Daines' vote didn't really help women

The House did a tremendous disservice to women when it passed the Violence Against Women Act on Feb. 28. Rep. Steve Daines wrongly voted for this nice-sounding legislation that obscures real violence in order to promote the feminist agenda.

First enacted in 1994 under the Clinton administration, the Violence Against Women Act has morphed into a series of rigid and ineffective law-enforcement programs that continue to spend approximately $455 million each year. 

Angela Moore Parmley, from the Department of Justice, wrote in Violence Against Women, Vol. 10, No. 12, 2004, p. 1424, “We have no evidence to date that VAWA has led to a decrease in the overall levels of violence against women.” 

There is no denying the very real problem of violence against women and children. However, this legislation continues to broadly define “domestic violence” against women. These broad definitions actually squander the resources for victims of actual violence by failing to properly prioritize and assess victims. Victims who can show physical evidence of abuse should be our primary focus.

Furthermore, the Violence Against Women Act fails to ensure that the money being spent is not wasted on ineffective programs. In random audits by the inspector general repeated irregularities and misconduct were found, including unauthorized and unallowable expenses in 21 of 22 grants.

When the House voted on the Violence Against Women Act, it included an amendment by Sen. Leahy that hurts sex-trafficking victims, seeks to legalize prostitution for minors and fails to protect the consciences of organizations, such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, that oppose abortion but want to protect trafficking victims. 

The Leahy Amendment, which was included in the bill that Rep. Daines supported, cut funding for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons by 64 percent, from $5.5 million a year to $2 million a year, which will dramatically reduce staffing. This office leads the United States’ global engagement in the fight against human trafficking. It is an injustice to victims to strip them of the assistance they so desperately need. In addition to drastically reducing the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking, the amendment also eliminated shelters for adult victims of sex trafficking in the United States.

The amendment also included a provision that would change the Model Law on sex trafficking to promote the decriminalization of prostitution of minors for states, which is extremely dangerous for trafficking victims. There has been a large increase in sex trafficking in Montana due to the Bakken oil boom. Therefore, decriminalization provides a perfect opportunity for pimps, traffickers and gangs to exploit minors in the sex industry by telling the minors that it is not illegal and that they will not get arrested. The bottom line is that this erroneous vote by Rep. Daines will hurt women who are trafficked. 

Finally, this legislation sought to close a loophole that allowed non-Indians who commit crimes of domestic violence to escape prosecution. However, S. 47 permits U.S. citizens to be prosecuted for domestic violence in Native American tribal courts without their full constitutional rights and without an ability to pursue an appeal in the federal court system. Instead of focusing money towards helping victims on Indian reservations get services they need, the money will go towards litigation.

If Rep. Daines truly wanted to protect women in his district, he would have voted to direct the money to Montana, which is in a much better position to address domestic violence and has greater ability to prosecute and penalize criminal behavior.

 Shellnut, of Laurel, is the Montana state director for Concerned Women of America.