Protect Republican Woman And Children From Abuse!

Where could these "Women for Kavanaugh" or "Trump," possibly be coming from, and why?

Are they being paid off? One in six women are supposedly victims of rape in their lifetime; it's virtually guaranteed to include republican women that supposedly support Trump or Kavanaugh, but why? Especially when they're treated with contempt by the men they support. And furthermore, do men really want to vote for a Party or candidates that almost seem to think it should be their right to rape women and cover it up or accept incredibly bad explanations denying it that make no sense whatsoever?

(This was updated below in Jan. 2018 following disclosures about Joni Ernst's claims to have been a victim of sexual harassment by both her ex-husband and someone she knew in college.)

There's little or no doubt that there aren't nearly as many women supporting either Trump or Kavanaugh as either of them are trying to claim, and the majority of women are against them both; however most polls indicate that over fifty percent of non-Hispanic white women voted for Trump, and there's little or no chance that Kavanaugh is faking all the women that supposedly support him, although there's some indication that some of them were pressured to do so behind the scenes as I mentioned in Is GOP Committing Political Suicide? Or Is Kavanaugh An Insane PsyOp? including text messages pressuring a former classmate to use a photo from a wedding Kavanaugh and Ramirez attended together; however this back fired and she indicated that Ramirez attended but was nervous around Kavanaugh and wanted to stay away from him, possibly supporting her version, not his. If this classmate was pressured it's possible that others who didn't come forward were also pressured and may have agreed.

Many of these former classmates of Brett Kavanaugh, and perhaps one or more of his female accusers are also from educated backgrounds and might have grown up in the same wealthy neighborhoods that often benefit from an system that may have access to much more economic opportunities, but people may also be more susceptible to pressure from the most powerful people controlling large institutions, including supporters of Kavanaugh. Some of these women might have faced financial or social pressure from within their own social circles including many of his allies.

The sad truth is that politicians and celebrities have an incredibly long history of looking the other way when it's their allies that have been accused of sexual misconduct and expressing self-righteous indignation when it's their opponents. this clearly includes the Democrats that looked the other way at Bill Clinton's affairs, at first in the early nineties they claimed that it was different because he supposedly only had consenting affairs, but when it became clear that some of them weren't consensual the entire Democratic Party, especially Hillary Clinton covered up for his, even ridiculing his accusers at one rally in New Hampshire, where the entire audience laughed along with her, even though her denials were no more credible than Trump's. This also goes for many Hollywood celebrities that defended Clinton, Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein, but then acted as if they were the grassroots leaders of the "Me Too" movement when it went viral.

However, the vast majority of Trump supporters weren't even familiar with Kavanaugh before he was nominated to the Supreme Court, and before these sexual allegations became public most of the polls showed that he was the least popular Supreme Court nominee in history, and the only one with negative approval ratings. However they were perfectly willing to accept his outrageous behavior, and according to numerous viral videos that aren't hard to find on Social Media a lot of them have turned it into a joke and often behave like teenagers, laughing it up, with one heavy set women that has gone viral writing on her shirt "Trump can Grab my" with an arrow pointed to her crotch.

If you Google the phrase "Trump can Grab my" and search for images there are an enormous amount of crude images including a massive effort to sell T-shirts with this phrase and other similar comments, as well as crude comments about Hillary Clinton which dominated the campaign. I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton and have made a few jokes about her myself, but, that's based on her incredibly bad record, and an enormous amount of corruption, and these crude attacks have nothing to do with that and are clearly something that you expect people to grow out of when they get out of junior high school, even most high school kids, that I remember grew out of the trashiest of this type of behavior!

Are these people even aware that elections are supposed to be about hiring the most qualified person for the job and look out for the best interest of the majority of the public?

There's an enormous amount of evidence to indicate that either they're not aware of this or they're more concerned with treating this like a joke and going along with their own crowd, without understanding many if any of the issues they're voting on. For starters, if this wasn't the case, it's hard to imagine so many people would fall for Trump's lies and obnoxious behavior, if this wasn't the case. Many of these Trump supporters have demonstrated with their actions that they have the mentality of a junior high school kid. I thought Hillary Clinton's comment about them being a "basket full of deplorable's" was incredibly crude and clearly not appropriate for a candidate for president; however they often demonstrate there seems to be some truth to it. But why?

