Under normal circumstances, this news would be applause worthy. However, it didn’t take long to discover that at least one sponsor, the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, doesn’t seem to offer a whole of of domestic violence services to men. At least, that’s what we surmise after a lengthy review of their website.
The cross-training, intended to teach the latest and greatest ways to combat child abuse and child neglect, will be held for Circuit judges, probation officers, court-appointed advocates, attorneys, social workers, counselors, nurses, domestic violence advocates, and others.
The problem with much of the domestic violence “education” that is offered is that it is typically centered around men being perpetrators while women and children are victims. However, the real-world facts tell a different story and often left out in the mainstream media are stories about men who are victims of domestic violence perpetrated by women. Further, often excluded from domestic violence discussions are female and child victims of violent women.
Hopefully, this “latest and greatest” training will focus on the reality that both genders suffer significantly as victims and both genders are far too often perpetrators of domestic violence. Only then will both genders be treated equally by these officials and maybe someday we’ll even see the billions in government funding for domestic violence, which almost exclusively gets funneled to programs for women, be allocated equally for both genders.
We’re not exactly hopeful since these particular seminars are “closed to the public.”
The training and seminars are to take place the week of July12th in Wheeling and Beckley in West Virginia.
