Protecting Women

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13623730.post-1120176627505977972005-07-01T00:12:00.000-05:002005-06-30T19:19:53.043-05:00Protecting Women - Or Not<div align="left">I thought that in light of Zoe’s post, this article raises several important issues. Supreme Court Decision Weakening Restraining Orders Short-Shrifted in the News 6/28/2005 - In its last day before summer recess, the Supreme Court issued decisions on six cases, only two of which, the decisions to outlaw copies of the Ten Commandments at a Kentucky courthouse and to protect copyrighted material in Internet file sharing, were widely covered by the media. In a troubling but all too familiar trend in media reporting, Castle Rock, Colorado v. Gonzales – a case that <a href="http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=9121">weakens enforcement of restraining orders</a> in domestic violence cases – was largely ignored. In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of her mandatory court-ordered restraining order against her husband. Gonzales had filed a $30 million lawsuit against the Castle Rock, Colorado police department for failing to respond to five phone calls she made reporting a violation of the restraining order. The town of Castle Rock, backed by the Bush administration and several police organizations, won their argument that it would be unrealistic to enforce every restraining order. With the vast majority of restraining orders requested by women, according to the National Center for Violent Crime, the Castle Rock decision puts women’s lives in jeopardy and potentially lets police departments off the hook for failing to enforce mandatory orders. <a href="http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswire.asp">http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswire.asp</a> I read this article and could barely believe it. Do we really live in an age where file sharing and the Ten Commandments are more newsworthy than the fact that the Supreme Court just made the decision that its perfectly acceptable for restraining orders not to be enforced? It only gets worse when you read the details of this disturbing case. In the early evening of June 22, 1999, Simon Gonzales violated the restraining order his estranged wife obtained against him and abducted his three young daughters while they were playing outside of their home in Castle Rock, Colo. Once Jessica Gonzales realized her daughters were missing, she suspected that her husband, who had a history of erratic and suicidal behavior, had taken them. At about 7:30 p.m., she made her first phone call to the Castle Rock Police Department, requesting that the restraining order against her husband be enforced.She produced a copy of the order for the police officers sent to her home, but they told her there was nothing they could do. They suggested she call the police department again if her daughters did not return home by 10 p.m. Soon after the officers left, Jessica Gonzales spoke to her husband on his cell phone, and he told her he was with the girls at an amusement park in Denver, about 40 miles north of Castle Rock. She called the police department again and demanded that police find and arrest her husband. The officer she spoke with refused and again told her to wait until 10 p.m. When 10 p.m. came and there was no sign of her daughters, she again called, and the dispatcher told her to wait for another two hours. At midnight, she again informed the dispatcher that they were still missing and went to her husband's apartment, finding no one home. From there, she placed another call to the police department and was advised to wait for police. She waited until 12:50 a.m., then went to the police station. There, an officer took an incident report but made no effort to enforce the restraining order or locate the children. He went to dinner instead. Nearly eight hours after Jessica Gonzales first contacted police, at about 3:20 a.m., Simon Gonzales arrived at the police station in his truck and opened fire on the station with a semi-automatic handgun purchased after abducting his daughters. He was fatally shot during the shootout, and police found the bodies of the three young girls, who were murdered by their father earlier in the evening, in the cab of the truck. </div><a href="http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/~secure/docket/"><a href="http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/~secure/docket/">http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/~secure/docket/</a></a>mt/archives/001896.php Mrs Gonzales followed all the legal procedures she could have - she got a restraining order, she notified the police when it was breached - and still, she was failed by the system. She trusted the police and her government to protect her and her children - they let her down. And now, nobody even wants to take responsibility. “Why doesn’t she leave him?” society sneers at women who stay in abusive relationships. “Why won’t the Supreme Court support the rights of women who do?” feminists everywhere should reply. Lauranoreply@blogger.com