The explanation could be very similar to Professor James Garbarino's description of many mass murderers that he researched in prison, "Most of these killers are best understood as untreated, traumatized children who inhabit and control the minds, hearts, and bodies of adult men." Of course, as they often remind anyone that debates how early child abuse leads to escalating violence later in life, the vast majority of abused children don't grow up to be mass murderers; however that doesn't mean they don't suffer long term consequences. And, some of the most common long term consequences include inadequate development of critical thinking skills that enable them to see through many incredibly simple scams, racism, sexism, bullying, other forms of domestic violence short of murder, and the willingness to support political candidates that routinely break their promises and act against the best interests of the majority of their constituents, including both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.



And apparently there's an enormous amount of academic research to support many of these conclusions, although most academics wouldn't quite phrase it that way. This includes why many rape victims might also be Trump supporters without questioning his obvious support for many accused sexual predators, and the fact that one of the predators with the strongest evidence against him may be Trump himself!

This isn't limited to willingness to support sexual predators and make it more difficult to educate the public about how to prevent violence, including rape, or hold predators accountable; it also includes many of his supporters that are willing to support environmental destruction that impacts the working class the most, economic policies that suppress wages for the working class, massive epidemic levels of fraud where the only beneficiaries are those scamming the public, wars based on lies, and many other issues where working class Trump supporters routinely vote against their own best interests.

In many cases they claim to be outraged when Hillary Clinton is involved in epidemic levels of fraud, defending her husband for his own sexual scandals, or some of the same activities Donald Trump routinely supports like wars based on lies; yet they have no objection when he does as much if not worse. During the campaign, and after the election, when Hillary Clinton tried to blame others for her loss, she, and her supporters often claimed that many of the scandals that she was accused of were based on lies; and in some cases they were either outright lies, or exaggeration; however there were also many cases when they were either true or very close. But the problem is that a shocking percentage of the electorate isn't checking the facts to see which is which.

And also, now that there are a fair amount of women defending Trump and Kavanaugh, there are also a lot of people outraged that they're supporting him despite his lack of respect for women, it's leading to an enormous amount of anger from many other women defending women's rights, often without understanding why they would defend them. There may be some justification for this; however, getting angry may only drive these women away, while understanding why they defend those who treat women like crap might help convince them of their errors more effectively especially if their denial is often a result of a dysfunctional upbringing. This leads to a very effective divide and rule tactic by the elites, who often nominate two incredibly bad candidates and benefit when working class people fight among themselves.

The most important reason to treat them may be to prevent violence from escalating in the long term and to help them deal with their own problems; however it may also enable some of these supporters, who many often have ongoing problems with oppression or intimidation from peers to keep them in line, however mild to recognize this and make it much harder for Republic candidates with outrageous beliefs to get elected, and make it more difficult for politicians to force voters to choose between the lesser of two evils.

Previously I have cited the fact that the nineteen states that still allow corporal punishment in schools, and presumably also support it more in homes as well, routinely make it into the top ten for murder rates and rarely, if ever make it into the bottom ten; in 2015-6 these states had average murder rates of 5.98 per hundred thousand, compared to only 4.54 for those that don't. I also reported that the highest rates of violence are routinely in the states that are dominated by Republicans; but instead of recognizing that Republicans do a bad job preventing violence and trying to educate the public about this Democrats routinely make the same appeals to get tough on crime policies that don't work. Joe Biden and both Clinton's are among the worst doing this and during the 2016 primaries I noticed that Bernie Sanders Wins Least Violent States, which are often the ones most likely to be controlled by Democrats, and as it turned out they were the ones Hillary Clinton needed to win.

This correlation wasn't as obvious on the Republican primaries, however both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who was the second most common winner supported conservative get tough on crime policies that don't work. Furthermore, the Democratic Party understood that when they front loaded the Southern states it would give Hillary Clinton an advantage because this is where she polled best, but they should have also understood that she was winning the nomination partly by enabling the states that were much less likely to vote for her in the general election to choose the nomination, and combined with the large number of election irregularities during the primaries enabled Trump to win. If the political operatives studied the research on authoritarianism available in the academic world they would have understood that they're taking advantage of characteristics that make it easier for politicians and political advertisers to manipulate the electorate instead of addressing the legitimate concerns of the public.

The implication of this is that early child abuse, leading to escalating violence later in life also impacts the ability of the electorate to hold their own leaders accountable; this was also supported by Professor Philip Greven's (author of "Spare the Child") conclusion that corporal punishment teaches higher support for authoritarianism, and higher rates of domestic violence and rape. Additional sources could easily be found to show that some of the highest acceptance of pollution, rape, income inequality, and support for wars based on lies, are often concentrated in the same states that still allow corporal punishment in schools. This desensitizes children and teaches them to blindly believe their leaders and makes them more susceptible to cult ideologies.

