“For everybody who calls, everyone who walks through the door, their claims are taken at face value.”

That's Yolanda Jimenez talking.  She's the commissioner of the New York City Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence.  It seems six women have just been popped for posing as DV victims in order to receive subsidized public housing.  This article that tells us about the case seems to be battling multiple personality disorder (New York Times, 10/22/09).  On one hand it informs us that scams of the sort alleged,

are so rare, and the issue so sensitive, that city officials and advocates for domestic violence victims said that they are not usually on the lookout for fraud when people come forward with claims of abuse.

Which leads a normally inquiring mind to wonder if they're not "on the lookout" for them and if all "claims are taken at face value," how city officials know false claims are rare.  The simple fact seems to be that those who provide the benefits believe any and all women who claim to have been abused. 

Jimenez's belief that there has been no fraud in any of the 36,000 cases of DV claims over the past four years sounds a lot like the governor of Texas claiming that the state has never executed an innocent man.  You can only hold those beliefs if you make no effort to ascertain the truth.  And from the article, it's crystal clear that little or nothing is done to find out if a claimant is on the level or not.

Indeed, the article goes on to list a variety of benefits to being a seen as a victim of domestic violence, from subsidized housing to green cards for immigrants to free legal advice and in some cases job training.  Those benefits, together with laughably lax standards for proving DV victim status make scams like the one charged closer to inevitable than to rare.

To "document" one's status as a DV victim, one need only produce a police report and a restraining order or a family court petition.  The women charged had forged those documents, or at least that's what prosecutors say, but in many cases, even that documentation isn't necessary.

In that regard, the attitude of Maureen Curtis of Safe Horizon seems typical.  She's quoted as saying,

“Some of them can’t or don’t have the documents they need... Does it mean that the person is not a victim of domestic violence? No.”

Very true, but can you imagine any other governmental agency taking that attitude?  For example, come next April 15th, I think I'll just claim some massive deduction on my income tax filing and when the IRS asks me for documentation, I'll just tell them "No, I don't have it, but does that mean I didn't incur the expense?  No." 

Think that'll work?  I hope they let me keep blogging from prison.

But seriously, Curtis' statement seems to typify the attitude of people on whom the taxpayers are relying to root out DV scams.  After all, tax money spent for benefits for DV victims should go to, you know, actual victims, not someone who wants to abuse the system.  So, if governments are going to provide these benefits, they need to realize that, wherever there's something to be gained, there will be corruption.  In short, they need to institute safeguards to make sure the people receiving the benefits are the ones they're meant for.

It is beyond amazing that apparently no one has yet thought of this in the context of DV.  In every other context, yes, but not DV.  It's high time we left "Believe the Woman" out of public policy.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Domestic Violence/DV System, Crime/Criminal Justice System/Police. You can trackback from your own site.