Will Folks (Expanded Posting)

It is hard to have sympathy for Will Folks of South Carolina.

Here is a guy that helped to violate the most basic civil rights of the men and fathers of his state by working with the Governer of South Carolina to "toughen" DV laws. But, he found himself ensnared in the Napoleonic legal trap of the very anti-male DV laws he helped to write.

He got into an argument in the morning with his co-habitating fiancé, who then locked him out of the house. Once he got back in, he says she blocked him as he tried to retrieve things he needed for work and she got bruised while he was trying to get by her. She called the cops.

And, now, he has learned something about being guilty until proven innocent. This sort of thing happens thousands of times per day in our country. A couple, both arguing, bump up against each other, and finally the woman in the equation calls the cops. Often, she knows that with extreme DV laws designed to combat her "patriarchal oppressor," she can do no wrong in the eyes of the law. The guy finds himself guilty until proven innocent and soon is attending a Soviet-styles reeducation camp to have the patriarchal influence reprogrammed out of him.

Seattle and King County are famous for this. The City of Seattle alone employes 11 domestic violence "advocates," which are essentially Women's Studies trained man-haters who see this as their role in the War on Patriarchy. City Attorney Tom Carr says his office spends 11% of it's budget on domestic violence and a whopping 34% of the city's criminal budget is devoted to domestic violence.

Carr was quoted by the Seattle PI saying, "We do 1,500 cases a year and spend a lot of effort to get it right." Wow. Following the gender feminist mythical rant that 95% of victims are women, most of these cases are against men. Don't be fooled by the gender neutral language in Mayor Nickels' five year plan to combat domestic violence. The 11 "advocates" employed in Seattle make sure that it does not apply to women. In the rare case that it does, the female perp is called a "victim-defendant" and prosecutors find a way out of the case.

You'd be excused for thinking that all that money, use of city attorneys, and court time, is major overkill. Worse, though, are the lives and marriages that are ruined by their "no drop" policy that turns domestic squabbles into major legal battlefronts in the War on Patriarchy. And, without such an hysteria driven approach to a over-stated problem combined with misguided solutions, perhaps King County and Seattle could be depended upon to catch the likes of Joseph Edward Duncan instead of letting him go.

Will Folks helped to create this monster in his own neck of the woods. I don't feel sorry for him, do you? Send Folks an e-mail and let him know that it serves him right.

This sort of out-of-control silliness is a disservice to the rare, but genuine cases of severe domestic abuse. (Of which, at least 40% of the victims are male). Sensible Ireland seems to recognize this, perhaps it's time we did too.

I'm looking forward to seeing more male politicians swallowed by the beast they helped to create.