This helps explain why there appear to be large numbers of conservatives that claim to be "Pro-life," yet oppose improved health care for all, protection of the environment, often even when it's in their own back yard, workers rights, including improved safety regulations that save lives, and education and they often support wars often when they're obviously based on lies. Adults raised in an abusive environment often are much less inclined to recognize political propaganda deceptive ads, war propaganda or other scams, including from televangelists, many of whom are often involved in their own child abuse or sexual scandals.

Before writing this article I wrote to Professor Sherry Hamby, an associate of Professor Murray Straus, who I cited in a previous article from 2015, but since passed away, pointing out that the states with the highest support for corporal punishment also had the highest murder rates and that they were dominated by Republican's, inquiring if there was research to support this; she responded by indicating that there are some studies correlating conservative values, without mentioning Party affiliation, with Rape Myth Acceptance, and cited a few sources as indicated in the following comment:

There's little doubt that there are a fair number of perpetrators in the electorate. There's some research indicating that people with conservative political views are more likely to endorse rape myths, such as:

Anderson, K., Cooper, H., & Okamura, L. (1997). Individual differences and attitudes toward rape: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 295-315.

There's also a lot of the literature is more indirect--for example that conservatives are more likely to endorse traditional sex roles and also people who endorse traditional sex roles are also more likely to endorse rape myths (but not necessarily all in the same sample).

Here's one review:

Suarez, E., & Gadalla, T. M. (2010). Stop blaming the victim: A meta-analysis on rape myths. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 25(11), 2010-2035.

Yes, all types of violence are inter-related. See attached for an overview of that.

Her comment that "all types of violence are inter-related," was a response to my comment, and among good academics this practically goes without saying, it's so fundamental; however it's practically never mentioned by the commercial media and they often give different impressions, so a large percentage of the public almost certainly doesn't understand this, as recent responses to Trump and many other violent crime shows indicates.

The responses from the Republican Party to these accusations against Kavanaugh were more extreme than most public figures have demonstrated in decades, except for a handful of the most fanatical politicians from the most conservative districts, but this also came from the leadership, who should know much better and on at least a couple occasions, including previous comments by Lindsey Graham about how he prosecuted rapists as a lawyer or Judge, indicates that he must have known which raises major questions about why they couldn't have reacted more rationally. However, this was previously a common attitude as indicated in the following excerpt from a book published in 1987:

"License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives" 1987 By David Finkelhor, Kersti Yllö

In most of the United States, a man cannot be prosecuted for raping his wife. Legally, he can sexually assault her in a dark alleyway. He can force her to submit with a knife at her throat. He can ties her up and have sex with her repeatedly, against her will. Whatever the degree of indignity, humiliation, or brutality he may impose on her, he will not wind up in jail for committing a rape.

He may, though, be prosecuted for some other crime that accompanied the rape; for hitting his wife, for threatening her with a weapon, or for kidnapping her. But the criminal charge will not be that he had sex with her against her will, without her consent.

The Illinois rape statute represents a typical case of how husbands are exempted from rape. A man commits rape, it reads, when he has “sexual intercourse with a female, not his wife, by force against her will.” All but twenty states incorporate similar exclusionary language in their laws. In some of the states, a husband retains immunity from prosecution from the moment his wife says “I do” until the ink dries on a divorce decree. By giving a man such immunity, the marriage license can indeed be called a “license to rape.” Additional excerpts

I'm reasonably sure this book and additional criminal trials resulted in at least a few improvements since 1987; however as responses to Kavanaugh's nomination from the right wing shows, among other things it almost certainly didn't result in nearly as many improvements as it could have or should have. A major part of the reason for this might be that many of the most powerful politicians are routinely catering to the most powerful people, primarily their donors, who are often wealthy people they socialize with, and are very slow to respond. Another part of the problem is the media does so little to educate the public about it. the best research on any given subject is always available in alternative media outlets or the academic world but the mass media virtually always provide much more, often obsessive, coverage for the ideological views of the The Power Elite as C. Wright Mills referred to them in 1956, without covering the most important research on any given subject.

As some of the articles Murray Straus wrote, as well as the ones recommended by Sherry Hamby, and more that I found from other sources, listed below show there's much more research available that the mainstream media never covers, and it's often a much better quality, than what they do cover.

