Over the last week, the fortunes house stealers of 81 Garia Street 5 Mile have dropped with posting of their crime on internet. Baragu is to be arrested for assault. OB 214/12 of 6 Mile police. Please click:
The man Alan Baragu has a reputation with the police from his days as conveyancing officer with the National Housing Authority. He has now gone down to the 6 Mile Police station and laid a complaint against the caretaker for defamation and damage to the family.
He was told by the police constables that this was not a police matter but a civil matter. But he bullied his way to an interview with the police and caretaker.
The interview was taken over by a green-as-grass AFP female constable. The house stealers complained bitterly about the harrassment of the caretaker. He is mentally ill they said and has to be restrained in prison. They are still trying to steal the house.
An amateur PNG police lady from Australia gave her opinion that some defamation can be criminal. To extreme satisfaction of the house stealers, she forbade any further texts on internet.
The Baragu house stealers produced a document written 3 years ago by Keith Jackson that had grossly defamed the founder of AIDS Holistics.
It was part of the Australian gay and lesbian attack at the time of the proposed legislation on gay and lesbian sex. That came from internet too, AFP lady. It was the start of a vicious hate campaign from Australian homosexuals and paedophiles.
The report was trashed 3 years ago and damaged the credibility of Keith Jackson. The house stealers thought it all goes to show that the caretaker has to be deported or placed in a mental institution. In their dreams. Please click: WORD
TO READERS OF BLOG PNG ATTITUDE
Last night Baragu forced his way into the bedroom of the caretaker and beat him with a broom. The caretaker was lying naked on his bed with deep chest pains from a recent heart attack caused by stress from the house stealers. Check with Dr Mathias Sapuri.
He was seeking my mobile phone that had internet and internet documents that I would be taking the next day to the police interview. When I told him of the heart attack he replied "Die old man die". Then they would steal the house.
But I pushed him out the door. He ran to get a long piece of timber but I hit him with a metre long crow bar bought from the local hardware when the violence started.
He ran down the stairs and then came back to bash me. I stood at the top of the stairs with the crow bar held high and said " Drop it or I will break your skull ". He dropped the timber and ran. I was standing naked and went back to my room. The door had been kicked in.
I was banned by the amateur PNG AFP officer from putting reports on internet. But permission to post was given by the 2IC of 6 Mile Police Station.
She was aiding a criminal in her naive sense of fairness. She quoted British law to us. She did not consult with any PNG police person on the police knowledge of Alan Baragu.
She was given documents by the house stealers. But she returned the documents to them when they promised a set of photocopies. She will never see the documents again. Where are the documents? Oh, I gave them back.
It would be interesting to see if the decision to ban reports on internet was influenced by mention of the gay and lesbian agenda.
In recent days, I have been harrassed and intimidated by a Port Moresby house stealer and wife to the extent that I have put reports on internet. Please click:
They now appear to be quite frightened by the publicity. This morning, I came out of my room to be confronted by the woman who demanded to know if I understood the damage I had done to her family.
She said there are laws to protect PNG citizens from f......g arseholes like me. It is a pity there are no laws to protect citizens from house stealers. Her main objection to me so she tells neighbours is that I swear.
I went down stairs to be confronted by her husband the house stealer Baragu. He told me to leave the house as he would personally bring police today to have me arrested. As I walked through the door, he hit me on the back and tried to push me down the stairs.
Yesterday I listened in horror as the young woman told how her family was driven out of their house at Hohola 2 by a truck load of Engans who arrived with a fake lease and threw their belongings out of the house and destroyed the gardens. The Engans were assisted by police. The wife died soon after.
The young woman says her father knows where the man lives now and is in contact with other families similarly driven out of their rental accommodation.
The trick in the National Housing Commission is for corrupt officials to target a Commission house in which the tenants are or are not up to date with the rent. A title is prepared in the name of a client for the house and sold for K45,000.
The new owner is told they can remove the tenants by whatever means. They may enlist the support of the police to remove terrified tenants and have the new "owners" move in.
The K45,000 then goes into the pockets of the corrupt officials. A second fake title may be sold to new clients who have the job of removing the new "owners". That may have been the case with the Engans bashing Baragu down the street recently.
Over the last two months, I have been caretaker of a Housing Commission home for a sick old man who has gone overseas for medical treatment.
The house has been invaded by a man Alan Baragu and his wife who have expressed the intention of taking the house from the old man.
Baragu used to be a conveyancing officer for the National Housing Commission and was terminated so we were advised for stealing and selling properties. Now he has become a squatter in this house with family and claiming he has the right to take over. Please click:
The report above posted yesterday has made him and wife furious with severe panic and I have been told they reported me to the PNG police and the Australian police to have me arrested and deported.
I was blocked from leaving the house last night and told to wait to be arrested. They are desperate to steal the house. They made what seemed like fake phone calls to the police. You are coming soon? We are waiting with your prisoner.
I was told I was a parasite and scumbag. I have been living off this country for too long. It was now time for me to leave my teenage daughters behind and go back to Australia. They must have the wrong person.
Over 38 years, my contribution to this nation has been massive. I wear the 10 year independence medal for services to the nation in training the PNGDF.
I came to this country in 1975 to serve at the Joint Services College of PNG at Igam Barracks. Over a two year period I trained officer cadets mainly in the skills of decision making.
