Archive for the ‘Lethality Indicators – in News’ Category
Don’t Box Me In…. or Shut Me Up…
Eve Ensler, as quoted by Anne Caroline Drake
We Silence Girl Power
When Ms. Ensler debuted her new idea at the TED India conference in November, 2009, she addressed how we silence girls’ authentic voices ~ tell them not to show their brilliance ~ tone it down ~ don’t be too intense. We sell them and objectify them and turn them into commodities to be bought and sold. In essence, we render them invisible.
She also shared how her violent father ordered her not to cry while she was being beaten because it exposed his brutality to him. He didn’t want to see it ~ didn’t want to be reminded.
Girl Power is silenced by patriarchy power.
Girls are initiated into society via a process intended to crush, eradicate, annihilate, humiliate, belittle, censor, reduce, and kill off their voices. [1]
Our compassion, empathy, passion, intensity, emotions, vulnerability, intuitive intelligence, and vision are silenced. We forget that compassion informs wisdom and vulnerability is our greatest strength.
Mandate to Please Girls are conditioned to please ~ to do what someone else wants them to do rather than to be authentic.
Ms. Ensler told CBS’ Early Show this morning that she believes girls stay in violent relationships because that’s what their boyfriends want: I think often when girls stay with boys, it isn’t always because they want to be beat up, it’s because they’re feeling their [boyfriend’s] sorrow, or they’re feeling their insecurity, or they’re feeling their grief, or they’re feeling something boys don’t feel. So they’re overcompensating for that.
One of the monologues, “Dear Rihanna,” is devoted to teenage girls’ reaction to the dating abuse Rihanna experienced from Chris Brown.
V-Girls Revolution Ms. Ensler is calling all girls to claim our emotions, break the silence, and unleash our feminine energy. She wants to shift the focus from a mandate to please to a mandate to educate, activate, engage, confront, defy, and create.
She believes girl power can save the world. In the book’s epilogue, she issues a Manifesta:
Everyone’s making everything up
There is no one in charge except for those
who pretend to be
No one is coming
No one is going to
Rescue you. . .
Always fight back
Ask for it
Say you want it. . .
Why am I waiting
Whining
Pining
Fitting in?
Ayaan Ali Hirsi.
The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
Its Preface is short, and worth reading.
In response to ongoing abuses of women’s rights in the name of fundamentalist Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her supporters established the AHA Foundation in 2007 to help protect and defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam.
Through education, outreach and the dissemination of knowledge, the Foundation aims to combat several types of crimes against women, including female genital mutilation, forced marriages, honor violence, and honor killings.
The Foundation is opposed to the adoption of dual legal systems to adjudicate family disputes in religious families and supports the separation of all religions and the State.
The AHA Foundation works to reinforce the following basic rights: the rights of women and girls to security and control of their own bodies, the rights of women and girls to an education, the rights of women to work outside the home and to control their own income, the rights of women and girls to freedom of expression and association, and the rights of women and girls to other basic civil rights of citizens and residents defined under the laws of Western democracies and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regardless of sexual identification.
Founding member, Ayaan Hirsi Alli
As a 501(c)3 organization under the Internal Revenue Code of the U.S., the Foundation only accepts charitable and philanthropic contributions and does not sell products of any kind.
Click here to learn more about the AHA Foundation.
WHAT DO WE KNOW? Click here to download facts and figures on the circumstances affecting Muslim girls and women in the United States.
Where Fist, Feet and Faith Collide
Diego Sanchez before a bout in Memphis.
Mr. Renken’s ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts — a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles — to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low. Mixed martial arts events have drawn millions of television viewers, and one was the top pay-per-view event in 2009.
Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events.
The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”
The outreach is part of a larger and more longstanding effort on the part of some ministers who fear that their churches have become too feminized, promoting kindness and compassion at the expense of strength and responsibility.
“The man should be the overall leader of the household,” said Ryan Dobson, 39, a pastor and fan of mixed martial arts who is the son of James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a prominent evangelical group. “We’ve raised a generation of little boys.”
These pastors say the marriage of faith and fighting is intended to promote Christian values, quoting verses like “fight the good fight of faith” from Timothy 6:12. Several put the number of churches taking up mixed martial arts at roughly 700 of an estimated 115,000 white evangelical churches in America. The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches.
The Church is segregated enough. Rich congregations, poor congregations. White and black. English, Spanish, Korean, et al. We shouldn’t have a schism over personality types. I know in the subconscious that we’re attracted to like-types, but the Body of Christ has many types and we all need to join together to work together.But aside from simply being offended by their derogatory language, there is great danger in redefining the Gospel of Peace. This happens by projecting certain personality traits onto Christ Jesus. In order to sell their case these men try to define our Savior as a rough-and-tumble character who liked fighting and pain. They say being sensitive is a feminine trait not fitting for men, so Jesus wasn’t sensitive. Gentleness is also excluded from Christ’s manly character. Driscoll has a slogan, “Meek. Mild. As if.” slamming the characterization of Christ as either of these things, regardless of Christ’s proclamation that “the meek shall inherit the earth.”