One thing they're often careful about in the academic world, is to carefully define things so they'll have a consistent understanding of what they're researching, to avoid misunderstandings, or at least try to, including Rape Myth Acceptance, which defines some of the most common stereotypes about rape that are commonly believed by many people, apparently including a lot of members of Congress. This still isn't a guarantee, but in order to come to a reasonable agreement on many of these myths there has to be a good faith attempt to get it right, which many Republicans clearly don't have and when it's the Democrats being accused they often don't have it either. Some of the myths that most of the academics agree on include “women ask for it” often because she dresses to provocatively or drinks to much, although the same standard often doesn't seem to apply to men, and “rapists are sex-starved, insane, or both.” Another one seems to be, as indicated by Trump, when it suited his political purposes, that if she was raped or almost raped as badly as she claims now then she would have reported it at that time; however the #WhyIDidn'tReport response overwhelmingly raised major doubts about that.

And, of course attitudes about rape or the right to beat wives into submission were different decades ago as indicated by the following ads which weren't considered controversial at one time:





This goes back to a conservative attitude that dates back centuries and often has a lot in common with how they treated slaves who also didn't have any rights. Those in power were literally allowed to beat those out of power into submission for thousands of years and people were taught this was the way it was supposed to be from early childhood. If anyone objected they were often beat even more until they went along with the program; however most people seem to have forgotten this history, and they often demonstrate that we still haven't learned as much as we've led ourselves to believe.

Another major Rape Myth or unjustifiable defense is the common practice of "blaming the victim," which certainly shouldn't be considered an appropriate response, yet the establishment routinely does exactly that; however, it needs to be put in it's proper perspective, and not taken to the opposite extreme. First of all the blame the victim tactic is often accompanied by the implied assumption that the appropriate way to get this thing we call "justice" is to wait until after a crime has been committed then decide what the appropriate punishment is, instead of researching the contributing causes of the crime to prevent it from happening in the first place. When this was described as virtually identical as "vengeance," which is often very similar; the reply was that this works as a deterrent, so seeking punishment is the most effective way to seek "justice."

This sounds very good to most people, however, the evidence indicates that it doesn't work. The same states that use corporal punishment from early childhood to teach justice, have the highest escalating rates of violence including murder; while the other states that often seek a more balanced approach, still using some punishment as a deterrent, but also trying to improve the education system, economic opportunities, and other social programs that have proven far more effective, like the Home Visitor program, often recommended by Professor Garbarino.

The truth also is that all to often when the victim doesn't get treatment they often become the next generation of perpetrators, and they often help the perpetrator to cover up the violence helping to prevent solutions. This has to be acknowledge and taken into consideration, however it needs to be understood that they're only doing this under extreme pressure or after being subject to massive amounts of intimidation and indoctrination. Therefore they shouldn't be blamed for it but treated as part of their recovery.

This abuse teaches the victim to blindly obey their leaders and accept their explanations for just about everything, since they face retaliation otherwise; and when they're part of a larger group that is indoctrinated to adopt the same beliefs they all go into denial together and accept one amazing double standard after another including the claim that powerful people like Kavanaugh are being railroaded, even though there may have been much more evidence against him, if they actually allowed a fair investigation; and there's an incredibly long list of of cases where they make the opposite argument for people of other races, or women, including when Trump called for the execution for the "Central Park Five," before the trial and refused to admit he was wrong even after DNA exonerated them; the Mexicans that he claims are responsible for all this crime despite statistics showing the opposite; and children being detained at the border without access to lawyers and being coerced into separating the from their parents, perhaps even permanently, and many more times where he comes to conclusions that are obviously wrong.



If Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual misconduct then he would be far from the only judge involved in sexual misconduct, there have been at least four other judges, and a teacher who was the daughter of a judge, implicated or forced to resign as a result of credible allegations, although, even when faced with stronge evidence they were often only forced to resign or in the case of Roy Moore losing his Senate election, other Judges include Texas Judge William Adams who was forced to resign after a video of him whipping his disabled daughter went viral (reported nationally Oct. 2011); Arkansas Judge Joseph Boeckmann who was forced to resign after pictures of suspects with cases before him were found on his computer indicating he was exchanging lighter sentences for sexual favors (May 2016), he was later convicted of bribery and forced to do time for that; Alabama Judge Herman Thomas who was implicated in a similar incident, although he was found not guilty at trial, even though the evidence in media reports seemed compelling (Oct. 2009); Shelley Dufresne a former teacher and daughter of an Alabama judge who admitted having sex with a student in 2015 in return for probation and avoiding registering as a sex offender; as I reported in Illusion Of Justice For Sale she was found not guilty of additional charges in 2017.

