Doing Right by Queers Dealing with Violence
My roommates Chuy and Ramón used to laugh whenever any one of us played the soundtrack from the movie Car Wash on the stereo that belonged to Ramón. We would cackle at the story Ramón told of the how the stereo came into his life. It always began with Ramón saying, “Dallas hated that album! Girl, I’ve had to buy that thing a few times!”
Ramón told how the first album met its demise as the three of us sat in our tiny living room swatting at mosquitoes, trying to keep the Texas heat at bay. Dallas, Ramón’s ex-boyfriend, smashed it in a fit of rage.
“I put on the album, turned up the volume and told him to go ahead and shoot; I was tired of all of his drama,” continued Ramón, swishing his drink in one hand and putting the cigarette to his mouth with the other. “He had that gun in his hand and just before he pulled the trigger, he aimed at the stereo that was right behind me,” said Ramón, the laughter making him throw his head back. With the apology that followed, Dallas bought Ramón a new stereo. The guilt stereo we called it.
We laughed every time we heard the story. We should have been horrified that Ramón had almost been killed, but all we could do was laugh.
This was in the early 1980s. I had just come out as a lesbian and found myself living with two gay Chicano activists. We railed against military intervention in Central and South America, embarked on Cuban solidarity trips, and went on to help organize the Austin Latino/a Lesbian Gay Organization. But we never gave the violence that we saw happening in our relationships a second thought. Like the violence aimed at us for being queer, it was just something we managed.
I’ve been out and actively involved in queer movements for liberation for nearly thirty years; I’ve met a LOT of people. Only a handful have not had to manage violence at the hands of an intimate partner; several fought back tooth and nail; and some went on to hurt subsequent partners. A large number came close to losing their lives. Few have talked about their experience. Not one called a domestic violence program, queer where it was available or otherwise, to ask for help.
I am not a researcher; I have no quantifiable and verifiable data to point to as I think about advocacy on behalf of folks who identify as queer, questioning, trans, bi, lesbian, intersex, or gay. There are very few studies or surveys to document these realities.
The only thing I have to work with is my own heart-breaking experience of supporting people I’ve dated or the friends who I call family as they manage the effects of that violence—in the brand of isolation that surviving anti-queer violence breeds. In short, I can only speak for myself.
I was an advocate for over seven years on the National Hotline. I love and deeply appreciate my fellow advocates on the Hotline and at programs around the country; they are my greatest teachers and supporters. Domestic violence programs do outstanding work against tremendous odds. I know that if I were ever to become involved in an abusive relationship, I would not seek help through a domestic violence program, queer or otherwise as my first step. In that regard, I am no different from the majority of the 20,000 callers to the Hotline.
I would likely call my family first, camp out in their homes with my dogs, and burn up my advocate friend’s cell phone minutes.
When I did call for help, I would want the advocate to have an understanding of the ‘flavor’ and context of violence I would be experiencing as a lesbian.
The Northwest Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse does an excellent job of explaining those dynamics beyond the power and control wheel so many advocates are now used to. The information can be found at nwnetwork.org.
Communities United Against Violence shaped their program around an analysis of violence that accounts for the complexities of living in a violent society. Their analysis can be found at cuav.org.
I would want to understand some of my basic legal rights, including whether or not I would be eligible for a protective order. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects has analyzed state statutes; though dated, this information would still be helpful:
I would want the advocate to put a check on their own feelings about lesbians and the rest of us queers. This recent article written by a fundamentalist Christian was eye-opening even to me, and like I said, I’ve been around for a while!
Lastly, I would want that advocate to understand their own experience of bearing witness to trauma. I would want them to be completely present for me. I would need them to be well-rested, well-nourished and self-aware. This book on Trauma Stewardship is a good, thoughtful resource.
I felt a dozen hands on my back as I wrote this blog entry; I am indebted to the people who shaped my perspective by sharing their stories with me. I heard their laughter, their sighs, or the whispered remnants of their stories as I typed. To those, like Ramón, who are no longer alive, I say, “que en paz descansen.” To those, whose hands I still hold and whose stories I am still learning, I say, “milésimas gracias.”
By Lucha
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 pm30 12:13 pm
Categories: share your voice
3 Comments
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Thank you for sharing this story. I am a survivor of a 10 year violent marriage. It’s important that we all speak up about domestic violence. When it is recognized, it usually focuses on stories like my own – abuse of wife and children. However, we need to continue to raise the awareness of victims in same sex relationships and those where men are the victim.
