From Capital Weekly News 1/26:

Advocates Push Gender-Neutral Domestic-Violence Laws

A group of men who say they were battered and threatened by their wives got their day in court on Friday. The plaintiffs in Woods vs. California say they were denied their constitutionally-mandated equal protection as they sought shelter services and police safeguards.

The case was heard by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly. The suit names the state’s Department of Health Services, the Department of Corrections and the Office of Emergency Services. It does not seek any damages, but instead is meant to force gender neutral law enforcement and services across key sections of the state’s government, health and penal codes…

Plaintiff Ray Blumhorst said that his case began several years ago when his marriage was falling apart. His wife hit him with a bookstand when he wasn’t looking, he said, putting him on crutches and leaving him with a slight-but-permanent limp. Days later, when the police got involved, he was the one who got arrested, even though he’d never lifted a finger against his wife…

Blumhorst said he sought shelter services for his own safety, but was repeatedly denied by shelters that received state funds but serve only women…

[Attorney Marc] Angelucci said that they nearly had a legislative solution to some of these problems last year. AB 2051 by Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, D-Saratoga, called for several changes in the law to protect the rights of the gay and lesbian community. This included sections relating to shelters and domestic violence enforcement by police. At first these sections written to be gender-neutral, Angelucci said, but after lobbying by feminist groups, they were amended to protect gays and lesbians but not straight men. This is the version signed into law on September 30…

From Capital Weekly News 2/1 (pdf):

Battered Men Seek Equal Protection

[L]obbyist Mike Robinson said that he has found multiple sponsors to draft legislation that would amend California’s domestic-violence laws to apply to “victims,” rather than only to women. He said the language has been approved by the Legislative Counsel. There are several Republicans who have said they are willing to sponsor the legislation, Robinson said, but he is trying to line up a Democratic co-author…

Both Robinson and the Woods plaintiffs said that they are not trying to cut off services to battered women. The issue, they claim, is that there are next to no shelter services for battered men…

From the Capital Weekly 2/8:

OpEd by Attorney Marc Angelucci (pdf) -

While I was a student at UCLA law school, my close friend was assaulted by his wife whenever she drank. She would hit him, kick him, throw broken glass at him and even try to stab him. He was bigger than her, but he refused to hit back and he knew he would probably be arrested if he did. So he just took it. And his children witnessed everything.
One night it was so bad that he asked for help. I was a busy student with a roommate, exams and a Disability Law Society that I founded. I was also not a professional. So I called several hotlines. Then I learned that of at least 25 taxpayer-funded shelters, none would help a man—even with counseling or a hotel arrangement—except Valley Oasis in Lancaster, which was too far away.

This upset me so much that I decided to research it further. I learned that men were traveling hundreds of miles to Valley Oasis because nobody else would help them, that Valley Oasis had to fight politically to help men, and that men were being denied help for political and ideological reasons. I also learned how significant but the problem was.

Men are less likely than women to report the violence to police or on crime surveys (which emphasize crime-based terminology). However, sociological (behavior-based) surveys consistently show women initiate domestic violence as often as men, that they are more likely to use weapons, and that 38 percent of injured victims are men. Professor Martin Fiebert of California State University maintains a bibliography that summarizes this data at www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm.

Some of the studies also asked about context and motives and found self-defense only explained 10 percent of the violence by women and 15 percent of the violence by men. Nonetheless, male victims were publicly seen as an oddball category with virtually no outreach or education for them. California Health and Safety Code Section 124250 excluded men from services.

After graduating, I founded the Los Angeles chapter of the National Coalition of Free Men, a nonprofit organization that looks at how sex discrimination affects men and boys.

Eventually I began filing equal-protection lawsuits to end this discrimination. One of them, filed on behalf of four battered men and one of their daughters, is now pending before the Sacramento Superior Court and was the subject of two recent stories in the Capitol Weekly. In those stories, it was disturbing for me to read some people downplayed male victims due to a lower average injury rate. That does not justify excluding them and their children from outreach and services. Should we excluded women from job safety laws because 92 percent of job deaths happen to men? And, in fact, 38 percent of injured victims are men. Don’t all victims deserve services … period?

Studies show that children who witness the violence they are emotionally damaged regardless of whether injuries occur, and it increases their chances of committing the same violence as adults. Domestic violence is an intergenerational cycle. We cannot stop that cycle by ignoring any amount of the violence. We must follow the example of virtually every other state by changing our domestic violence laws to be gender-inclusive, so that all victims and their children receive services. As the late Dear Abby said, domestic violence is a human problem, not a gender problem.

National Coalition of Free Men - Los Angeles

California Mens Centers