All of these cases were in the South where they still allow corporal punishment in schools, Alabama and Arkansas are routinely amount the most violent states when it comes to murder rates. There's also a lot of research to indicate that the vast majority of sexual predators were themselves victims before becoming predators, which means that their own victim-hood, without treatment was probably major contributing factor to them becoming sexual predators themselves; and these perpetrators, including Shelley Dufresne may have been victims of one or more of the adults who raised them. It's not unreasonable to speculate under the circumstances if one of her parents, perhaps her father the Judge, might have abused her previously as a child. If you go back farther in history there are more stories of judges ordering spankings as punishment, including the states that have since banned it in schools but even then it was more common in the ones that still allow it, including Judge William J. Obermiller, 77, the Indiana "Spanking Judge" of 1960S who appears to be the most well known one according to Google search.

The most important thing is to recognize the causes that lead people to be violent. Most good academics, including Professor Hamby, agree that all violence, including domestic violence, rape, murder, bullying, and even war, are inter-related; however, if there is one form of violence that is more important than any other when it comes to preventing all of it that would clearly be abuse of children which teaches them that violence is an acceptable method of handling their problems. It also teaches them to accept violence or emotional coercion as a credible source of authority which shouldn't be questioned, which is why abused children are much more likely to accept Rape Myths or deceptive propaganda designed to justify the latest war based on lies.



A couple recent cartoons or Memes have indicated that a few of people outraged by the Kavanaugh nomination have gone too far, including a meme showing Kavanaugh's wife saying "you promised me I would be the only one you sexually assaulted, which might seem close to the truth to some; and a cartoon showing Kavanaugh's daughters praying at their beds for God to forgive their father for being a sexual predator and then committing perjury during the nomination hearings. The later enabled Chelsea Clinton to claim what some perceive as the high ground for justifiably saying that children of politicians should be off limits, as she should have been off-limits when she was thirteen entering the White House; however anyone paying attention to the 2016 campaign or earlier ones might have noticed that she joined in in numerous amounts of unjustified smears after learning politics from her parents. These memes were also used in a weak attempt by Republicans to claim the high ground as well; however, a quick look at many social media accounts by Kavanaugh or Trump supporters shows many more crude memes, often much worse, so this claim is highly hypocritical.

But the point is still sound, victims including women and children should be protected from the retaliation of the powerful; and perhaps even more important, a large segment of the public needs to be taught not to respond well to demagoguery tactics that seem to be working so well for Trump, the GOP and Hillary Clinton. In the long run this will require much better child rearing tactics for some of the most dysfunctional families that continue passing down intimidating and abusive tactics from one generation to another.

Regardless of how or why this campaign has become so insane, hopefully there will be a large number of people that recognize how extreme it's become and there will be a backlash against the extreme abuses of the GOP. However, even if there is, the Democrats aren't providing much better choices, and in addition to this there needs to be much more reporting on the most credible research on this subject, and every other subject, as well.

The mainstream media hasn't even tried to report on much if any of this research during this debate, presumably because they're controlled by the same six for profit oligarchs and it doesn't serve the interests of the executives. Copyright laws also make it harder to find and distribute some of the best research since colleges force people to sign into accounts before accessing a large amount of these papers, and they still don't make it available to those unwilling or unable to pay high fees, sometimes trying to charge $36 dollars for relatively brief papers. Fortunately, unlike the executives controlling the media making the laws or rules about copyright, many of the academics working on this are as concerned if not more concerned about the best interests of the majority so they want to distribute this the most effective way possible. They may also recognize that with computer technology and the internet rapidly improving the cost of preventing the distribution of educational information has been skyrocketing, while the cost of distributing it has been plummeting. This should obviously lead to a debate about better ways to fund good research since copyright has obviously failed, which I'll go into more in my next article.

However I managed to find a fair amount of material which I provided below it it helps, including Murray A. Straus articles on his home page, which was not maintained after he passed away in 2016. In the last year of his life he was apparently giving away digital copies of his work, and wrote about his concerns about copyright in the forward of the second or third edition of "Beating The Devil Out Them" after his previous publisher failed to provide adequate promotion for it, and he had to sue to get his own copyrights back.

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Edit 01/24/2019: Joni Ernst has just come out with numerous admissions that she was a victim of domestic abuse, both by her husband and a victim of rape by someone she knew in college, and that she kept silent about both of these problems for years, until her divorce agreement was leaked and she was confronted by reporters. To the best of my knowledge she hasn't disclosed problems about sexual harassment when she was in the military; however, it is the most authoritarian institution, and people are taught to blindly obey orders and put through a routine hazing process to teach them to stay in line and go along with the program without challenging superiors; and, of course, there are plenty of other sources indicating that there's a major problem with sexual harassment there.

