The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) About the NCIDP

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many.

We note our birth in the header of every page because we think it to be a critical facet of our organization's founding that remains enveloped at the heart of our mission.

Society currently well recognizes rape, domestic violence, stalking, kidnapping, and attempted murder as some of the most heinous personal crimes committed upon survivors. The founder of whom we speak in our header experienced all of those types of crime, and survived many of them several times each. This without involving herself in crime, or violence or gang activity, or even illegal drugs of any kind, throughout her life. She never even liked the taste of alcoholic beverages (a non-drinker), and she served her country well if inconspicuously for many years. That is, she spent her life 'being a good girl', and the violence that she experienced exclusively reflected her past history of extreme violence being perpetrated upon her dating back to her infancy.

The mission of the NCIDP continues to be shaped by such experiences. In most of the cases that we have seen and report on, the victim had already survived multiple incidents of perpetrations from among those crimes listed in the paragraph above. Our founder herself emphasized the stalking and domestic violence above the rapes and attempted murder, as reflected in our header. It was these persistent, incessant, mind-crushing, heart-rending, terrorizing forms of violence (stalking, domestic violence) that she found to be much more damaging to her heart, mind and soul than the ephemeral acts of physical violence (rape, attempted murder).

Still, we have also encountered individuals who share an interest in certain issues that we confront for reasons apart from the survival of violence. We feel it to be absolutely inane for anyone to "need" any specific "reason" for exercising their fundamental rights in a nation of "liberty", and that the broader the exercise of such rights, the easier the exercise of such rights will be for those who do have such need and reason. Consequently, we have incorporated the broader perspectives of such other demographic groups with shared interest, when practicable. Yet we consider paramount our organizational memory of our own roots in these issues.

We live in a country where, by declared intent and design, "the fight for civil rights" should be an oxymoron. Yet millions upon millions of individuals in this nation can speak to the failures of this nation to live up to that promise. We are here to say that among them, survivors of violence are not the least of them. We are here to say that we survivors are not here to be beaten down another round and led to slaughter by those very ones whose professions and duties are to protect us, to help us, to serve us - we as members of society and community.

We cannot, we refuse, to forget that the issues we raise and confront ARE matters of life-or-death for the innumerable, the hidden, survivors of violence that cannot find safety without respect for, and honor of, their rights. We insist upon confronting those who would arrogate such important, life-or-death rights in the terms of the status they have chosen to adopt in so doing: as criminals.

Our mission is the exercise of control over personal identity information through the exercise of fundamental legal rights and protections guaranteed to people in this nation by the rule of law - to the end that such exercise is critical to survivors of violence escaping their perpetrators.

With so much literature about privacy and identity now (finally) reaching the public consciousness, we would expect to see more actions against those who commit such crimes, or at least more explanations about existing protections for those rights. Yet, sadly, there appears to be woefully little beyond our own work of the past decade and more to inform individuals that the laws that protect them offer criminal prosecution against those who perpetrate upon them and their rights.

While we applaud, ideologically, notions of increasing the protections of individuals and their rights, we remain skeptical of the efficacy of such changes when existing and long-standing standards of law remain so callously and even blatantly unenforced and arrogated.

We are an organization of, about, by, and for survivors of violence. Our goal is to end reperpetrations upon such survivors by those to whom we are supposed to be able to turn safely. To that end, we educate. The information on this website obviously cannot serve as legal advice to you in your particular situation.

Originated as a begrudging work of survival, and enduring through continuing perpetrations and violence, there are some citations from this work still missing. While our founding survivor was tough, tenacious, thorough and careful in her research, much of her citation lists and founding research materials have had to be recreated. For her, at the time, she could provide those quotes, with proper citation, from memory - her life depended upon it.

Our mission is the exercise of control over personal identity information through the exercise of fundamental legal rights and protections guaranteed to citizens by the rule of law - to the end that such exercise is critical to survivors of violence escaping their perpetrators.

If you have additional material to offer that we haven't published here, or that may help us in this recreative process, please let us know. We will be grateful for the additional information.