The New Agenda press release on NY State Senator Monserrate and Domestic Violence
February 6, 2009
by The New Agenda
|For Immediate Release
Contact: Amy Siskind
(484) 844-2996
NewAgendaPress@yahoo.com
The New Agenda Calls on NY Senate to Force Monserrate to Step Down
The New Agenda, a national non-partisan women’s rights group, is joining NOW NY in demanding that New York State Senate Sen. Hiram Monserrate step down immediately. Monserrate is charged with second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon in connection with a domestic violence incident involving his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo. If convicted, Monserrate faces up to seven years in prison.
“In an appalling demonstration of partisanship over women’s safety, the New York Democratic Party seated Monserrate to achieve its first Senate majority in 40 years,” said The New Agenda co-founder Amy Siskind. “This outrageous move must be reversed immediately. By allowing Monserrate to remain in office, the New York Democratic party is sending a message that an arrest for violently attacking a woman is a trivial matter without consequences.”
Siskind expressed concern about Monserrate’s level of arrogance and defensiveness in addressing legitimate questions about the attack and worried that the victim is being bullied and intimidated – an all-too-common experience for victims. Siskind also expressed The New Agenda’s full support of NOW NY’s work to make domestic violence against women a hate crime.
According to the Human Rights Watch organization, the projected number of domestic violence incidents against women increased by 42 percent between 2005 and 2007. According to a study conducted by the Department of Criminal Justice Services, 55 percent of New York women murdered in 2007 were victims of domestic violence, and state officials expect domestic violence to rise as the economy worsens. As well, due to current recession, many domestic abuse shelters are now reporting a 20-25 percent increase in hotline calls.
Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith has not only remained silent about the charges against Monserrate, he appointed him to head the Consumer Protection Committee.
“Domestic abuse is a national crisis. One in four women are victims of abuse across all socio-economic lines, and the problem is escalating.” said Siskind. “If Smith and other legislators think this went by unnoticed, they are sorely mistaken. To seat Monserrate in spite of the grave charges against him will cost them far more than their Senate majority: it will cost them their credibility, and it will leave New York’s citizens with lawmakers who gave up their moral authority to legislate and lead.”
On December 19th, 2008, Karla Giraldo told an Emergency room doctor at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center that Hiram Monserrate had slashed her face with a broken glass, leaving deep gashes around her eye that required 25 stitches to close.
A security video of the hallway of his apartment shows an enraged Monserrate attempting to throw something from Giraldo’s purse down the garbage chute. Another security video recorded Monserrate screaming at someone inside the apartment.
Later, security camera footage shows a frightened and distressed Giraldo knocking on neighbors’ doors with a bloody towel clutched to her face. Still later, Monserrate is seen wrestling Giraldo out of the front door of his building.
###
I wonder if that footage can be obtained and splattered all over the net? It needs to be ~ ~ good ol’ boys endorse woman slasher ~~
slasher to sit in Senate~~
Thank you Amy! We need as much exposure on this as possible.
This is wonderful, thank you so much! This is an excellent press release – the details you included about the video segments are terrifying yet powerfully convey why this issue deserves a serious response. Bravo!
Rock on sister!
“Siskind also expressed The New Agenda’s full support of NOW NY’s work to make domestic violence against women a hate crime.”
I hadn’t heard about this. I assume that like other hate crime legislation, it will categorize by classification rather than by a group; that is, assault committed by reason of sex/gender will be a hate crime.
I am trying to think through how the prosecution for this would work. In prosecuting for a hate crime, you have to prove that the crime was motivated by the victim’s [race, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, etc.]. These also tend to be crimes between strangers or bare acquaintances — e.g. Matthew Shepherd’s murder by men he’d just met in a bar, who lured him out, beat him and left him on a fence to die; or James Byrd Jr.’s murder by white men who offered him a ride, then chained him to their truck and dragged him three miles. A recent killing in Paris, TX probably won’t be charged as a hate crime because the victim had been friends with his killers; the death seems to have been the result of a drunken fight, although one can question whether some sense of a black man’s life not being worth much also contributed.
One factor in determining whether to charge it as a hate crime is whether the perpetrators had expressed hatred toward the group to which the victim belonged. Byrd’s killers, for example, were known white supremacists. Many people have challenged the prosecution of Shepherd’s killers under hate crime laws, claiming that the killers were themselves closeted homosexuals (and I suppose reasoning that therefore they couldn’t hate other homosexuals).
Similarly, for domestic violence to be prosecuted as a hate crime, I would think the perpetrator of the assault would have to have expressed hatred toward the group to which his/her victim belongs. Lesbians would have to have expressed hatred toward fellow women; gays toward fellow men; straight women toward men; straight men toward women.
Obviously, the majority of domestic violence occurs between hetero couples (they being the overwhelming majority of the population), and within that group, the majority of domestic violence — particularly when weighted by severity (i.e. not treating a woman’s slapping a man as equal to a man punching a woman) — is committed by men against women.
