Abstract
The current paper provides a detailed and exhaustive analysis of the contemporary ethical problem that has more than significant social and legal consequences. In particular, the respective paragraphs of the current study are discussing the theoretical and practical perspectives concerning the crimes against women in their most casual and the most underreported form – the acts of violence by their intimate partners. For this particular purpose, the current International, European and American legislature concerning the acts of violence against women have been offered by the beginning of the paper along with the brief insight to the background information that is required to effectively comprehend its statements. Further, two most prominent cases are being discussed, which have happened in the United States and still remain disputed from both ethical and legal points of view. The paper draws corresponding conclusions and recommends continuing the research related to the problem of crime against women and the variety of acts of violence against them.
All types of crimes, including violence against women has generally been an inevitable part of human history from the ancient times. The forms of violence against women vary significantly including but not limited to different kinds of domestic violence, sexual forms violence including trafficking/slavery etc. Correspondingly, it appears more than obvious that the scholarly research is more than required to estimate different kinds of crimes against women along with shedding light on cases of crimes against women. As a result, the current study recommends the corresponding amendments to the respective codes of criminal legislation that are responsible for handling such cases due to the fact that even nowadays not all the cases of crimes against women are being detected, analyzed and further solved adequately and effectively.
In addition, the mass media including TV shows of both entertaining and educational type are currently depicting the crimes against women as mostly unorthodox and heinous; moreover, the media discussing real criminal cases of violence against women tend to neglect significant details about the acts of violence; furthermore, the images of female victims were also rather discriminative. Thus, a detailed and explicit research is required about all possible aspects of violence against women starting from the background history of these crimes and to effectively determining an actual victim of a crime without any system manipulations. What is more important in this regard, the current project also aims to determine the pathology of purpose or any adequate reasoning as to why any person would willingly violate the rights of any woman, including acts of violence against her.
For this particular purpose in accordance with the topic of the research, the following paragraphs are going to address the variety of definitions of crimes against women along with their respective components in their broad variety. Furthermore, the same paragraphs will clearly highlight the negative and positive outcomes of selecting a set of particular policies and regulations in favor of other ones. In addition, the inclusion of examples of relevant cases with both negative and positive outcomes will be considered and profoundly analyzed along with the respective case studies that also discuss the traits, characteristics and details of judicial decisions and considerations regarding the denying and granting the guilty pleas.
In total, the overall structure of the current project will be consisted of the brief introduction to the project’s main topic, which will further develop into analyzing the real cases related to it and finally the research will offer a set of conclusions and recommendations concerning the research questions in accordance with a particular ethical position that will also be introduced, defined and analyzed in the further sections of the current paper. Therefore, it is believed that the current project, its analysis and further recommendations drawn from it will contribute to gradual shift in modern legal procedures considering the cases of violence against women making them even more professional and adequate.
Firstly, it is necessary addressing the violence against the women as the violation of fundamental human rights. In particular, it is an obvious case of violation of human dignity, which can also develop to a violation of the right to life. Further, it is also the clear and extreme representation of inequality on a gender basis. Nevertheless, the cases of violence against women remain to exist in almost every society in the world also encompassing various forms of sexual, physical and/or any form of psychological abuse. Still, disregarding the scale of such social and anthropological trend with its negative consequences on the social systems, the cases of violence remain both underreported and significantly under-researched, especially in the fundamental areas of this issue. For this particular purpose, the following paragraphs will start with the survey of 42 thousand women conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). This particular survey reports all cases of violence against women within all the member-states of the European Union along with their nature and consequences (FRA, 2014).
It is true that women can also perpetrate violence and it is more than true to state that boys and men can also become victims of violence caused by the representatives of both sexes; however, according to the results of the aforementioned survey, the predominant share of criminals accused of acts of violence against women is the men. Moreover, this appears more than true when it comes to considering any forms of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Taking into consideration the aforementioned facts, it is worth stating that the majority of crimes against women can be defined as a form of violence on a gender basis (FRA, 2014).
In majority of the member-states of the European Union, the cases of domestic violence and the cases of violence against women has been always defined as a matter of private consideration, in which the state had had only a nominal role of judge. It was only in the 1990s, when the issues related to violence against women appeared to be one of the major concerns. Since then, the crimes against women and all forms of violence against them have received adequate political and legal recognition with launch of the respective institutions having an obligation to protect and assist the victims.
Nevertheless, even with this official recognition of the problem, not all the forms of violence against women are being addressed by the European legislation. In particular, it offers the respective provisions concerning the female trafficking and female genital mutilation due to the fact that such issues of discrimination and inequality affect the humanity on the global scale. However, the majority of violence forms are being neglected by the EU legislation, for example the Directive 2006/54/EC concerning sexual harassment clearly demonstrates that (European Parliament, 2016).