This creates a very awkward situation since she supported both Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, and perhaps more suspects of sexual harassment. She should, of course be encouraged to come out, like others that might have given into pressure, but she has also enabled politicians to push their agenda at the expense of many other women including Christine Blasey Ford. This is a clear indication that she's not an independent voice, and the other four Republican Senators may also be caving under pressure. Of course, Men that supported Brett Kavanaugh's nomination are also a disgrace, including Joe Manchin, who pretends to be a Democrat.

This is also a clear sign that many politicians are routinely pressured behind closed doors to support positions that they might not otherwise support. Clearly one of the solutions to this problem would be to provide fair coverage to all candidates running for office but the mainstream media clearly isn't willing to do that rigging it for limited candidates supporting their agenda by simply not covering honest candidates preventing them from getting name recognition needed to be viable, but that's not the only thing that needs to be addressed.

Divorce filing: U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst says her husband physically attacked her 01/22/2019

Republican Senator Joni Ernst Says She Was Raped in College 01/23/2019

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst says she turned down Trump's offer to be his 2016 running mate because her husband 'hated' her success 01/22/2019

1950s clipping shows how far we've come; or has it?

Kavanaugh allegations: Is what someone does at age 17 relevant? 09/20/2018 Teenage antics are usually "calibrated not to hurt people," said Sherry Hamby, a psychology professor at the University of the South. If a boy covers the mouth of a girl to drown out her screams, "it's pretty clear that you know you don't have consent," she said.

Here's what experts, including Sherry Hamby, who study sexual violence say about the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony 09/28/2018

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network: Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics (Also includes hotlines for victims) One out of Six women are victims of rape or attempted rape.

The National Domestic And Sexual Violence Hotlines

The Web of Violence Exploring Connections Among Different Forms of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse by Sherry Hamby, Ph.D. & John Grych

The Cost of Compartmentalization

For decades, research examining different forms of interpersonal violence has proceeded in relative isolation. Large literatures have been generated on child maltreatment, bullying, intimate partner violence, teen dating violence, sexual violence, and elder abuse with few systematic efforts to understand connections among them. There are exceptions, such as work investigating links between intimate partner violence and child physical abuse, but for the most part, each field of study has developed its own conceptual models, knowledge base, and approaches to intervention. There are historical reasons that these “silos” have developed; different forms of violence have come to public and scientific attention at different times, and the initial work on each understandably sought to document the nature and extent of the problem and to identify ways to prevent it or aid its victims. Although much has been learned about each type of violence, the propensity for research, services, and even entire institutions to organize around single forms of violence or a few closely related types has significant costs as well.

By focusing in on particular types of violence, the field as a whole has failed to recognize the extent to which different forms of interpersonal violence are connected across contexts, over the lifespan from birth through adulthood, and in the lives of victims, perpetrators, and those involved in violence as both victim and perpetrator. Disciplinary silos slow the advance of scientific progress by restricting the flow of information about the causes and correlates of different forms of violence, resulting in the repeated reinvention of conceptual and methodological wheels and reduced opportunities for researchers in one subfield to learn from the insights gleaned in others. Studying the interconnections of different violence types can lead to more comprehensive understanding of how and why violence occurs and to more effective approaches to reducing the number of children, women, and men who become victims.

There have been studies documenting co-occurrence of different forms of violence in a surprisingly large number of disciplines of violence scholarship and practice, but most have addressed only two fairly specific forms of violence, and disciplinary silos and hyper-specialization have meant that this scholarship generally has been conducted in isolation from other work on co-occurrence. Although there have been calls to focus more on the relations among forms of violence in the past (Slep and Heyman 2001), only recently have there been concerted efforts to systematically assess the extent of interconnection across multiple forms of violence (e.g., Finkelhor et al. 2009). This work indicates that the overlap among different forms of violence, even seemingly diverse and unrelated forms, is so great that it can be difficult to identify a group of individuals who have sustained or perpetrated only a single form of violence (see Chap. 2). The high level of violence co-occurrence has important implications for research, intervention, and public policy, and the purpose of this book is to address how knowledge generated in multiple domains can be organized into a larger framework that illuminates the commonalities and patterns among them. We believe that greater recognition of these connections will lead to a more contextualized and comprehensive approach to research, prevention, and intervention on all forms of violence.