TO: ALL COALITIONS AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Please excuse the informality of this email. As a brief introduction I am an attorney that handles privacy law. I am contacting your group to alert you of pertinent issues of concern, request information, and to request any individual that was attacked after a perpetrator obtained their location from state motor vehicle records to contact me to determine if litigation is necessary related to those that allowed such access to the records.
Please allow me this opportunity to commend your organization and staff on their success, objectives, and assistance to victims of physical and sexual assault. Please excuse the informality of this email. As a brief introduction, I am attorney that represents individuals in privacy litigation. The purpose of this communication is to ALERT your association to the results of my research and investigation, as it pertains to YOUR STATE, and it’s possible effects on your state’s domestic and sexual abuse victims, and to request information. The basis of my knowledge in these areas comes from an extensive research project, covering about four (4) years, involving open records request,and many communications with all state’s Motor vehicle department’s personnel pertaining to their release of motor vehicle records to persons and entities claiming a Driver Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) permissible purpose. Such includes driver license and car registration information. Such is of concern since it includes personal identifying information,referenced within the area of privacy advocates as “PII”: name, address, gender, age. The reason for such inquiries concerned litigation.
While my involvement in this area originally related to litigation of any and all persons and entities that illegally obtained access to protected public records in all states, I hope now that there could be additional benefit to the public by bringing notice of these issues to associations that could use such information to further protect individuals, and to protecting the privacy of any and all state’s residents in this regard. While limited by my professional abilities inherent within the litigation of these matters as it pertains to providing assistance, your association has the ability to accomplish far more than contemplated by the litigation. I must admit that I did not grasp the extent these matters until recently, and was not aware of the magnitude of the risk associated with the illegal release of protected public records to domestic and sexual abuse victims. until recently. While the illegal release of the information was the issue of the litigation, we now fully appreciate, and with much concern, that there are actual victims which have physical harm due to the illegally obtainment of such protected public records. Excluding our duties to represent our clients and their individuals concerns, our objective will be also to make state and federal governmental entities, that apparently did not comprehend the increasing dilemma posed by the Internet and Online Websites illegally obtaining, and releasing documents. Since our research has been quite extensive, we can finally discuss our results to those that would benefit from an understanding of these issues, as such, I thought it best to alert state associations at this time, discuss the results of my research as it pertains to your state, and to also request any information that could assist my research and litigation work.
YOUR STATE’S RELEASE OF PROTECTED PUBLIC RECORDS SHOULD BE OF CONCERN. Since you are on my list of states to send this email to, I can say without issue, I can attest that all victims of sexual and domestic violence WITHIN YOUR STATE are at risk of having their predators access their personal identifying information.I shall send a different letter to those associations in the “protected states”, alerting them to warn their victims about YOUR STATE. The ACP laws, which exist in less than a third of the states,provide limited protection, limited notice,are extremely invasive, and are time consuming to obtain such protection when time is of the essence. While your national association provides lists of all their affiliated state associations that should be provided information on these matters at some point, I have decided to contact the twenty seven (27) state associations within your national associations at this time in order to advise you that I have determined that your state associations should be on heightened ALERT for illegal access to protected public records, and that sexual and domestic abuse victims are not protected by your state Department of Public Safety and Department of Transportation agencies. Such is my conclusion based upon my four (4) years of research. YOUR STATE, and victims within your state, have the misfortune to have made it onto what I refer to as the “RED ALERT STATE LIST”. Such is derived for the purposes of a litigation review. While I was concerned with illegal access to such protected information, I was not honestly aware of the harm caused by such access until recently. I still am still stunned by that news, and as such, I feel that such information should be provided to all involved associations so that actions may be taken to provide notice to victims for their immediate safety. Such is the reason for providing your association this information and communication. It became apparent to me that I had to notify certain associations immediately when I reviewed the basis for the Texas ACP law, which was enacted recently. Noted within the purpose of the actual legislation was the following: “According to the Texas Council of Family Violence, 143 women died in 2005 as a result of domestic violence, some of which might have been avoided if the addresses of family violence victims had been kept confidential. Without the existence of such a program, many victims of family violence do not obtain a driver’s license or register to vote, for fear of making their address open to the public. There is an increasing need for address confidentiality for victims of family violence due to the public”s increased accessibility to personal information”. With all due respect to the state of Texas, the DPPA was enacted in Texas in 2001, and it would be alarming if we knew how many people actually died from 2001 to date due to this illegal release, let alone those that were stalked, harassed, and physically harmed,but not killed. This story has been duplicated in at least twenty-seven (27) states, including YOUR STATE. Whether our professional abilities allow us to bring about grass roots efforts to provide notice and actions, or limited to litigation of those illegally obtaining such records, the sharing of this information is proper at this time.
