Shedding light on sexual violence
By Easter Khaw
May 15, 2006 9:00 p.m.
Correction appended
Stanley Green is no stranger to domestic violence. His then-wife
once attacked him in an L.A. County parking lot, leaving him with
lacerations, contusions and internal injuries including skeletal
damage and a misaligned rib cage. When police arrived on the scene,
Green said they assumed that she was the victim, especially after
she claimed he had been trying to steal their co-insured car.
“They didn’t believe me because she was the woman and
she was the doctor and I was just an engineer,” said Green, a
Stop Abuse for Everyone speaker and YWCA training volunteer.
“So this is about gender and class.” When he asked the
police how he could file a report on the assault, Green said they
would not help him because they did not believe his story.
“They said, “˜We’re not taking reports from you.
You’re lucky we’re not hauling you off to
jail,'” he said. Green is one of an unknown number of
male victims of intimate partner violence. As campus groups hold
events during Women for Change Week this week, organizers and
campus officials are noting that men can also be victims. Though
the majority of reported victims of sexual violence are female,
male victims “comprise a large, hidden class who face severe
public neglect,” said alumnus Marc Angelucci, president and
founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Coalition of
Free Men. “The politically correct way to talk about it is
women victims and male abusers,” said Angelluci, who has
spoken at the UCLA Clothesline Project display. Green said domestic
violence service has improved for male victims since he was
attacked in December 1990 but still has a ways to go. Until
recently, only the Valley Oasis Center in Lancaster provided full
services to male and female victims. “While men can now get
services in some programs … they still get a lower standard of
service,” Green said. He said he was abused before the car
incident and continued to be abused after it, including at a church
potluck. He tried calling many local domestic abuse centers listed
in the phone book seeking advice; he found that they only serviced
female victims. His ex-wife never took responsibility for her
actions, and Green was unable to persuade prosecutors to press
charges against her. Though authorities rejected his case several
times, he said he was not discouraged because the trauma therapy he
underwent following the attack helped him become more assertive.
Following the national outreach of the past few decades encouraging
female victims of sexual violence to come forward, the number of
cases reported increased. The same needs to be done for men,
Angelucci said. Tina Oakland, director for the UCLA Center for
Women & Men, said the center’s men’s outreach
programs are for this purpose. Though more women go to the center
seeking help, Oakland said this does not mean that men are not also
victims, but added that not as many men come forward and men tend
to wait longer to do so. However, she said the center’s
programs designed specifically for men have had successful
turnouts. “We know that there are some circumstances because
of gender socialization that are harder for men,” Oakland
said. “(Intimate partner violence) is no less traumatizing
for a man than it is for a woman.” The center also has a Web
site and forum, www.eguy.ucla.edu, specifically for men to discuss
sensitive subjects with other men. “There are things that men
are willing to discuss with other men around that they’re
less willing to discuss (with women present),” Oakland said.
Oakland and Angelucci said some men do not go to the authorities
because they often feel shame and embarrassment, especially if the
abusing partners appear smaller and weaker. “They think they
can take it,” Angelucci said. “You keep it private; you
deal with it somehow.” The prevailing attitude that men are
the perpetrators and women are victims has also impeded public
knowledge of intimate partner violence against males, Angelucci
said. “The movement that drove the (awareness of domestic
violence) has been a feminist moment, and they have wanted to frame
it a certain way,” Angelucci said. UCLA Clothesline Project
executive co-chair Alexis Flyer, who graduated last quarter, said
society has preconceived notions about domestic violence.
“That’s a big stereotype ““ that survivors are all
women,” Flyer said. “(Domestic violence against men)
happens a lot more than we think.” Angelucci said he is
thinking of having members of the community make papier-mache masks
during future Clothesline displays to show how male victims are
neither seen nor heard. Though Angelucci has not discussed the
possibility directly with the UCLA Clothesline Project yet,
co-chair Julie Siegel said she thought it was “an awesome
idea.” “I think that’s really empowering,”
she said. “A lot of male survivors are silenced because they
don’t feel that they have as many resources as female
survivors do.” Angelucci stressed that the influence of
domestic violence, no matter how mild, goes beyond the partners
involved; it also affects their children, who will learn from their
parents’ example. “The worst victims of this are their
children,” Angelucci said. “We need to inform male
victims and their children that there are not alone. We need to
make the statistics known.” The coalition also transports
male victims to Valley Oasis and provides them with emergency
shelter if needed, Angelucci said. As recently as March, members
helped two men from the East Coast get to the Lancaster center
because no one else would shelter them, Angelucci said. One of the
men is still at the center. “We need to drop the gender
politics and realize that this is a human issue and not a gender
issue,” Angelucci said. “Everyone needs service and
treatment when they’re victimized.”