This isn’t the first time a masculine movement has tried to redefine the Church. When the Germanic barbarians controlled much of the Northern Holy Roman Empire, the (beer drinking) barbarians wouldn’t accept “a God I could beat up” because of their warrior culture. To “Christianize” the Germans, the Church adapted to this culture turning Jesus into a warrior, Heaven became Valhalla, and the disciples became Christ’s warriors. The Germanic tribes were indeed converted, but Christianity became a militarized religion as a result. Centuries later you will never guess who drew on this Jesus as a warrior model in the 1930s to create a masculine, nationalistic movement in Germany. If you guessed Adolf Hitler, you’d be right. He drew on the Germanic folklore, blended with Christ, to create the Aryan race. He called Jesus his “Lord and Savior” and “a fighter.” Jesus was a warrior punishing the Jews.
I don’t mean to invoke Godwin’s Law, it just happened to be a historic fact that the blending of tribal Germanic myth with Christianity lead to a “fighter” Jesus which just so happened to inspire Nazism, which was a decidedly masculine movement as well. (Is it any coincidence that our current masculine movements tend towards being nationalistic?)
As time went on, the rugged, pioneering American spirit brought another masculine movement opposing the traditional clergy who were viewed as wimps because of their refusal to fight, and their piety. This lead to more individual ministers instead of the traditional clergy with elders, deacons and the rest. Again, Jesus was redefined to fit this cultural model of man and he became muscular and militant.
Where I stand:
I think that this pendulum, this male/female argument isn’t going to be won one side or the other. Until the artificial womb is complete, and sperm cloned (don’t think there’s not work going on this… There is….), we are going to need each other. Besides, how’s about some variety?
Hate begets hate, and hate is a human spiritual/emotional quality. It’s just that some environments incubate it better than others. Like theater, the arts (including the “art” of war), drama, music, and building things like pyramids, cathedrals, and mosques, the dynamic, the resonance, the structure, the impact, is intensified (for better, or for worse) in crowds.
I think that basic human nature needs scapegoats, and if they can’t face their personal “demons,” they will continue to externalize them in someone or some group to “hate.” The central message of the cross (to me), is that they end up shooting themselves in the foot, or shooting (or crucifying) the messenger. At our best, and privately, I’m sure most of us are hypocrites. It’ s the “US/THEM” mentality, carried to extremes, that is the primary problem.
HOWEVER, that’s no excuse for shutting up women reporting abuse, or attempting to leave it, or attempting to get something better for their children. And this is going on to this date, don’t kid yourself.
I wish I’d known about the “muscular Christianity” while I was married. If this continues to be carried to extremes, women are going to be just as interested in it, as in doing the “feminine” thing, i.e., running around from agency to agency looking for someone to protect them. I’m beginning to hate myself for my own upbringing, in having done that — BUT, you live, and you learn.
For those who wonder where I may stand religiously, I can’t stomach church attendance any more, and believe that they cause more problems than they help with. I also have become much more skeptical over whether church and state can really be separated. Not with some of our present institutions.
Besides, it seems the national religion at this time is worship of money. Like any religions, it is just as prone to sacrifice men, women and children at its altar. In order to retain their “manhood,” SOME men lower on this totem pole appear to need to have some women lower than themselves, or children as property to bolster it up. Others have enough self-control not to do that.
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HAITI, pre-Earthquake (2005)
Rewinding History: The Rights of Haitian Women
Let Haiti Live Women’s Rights Delegation
January 2005
Introduction
In a climate of deep insecurity and escalating violence, Haitian women, the backbone of Haitian society and economy, are facing insurmountable challenges. Although Haitian women support the majority of Haiti’s economic activities and hold families together throughout the country, they have historically occupied an inferior social position.
Under the regime of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, Haitian women are caught in the middle of what many Haitians are calling a “rewind” back to the time of the 1991-94 coup d’etat, a period characterized by random violence in poor neighborhoods, a terror campaign employing rape, murder and disappearance as tactics, and rapidly increasing insecurity undermining all economic activity of the informal sector.
. . .
- The most impoverished and overpopulated neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, known as katyè popilè, have become war zones where feuding gangs, some of which are funded by political organizations, are victimizing tens of thousands of innocent civilians. While traveling to St. Catherine’s Hospital in Cite Soleil, an area that has been gripped by gang violence, the delegation observed the remains of arson attacks in the zone. Although the popular perception of the populations in these areas is that they support one or another of the gangs, the team heard repeated testimony that these armed groups are raping women and young girls, robbing families and burning homes.
