When Stanley Green’s wife attacked him, causing severe injuries, he knew what to do next thanks to having read her copies of Ms. Magazine.
Stanley recounts this story in the video below, which is an excerpt from his presentation on September 16, 2022 at the Men and Families Conference in Toronto. Blair Daly of Washington Initiative for Boys and Men attended the conference, the tagline for which was “An International Interdisciplinary Conference on Fatherhood and Men’s Experiences with Violence and Victimization”. The keynote speakers were Dr. Denise Hines of George Mason University and Dr. Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and author. The conference featured two days of presentations from academics, researchers, and leaders of nonprofit groups from over a dozen countries.
Stanley Green, who was born in Tacoma and lives in Walla Walla County, is a member of the speakers bureau of Stop Abuse For Everyone (SAFE). A friend of Washington Initiative for Boys and Men, Stanley is a prolific advocate for domestic violence victims and for eliminating gender-based discrimination. He was one of eleven people who testified against the bill the Washington legislature passed earlier this year that radically expanded the definition of domestic violence. (See this video compilation of the eleven testimonies opposing SHB 1901.)
“I understood you should get a police report taken”
Below is an edited transcript of the video above.
Blood streamed down my face. I had lacerations and contusions from my head to my groin, front and back. Internal injuries pulled my right rib cage more than five centimeters out of alignment.
After the attack, I made sure that my children were safe with my parents, and then I spent almost an hour phoning every domestic violence shelter I could find in the phone books for the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles. I wasn’t asking for shelter; I was asking for advice on how to get a police report taken. I had read my former wife’s Ms. Magazines for a number of years, and even though of course things were always written in gendered terms, I understood that if you were a victim off an intimate partner violence attack, you should get a police report taken and get medical documentation before you change clothes, bathe, or do anything else.
So I went to a medical clinic and got documentation and treatment. Then I went to my parents’ apartment where my children were safe and made phone calls asking for advice on how to get a police report taken.
“We’re here to serve women.”
“Well, what would you tell a woman to whom the police had refused to take a report?”
“We wouldn’t know what to say to a man.”
That’s the response I got from every single one of the battered women’s shelters I called.
Later, I went to the court. I had photos of my injuries, medical reports from two clinics documenting my injuries, and the police report I had finally gotten.
My assailant insisted that my injuries were self-inflicted — which was a physical impossibility. The judge looked at all of the documentation…and laughed. “Well, you have to expect one knock-down drag-out fight per divorce.” Even though she hadn’t asked for a restraining order and did not claim I had assaulted her, the judge issued mutual restraining orders.
END