I was called Captain Double Check. One senior officer of the maritime element told me recently that after 36 years, my training was all he could remember. Hey Murphy. Please click:
Nov 13, 2011 - FAMILY POSITIVE LIVING - AIDS HOLISTICS: SUPPORT
TO ... 2 days ago . ...MASTERY LEARNING FOR PNGDF TRAINING ·
SETTING UP ...
On return to Australia, I was posted to the RAAF School of Languages. For 14 years, I conducted Tok Pisin and culture training for 4000 Australian and NZ personnel on posting to PNG. I am the leading trainer of Tok Pisin in the nation. Please click:
Aug 24, 2011 - I came to PNG to serve at Igam Barracks during 1976-1977.
I had just completed a Bahasa Indonesia course at the RAAF School of Languages ...
I trained PNGDF officers to be language instructors and prepared Defence Schools for training PNGDF soldiers in technical subjects.
After retirement and a marriage break-up, I returned to PNG to work as a teacher. I was senior subject master and Deputy Headmaster at Dregerhafen, Bumayong and Busu High Schools. I continued to teach by Mastery Learning.
I have helped Port Moresby schools as a volunteer in Mastery Learning. These are Kila Kila Secondary, Wards Strip Demonstration school and Boreboa school.
It has lifted the standard of written expression in the grade 8 exams. The work is being watched by senior officers of the national and provincial Departments of Education
On leaving I set up my own company and found a lady who gave me two lovely daughters. She left us after two years and I have been a single parent since that time.
I could not go back to Australia as I needed the signature of the mother on the passport applications for my children. So here I have stayed.
I found another woman to look after my daughters while I went to work. But she had HIV infection though she claimed to have been tested 2 months before.
I cared for her and my son for three years before they died. Baragu claims I am HIV positive and killed Linda.
We formed AIDS Holistics and began to promote Positive Living with HIV/AIDS. For our trouble, our NGO was banned by AusAID and UN gays and lesbians who opposed our focus on family.
I have worked as a volunteer for 13 years and have put into AIDS Holistics about K50,000 of my own money. AIDS Holistics remains banned from funding from UN and AusAID.
But we went on to the present day with Positive Living now the key message in PNG AIDS awareness. Please click:
We have suffered a vicious attack over 10 years. The same attack is now at the hands of house stealers Baragu and Awesa. The gays and lesbians claim that I was HIV positive, full blown AIDS, mentally ill, wife beater and child molester.
It makes me wonder about the 22 year old son who seems to have access to the gay and lesbian hate message.
The house stealers claim that I am a parasite, beggar, mentally ill, thief, HIV positive, Linda and son killer and infecter of PNG women. But God is on my side.
So here we stand.
Today I am waiting to be arrested by the PNG police and Australian Federal Police. There have been people in high places who state that I should be made an honorary citizen but it has not happened yet.
I just go on with the Positive Living message. It is not as crucial as it was as most care organizations follow the Positive Living message. We can step aside slightly.
I have an old friend in Port Morsesby aged in his late seventies. Over the last 15 years, we have supported each other.
When Linda and our son died of AIDS in 2002, he brought me into his housing commission home. I supported him with money as he was becoming sick and finding difficulty in working. For several years, his house became the HQ for AIDS Holistics.
He had a son who caused him ongoing trouble with drugs, fighting with his wife and being harrassed by people to whom he owed money. He owed over K20,000 to the Totai couple in the story below. A useful clue.
We left 3 years ago and I gave him K2500 as a parting gift. I asked him to keep our room open should we decide to come back.
We did come back when I met the old man who told me he was sick, out of work, starving and no money to pay the rent.
But within two months, a Tolai family moved into one of the upstairs bedrooms without permission of the old man. His son had moved them in, probably to take over his father's lease to cover his rental arrears.
The husband and wife turned out to be a rotten dishonest couple who made no attempt to hide that they planned to take over the house.
The man was Alan Baragu and wife Cathy Awesa who clamed the man's uncle was the Minister for Housing and would hand over the house to them anytime they wanted.
Then the old man went overseas for medical treatment. I was put in as caretaker of the house. This was not recognised by the ugly couple who claimed that as citizens, they were in charge. I was an alien.
The man claimed that he was once the Managing Director of the National Housing Corporation and had every right to the house. Lies.
But the old man had taken me to the new Housing authority and arranged certain administrative matters to cover his stay overseas. I was to look after the house.
Advice from Housing was that Baragu was once Conveyancing officer who was terminated for stealing several properties and putting the money to his own use.
He also had a reputation for violence to women who were not his wives. Only recently, he bashed his own wife at midnight at our front gate. She lay groaning for an hour while he kicked her in the head. No honour among thieves.
Baragu and wife threatened to take Housing and me to Court for defamation. That will bring everything out into the open. Great stuff.
The woman started a hate campaign against me. She would abuse me by text. If I responded, she would threaten me with arrest for harrassing her. Great trick.
She would scream to all in the house that I pissed on the toilet seat and stole her water from the freezer. She was the primary key to making Grace unhappy by telling her I was not giving her enough money.
Then it escalated big time. She had discussed with me in early times, my work with AIDS Holistics. I told her husband that I was caretaker of 3 ANGELS CARE and had cared for several men and women who died. She used this against me.
