Domestic violence law needs to change

LETTER WRITER Patricia Levesh asks why "we continue to portray intimate victim violence as anything other than it is: a crime" ("How we continue to mislabel domestic violence," Letters, Jan. 23).

As she is the managing attorney in the family law unit of Greater Boston Legal Services, I'm surprised that she is mystified by this. If allegations of domestic violence were treated the same as any other violent crime instead of as civil infractions, the accused "batterers" would be granted the rights of those accused of other criminal acts: the right to an attorney, to a trial by a jury of one's peers, to cross-examine the alleged victim at an evidentiary hearing.

In short, if domestic violence allegations were not prosecuted under the present quasi-civil regime, the accused batterers would be entitled to that precious commodity that separates free societies from tyrannies: justice.

So, yes, please, by all means, let's move the law on domestic violence where it belongs: criminal law. Let's allow the accused to defend themselves, and if found not guilty, to bring charges of perjury against those women who use allegations of domestic violence as a legal gambit to gain automatic custody of children in divorce or to lash out after a relationship has gone sour.

JOSEPH URENECK
Dorchester