What is Gained by Focusing on Co-occurrence?

The most fundamental advantage of a co-occurrence perspective is that it more closely corresponds to the reality of many, if not most, people who are involved in violence in some way. Individuals do not carve up their experiences according to the disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries established by scientists, clinicians, and policymakers. Narrow labels misrepresent and minimize the true burden of violence. Awareness of the interconnections among different forms of violence will provide a more accurate understanding of how violence affects people’s lives, which in turn will facilitate efforts to reduce violence and the suffering that it causes. In the next section, we briefly address the advantages of recognizing the interconnected nature of different forms of interpersonal violence for research and for practice.

Benefits for Research

More valid inferences. Studies of a particular type of violence typically identify victims on the basis of their experience with that type of violence, and infer that it is that type of victimization that is related to whatever outcomes are being studied. Any victim group, however, will include many individuals who have experienced victimization in several different domains at the hands of several different perpetrators. Consequently, although outcomes are typically attributed to the form of victimization that is the focus of the study, they are likely to be the result of multiple forms. The same issues hold for studies of perpetrators; single labels such as “batterer,” “bully,” or “rapist” will be incomplete depictions of many individuals’ involvement in violence. Given the high degree of co-occurrence of all forms of violence, studies that assess only a single type of violence and then label the group with that form are fundamentally inaccurate.

Even more disconcertingly, many participants in the comparison group are also likely to be victims of some type of violence and may have many characteristics in common with the “victim” group. Finding minimal differences between “victims” and “nonvictims,” or between “perpetrators” and “nonperpetrators,” can lead to the conclusion that the particular form of violence has little or no effect on whatever construct is the focus of the study. This conclusion could be erroneous if the ostensibly nonviolent group included individuals who had experienced forms of violence that were not assessed in the study but share many of the same risk factors and consequences as the form that was the focus of the study. Complete article

The Complex Dynamics of Victimization: Understanding Differential Vulnerability without Blaming the Victim 06/23/2014 by Sherry Hamby, Ph.D. & John Grych

A perpetrator lurks in a mall parking lot scanning for a “mark”—a victim who he (90% of robbers are male) intends to rob. Just as it is likely that this perpetrator has engaged in other forms of violence in other contexts, there is a good chance that the person he eventually picks will have a prior history of victimization. What is it about the environment the robber has chosen or the characteristics of his victim that leads him to re-victimize someone? Understanding the dynamics of victimization and why multiple victimizations are common for many people will be the focus of this chapter. We will describe a conceptual framework for the possible patterns of interconnection among victimizations and other violence, discuss ways to acknowledge interconnections among victimization without blaming the victim, and explain the various mechanisms that are thought to produce these interconnections. We will close with a few implications of these interconnections for research and clinical work. Before we begin, we would like to offer a note of caution in understanding these patterns. The interconnections among all forms of violence are strong and reliable, but they do not describe every person who has experienced violence. Some incidents of violence are isolated events.

Types of Interconnections

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We believe that there are three primary forces at work. First, the tendency to blame victims is strong in American and other wealthy, individualistic cultures where “just world" beliefs are common (Lerner, 1980). Those who hold these beliefs tend to think that people get the life they deserve and consequently must have done something to cause the bad things that happened to them. Contrast this belief to more fatalistic cultures or to settings where poverty or war teaches almost everyone that sometimes bad things—very bad things—happen to good and innocent people. Further, people tend to systematically underestimate the influence of situational factors in relation to intrapersonal ones. This is such a common phenomenon in American and other individualistic cultures that it has been referred to as the "fundamental attribution error" (Ross, 1977). Famously, people also are much more likely to make this error about others than they are about themselves—the so-called "actor-observer bias" (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). When explaining one’s own actions, the full context of the circumstances and the many situational demands that shape behavior become more apparent. The fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and just-world beliefs are well-known social psychological processes that affect many attributions and can be powerful sources of victim-blaming tendencies. Awareness of these common cognitive biases, however, can help reduce them. Complete article

Anderson, K., Cooper, H., & Okamura, L. (1997). Individual differences and attitudes toward rape: A meta-analytic review.

An overview discusses (a) the importance of rape attitudes, (b) the major rape attitude measures, and (c) the applicability of four theoretical frameworks of hostility toward women to rape attitude maintenance. Findings from 72 studies of rape attitudes and individual differences were quantitatively synthesized. The meta-analysis revealed more rape acceptance for men, older people, and people from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. For men, cognitive predispositions toward perpetrating rape were strong predictors of rape acceptance. For women, experience as and exposure to rape victims were associated with slightly less rape acceptance. Consistent with some theoretical predictions, traditional gender role beliefs, adversarial sexual beliefs, needs for power and dominance, aggressiveness and anger, and conservative political beliefs predicted rape acceptance. Implications for rape education programs and research are discussed.