I had recently sought a house meri in the absence of Grace who had died. One woman stayed for a day and then ran away. I found out from her later that the ugly woman had told her that I was an HIV womanizer who had infected several women who had died.
The ugly woman has started a theme that I have a long stream of prostitutes coming to my room. I have to be kicked out and arrested as an HIV man infecting women. The first came to be a house meri but ran away. She was not a prostitute.
The next was a woman who came to identify the Tolai man for her father as the one who stole their house at Gerehu. She was not a prostitute. Her family blamed the Tolai for the death of their mother.
The next was Asi, a 23 year old woman with a baby Bruce named in my honour. She is my daughters' cousin and comes regularly for money for food for her family. I have known her since she was six. The creep Tolai woman says she comes for sex.
The Tolais are trying to get me to leave. They now have a plan to tell all the neighbours about my killing women. The neighbours have known me for at least 15 years. They think the Totai couple are rubbish.
Now I am being told along with the neighbours that I killed Linda in 2001. As if they would know. Creeps.
My daughter's friend has arranged next week for a security officer to move in with his wife. The ugly couple has gone out of their tiny brains.
Recently the man was bashed by a group of Engans who wanted their K45,000 back for a house he sold them that had two titles. Was he the Housing conveyancing officer at the time?
So here we stand.
I gave the report to a woman who said she would show her father who she said was forced out of his house at Gerehu by this man with a false lease to someone else. He blames the man for the death of his wife. Now he knows where he is living and will come.
81 Garia Street 5 Mile.
The ugly couple and son have gone racing off to report me to the 6 Mile Police for defamation and spoiling their family name. They say I will end up in gaol and deported. Their last chance to steal the house.
I told them they have no family name. If they did the same in China, they run the risk of standing before a firing squad.
There is a moving report on internet by Indian writer Vikram Seth on the recent banning of gay rights in India. He presents a very compelling view from the point of view of gay men. Please click:
2 days ago - To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched
away, says Vikram Seth on gay rights.
We can not help but be moved by the argument used. But he presents only part of the issue. With the rise of gay rights in the world comes a massive rise in paedophile sex.
Many gay men are also paedophile. Gays and lesbians never speak out against paedophiles because many of them are also paedophile. But many paedophiles are heterosexuaL.
So the nations of the world are moving against paedophiles. They have also to move against those paedophiles disguised as gays. Take the recent laws of Russia.
The gay community will never have credibility unless they speak out against homosexual and heterosexual paedophiles. That they will never do.
In recent weeks I have reported on caring for Grace who had suffered from TB for a long time but ignored by her family. I took her into my home and cared for her over an 8 month period.
Each fortnight I took her to the Pacific International Hospital to be checked by Dr Mathias Sapuri. Her condition deteriorated over that time largely because she was secretly smoking. She was frightened of dying.
Her personality changed over that time and she became short tempered and violent at the least problem that faced her. But she was ignored by her family, particularly by her father.
On 21 October 2013, she decided she was dying so she rang her father and screamed down the phone hysterically. He arrived drunk with a policeman friend and brutally bashed her carer and took her away. Please click:
But the family still did not care for her and she dragged herself to the hospital to be treated. She did not come home to be looked after by her carer who had put a complaint to the police on her father's brutality.
I contacted the father and begged him to bring her back. She had check-ups at the hospital. She has TB pills to be replaced. Most of all, she should be prevented from smoking. Dr Sapuri had already told her that smoking kills people with TB.
In late November 2013, Grace died. Her father Chief Inspector Bonn Gulu was largely responsible for interrupting her care and preventing her from coming back to her carer. He kept her away from the police investigating his bashing. He saved his own career. Bastard.
He obviously blamed her carer for her drop in health. Gulu killed his daughter by his own vicious stupidity. Please click:
Her carer was advised by her doctor that she was still strong at the last visit to the hospital. The possibility must be considered that she committed suicide.
I have been reluctant to say this but she would have felt total despair at being forcibly removed from her carer by her father. All anger of her carer has gone and replaced only by contempt for her family.
There is a new lifestyle among modern women in PNG. They do not want babies. They have no desire to stay home, cook and wait for the husband. They want to be out with money. That involves a little prior planning. Please click:
The trick in the urban areas is to have two or three husbands. They could not do that in the rural areas because they and their men might die at the hands of an angry husband.
But the trick can work in the urban areas particularly with expatriate men and a PNG husband. Expatriate men can be as thick as a brick when it comes to tricky women. Please click:
The woman will explain her problem to the white man. Darling I love you but can only stay with you for 2 days a week. I have a sick aunt in the settlement who needs me to look after her. I am her only family left.
What a lovely lady. Here have K400 to look after her. I love you darling. Then off she goes for 2 days to live with her PNG husband who may or may not be in on the trick. She has another white man to love at the end of the week.
The PNG husband just has to sit at home and wait for his wife to bring him K600 a fortnight from her loving white man.
This is an increasing trend in the urban areas. It requires a little discipline on the part of the woman. She must never be seen in public with the white man or her PNG man.
She may have two white men on a string. That enables her weekly double dipping. Not intending to be rude. Please click:
This woman is not being abused. She is doing well as a professional lover. White men should beware of a woman who has broken up with her husband.
It only takes the news that she is with a white man for him to be back as loving as ever and wanting either his wife or compensation from the white man. It could all be planned with the wife.