Nonetheless, I think this could be quite complicated. If a woman slaps her boyfriend, can he try to have her prosecuted not just for domestic violence but for a hate crime, based on her friend’s testimony that the woman had said, “God, I’m really sick of men, they all suck”?
Domestic violence as hate crime would be something different from the “norm” of hate crimes, because hatred often is assumed to mean that you don’t want to associate with that group. A white supremacist is unlikely to have a lot of black friends, or a homophobe a lot of openly-gay friends. For someone to commit violence against an intimate, there must have been some closeness at some point. (Indeed, this is part of the difficulty of prosecuting domestic violence; the victims may have mixed feelings toward the perpetrators whereas the victim of a gay-bashing probably never had any nice moments with his assailants.)
Sorry for the very long comment, but I wanted to get these ideas out there in hopes that some of y’all could explain how this legislation would work.
Great press release!
goesh – Love your idea on one level, but in thinking about the victim of this assault, I’d lean strongly away from getting this up on the Internet. As it is, the Queen’s DA is prosecuting the case on their own (which I think is right on), irrespective of the victim’s desires. I think she deserves her right to privacy as far as having this become available on u-tube, for example. But, I get where you’re coming from. I’d love for Monseratte to be publically shamed, but in trying to do so via a public tape, his girlfriend would also wind up with more than 15 minutes of likely unwanted fame. In any case, at this point, the video is “evidence” and as such I doubt could be released.
Anna,
You make a good point that I hadn’t considered. If the video is widely released, and for some reason the judge rules that it can’t be used as evidence, that’s going to constrain the jury pool for the trial only to those who haven’t seen it.
It might be best to stick to the publicly available information: Monserrate has been charged with assaulting a woman in the face with broken glass, and while “innocent until proven guilty,” should not be in a position of responsibility until this matter is resolved.
PG’s comment is quite accurate, as labeling domestic violence as a hate crime has very shaky legal grounds and implications. Obviously, domestic violence against women is a vile crime and should not be tolerated. However, it would be very difficult to legally say that the attack(s) were motivated out of some sort of gender bias or hatred, especially considering that by the very nature of domestic violence that these two people were intimately related, and as is said above, KKK members do not typically share homes and lives with blacks or other races they may hate. Furthermore, with regards to Sen. Monserrate, while the evidence that is publicly available seems to be extremely damning towards him, we must remember that in America one is innocent until proven guilty. The press releases may not include all the relevant details, and we must not let emotions cloud our legal system, which certainly is not perfect, but is designed to provide justice on the largest possible scale. If he is guilty, then of course he should be subjected to the harshest possible punishment. However, when we start to vilify those who are merely accused of a crime, so begins a very slippery slope.
What about a re-enactment and posted on you-tube? It would protect privacy yet convey what this man did.
PG – You raise excellent points.
QUESTION – HELP NEEDED!!!
I’m composing a letter to the editor and need to confirm:
Is the Queen’s DA office prosecuting Monseratte? I’ve seen this noted somewhere on the blog but can’t find it and I’m in a rush. If anyone can confirm one way or another, please post. Thank you.
Anna-
This arrticle says Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown.
http://www.qgazette.com/news/2.....s/021.html
This article says same.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blo.....brown.html
Thanks, Thia.
Here’s a draft of a letter to the editor. PG, and anyone else, feel free to comment and edit:
—————————————————————————————
I am writing to you about New York State Councilman Hiram Monseratte who was recently captured on videotape brutally assaulting his girlfriend. The Queen’s District Attorney’s office is currently prosecuting him.
Meanwhile, Mr. Monseratte has been sworn into office and has been elevated to be the Chair of the Consumer Protection Committee, an ironic position for a person who sees fit to batter his girlfriend.
It seems that Mr. Monseratte has a history of violence and mental instability. In 2001, he was arrested for running over a tow-truck driver who was attempting to confiscate Mr. Monseratte’s vehicle. Two years prior to that, Mr. Monseratte, a former police officer, had his firearms seized by the NYPD after the results of psychological testing showed Mr. Monseratte as mentally unstable.
I am astounded that the media is not covering Mr. Monseratte’s recent assault on his girlfriend. What sort of message does it send when an elected official, a person in position of power and public influence, batters his girlfriend and the media appears to collectively yawn and look away? Is this the bar we now set for those who represent us in government?
I am writing to urge you to cover this story. Four women are killed every single day in the United States as a result of domestic violence. How many more women must be beaten, pummeled, cut, shot at, and killed before we address this tragedy?
Anna,
I love your letter. What publication(s) are you sending this to?
Thank you Amy for sending out the press release! It’s such an important issue that we must continually speak out on.
Anna, your letter is great. The press needs to cover this.
How does this fool live with himself?? Disgraceful! How does this kind of thing happen and go so unnoticed?
Thank you Amy and “The New Agenda”.
I just want to respond to PG who asks a good question about how DV can be considered a hate crime. Let’s face women…men are taught from day one that anything feminine is yucky, disgusting, stupid, etc. One only needs to look around oneself to see the obvious messages that men are given about women and women are given about themselves. Sexism and internalized sexism is rampant.