The origin of my involvement in representing victims of sexual violence, and involvement in this present litigation, originated in 2004-2006 from my legal representation of a rape victim in a civil lawsuit, which included assisting her in the aspects of the criminal trial. We concluded,at a later period, that the predator’s access to my client’s protected public records from an ONLINE WEBSITE, after the assault, allowed him to illegally obtain her newly acquired driver license records with her new address. Such allowed him to locate her after she attempted to find new residence in a new city. Such illegal obtainment resulted in a second confrontation; wherein her apartment door was being kicked in, police were called again, and thankfully the attack was halted that time. Based upon your involvement in assisting victims of domestic and sexual violence, I expect this is a common scenario that you have heard from your victims. Such though provided a basis for my research and present litigation in these areas. While the ONLINE WEBSITE access is of major concern, the initial area of concern is that YOUR STATE is allowing “BULK REQUESTER” to purchase the entire database of your state MVR’s for minimal amount of money on a bi-monthly basis, with limited review, and questionable claimed DPPA permissible purposes. In order to understand the area of law that is at issue, please review the Federal DPPA law, and your state’s DPPA law, which concern access to driver licence and driver registration. Since victims attempt to hide from their predators, relocating to new cities or states, they will need, and be required by law to obtain and register for a new license and car registration if they relocate. As with my client, and I suspect all victims, they have a false sense of security thinking their location noted on their such protected public records were protected!
While NOTICE to the victims of your state and association of these issues is the primary interest of this communication, and hopefully will actually save and/or assist victims from this false sense of protection, I would also request assistance from your association. As noted, I was not aware of the extent of actual harm caused victims by the illegal obtainment of protected public records. While having very limited exposure to this issue within one case, I now see that it is an epidemic, of a proportion not understood by many even within this field. Such is due because your association has not been provided the data that I have collected in preparation for litigation, and I have not been fully made aware of information that your association possesses. Hopefully by sharing of information,data, and any exchange of ideas between our groups it will provide benefit to the victims. While my interest is to stop companies that are illegally obtaining such records, carelessly reselling such records, and providing such to ONLINE WEBSITES that sell such information for minimal costs, allowing predators to access such records instantly from their computers from the privacy of their home for questionable purposes. While our concern involves crime victims, please also note that all residents of YOUR STATE can have their records sold online without permission or authority.
DOUBTERS NEED TO GOOGLE IT!. If anyone that views this email is of doubt, please “google”: your state’s name and driver records. Use your name, and if you are in a state with identification cards, insert your children’s name. How did your personal identifying information contained within your driver license end up on all of those ONLINE WEBSITES. For obvious reasons, it makes a big difference when people actually see their own information for sale! “Click Click”, 3 minutes, and $14.95 later, I can find anyone in those “27′” states from the comfort of one’s home, not under the scrutiny of state officials, and to the enjoyment and benefit of predators, ANONYMOUSLY. Within minutes you can claim whatever DPPA exemption you so desire that gives you a right to obtain such records. We doubt though a predator is of any concern that providing a illegal DPPA permissible purpose is wrong, and the ONLINE WEBSITE provides no review and thus claims protection from such activity. Most attempts at tracing the origins of requesting party is useless since it was done anonymously for obvious reasons.
PLEASE DO NOT BE CONFUSED ABOUT THE LAWS THAT PERTAIN TO ACCESSIBLE PUBLIC RECORDS THAT CAN BE OBTAINED ONLINE LEGALLY AND THOSE PROTECTED PUBLIC RECORDS THAT HAVE SUBSTANTIAL RESTRICTIONS PERTAINING TO THEIR RELEASE.