A pregnant woman appeared in District Court in Lae on a complaint from her husband. She has come home drunk at night and damaged the family home in a fit of anger.
The Court ordered her to pay damages. The husband was a lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality. She said she was angry because he did not give her money.
The problem may well be that he was reluctant to do so as he knew she would go out and get drunk with the family money.
This is the new style PNG woman who is supposed to be abused by men. Women are becoming the abusers. The UN lesbians are getting it wrong. Don't give up lesbians. Talk to your drunken PNG sisters about the importance of family.
If she drinks beer or homebrew, she probably smokes too. She has a baby in her womb who is suffering from the poisons of her lifestyle.
2 days ago - British singer Elton John urges Russia to end
discrimination against gays and lesbians as he performs at
a concert in Moscow
There has been a campaign across the world to misrepresent the intent of the Russian laws. The gays and lesbians are trying to say it is against them.
It is if they are paedophile and want to promote a gay and lesbian lifestyle in schools, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.
Let Elton John stay with music. That does not give him the credibility to be totally incorrect in his assessment of Russian laws. Being a musician does not make him a world thinker.
A women stabbed and killed her husband in a domestic dispute and was sentenced to 10 years gaol by the Papua New Guinea court.
Her husband was a campaign manager for a candidate and returned home at midnight. His wife was on her way out to play cards and buy betel nut. He would not allow her to go so she stabbed him.
Her lawyer told the Court that she had suffered some form of assault on the day of the offence. But he could not be specific. It sounds as if he just made up a story. PNG lawyers are like that.
She apologised to the Court and her husband's family for what she had done.
It is good to realize that the key awareness message in the Papua New Guinea AIDS response has now become focused on family.
Ten years ago, with the AusAID and UN gay and lesbian activists in control, there was a not-so-hidden gay and lesbian agenda that AIDS Holistics was forced to oppose. Focus was on condoms and the rights of women and girls.
Focus was also on violence of men starting with the founder of AIDS Holistics who they claimed was a violent wife bashing child molester. How could he possibly have anything to say on family living? Please click:
The Positive Living message is now the key to the family awareness in the AIDS campaign. It is now spreading to living in general. Focus is on:
* importance of family,
* rights and responsibilities of all family members,
* parents support to children,
* healthy living for all,
* importance of education,
* nutrition,
* husbands and wives supporting each other,
* dangers of marijuana and homebrew,
* family values in home, church and school,
* problems of sorcery killing,
* circumcision,
* mother to child transmission of HIV,
* faithfulness in marriage, and
* importance of faith.
There is still bullying by AusAID and the UN of the churches and care groups by the gay, lesbian and paedophile lobby. AIDS Holistics remains banned as began in 2002. We had committed a terrible gay and lesbian crime. We had focused on FAMILY and FAITH.
The gay and lesbian focus on violence of men towards women is starting to suffer a battering at the hands of those who understand the fake statistics put forward and the dirty tricks. Please click:
Sorcery is not funny. But the scene in Life of Brian was hilarious. It starred John Cleese who stood on the mount and addressed a group of English medieval peasants in their filthy brown tunics.
Peasants: Kill im. He's a sorcerer. Kill im.
JohnCleese: How do you know? What proof do you have?
The UN lesbians are determined to muscle in on sorcery killing. They are failing everywhere else. There is no violence and rapes in Port Moresby markets. There is no massive deterioration of family at the hands of men. This is all ideological wishful thinking.
Now they are back with the fake advice that sorcery killing is a gender issue. Rubbish. They are saying that sorcery killing is focused on women. Reports in the media are that men and women are killed perhaps equally.Please click:
It all depends on where the killing takes place in the country. Some areas have women involved in sorcery and others have mainly men. But sorcery exists and does occur. Whether or not all deaths are the result of sorcery is a matter of conjecture.
The gay supporting Post Courier has placed an editorial today on gender based sorcery killing. Perhaps they want to make the UN lesbians happy.
Sorcery is said to occur against old men and women who live alone with no family. Often they will own land that the jealous eyes of their killers are watching with anticipation of taking and dividing as spoils of the killing.
Some will be sorcerers who may well not have been involved in the killing for which they are being murdered.
A report has been posted on this blog on the domestic violence at the hands of a PNG woman against a man. It referred to monthly bashing, abusive words, regret and apology, more violence, talk of love and threats of suicide. Please click:
It is interesting to find that the same pattern of abuse occurs in gay and lesbian domestic violence. The report below points out that gay and lesbian violence is now only being brought out into the open as it has always been seen as men being abusive and violent to women.
GAY AND LESBIAN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS SILENT
Typical framing of partner abuse as a heterosexual issue—with men abusing women—does a disservice to victims in abusive homosexual relationships.
Two months into their relationship, Chris's boyfriend José pushed him to the ground in a fit of anger and ripped the clothes off his body. "We had gone out dancing, and when we got home, I was changing in front of him," said Chris, 34.
"I had on my favorite pair of underwear; it was the pair I had worn the first time we went out. He saw the underwear, and just flew into a rage, saying, 'How dare you wear those! Those are for me!'"
José threw him on the floor of their bedroom closet, and smashed the only light bulb in the room, leaving them in darkness. He loomed above Chris on the floor as he tore the underwear away. That was the first time things had ever turned violent between the two.
