How VAWA Weakens Families and Grows the Government
The Violence Against Women Act, first passed in 1994, was designed to reduce domestic violence. But is it working?
VAWA’s $480 million budget is focused on ramping up the criminal justice system response: mandatory arrest, no-drop prosecutions that remove prosecutorial discretion, and harsh punishments. But the reality is, most victims don’t want their partner to be incarcerated, they just want the abuse to stop.
VAWA has had another untoward effect: weakening the family structure. VAWA has done this in several ways;
- Portraying men as abusers and batterers, making women wary of their husbands and boyfriends, thereby diminishing trust and respect between the sexes.
- Incentivizing false allegations of abuse (free legal help, priority on low-income housing, free-pass to foreign nationals to get a Green Card and eventual citizenship), and not sanctioning false accusers.
- Failing to address the leading causes of intimate partner violence: alcohol abuse, mental illness, and marital discord. This allows these problems to fester and worsen.
- Taxing marriage licenses to support abuse shelters, thereby creating the false impression that marriage increases the risk of violence.
- In many states, banning mediation or couples counseling if an allegation of abuse has been made.
- Lobbying efforts by state domestic violence coalitions to marginalize father involvement following divorce.
The annual taxpayer costs for federal poverty programs arising from family fragmentation and fatherlessness are conservatively estimated at $100 billion to $112 billion. By conservative estimates, American taxpayers are paying $20 billion annually to support single-parent families that have been harmed by a false allegation of domestic violence.
These concerns are worsened in low-income minority communities, where the absence of a wage-earner can push a family into welfare dependency, creating more demand for government services.