I NEED YOUR HELP. In order to obtain information relating to these matters I have made requests to state entities pursuant to an open records request. As with most states, they tend to overlook the noted purposes for my requests, are not pleased with me noting there are substantial issues at risk and that they need to review these matters, and repeatedly delay producing information. As a private not profit group you are not obligated to provide me any information; therefore I make a REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE FROM YOUR ASSOCIATION. Based upon everything discussed within this email, let me not limit the benefit of all information that could lend an education for me of these areas, thus send me any information that you think would help me! My initial interest would be to investigate any information of actual reported occurrences for the past five (5) years, where predators have obtained their victim’s driver license and/or car registration information and used such to make contact with, and/or to instigate an attack on their victims. If you can refer me to other persons or sources with such information then that would be helpful too. Please protect the privacy of these individuals by omitting their personal identifying information if you do send information. If any of your representatives wish to contact me, via phone or email, feel free to provide them my information, including any individuals with knowledge of these occurrences. Such discussions shall be held in confidence. desire to contact me, in confidence. My interest is to understand how widespread this epidemic is, use such within our litigation to provide notice to the court of such harm, and finally that state governmental agencies reevaluate their policies and procedures, so as to cease release of such protected public records to entities that should not be obtaining such information. While our client base are all state residents with a driver license, I am more interested in researching the actual real life occurrences which should be of concern to, and hopefully will, if we are successful in court, be used to assist in curtailing the release of such protected public records. Without showing the proof of the actual harm, known probably only to associations such as yours that are involved with the victims, I can not provide awareness to involved entities of the extent of the possible harm that could be caused to my clients, nor try to evidence to state governmental agencies to reevaluate their policies and procedures.
Please note most states also sell their entire database of Identification Cards, which look like a driver license and includes name, address,gender, age,and are provided generally in large proportions to children and senior adults that do not possess a driver license but need identification, such as for airplane travel. Such should be of concern as it relates to sexual predators of children obtaining such information. A Case in point would be a state, one of the twenty-seven (27) that will receive this email, that allowed a man, running a questionable business enterprise from his apartment, and requiring the entire state’s database of identification cards. I noticed that was a peculiar limited request, since all other entities requesting records wanted all records, which would include driver license and ID card information. I will not disclose the name of the requesting company, but if I did, you also would raise a red flag! To make matters worse, the claimed DPPA exemption concerned activities involving automobile research, which should have provided notice to the state’s DPS representatives, since his search query, or the actual limited request to the state’s to search their database of records involved limiting the information to “females under the age of 16″. These young females would be sent a letter concerning a contest, a need to write personal information concerning matters, and that they would need to provide pictures in a bathing suit for a contest with a prize. While researching all entities obtaining their state’s records, As a former Insurance fraud investigator, I was able to develop the investigation to quickly see that this particular entity was questionable, reported such to that state, and they ceased providing this person the minor children’s database of information.
In closing, I want to commend your association for their work and the benefit you give to crime victims. While my interest concerns litigation of these matters, I hope I have provided information, albeit of concern, relating to these matters. As noted, you are free to email me to discuss any aspect of my research if such will allow your state to review their policies of releasing such protected personal identifying information. While my profession dictates the reason for my communication with your association, and the level of my involvement in these matters, I do hope to some degree that my work will provide benefit to those that need it most. Since I am now understand the extent of this crisis at this time, our initial belief that there would be only benefit to those state resident’s that have not given their permission for the sale of their personal identifying information contained within protected public records so as to limit their exposure to Identity Theft was wrong, and now possibly the best result will be benefits to crime victims, especially domestic violence and sexually abused children.
Thanking you for the attention to this matter, I remain.
Attorney Joseph H. Malley
malleylaw@gmail.com
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Law Office of Joseph H. Malley
1045 North Zang Boulevard
Dallas, Texas 75208
Ph. (214) 943-6100
Fax (214) 943-6170
November 19, 2009
http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3849326/House+Panel+Moves+Closer+to+Privacy+Bill.htm
“Look for the least restrictive alternative,” said Jennifer Barrett, the global privacy and public policy executive with data broker Acxiom. Barrett urged the lawmakers to identify the clear consumer harm they seek to prevent in the legislation, and write the bill with a narrow focus to target only those practices.
Acxiom purchases state driver licenses and resells for marketing purposes. Websites obtain this information for resale.
What if an abused person leaves area to hide, needs to register their car, license, and uses public entities that requires providing personal information, but it is then sold to companies. Websites sell driver license info with address information, done anonymously online and in seconds,for less than 10 bucks!
Anyone in this group want to “identify the clear consumer harm”