"I was in such a state of shock," Chris recounted seven years later, his fingers tapping at a wine glass stem and his brown eyes drifting. "I thought, 'Oh, he's just jealous; it's the drinking,' and I let it go. There was a lot of drinking in this relationship. No drugs, but lots of drinking.
The second time was worse. "He was angry at something—I can't remember what—and I was laughing," said Chris. José again became incensed, strode into the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife. "He pulled me by my hair, had me on my knees and had the butcher knife at my neck."
Chris says he didn't react. At the time, his sister was pregnant, and he wanted to live to see his niece. "I talked him down, told him to give me the knife.
I put my hand on his, and we put the knife back in place together," said Chris, demonstrating by holding his two hands together.
That night, José locked their bedroom door for fear that Chris would escape and tell someone. The next morning, he told Chris, "You know I didn't mean it, right?"
"That was his way of apologizing to me," Chris scoffed. The relationship lasted nine months, but continued to affect Chris for years after it ended.
***
Sam, 25, describes himself as having been "naive and impressionable," during the time he was dating David. "He's not a stupid person," Sam told me over Skype.
"He never hit me or threw things directly at me, but he would frighten me enough to make me back down."
According to Sam, David became increasingly controlling after they moved in together, three or four months into their relationship.
At that point, because of the apartment lease, he said, "it was too late to just up and go."
One of David's main methods of control was evoking pity and threatening to harm himself.
"He would get very sad and upset which, in hindsight, was a plea for compassion," Sam said, "As time went on, he became controlling through jealousy.
Any attention that I didn't give to him—whether I gave it to friends, family, or other guys, even just other gay men who were my friends—he would get very upset if I hung out with them too much."
David eventually forced Sam to open a joint bank account so that Sam couldn't "stockpile" any funds and move out. He increasingly tried to cut off Sam’s contacts with friends and family.
After two and a half years, Sam managed to end the relationship after David admitted he had returned to using cocaine.
***
LaTesha, 18, is a consummate Queens girl. Tough and stoic behind her soft voice and hooded sweatshirt, she is about to graduate from high school and wants to study criminal justice in college.
She has already been beaten up by a girlfriend. "It only happened when we got into an argument," she said, her brown eyes getting serious. "If she felt like she was being disrespected, she would swing at me."
"We always argued," she continued. "But you know how a couple can argue and then just be back to normal? We would argue, be back to normal. When we argued again, she would bring up the last argument. And it would just build up.” There was always something to argue about and usually, LaTesha said, it was girls.
"She was so insecure," LaTesha recalled. "If I'd be hanging out with one of my friends who was a girl, she'd see me and say 'What's this? You cheating on me?' And I always told her, 'You need to stop.' And then we would get into it. It was a pattern. We would break up for one week, get back together another. We must have broken up about 20 times."
The final break-up happened when Monique landed several punches on LaTesha in front of the staff of Safe Space, an LGBT community center in Jamaica, Queens.
***
Domestic violence—or as it's often referred to today, intimate partner violence—is usually discussed in the context of heterosexual relationships. But partner violence is also an issue in the LGBTQ community, a fact that has only come to light in recent years.
Tre'Andre Valentine, the Community Programs Coordinator at The Network/La Red, a Boston-based domestic violence support group specifically for LGBTQ people, says that because domestic violence is still thought of as a heterosexual problem, there can be major hurdles when trying to find funding and conduct research, as well as when providing services to people who don't fit in the stereotype of a domestic violence survivor.
"The idea that a woman can be the one who's abusive throws a wrench in the traditional view," Valentine said. "The idea that only men can be batterers makes it a lot harder for men to get access to shelter."
Yejin Lee, an associate at the Anti-Violence Program in New York City, said that the assumption of heterosexuality has been a huge stumbling block for gays and lesbians seeking refuge from an abuser.
"One problem is the way domestic violence has been framed for the past 30 years," she said. Since the entire movement against domestic abuse started as a battered women's movement, Lee said, we are ingrained to think that victims are all are married, straight women.
As a mental health counselor with the Violence Recovery Program in Boston, Jessica Newman says that because the default assumption is that people are straight, there can be an attitude within shelters that a gay person somehow “deserved” the violence.
"Same-sex relationships are often demonized or marginalized," she said, "So some people's attitudes are 'it serves you right.'"
But Newman, Lee, and Valentine all added that there are also internal factors that keep a cover of darkness over the issue of domestic violence in the gay community.
"There can be a fear of making the community look bad," said Newman. "Some people might have a real and legitimate fear of being looked down on, or not finding services through the police, judicial system, or a shelter. People don't want that negative image of the community out there."
Valentine added, "There's the idea that we'll be airing dirty laundry. It sort of discredits the community to say that abuse is happening, after all the work we've been doing [to enter mainstream society]. There's the feeling that we don't want to attach something additionally bad to us, so it's not talked about."
Sitting in a small restaurant near Madison Square Garden, Chris mulled over his past. "I know gay couples in the Bronx who beat the shit out of each other," he said. "The weird thing is, it's like fighting with your brother.
You're going at each other, and you're not taking it seriously, and you don't think of it as a problem, it's just the fabric of your relationship. But you don't realize it's a piece of fabric you can cut out."
