Domestic violence registry: Could it help stop the hurt?

Submitted by Mastodon on Fri, 2014-06-06 18:37

Article here. Excerpt:

'The recent murders of four family members in Petersburg has one Virginian man fighting for state lawmakers to create a domestic violence registry, similar to the sexual predator registry.

Marlow Jones created an online petition that proposes a person with two protective orders filed against him or her within one year would have to register as a “domestic violence offender,” just like a violent sexual offender has to register for a minimum of five years.

LINK: Jones’ online petition

“It’s a win-win situation for everybody,” Jones told WAVY.com. “You and I can use it for our daughters, our daughters can use it when they date.”

However, some attorneys question whether a registry is constitutional, including Portsmouth’s Richard Davis.

“I don’t think it is legal. I mean, you have to be tried, you have to be convicted, you have to be charged before you can get some sort of sentence like that, and that is a sentence,” Davis said.

Davis points to issues with the sex offender registry, cases, for instance, where an 18-year-old dating a 16-year-old is blacklisted for life.

“That’s probably worse than jail, being on the registry for years and years and years, and you can’t do much of anything about it,” he said.

Women at a local domestic violence shelter voiced concern that it could victimize their clients again. If a woman fights back, or even if she doesn’t, her abuser can take a protective order against her, too.'

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Comments

This is a horrible idea. Simply because such a setup would be ripe for abuse for anyone with an axe to grind. Jilted ex-girlfriend is upset with you? Well, all she has to do is take up two restraining orders by saying that she's "afraid", and presto, your life is essentially ruined for the next x years. I hope they scrap this.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Sun, 2014-06-08 21:00

In places where a mere application for a R.O. from a female is met with assent by default, a woman can file one one day and another the next and that's that. A man files one? A hearing is needed, etc.

Finding more ways to give women the tools to use the big daddy state to coerce men into doing *whatever* is the idea here, or to find ways to get back at them for some real or perceived relationship-related sleight. After all, how many of such R.O.s actually amount to anything tangible in terms of stopping truly dangerous people of either sex from assaulting/stalking someone else? Nutty people like that don't care about R.O.s, and "the system" knows it. But what R.O.s do do is form the basis for allowing men (and the occasional woman) to be summarily booted from their homes during a divorce (or at its outset) and given no practical recourse against it. Feminist call it "empowerment". I call it legalized legal system exploitation and a violation of several articles in the Bill of Rights. (Yeah, that old thing... but MANN regulars already know I think the US Con'n was abrogated over 200 years ago, so no surprise there.)

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2014-06-08 22:19