San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/search/user/page/3/)
On average in the U.S., more than 1 in 3 women, and 1 in 4 men, will experience physical violence, rape or stalking by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Nevertheless, when victims turn to family court for protection from their abusers, they often face skeptical judges. And that’s especially true when the abuse doesn’t leave a mark.
While not all California judges are sympathetic to the stories of intimate partners who claim emotional abuse, and some even exhibit misogynistic conduct, others have shown an interest in using new legal tools to give the benefit of the doubt to people who say they are victims.
In a Los Angeles-area case, a judge acknowledged the evolving understanding of domestic violence to include psychological abuse, and extensively cited the state’s new coercive control law in his ruling.
A California law enacted in 2021 allows domestic violence victims to claim coercive control — a broad range of behaviors including humiliation, surveillance, intimidation, gaslighting and isolation that strips an intimate partner of a sense of autonomy and personhood.
Experts in domestic violence say judicial skepticism of abuse victims, often with misogynistic overtones, has long been widespread in U.S. family court, creating dangerous hurdles to justice. The expanded conception of domestic violence on paper is of limited use if judges continue to cast a skeptical eye on testimony, usually from women, of manipulation within intimate relationships.
Blanca suffered decades of psychological abuse from her husband, whose behaviors fall under a category of abuse sociologists and family law experts call coercive control.
Under a California law passed in 2020, the government is finally offering some acknowledgment of the harm she experienced. But the reform applies only in civil court — and can be used only in limited types of cases.
The key to addressing San Francisco’s overdose crisis, say community activists and medical experts in the city, is harm reduction. That’s an approach that acknowledges not all drug users will achieve abstinence, and that focuses on keeping them safe and alive if they’re not ready or able to quit. Drug overdoses killed more people in San Francisco than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021.
California could see widespread evictions next month because of government delays in getting federal funds to renters, tenant groups warn.
Tenants throughout the state will still be waiting for rent assistance by April, when their pending applications will cease to protect them from eviction for those debts, the groups said in a report Tuesday.
The Bay Area can house millions more people without increasing its water use, according to a new report from the urbanist and water-use think tanks SPUR and the Pacific Institute. This could be done by continuing to improve water conservation efforts while concentrating on developing infill housing to prevent urban sprawl.
The agency responsible for regulating the ride-hailing industry in California has failed to collect consistent data on complaints of assaults, threats and harassment on Uber and Lyft rides, a San Francisco Public Press investigation found.
San Francisco residents can now learn how to avoid eviction by sending a text message to a special phone number.
That service is part of an outreach campaign launched Friday by the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition, a group of tenant-rights organizations. The goal: to teach people their rights and help them apply for rent assistance during the two months left before a statewide moratorium on evictions for unpaid rents expires.
California’s program to alleviate rent debts — and prevent a wave of evictions in July — makes it tough for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents to request financial aid, community groups in San Francisco say. The way the system is designed prevents many people from applying, including those who live in informal housing arrangements, those who do not speak English and those who lack digital proficiency, according to staff at local organizations helping tenants and landlords file applications.
