's an actual visible injury i think one of the problems with particularly males is that you have two men and i think the attitude is and it's not just homophobic although i'm sure there's plenty of that involved but the attitude is well they're two guys must be a fair fight you know everybody can protect themselves or with women must be a cat fight kind of thing you know and everyone can protect themselves so you guys just you know knock your heads against the wall and we're leaving figure it out yourself um with the change in the law it's now required that an arrest be made of course our problem is getting police officers not to arrest both people but making a logical determination of who the aggressor was well there's a lot of this feeling that that if one person acts in self-defense that you've got mutual combat i mean we were talking about that the other day so how do we sort of go against that that notion right it is very confusing and a lot of people think that there could be mutual battering especially when someone fights back and uses self-defense and part of what you really have to do is do a really good assessment like talking about the police officers as therapists to really get the whole sequence of events and the sequence of the relationship the whole atmosphere of the relationship is really what helps you understand you know is there intimidation going on um because sometimes someone may do me like i may do a physical act to you first as a way of trying to sort of protect myself because i know what's coming or i'm trying to get you know i know that sooner or later i'm going to get it and i'm taking a little control back and then i can be confused and think that i'm battering you feel victimized and it's very confusing for the partners it's confusing for the people on the outside for the police and you have to really get an assessment of the whole relationship go ahead lauren i think for law enforcement that the need for law enforcement whether it be prosecution or police is we have to be able to say okay both people have injuries but let's make a determination is there one set that are defensive wounds you know i mean if someone has you down and they're choking you and you have a hand print around your neck and maybe you know a swollen jaw or whatever and the other person has scratches on their neck now theoretically and i have seen it happen all too many times both parties can be arrested in this in this state because the officers have relinquished any kind of discretion and it's like okay well you both got injuries i'm going to cover myself you're both going um this is the kind of thing i think we need to fight against uh we have to say you know use your common sense you know somebody has a hand on your throat and the other guy has scratches how do you think he got that well most likely by trying to get you off his throat well some states have adopted a definition that includes primary aggressor so that it asks law enforcement to look at who not only initiated but the word primary has something to do with seriousness of the injury you know to make a judgment because in heterosexual couples where there's kids or in our community where there's kids right you don't want both these people and pets now what about pets for a lot of gay and lesbian couples pets seem to perform the same function of companionship of caring of nurturing and a threat against the pet can be just as traumatic as threats against the children as a matter of fact it's not just traumatic but it's a very effective way to take control over someone yeah instead of you know you say and and and they do i mean i i've seen lots of cases where animals are hurt yes by way of showing you what's going to happen to you we just tried one where a guy it was a heterosexual couple but he took a cute little fluffy i mean serious and killed the dog by slamming it up against the wall purposely and purposely killed it and it was by way of saying i'm going you know this is you you're next exactly you know this is you so in in the gay and lesbian cases do you prosecute them the same way yes i mean we we prosecute them in the same way that our preparation and everything is the same the statutes are the same i think a trial attorney has got to look at it in a different way in that they're going to be different things that come up first of all we have to realize that in front of some juries we have less sympathetic victims to the jury never forget we had one case where a young woman was a victim and she had a tattoo that said dyke around her throat i mean those are kinds of things that you're gonna have to think i'm gonna have to say something to this jury you know this jury you don't want your victim to be disliked because they're much more likely to take the aggressor's position and one of the one of the problems with this dual aggressor or two people is that if the police officer can't make a decision i can tell you that a jury won't they will just throw up their hands and say mutual combat or self-defense or how can i reasonably say who started it and so i think that you know everyone has to look at it in a common sensical manner and how do friends and family respond to these issues i mean first of all we talked about the problem of having to come out about it because you can't say you know my roommate's beating me up and i don't want to leave my roommate right right we finally got it as if they didn't know anybody but supposing that your family knows you're in this relationship and you try to get some help what have you had any experience with how family and friends respond uh often family responds by kind of of of rooting for the the breakup of the relationship and so well yes we want to encourage this so they'll break up and friends on the other hand can really encourage staying together no matter what because friends often have an investment in our relationships continuing because if we break up then they might break up or it'll destroy their social you know situation that sort of thing and so friends and family can really respond in opposite ways that way however for gay and lesbian couples it's friends who's often the adoptive family and who are there and present to influence it and a lot of minimization and denial that goes on you know because you don't want to think that that could be happening to your friends or that you know this is going on next door so sort of just kind of turning the other way or not really taking it as serious as it really is and and lesbian and gay victims both get told the line that women were told for centuries and centuries of just try harder try not to upset him try not to upset her try to make it work yeah and it's like whoa wait a minute that could be lethal and also the the sort of the extra thing in terms of the political part of it it took women so long to talk about this and now it's become a very political thing but it's been a lot shall we say in to great extent white women for a long time talking about this women of color having more problems talking about it there are individuals who do it you know it certainly happens but it's more of a threat to a community that's already under threat you know now they're going to think not only are we this this and this but we're violent and that's a bad thing to be so i've seen it in a number of communities i'll never forget i did a panel