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Cognitive correlates. Cognitive correlates of attitudes toward rape mainly relate to general aggressiveness, aggressive and nonaggressive sexual behavior, gender role beliefs, and thoughts about women. Burt (1980) suggested that acceptance of interpersonal violence, adversarial sexual beliefs, sex role stereotyping, and sexual conservatism were related to belief structures that tended to accept rape. The first three dimensions indicated by Burt have been correlated with attitudes toward rape in many subsequent studies (e.g., Rapaport & Burkhart, 1984; Ward, 1988). Attitudes toward women's roles, as measured by the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (Spence & Helmreich, 1972; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973), have been posited to increase rape acceptance in several studies (e.g., Deitz, Tiemann Blackwell, Daley, & Bentley, 1982). Conservative ideology, as measured by a variety of scales such as belief in a just world, social consciousness (a measure of liberal ideology), and religiousness, have also been predicted to increase rape acceptance (e.g., Bell et al., 1992; Fischer, 1986; Weir & Wrightsman, 1990).

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For women, the most intriguing implication of the findings for rape prevention education comes from a finding that failed to appear: Women who were the victims of sexual coercion or who were exposed to such victims did not express significantly more negative attitudes toward rape. If we assume that at least part of this relation is caused by rape victims engaging in self-blame, then interventions that expressly dismiss the self-blame explanation for rape may lessen rape victims' feelings of guilt and trauma.

Recommendations for Future Research

Our conjectures about effective content for rape education programs included two conclusions that were largely speculative. The first was that exposing men to rapists who express remorse for their actions may be of dubious, if not counterproductive, effect. The second was that education programs that "inoculate" women against self-blame explanations for rape might decrease the trauma associated with rape. Both of these suggestions call for empirical validation. ..... Complete article

30 Alarming Statistics That Show The Reality Of Sexual Violence In America 04/06/2017

Trump Lambasts Democrats As 'Angry Left-Wing Mob,' 'Party Of Crime' At Kansas Rally 10/07/2018

Why I wore a "grab my pussy, I dare you" T-shirt to a Trump rally 10/12/2016

Murray A. Straus articles on his home page

Investigators face big hurdles in church child abuse cases 11/13/2017

The Complex Dynamics of Victimization: Understanding Differential Vulnerability without Blaming the Victim January 2014

Stop Blaming the Victim: A Meta-Analysis on Rape Myths 01/11/2010 by Eliana Suarez and Tahany M. Gadalla

Rape as Torture: The Psychology and Motivations of Perpetrators by Zhi Ping Teo

Regarding Male victims of Sexual Assault December 2002

Melania Trump Says #MeToo Accusers Must Show ‘Really Hard Evidence’ 10/10/2018

Rape Myth Acceptance In College Students: A Literature Review 2nd Qtr. 2008

True Colors: Police Officers and Rape Myth Acceptance Amy Dellinger Page, Ph.D. 2010

Rape Myth Acceptance: Implications for Counselor Education Programs Kushmider, K. D., Beebe, J. E., & Black, L. L. 2015

"The Power Elite" by C. Wright Mills

Propaganda by Edward Bernays (1928) THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.



The following are some of my past articles about contributing causes to crime and how to prevent them:

Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows

Does lack of education increase violent crime? Religion?

How much does Income Inequality Affects Crime Rates?

States with high murder rates have larger veteran populations

Teach a soldier to kill and he just might

The tragedy of gambling politics in United States

How does gambling and gun control impact violent crime?

Politics, not technology, caused botched executions

Troy, Cameron, Gary all innocent? And executed?

Democrats do a bad job on crime; Republicans and the Media are worse!!

Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit

Life Insurance and media companies are encouraging lots of murders

Union Busting adds to corrupt bureaucracy and incites crime

Obama’s Opposition to Corporal Punishment Needs to be Finished by Grassroots

Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation Should Become a Priority Again!

Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns!

Growing Evidence Of Mega-Church Fraud Violence & Support For War?

Is Push For Charter Schools Increasing Murder Rates?

Insurance Executives Profit By Inciting Murder Occasionally Paying Killers

Media Glorify Themselves While Still Refusing to Cover Causes of Violence!