To begin, we must cover the problems with intervening in instances of domestic abuse because the reason so much of it goes unanswered for is messy and stupid. The public is not the best gage of who is dangerous and who is not. Their verdict falls along the lines of their cognitive biases and rationalizations. Oxytocin and other influences will make people defend those they like and oppose those they don’t. Working in politics, I am acutely cognizant of how sociopaths can be mistaken for good people. If, for example, a victim is financially dependent on their abuser then they must rely on the community. Not the state. Which means the community must defy their own feelings.
The etiology of most domestic abuse, and I mean the acute physical kind, is a domination complex, a possession complex, and/or a sadistic complex. This is important to understand because I have been domestically abused in the physical sense to the point my mother evicted my father from our house for four months in Spring 2012 for attacking me and my child psychologist told my father to stop corperal punlishment of me when I was late 10. Also, I have been labelled a creep for non-violent, non-sexual, reasons but the police have intervened against me. The reason I have two police reports on me, three on-record disciplinary infractions at my college, and a suspension on my record for non-violent, non-sexual, instances but my father has completely gotten away with violence is because I am safe but weird while he is dangerous but normal. Responses need to be according to etiology and dangerous people need to be categorized differently than non-dangerous people. Not punished more but classified, qualitatively, differently.
This is, in part, why I hold the police in dismally low regard. They have obliged karens to make my life a living hell when I wasn’t dangerous but they didn’t do anything when I was in danger. In their defense, there is isn’t any way for them to be anything else. They’re powerless in most cases of domestic abuse because the victim is usually dependent on their abuser so the victim has a choice between incarcerating their source of food and continuing to endure the abuse. The police are not a great social program for abuse victims since they do not have any capacity to do anything except protect a victim from acute violence. When it comes to chronic needs, they’re useless. Also, they have no capacity handle the messy situation of being related to an abuser and not wanting to alienate them. When you call the police on someone, it tends to ruin relationships. No one should have to choose between effectively disowning their family and safety.
In the case of my father, what works best is to go after his ego. To make him understand he is powerless in a situation and conditin him to surrender his desire to dominate. If he ended up in jail, he may climb to the top of the social hierarchy or something like that. It would not make him safe to be around, he needs treatment. The best way to handle these situations is to remove the victim from danger and treat the pathology of the abuser. This is a utilitarian, not deontological, approach. The deontological approach would be to assign an appropriate-feeling volume of punishment. My approach, the utilitarian approach, is to solve the problems without regard to punishment. To move the victim to safety and the abuser to treatment. Our problems will likely be fixed if he is cured of his pathology, which won’t happen if he comes out of the criminal justice system.
The Autistic Resistance 