Furthermore, the legislation lacks the source data concerning the acts of violence against women, especially in its exactness and adequacy. For example, the police and criminal authorities data contains significant distortions of the information that also distort the objective reality concerning the criminal case. For example, once considering an act of rate, the criminal analytics tend to report significant “attrition rates” for rape, which means that the rapists are being officially accused of considerably rarer in comparison to an actual number of registered acts of rape (Daly & Bouhours, 2010).
Thus, the continuous lack of adequate and comprehensive information regarding each act of violence against women negatively influences the formation of an effective legal system protecting women due to the fact that the officials cannot afford themselves to base any provisions on uncertain and unclear statistics concerning a particular problem. Thus, it appears necessary to gather exact and explicit statistics related to the problems of violence against women.
Just like it has been stated previously, it was only in the 1990s, when the problem of violence against women was officially recognized and legally addressed, as a result. In particular, in 1992, the gender-based violence was defined as “violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately” by the General Recommendation of the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) (UN Women, 1992). The next year, the direct definition to the term of violence against women was defined: “violence against women’ means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (UN General Assembly, 1993).
Therefore, it is worth concluding in this regard that the fundamental area of this problem still remains unclear, disputed and under-researched. In fact, not only do the European officials lack the adequate source data to address the problem of crimes against women, but also the respective committees of UN with the representatives of civil society cannot agree upon the unique and standardized definition of violence against woman and corresponding act of crime. In other words, despite the colossal efforts of the International and European authorities to solve this issue on a legal basis, there is still much to investigate and evaluate. Due to the reasons mentioned above, the cases related to the crimes against women appear to be the prerogatives of judges that are solving each particular case and upon their own discretion. In other words, the current system of justice lacks the necessary objectivity. Correspondingly, in order to figure this out and to either prove or nullify the statement about the subjectivity of judicial decisions while solving the criminal cases related to violence against women, it is worth analyzing the relevant of them.
The first case to consider is the case of 1999, “United States v. Helem”, during which the defendant was accused of two-count indictment. The first one charged him with “interstate domestic violence in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2261(a)(2) and 2261(b) and Count Two charged him with kidnaping in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)” ("FindLaw's United States Fourth Circuit case and opinions.", 1999). However, to have a clearer understanding of the charges and the case in general it is necessary discussing the background of the case and all its respective details that have resulted the judge and the jury to draw the aforementioned verdict.
The defendant, Charles Helem, and the victim, Denise Custis Helem, were married in a month after their first meeting in 1996 and lived in their apartment in Laurelton, Maryland. During their personal relationships, the victim has been beaten four times without any severe consequences and without any respective engagement from the representatives of police. However, after the last act of violence in 12.1996, the victim left the apartment and moved to her mother’s and sister’s apartment. The court has also been informed that during that time period, the couple maintained communications and the defendant tried to consult with the specialists about his problem with anger management. Still, without any mutual agreement and no solution of their personal problem, Denise Helem returned to the apartment on the 24th of March 1997 in order to pack her things and finally talk to her husband. In fact, he arrived while she was packing her belongings. Afterwards, a police officer arrived in order to serve Denise Helem with “a criminal summons for second degree assault on a complaint that the defendant filed against her” ("FindLaw's United States Fourth Circuit case and opinions.", 1999). Obviously the accusations were false and after the officer figured that out, he left the apartment.
Having finished her conversation with defendant and having packed her things, Denise Helem intended to leave the apartment. However, the defendant grabbed her from behind in a choke hold pulling her into the bedroom. He continued choking and beating her also verbally threating to kill her. He kept on choking and beating her along with accusing her of not loving him until she managed to say that she loved him. Having heard that, the defendant released her and stopped the beating also asking for the victim’s forgiveness. Being afraid of someone seeing his wife in such condition, the defendant forcibly left the city and the state with the victim. During the trip she could barely speak during the damage caused to her neck and her face; thus, she could not cry for someone’s help even during the stops in several cities. Eventually they reached Fayetteville in North Carolina, where the victim was brought to the Southeastern Regional Medical Center’s emergency room. Certainly, during the victim’s inability to speak, the defendant lied to the medical personnel about the real reasons of her injuries simply making out a story of some car accident.