Raised in a conservative, military family, with a history of sexual abuse running on both sides, Chris said he always felt like the odd one out growing up. "I was raised to tolerate what was dished out," he remembered. "It was just dysfunctional. I grew up with a closeted uncle who died of AIDS and a mother who hit my father, who would then turn around and hit us."
Chris moved from Chicago to New York when he was 21 so that he could live life as an out gay man, he said. "I had a full time job, full time benefits, and my own apartment," he said. "That didn't last."
Chris met José at a lounge in Washington Heights in late September 2004, and for him, it was love at first sight. "I saw his eyes, the way he dressed," he said. "He made me feel secure. He was a husky guy. My ideal: a masculine Latino."
A honeymoon period ensued and within three months the two were living together. Chris said he doted on José, alienating friends and family in the process.
But the honeymoon period ended soon after José moved in. He started taking over everything in Chris's life. "It started with verbal abuse," Chris said. "Little things: put downs about the apartment, about me, and then it turned into everything. He wasn't happy with anything."
"I grew up self-conscious. I was made to feel inferior at school and at home," Chris continued. "And I just lost all the self-esteem that I had found when I came here and came out. I'm smart! I graduated from college, I've won awards. And he just made me feel like so much less than I was. [But] the less happy he was, the more I would try to fix things."
Chris sensed José wasn't happy, but it never occurred to him that the relationship had turned bad, or would soon turn physically violent.
"I didn't tell anybody [about the violence in the relationship],” Chris said. “I didn't want to! They're just going to tell you what you don't want to hear."
The summer after José moved in, after those first incidents of violence, Chris was mugged on the street outside their apartment. The thief punched him in the nose, but when Chris went to run after him, José grabbed his arm and stopped him.
"He wouldn't let me call the cops," recalled Chris. "José didn't have legal papers to be in the U.S. and he was scared of what might happen."
Furious, traumatized, and gushing blood, Chris turned around and backhanded José on the street. The two stood looking at each other. Chris remembers this as the moment when the relationship truly began to go downhill.
"I didn't think about leaving until that moment," he said. "It got to the point where I was crying in public. I was crying at work. I couldn't speak my feelings."
The very last time José turned violent was close to the end of their relationship. "He was always on the phone a lot," Chris said. "So one time I reached for his phone to go through it and see who he was talking to, and he just grabbed my wrist and twisted."
By this point, Chris remembers, José was out all the time and coming home late, or not coming home at all. In August of 2005, Chris kept a promise to himself. "I told him, 'I can't count on these fingers how many times you've lied,'" Chris said, spreading all ten fingers out on the table in front of him. "And I promised myself once I couldn't count your lies on these fingers, it would be over.'"
That night, Chris went out without José. "I told myself if I could kiss someone else, then I didn't really love him. Well, I kissed someone else, and I went home and told him to move out."
Data on the rates of same-sex partner abuse have only become available in recent years. Even today, many of the statistics and materials on domestic violence put out by organizations like the Center for Disease Control and the Department of Justice still focus exclusively on heterosexual relationships, and specifically heterosexual women.
While the CDC does provide some resources on its website for the LGBT population, the vast majority of the information is targeted at women. Materials provided by the CDC for violence prevention and survivor empowerment prominently feature women in their statistics and photographs.
In 2013, the CDC released the results of a 2010 study on victimization by sexual orientation, and admitted that “little is known about the national prevalence of intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking among lesbian, gay, and bisexual women and men in the United States.”
The report found that bisexual women had an overwhelming prevalence of violent partners in their lives: 75 percent had been with a violent partner, as opposed to 46 percent of lesbian women and 43 percent of straight women. For bisexual men, that number was 47 percent. For gay men, it was 40 percent, and 21 percent for straight men.
The most recent statistics available on same-sex intimate partner violence from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, which focuses on LGBT relationships, reported 21 incidents of intimate partner homicides in the LGBT community, the highest ever. Nearly half of them were gay men and, for the second year in a row, the majority of survivors were people of color—62 percent.
In 2012, NCAVP programs around the country received 2,679 reports of intimate partner violence, a decrease of around 32 percent from 2011. However the report noted that many of the NCAVP’s member organizations were operating at decreased capacity due to limiting the number of cases they were able to take. The report said that excluding data from organizations, there was actually a 29 percent increase in reports of violence from 2011 to 2012.
"Statistics are very controversial," wrote Curt Rogers, executive director of the Gay Men's Domestic Violence Program, in an email. "And it's possible that men are underreported. The bottom line for me [is that] it happens to men, period, so we should be inclusive in our approach and not marginalize the male victim population."
Valentine, from The Network/La Red, said that in his experience, the rates of violence in the LGBTQ community seem comparable to those in the straight community. "The rate of domestic violence that has been documented is one in four women, and it's pretty much the same for LGBTQ folks," he said.
"Reporting can be really difficult, and historically we [LGBTQ people] have not had a very good relationship with police and law enforcement, so folks may not be reporting it."
In any case, he continued, the police might not believe the victims when they call, the attitude often being, "You're both men, work it out between yourselves," or, "Women aren't violent; they don't hit each other."
Indeed, according to the NCAVP report, only 16.5 percent of survivors reported interacting with the police, but in one-third of those cases, the survivor was arrested instead of the abuser. A mere 3.7 percent of survivors reported seeking access to shelters.