Women are looked at as objects to use for advertising, do the laundry, cooking, cleaning and have sex with. etc. Every single message that a man gets in life is about not respecting women and controlling women’s lives. So what is the ultimate controlling mechanism that he will use? violence!
If a man can’t get his way through insults, shame, coercion or other means, he will use violence. And it doesn’t matter whether it is on the street, in corporations, religious institutions or home.
Men are taught that their ultimate goal in life is to use and control women. period. So given the history of violence against women (and I am not just talking about yesterday but from the beginning of time) how can we deny that women are in a class by themselves, discriminated against, hated, used, disrespected and abused. Any form of VAW is a hate crime, including domestic violence.
Addresssing “internalized sexism.” We only need to look back a few months when we saw how women treated, talked about, laughed about and participated in the taking down of the first viable, woman candidate for President.
Marcia, what you said is really thought provoking for me, and also resonated. I was immediately able to recall instances of how men in my life had expressed frustration and displeasure when they weren’t able to control me or to get me to do what they wanted, and sometimes followed by physical attempts, thankfully non-violent, to get me to do something.
There are definitely control issues out there between men and women and I agree that too many end in violence, but I also wonder if what you describe about male behavior to women is so different than male behavior to other males.
Perhaps males in general are genetically or culturally programmed to want to be in control, be right, and definitely we are taught in our culture that it’s more appropriate for a man to be in control, and for a woman to be controlled. Perhaps we need to start teaching young males in our culture that it’s good to share control to share power to share everything!
I imagine an experiment where heterosexual men live together as
couples, maybe as roommates for a really long time, and they become co-dependent, and are bound to one another by need or some other social contract that is difficult to sever–and I imagine that some of those couples will have bouts of violence in their relationships.
And it’s intriguing to think about same sex relationships and the incidence of domestic violence. Here’s a quote from lambda.org about same-sex couples: “The rates of domestic violence in same-gender relationships is roughly the same as domestic violence against heterosexual women (25%). As in opposite-gendered couples, the problem is likely underreported. ”
I really believe punishment for domestic violence is inadequate, and I strongly believe that hatred towards women is a sickness in our society and our world, that too often culminates in injury and death. However, if domestic violence against heterosexual women is made into a hate crime based on the premise that women are hated, then when it comes to domestic violence between same-sex couples, one can still say that a woman beating up her female partner comes from woman hatred, but what about a man beating up his male partner? Would that be attributable to hatred of women?
I think a lot of times domestic violence is related to an imbalance of power in a relationship, be it physical power, financial power, social power. I think no woman would go out with a guy if on their first date the guy gave her a black eye. I think part of the domestic violence problem is whatever it is that makes someone think it’s acceptable to injure or kill another person for any reason, and the other part is a lack of ability of people in a relationship to see that their partner is crossing the line, and their unwillingness or inability to leave that partner when a line is crossed. Or perhaps, even more basic than that, deciding where the line is, no matter how long you’ve been with another person. And this drawing of the line is probably connected to how much respect one has for oneself, which is related to the negative and damaging messages women get about themselves in our society.
Ali
Was going to send it out to the usual suspects (all the main media outlets plus a zillion more. I have a data base of media links I use and do mass e-mails, grouping about 25 at a time, but no more or they’ll be perceived as spam).
But, realized I have a couple of corrections to make in the letter:
1. Monseratte is a Senator not a Councilman, and
2. The video doesn’t show him attacking his girlfriend.
Will correct and send.
Just got dumped by a guy who wanted to know every minute where I was and when he could not reach me was sure I was fooling around. Yup, he doesn’t trust women, that is for sure.
Wow, what an intelligent press release. Ditto on the Bravo to Amy Siskind. It is articulate, concise and makes easy contact links to the media. It is fantastic that The New Agenda is non-partisan – partisanship has created hypocrisy and ineffectiveness in other women’s activist org.s.
This case is an outrage and unfortunately confirms that Dem.s are no different than Repub.s in capacity for venal, immoral behavior. The Democratic party has really abandoned its core support – WOMEN – during this past election cycle and clearly continues to do so via cases like this one.
We must demand that our lawmakers stop conducting governance as if it were a sporting event and each team must win at all costs. Government is not a sporting event. This domestic abuse case is reminiscent of how star athletes commit rape without consequences so the team can win.
Men abuse women for one reason. Because they can.
If we lived in a society that did not tolerate abuse, then it would halt. There are several ways to stop it. Some of which I cannot post. (wink, wink)
The truth of the matter is this. Yes, women can be abusive to men and to other women, and most certainly men are abusive to women and even other men. But the difference is how this abuse plays out in the lives of women as a whole, as opposed to how it plays out in the lives of men.
When a woman is abused, she most generally grows up to remain a victim of abuse. When men are abused, they grow up to be abusers. There is solid research that shows this.
Also, we need to look at other aspects as to how abuse affects women and men. For instance, it adversely affects women in a financial way, much more so than men. It affects her children, since she is usally the primary caregiver…on and on.
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