Suit Spotlights Gay Domestic Violence & Police Indifference

[davidinalameda]

http://www.365gay.com/newscontent/121903houstSuit.htm

A Texas lawsuit is set to shine the spotlight on domestic violence among same-sex couples and alleged police indifference to the problem.

Gloria Swidriski is suing the city of Houston for the way police handled pleas from her son that his partner was violent and his that his life was in danger. Swidriski's son Marc Daniel Kajs was later shot to death in full view of patrons at the restaurant where he worked by his partner, Ilhan Yilmaz. Yilmaz then turned the gun on himself, and also died.

According to Swidriski's attorney, Robert Rosenberg, Kajs sought police help at least six times, but officers failed to follow policy and offer him assistance that could have prevented the slaying because he was gay.

[tkulesa]

1. Unfortunately common

I used to share an apartment with a male friend. I had to deal with the police a couple of times and they never once even attempted to be helpful simply because they assumed that we were gay. (I am, roommate was not.)

I got smirks, jokes, and absolutely no help whatsoever.

Anyone who isn't straight in this country is denied any protection from the police in any matter, big or small, and when someone dies because of it the they simply don't care.

I've even been told by one police officer "you people choose to live a dangerous lifestyle so what do you expect? You get what you ask for."

[Heddi]

2. This is horrible---the same thing, tho happened to my mom

back in the 80's (she's not gay-)

Her then husband was very abusive towards her. Always managed to leave bruises below the collar line and above the wrists--can't let anyone else know that you beat your wife senseless every night, now, can we?

Anyways, one night was particularly brutal, and my mom called the police, yet again, and even with welts and bruises and blood running down her face frm where he slammed her head into an oven hood (and broke the oven hood in half), the police would do nothing.

My mother said "Do you people have to wait before he KILLS me before you do anything?"

With a straight face, the officer said "yeah, pretty much"

Later that night, she called the police again, this time a female officer came out. Like times before (and many times after) the police didn't do anything (Back then, they needed to SEE the assault take place before an arrest could happen), but the female officer told my mother that should anything happen and she "accidentally' kill my step-father, make sure she did it in the house, or drag the body inside the house---that would make the difference between murder and manslaughter, and she could say that he broke inside the house and she feared for her life.

Luckily, though, she separated before she had the....need...to kill him.

Many police officers are very lax with regards to any kind of domestic abuse---hetero or homosexual. I've heard officers tell my mother that she wouldn't have gotten beaten if she didn't deserve it, and that she must have done something to provoke him into breaking her face with various kitchen ware.... :eyes:

[chasqui]

3. Why didn't she just move out?

[Heddi]

4. well, such is the cycle of domestic abuse

She had a child (me) and was financially unable to just get up, move out and find a place of her own.

This was the mid-80's. She was making $4.00 an hour. Even back then, hardly a wage that someone could support themselves and a child on.

Where was she to go? Her parents had pretty much had nothing to do with her when she married him. There weren't any DV shelters back then where we lived.

I guess we could have lived on teh street, but somehow that's not an option when you have a child under the age of 7 to take care of, to feed, to clothe, to send to school....

I hope you're not suggesting that somehow victims of DV somehow "deserve" to be beaten because they don't have the resources to just pick up and move out....

Would you also ask a rape victim why they didn't yell 'NO" louder?

She did what she could. She called the police. They laughed at her, and blamed her for being beaten (sort of like you're doing). They saw my step-fathers swollen knuckles from where he punched her in the face. They saw her blood splattered on him and his clothes.

Yet they said there was no proof of assault. It was her word against his. SHe could have easily have done that to herself to get attention (you know how women are always self-mutilating themselves, calling it abuse, just to get attention).

what could she have done? Where could she have gone? He'd have found her, just like he did when she DID move out, and gave her a good beating for that too. That taught her not to run away from her wifely responsibilities...whatever they happened to be at any given moment in time....

[WildClarySage]

5. Sorry, but

why should SHE have to leave her own house? She isn't the one doing anything wrong!