"We need to change the way we look at domestic violence," Rogers said. "I don't see it in any way as a gender issue. I see it as a power and a control issue."
***
Sam met his first and, so far, only boyfriend, David, outside of a club one night while he was in his second year of college. "The first thing I remember thinking when I saw him was 'Oh God, never,'" he said, laughing. "As in, I would never date somebody like that. He was very assertive; almost a purposely bitchy persona, which is not uncommon in the club scene."
But date they did. After a bit of flirting back and forth on Facebook, within three or four months, as Sam remembers it, they were living together.
"In hindsight," said Sam, "I sort of already knew things were off, which really should have been my chance to get away. But it wasn't until we moved in when I started to realize that amount of control that was going on."
David soon became aware that Sam was unhappy and, according to Sam, he increasingly tried to force a façade of a stable life and healthy relationship on him.
"He went from using emotions to manipulate me, to smashing things, to threatening to commit suicide, to threatening to harm our cat, to threatening to ruin me in various ways—socially, academically, that kind of thing. About a year in, I tried twice to get out of it. He would say 'Okay, that's fine,' and then he would smash up the apartment. He would smash mirrors or push the Christmas tree over or threaten to kill himself.
That's usually when the threats became the worst, when he was trying to control me into staying," Sam said, recounting once incident when he tried to break up with David, and David smashed an entire rack of drying dishes, saying, 'Well I guess we don't need any couples dishes anymore.'"
Sam insisted that David was delusional and trying to cling to the idea of a stable, normal life with Sam. David, as it turns out, did not have a stable background. He came from a troubled family:
His mother was alcoholic, and his parents, while loving, were dysfunctional and destructive. In addition, David told Sam that an older boy had molested him when he was 12 or 13. He developed a cocaine habit that, he told Sam when they met, he had kicked.
Both men eventually grew depressed, and Sam felt increasingly frightened and isolated by David's behavior—not to mention embarrassed that the neighbors could always hear when David flew off the handle. He had only one friend he felt he could turn to, who of course pleaded with Sam to break things off.
During this time, David began slipping back into cocaine use, and Sam buried himself in his studies. Focusing on earning an honors degree, he said, helped get him through.
"Often he would try to 'guilt trip' me about the time I spent doing school," Sam recalled. "But I was able to hang on to that as sort of a hope and a goal."
In December 2010, David forced Sam into an engagement. "I was so afraid of what he was capable of," Sam recalled. "It was less problematic to keep this up than to break it up." Then, in mid-August 2011, David came forward and admitted he had started using cocaine again.
"I was in the shower," said Sam. "And he came in the washroom and said, 'I have something to tell you. I've been doing cocaine again. A lot of it, and spending a good chunk of our money on it.' We'd been really struggling money-wise, like, probably below poverty line at some points."
Sam got out of the shower and went out, and David began making calls to friends and family, admitting his problem, telling them that he'd been lying to them and taking money from them.
"Years ago, he had had one slip up," Sam said. "And I said, 'Okay, I get it, you're a recovering addict. But you do it again, you slip up again, and it's over.' And that's the card I pulled. I'd been looking for a way out for two years."
The psychology of domestic abuse, both those who perpetrate it and those who survive it, has been studied for years. Multiple factors have been shown to contribute, including childhood abuse, mental illness, cultural norms, stress, and unbalanced power dynamics in the relationship.
Brian Norton has been a therapist in New York for 12 years, specializing in "challenges related to gay men (homophobia, coming out, etc.)" and couples therapy. He said that often a controlling or abusive personality forms in childhood.
"We all recreate the same dynamics over and over again. Ninety-nine if not 100 percent of the time, victims have had previous abusive relationships."
Abusive relationships are, of course, emotionally draining for the victim. "It's disorienting," Norton said. "One minute they're telling you they love you, and being strong, and loving and positive; then they're cheating on you, or not respecting you, and not paying attention to what you need."
Benjamin Seaman, also a New York-based therapist who has been practicing since 2001, specializes in polyamorous relationships and has also seen the "full spectrum" of gay couples. In Seaman's philosophy, violence and abuse are "usually the tools of someone who feels powerless."
Seaman agreed that bad relationships fuel other bad relationships and that sometimes the lingering stress of abusive childhood incidents leads to an ongoing shame in adulthood.
This can further contribute to stress in a gay relationship, said Seaman, when one or both of the people are "self-loathing" gays.
Norton gave the example of one couple currently in his care. "One person in the couple doesn't have his life together, and his partner does. He feels intimidated and threatened by the success and stability of the partner. So he became abusive."
***
LaTesha, the high-school student from Queens, admits that when she was in first grade, she used to "do things that we weren't supposed to do" with a next door neighbor's daughter. The first person she came out to was her best friend when she was 15.
Her mother found out by reading her diary. "She was just like, 'You love girls now? Not in my house!' and she started bashing me. And so I told her I would never tell her anything ever again."
LaTesha was 16 when she met Monique, who was 18, in school. The two started dating, and soon after, started fighting. "This scar, on my neck? Her," she said softly, massaging the thin line with her fingers. "That's from her nails."
LaTesha insists the two didn't physically fight often in their 19 months together. "I'm not the type to do that," she said. "If I love somebody, I will never put my hands on them. I just figured that she got mad, and she swung.
