Batterer's Education Program Teaches the Battered to Clam Up

by Homeless T

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2009, CEDAR RAPIDS, IA: A statement of heartfelt contrition regarding his crime (in light of what he has learned over the course of 16 two-hour class sessions) marked Homeless T's completion of the Monday evening Batterers Education Program (BEP) at Wellington House in southeast Cedar Rapids, IA.

In November of 2007, Homeless T inflicted a hairline fracture on the top joint of his then-fiance's pinky finger during a tussle over the house-key to their newly rented house. The unfortunate altercation resulted in an aggravated misdemeanor charge for Homeless, and a months-long "no contact order" that kept the couple separated until well after the New Year. The Tama County prosecutor increased Homeless T's charge from its original Simple Domestic Assault (punishable by 30 days in jail) to one of Serious Domestic Assault Causing Bodily Injury and Mental Illness when the fractured pinky flange was at last identified by the third doctor to X-ray it. 

The state's assertion that the incident caused his fiance's mental illness was refuted by Homeless T. The prosecution reluctantly agreed that she had suffered from mental illness all of her life, and that clause of the charge was deleted. Ironically, both Homeless and his fiance exhibit the skeletal anomaly called clinodactyly--a curved little pinky--and Homeless had fractured precisely the same flange at age 10. Ergo, their colorfully named relationship status: pinky pals.

So . . . what have you learned, Homeless?

I never should have tried to pry that house-key from my fiance's key-ring as she held it so doggedly tight. I should have controlled myself, but I didn't. I also learned that under Iowa law, reconciliation was not something to be made with my victim or my conscience, but with a far stonier successor-plaintiff, the State of Iowa.

Eager to spare his fiance the public humiliation of a mud-slinging trial (and also concerned over a second Aggravated Misdemeanor charge trumped-up against him in Waterloo for an April, 2007 offense) Defendant Homeless T accepted a plea-bargain offered by Tama County Prosecutors. The plea reduced his charge from Serious Domestic Assault back to Simple Domestic Assault; imposed a fine of $50.00; offered a deferred judgment (expungible following a year of successful self-probation); and ordered him to register, attend, complete, and pay for a State of Iowa-approved Batterers Education Program (BEP). Iowa still prides itself in being "the education state"--although it has slipped considerably in national rankings--so education-as-punishment seemed very much in keeping with Iowa's reputation. A weary Homeless T signed the plea on January 7 of 2008.

On March 6 of 2008--two months later--the Court ex parte amended its plea with Homeless T.  Not even a rumor of restitution entered the negotiations of the initial plea agreement, yet the court summarily tacked on $2156.92 to Homeless T's costs--for victim restitution. The victim was awarded $60 in gas money, $0.00 for pain and suffering, so the balance of the restitution sum was ordered to pay for all those x-rays and Vicodin. They cost a lot of money as billed to the State. Homeless T's legal research brought to light numerous cases of ex post facto court-altered plea bargains. The plea bargains were invariably voided, but the plaintiff in no case was freed of liability for the restitution. Only in Iowa.

So what did you learn, Homeless?

I learned that even if I appealed the late-added restitution and won, I would still have to pay. I learned that a no-contact order provides no chance for reconciliation outside the supervision of the court, and if I should dare to speak directly to my intimate partner, the sheriff would gladly cart me off to jail. Further, I learned that what begins as a domestic tiff transmogrifies into a troubling legal nightmare--once the case caption automatically rolls over to reveal the $tate versus U. Police and court procedures spring like a trap set-out by jurisprudential trickster, to keep Iowa's district courts afloat.

The whole post-arrest enterprise wouldn't let me go. The fifty-dollar fine of my original plea agreement turned into a square root. First, the court added $2156.92 to my costs for restitution. As months passed, other costs, fines, and fees mysteriously escalated. My classes cost an additional $380.00. Two days in jail set me back another $80.00. My fine and costs rose to $492.00, bringing the total to over $3,000.--a far cry from the fifty-dollar fine set down in the January, 2008 plea agreement. I still owe two grand.

I had to familiarize myself with the laws, and arrived at a sad conclusion: words that enter the legislative process with high ethical content, freshly assayed in the precincts of Iowa's State congress, are seized upon by municipal practitioners and remolded into something altogether different--something invariably less just and more profitable. It goes something like this:

An Act is passed, and given to redactors who codify it into law. That Code is then translated into Court Rules and enforcement procedures, and made to conform to municipal expediency. Expediency spawns some unusual applications, sometimes diametrically opposed to the Act's true intent. The Code of Iowa is metaphorically hammered into vulgar Shriner kiddy-cars, driven by fez-wearing locals.

Ouch. That's an awful thought. What else about BEP? Anything practical?

32 hours of Batterers Education Programming imparted to me the unspoken mendacity currently permeating American culture, both high and low: deny everything if you have a single lick of sense. As regards my own domestic relationship: I left the class feeling that I should never have pled guilty or admitted anything, and that my tendency to be an honest man must be curbed. When truth-telling serves only to provide your legal adversary with damning evidence, even the Court will conceal the legal truth in taciturn tactic.

Now I understand the reasons for the grotesque duplicity that I have too often witnessed among still-battling couples who have experienced for themselves the true purposes underlying the domestic assault meat-grinder: cash flow. Once partners have undergone the enduring, practical agony of BEP (with its education-as-punishment, no-contact inconveniences, and outsized expenses), both victim and batterer adapt to a real-world lesson that contradicts the intent of the original Act: For God's sake, never call the police, no matter how crazy the domestic dispute gets--because it's going to be a long, expensive ordeal for both batterer and victim.

Any last words before they hang you, Homeless T?

Yep: far from the $50 fine specified in my plea, the whole business will end up costing me about $3000--with only $60 of the restitution going to the victim, who became my wife. The law has good intentions: protection for truly battered partners with no other recourse. But in cases I have seen, criminal justice is so protracted, emotionally unaccommodating, and financially draining on both perpetrator and victim (sometimes the line between them is fuzzy) that graduates' new-found aversion to violence has an evil twin: the justice-crippling reluctance on the part of victim to involve the advocacy of the state, ever again.

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