Nevertheless, the victim managed to tell the medical personnel about the real cause of the injuries; as a result, they called the police, the defendant was further arrested and charged of the aforementioned accusations. Despite the defendant’s attempts to defend himself by stating that there have not been any act of violence after they reached the border of the state and by asking the judge to prove that the victim have not been assisting to cross the border, as well, the defendant was defined as guilty in accordance with the aforementioned indictment ("FindLaw's United States Fourth Circuit case and opinions.", 1999). In addition to undisputed evidence provided by the police and corresponding provisions of current legislature of the US, the claims of the defendant could not be satisfied and he could not be justified in any case.
Another similar case of interstate domestic violence is the case “U.S. v. Page” of 1999. The defendant was also accused of the same act of interstate domestic violence under the previously mentioned provision of the US legislature. In short, the defendant had prohibited the victim from living his apartment with the help of violence caused by a blunt weapon. During the course of several hours, he beat his victim with his fists, a pipe wrench and a claw hammer.
The further scenario was almost identical to the previously mentioned case, as the defendant tried to leave the state with the victim. During the trip, he did not even touch the victim, which also was offered to the court as an evidence of absence of any kind of violence during the travel. In particular, the defendant drove through West Virginia into Pennsylvania seeking evasion from the state prosecution. Afterwards, the defendant delivered his victim to the local hospital there. Nevertheless, despite the fact that there was not any act of physical violence during the travel, he did threaten the victim to push her out of the car if she attempts to seek any help or medical treatment (United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit., 1999).
Further, the victim was left at the hospital, where she managed to inform the medical staff about the act of violence and inform the police about it. During the hearing of the court, the defendant has been accused of the similar indictment; correspondingly, the only provision of the American legislature was the “interstate domestic violence” indictment that appeared to be disputable among the jury due to the fact that the act of violence before the travel is not included in the legal explanation of this indictment. In fact, that particular fact forced the court’s panel to arrange another trial, during which the defendant’s aggressive behavior and his threats during the travel have been defined as act of violence during the trip, which corresponded the accusations of interstate domestic violence (United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit., 1999).
Having looked through all the details and provisions regarding the crimes against women, it is worth concluding that the current level of legislative preparedness and level of protection of women from any possible acts of violence appears to be dramatically low. It is worth accepting that the provisions discussed further are the respective achievements of the modern legal system despite the fact that they are still remaining unclear and could be disputed by an experienced lawyer protecting a defendant. It appears obvious that both the European and the American legislative standards are not covering all the possible issues and questions related to the problem of violence against women. It is true that these provisions cover the most severe and the most resonant problems that are related to women, still, even nowadays the women are not being completely protected by the law and not granted any legal protection even from domestic violence.
Furthermore, it is worth concluding that these cases demonstrating the acts of violence against women had their inevitable and obvious examples of evidence, where both women have been somehow delivered to the respective medical institutions. Obviously, the medical staff with the police representatives have figured out that the injuries had been caused not by accident, intentionally and with a severe level of anger and hatred. Thus, these women have been given a chance for legal protection. However, it is still worth reminding about the thousands of women suffering from regular acts of violence and not getting any help from legal and force structures, while the rest of beaten victims are found dead some day without any clue who had done that. Even neglecting the Middle Eastern cultures and social system, where the women are constantly being discriminated, the level of helplessness even of Western women remain significantly high, when it comes to crimes against women and especially acts of violence caused by their intimate partners.
Correspondingly, it is recommended to keep on researching the current topic and further developing the legal system of both the European Union, the US and the International Institutions responsible for guaranteeing the human rights for everyone. In particular, more exact and more explicit methods of conducting and adjusting the protective legal provisions are needed along with more adequate methods of reporting and gathering evidence about even the smallest acts of crime against women.
References
Daly, K. & Bouhours, B. (2010). Rape and Attrition in the Legal Process: A Comparative Analysis of Five Countries. Crime And Justice, 39(1), 565-650. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/653101
European Parliament,. (2016). REPORT on the application of Directive 2006/54/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2006 on the implementation of the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment of men and women in matters of employment and occupation - A8-0213/2015. Europarl.europa.eu. Retrieved 30 May 2016, from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A8-2015-0213+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
FindLaw's United States Fourth Circuit case and opinions.. (1999). Findlaw. Retrieved 30 May 2016, from http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-4th-circuit/1279873.html
FRA,. (2014). Violence against women: an EU-wide survey. Luxebourgh: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
UN General Assembly,. (1993). A/RES/48/104. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. Un.org. Retrieved 30 May 2016, from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/48/a48r104.htm
UN Women,. (2016). General recommendations made by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Un.org. Retrieved 30 May 2016, from http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/recomm.htm
United States Court of Appeals,Sixth Circuit.,. (1999). UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Derek Duane PAGE, Defendant-Appellant. Findlaw. Retrieved 30 May 2016, from http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-circuit/1078607.html