That’s what happens when people get mad—I didn't see it as she was beating me. I didn't see it as that. But then I had to realize that's not always the answer for when we get into altercations.”
Others noticed. "People would come to me and ask what happened, 'cause I would usually have scratches or a little bruise on my face. I'd tell them I got into it with her and they'd say, 'I don't' understand why you're putting yourself through this.' I'd be like, 'Well, I love her, and I'm going to accept her for who she is.'"
Monique began trying to manipulate LaTesha, telling her who she could and couldn't hang out with. She bought LaTesha a cell phone and then took it back when she thought LaTesha was texting other girls. When they fought, Monique would hurl insults at LaTesha, saying, "I hope you die of AIDS," and calling her a slut.
After the last time the two broke up, LaTesha said, "She just wouldn't let it go. She tried to get back with me. I was still in love with her [Monique], but I didn't want to be with her anymore."
At the time, LaTesha had started dating another girl. Monique didn't like this, tracked the pair down at Safe Space, and came in swinging at the new girlfriend. A final confrontation occurred in front of staff, counselors, and peers at Safe Space.
LaTesha had begun volunteering as a peer educator there after she and Monique broke up for the last time. "I could have gotten banned from Safe Space," LaTesha said of the fight.
"We weren't even together, and she was, quote-unquote, in love with me. I was just like, 'No. You're not going to hit her. You got a problem, it's between me and you.' And she swung at me. She got in my face and said, 'What are you gonna do?' And she hit me, and then she did it again."
The Safe Space staff managed to separate the two, and LaTesha remained a peer counselor with the group.
Lesbian women can have a very hard time finding shelter. And sometimes, an abuser will call a shelter claiming to be a victim. "What may happen," said Valentine at Network/La Red, "is that both a survivor and an abuser can access services, so it might not be the safest harbor for a lesbian survivor."
Newman at the Violence Recovery Program said that proper screening techniques can help enhance shelters' safety. "We screen both parties," she said. "And we won't work with batterers. We'll refer them to a batterer's intervention program. But I've definitely seen it. People will see themselves as victims when they're not."
It's tough enough to get into a domestic violence shelter if you're straight, no matter your gender. Kristen Clonan is a spokesperson for Safe Horizon, which claims to be New York City's largest provider of domestic violence residence with nine shelters and around 725 beds throughout the city.
Clonan said that in 2011, nearly 2,500 women, children, and men sought out shelter at Safe Horizon, and Safe Horizon's three hotlines field 163,000 calls annually.
That's a lot of demand for 725 beds. And shelters that cater to LGBT people are even more perilously few and far between. Cassildra Aguilera, the LGBTQ program coordinator for Safe Space, said there is one shelter in New York City that identifies as LGBTQ-specific, with 200 beds. Of the mainstream shelters, only 12 are LGBTQ friendly, and all are based in Manhattan.
According to Network/La Red in Boston, only two of the 30 domestic violence shelters in Massachusetts are specifically geared toward LGBTQ people: Network/La Red, and the Gay Men's Domestic Violence Program. Of mainstream programs, only eight accept LGBT people. Many shelters, even if they say they're LGBT-friendly, reportedly fail when it comes to providing for LGBT safety needs.
Valentine of The Network/La Red said there's a lot of homophobia in shelters among shelter residents. "The staff might have a non-discrimination policy, but it's not enforced, and that definitely affects a lot of survivors."
Transgender people have an especially hard time, according to Newman. They might not find a shelter, because often neither men's nor women's shelters take transgendered people. If they find a place in a homeless shelter, they might be housed with the men, which could be dangerous, or with women, which can agitate shelter residents.
Curious people may ask intrusive questions, or they might not be seen as "real" women or "real" men, which, Newman said, is tremendously demeaning.
A month after breaking up with José, Chris tried to commit suicide. He failed, and shortly after began a course of therapy that, he says, helped him come to terms not only with this damaging relationship, but also with his tumultuous family life. After a rough few years during which he suffered from depression and severely decreased libido, he has just begun to make his way into the dating scene again. He has a steady job working in children’s after-school education.
Sam graduated from college and has begun a master’s degree program. He and his friends work to actively ignore and cut David out of their lives, despite David's repeated attempts to be in touch and get back together. And Sam says he has begun to date again, as his mental health has slowly improved with the help of his psychiatrist and his counselor.
Soon after the last violent encounter with Monique, LaTesha met the girlfriend she is currently seeing and says that she has definitely learned from her experience with Monique.
"The girlfriend I have now, she's so much different than before. You know, if we argue, we just won't talk to each other. If we play-fight, and we know it's about to get serious, we'll stop."
LaTesha is still a volunteer peer educator with Safe Space. Every week, she works to educate the Queens community about the LGBT population and spread the message of safe sex and healthy relationships.
In May 2013, President Obama re-authorized the Violence Against Women Act. While the law still focuses on women in heterosexual relationships, it has a new section that includes coverage of same-sex partners—a big sign that attitudes are changing. Rogers and Newman both agree that circumstances are improving for gays seeking shelter and help.
"Twenty years ago there was nothing," Rogers said. "Now there are significantly more resources and a much higher likelihood of a positive response from mainstream providers and first responders."
As individuals and society come to recognize same-sex partner violence as an existing problem, there is hope.