for 200 jewish women about eight nine years ago it was a luncheon program and they threw rolls at us on the panel that we should dare suggest that a jewish man you know would batter well this doesn't happen anymore i mean i uh of course we have enormous numbers of examples that this happens in every family but our community is also still going let's not let anybody know about this because they already hate us and now they're going to think we're violent instead of these idealized relationships that we have right and this is a downer why we don't really want to have you come and talk about this i mean i've had i've been told that by community groups where other community groups have wanted me to go as a speaker to do some education and the other people sort of you know running the group or whatnot well i don't know this is such a downer why would we want to talk about this you know why making ourselves look bad right right well but we've got to i think um start and certainly there has been a start because of the work that all of you are doing but in terms of of the audience that we reach even with this show i think it's important to sort of make some very firm statements about what we should do i mean this is an issue as you know that i've been working on for 20 years mostly in the heterosexual community but first of all i think we want people to take violence very seriously in their relationships it is dangerous yes um my my partner when we informing the women's law center abby liebman her twin sister was just murdered last month by her husband the sister's husband and everyone says was there any violence did he beat her and the answer was no there was an enormous amount of emotional violence she was afraid for the children but she was leaving and so they make that leap you know you're not going to leave me and it was murder yeah so we have got to know how serious this is for us too that it can be it can be life-threatening it can be life-threatening at the point that you say you're leaving right your greatest likelihood of severe violence is at the time you leave your batterer or attempt to leave your battery and 10 of the women murdered in this country were are murdered by their partners and usually as they're trying to leave a dangerous situation on the other hand we don't want to give the message they better just stay right so the answer to that is really resources don't you think i mean it is resources that that as a community if we're not engaged in such a relationship we need to be there for our friends who are we need to help them identify it and get out of it and what kind of what kind of resources would you advise friends and family who are concerned to think about using realistically for our community well i can tell you one thing i mean one thing is to call the police you know and the interesting thing is that we find that instances of battering go down or stop you can control it by bringing the police in your biggest problem is i know we just just said that your worst problem is when you try to leave and that you know that's an unfortunate paradox but when you call the police in you have a much better likelihood of controlling that situation of stopping that situation and so from our perspective get us involved you know certainly here in los angeles i mean i can't i can't vouch for other places around the country but get us involved we're we're here we're willing our unit is going to have a deputy that is specially assigned to do gay and lesbian uh battering uh cases and so you know we're here to be involved so we'd be real happy to do that the center also has facilities for for dealing with this so we have crisis walk in every day where people can come in and ask for help and and we can take action we also have one of the most comprehensive referral sources at the center of anywhere listing all the shelters uh therapists all the resources for men and for women and it's very very very helpful uh the therapists are and the counselors in the department are getting uh educated and becoming much more aware of dynamics to look for how to assess this who to refer to all of these right and not just for los angeles but there are also resources all over the country that have you know in the last few years have started to be developed and that are ongoing and you know in terms of shelter or um helplines a couple of the shelters in los angeles have specifically made room for battered lesbians yes but not men where do battered gay men there's one shelter that will take men straight or gay oh really in the l.a area yeah you talking about oasis in lancaster yes yeah yeah what about therapists val what should a therapist do they learn about this within the context of the therapist client relationship what can they do well you're talking about in an individual situation yeah that you know first as if a therapist doesn't have any knowledge about domestic violence they need to go out and get consultation um and really educate themselves and it's important you know let's say if you're working with a batter it's important to hold them accountable but not be punitive i mean if we're going to really heal our communities we have to understand both the batterers and the victims so accountability is a very important thing and you know therapist needs to be able to be non-judgmental but be holding the client accountable and working with battered partners the therapist also needs to be very supportive and empowering of that person and not pushing them necessarily though to leave the relationship because one that can be very dangerous to the man or woman may not be at a place where psychologically they feel like they can leave the relationship or financially i mean there could be all kinds of reasons as we talked about good reasons why the person may be staying so to help empower them to be able to make decisions and use resources that are out there contact the police contact the center get involved in a battered lesbian better gay men's support group something like that it's not easy no i mean that's the thing that people have to understand it's not easy to leave a relationship it's not easy to stop battering it's not easy to ask for help often the police may not be very helpful that's right often the the justice system may not be very helpful we're just at the beginning of really dealing with this with this concern and i want to thank all three of you for the work that you're doing and for being on the show and for sharing with us really what you've experienced and what you know i think there have not been really very many exposures about battering in our community and it's a really important thing for us to be talking about so thank you all very very much i want you to pay attention as well if you're a victim or a batterer reach out for some help if your family or neighbors or friends be sure that you're there for the victim don't aid and abet any of this stuff if you're organizing in your community to help the gay and lesbian community make sure that this is a part of it if you're part of the domestic violence movement in any way make sure that you're aware and sensitive to these issues and now that i've given you all your assignments for this month thank you very much for being here and remember we're here we're queer get used to it [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you