Violence Against Women Act

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The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) is a United States federal law. It was passed as Title IV, sec. 40001-40703 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 HR 3355 and signed as Public Law 103-322 by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994. It provided $1.6 billion to enhance investigation and prosecution of the violent crime perpetrated against women, increased pre-trial detention of the accused, provided for automatic and mandatory restitution of those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted.

The National Organization of Women heralded the bill as "the greatest breakthrough in civil rights for women in nearly two decades." The American Civil Liberties Union derided the Act as "troubling", saying that the increased penalties were rash, the increased pretrial detention was "repugnant" to the US Constitution, the mandatory HIV testing of those only charged but not convicted is an infringement of a citizen’s right to privacy and the edict for automatic payment of full restitution was non-judicious in their paper "Analysis of Major Civil Liberties Abuses in the Crime Bill Conference Report as Passed by the House and the Senate", dated September 29, 1994. However, the ACLU has supported its reauthorization on the condition that the "unconstitutional DNA provision" be removed.^[1]

VAWA and the 1994 Crime Bill in general was supported by Congressional Democrats and President Clinton and opposed by then minority Congressional Republicans with a few exceptions. [1]

Ironically, Paula Jones' attorneys Susan Carpenter-McMillan, Gilbert Davis and Joseph Cammarata would use VAWA in winning arguments one year later to allow a civil suit against President Clinton for sexual harassment to proceed. Eventually President Clinton paid an out of court settlement of $850,000 for the harassment of Jones.

In 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States held part of VAWA unconstitutional in United States v. Morrison. Only the civil rights remedy of VAWA was struck down. The provisions providing program funding were unaffected.

VAWA was reauthorized by Congress in 2000, and again in October 2005, when it passed the Senate unanimously. It is due for further reauthorization in 2010.

[edit] World Health Organisation Multi-country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women 2005

The World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the same year, concluded that civil society and governments have acknowledged that violence against women is a public health policy and human rights concern. Work in this area has resulted in the establishment of international standards, but the task of documenting the magnitude of violence against women and producing reliable, comparative data to guide policy and monitor implementation has been exceedingly difficult. The World Health Organisation Multi-country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence against Women is a response to this difficulty. Published in 2005 it is a groundbreaking study which analysed data from 10 countries and sheds new light on the prevalence of violence against women. It seeks to look at violence against women from a public health policy perspective. The findings will be used to inform a more effective response from government, including the health, justice and social service sectors, as a step towards fulfilling the state’s obligation to eliminate violence against women under international human rights laws.

[edit] Criticisms

Critics of VAWA cite studies, such as the analysis by Martin S. Fiebert of the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, who compliled 195 scholarly investigations: 152 empirical studies and 43 analyses, which demonstrate women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men ^[2] . That aggregate sample size exceeds 175,700. Critics of VAWA contend that the law foolishly relies on a stereotype of women as victims and men as perpetrators, rather than targeting alcoholism and other troubles that cause violence against women. (Such critics claim that this reflects the influence of radical feminists and pro-feminist men on the federal government).^[3] Many men view the VAWA as discriminatory as would be a Violence Against Whites Act toward blacks.

Failure of the courts to prosecute false domestic violence allegations in divorce and custody battles is viewed as advocating false domestic violence accusations in the same manner that claims of maritial infidelity were exaggerated before no fault divorce legislature was enacted to curb this disturbing trend. Thomas Kasper writes in the Illinois Bar Journal, domestic violence measures funded by VAWA readily “become part of the gamesmanship of divorce.”