Members of the national labor movement, Confederation des Travailleurs Haitienne (CTH) explained that due to the lack of economic opportunities in both formal and informal sectors women are having sex for money. A number of sources confided to the team that women and girls who cannot afford to attend school are having sex with older men to finance their educations.
When looked at in tandem with the rise in forced sex, the recent spike in politically motivated rapes is a clear indication that women’s bodies are being abused sexually as a result of increasing insecurity. The increase in frequency of rapes was confirmed by the director of the gynecology department at the General Hospital. Testimony from victims of rapes heard by the delegation highlighted several patterns in the attacks. Attackers beat their victims into submission, often striking their eyes so they will not be able to identify them. Attackers are often masked and heavily armed. Women are usually raped by more than one attacker, and the victims’ children are often witnesses to the rape. After the attack, most women have nowhere else to go and are forced to return to the location of their rape (their homes and the yards in front of their homes) to sleep at night.
Women accused armed bandits/gang members of committing the rapes, but most cannot identify their attacker(s) either because they were masked or because the victim was beaten and could not see the identity of her attacker(s). Most victims have been forced to find alternative places to stay and are afraid to go out during the day. Children conceived during rapes are deeply stigmatized in Haiti. One woman told the team that her daughter is taunted with the name “little rape” by the other children in her neighborhood.
One fifteen-year-old prisoner claims she was held for several days in the fire station before being transferred to the prison, and that while in custody there she was beaten and raped.
From the interviews at the women’s prison, the delegation unanimously concluded that justice is very much for sale in Haiti. Those who have the means to hire lawyers are able to see judges and have their cases dealt with swiftly and to their advantage. The poor suffer indefinite detention and are denied the right to see a judge because they cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
Although Haiti’s young democracy inherited problems from decades of dictatorships and little has been done to reform the system, it is not an overstatement to describe the system as a failure
Haitian women become crime targets after quake
From the interviews at the women’s prison, the delegation unanimously concluded that justice is very much for sale in Haiti. Those who have the means to hire lawyers are able to see judges and have their cases dealt with swiftly and to their advantage. The poor suffer indefinite detention and are denied the right to see a judge because they cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
Although Haiti’s young democracy inherited problems from decades of dictatorships and little has been done to reform the system, it is not an overstatement to describe the system as a failure
HAITI, post-earthquake, 2010
By PAISLEY DODDS – Associated Press WriterTags: CB Haiti EarthquakePORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Bernice Chamblain keeps a machete under her frayed mattress to ward off sexual predators and one leg wrapped around a bag of rice to stop nighttime thieves from stealing her daughters’ food.
She’s barely slept since Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake Jan. 12 forced her and other homeless women and children into tent camps, where they are easy targets for gangs of men.
Women have always had it bad in Haiti. Now things are worse.
. . .
Rape was only made a criminal offense in Haiti in 2005.
Reports of attacks are increasing: Women are robbed of coupons needed to obtain food at distribution points. Others relay rumors of rape and sexual intimidation at the outdoor camps, now home to more than a half million earthquake victims.
A curtain of darkness drops on most of the encampments at night. Only flickering candles or the glow of cell phones provide light. Families huddle under plastic tarps because there aren’t enough tents. With no showers and scant sanitation, men often lurk around places where women or young girls bathe out of buckets. Clusters of teenage girls sleep in the open streets while others wander the camps alone.
Out of all the things to take away from women who have been suffering, what a crime it is to attempt to take away, and re-phrase their own interpretations of their stories, their own reports of their own lives.
It has to be some kind of crime, these conferences ABOUT our families to which our families are not invited, nationwide. This is made possible by the digital divide, and economic constraints as well. It is an US/THEM mentality which is a poor/rich divide.
In the US, another family in Idaho was wiped out by court-ordered visitation.
Police: Father kills young son in Meridian murder-suicide
by Scott Evans
Idaho’s NewsChannel 7Posted on February 9, 2010 at 8:30 AM
Updated today at 11:09 AM
MERIDIAN — The Ada County coroner has identified a father and infant son in an apparent murder-suicide in a home on S. Pelican Way.
Meridian Police say it appears Nicholas Bacon, 20, shot his 8-month old boy Bekm, then turned the gun on himself.
According to police, Bacon’s estranged wife received a series of telephone calls from her husband Monday, the last of which she said he threatened violence.
“Her husband was making suicidal and homicidal threats; he had their baby with him,” said Meridian Police Deputy Chief Tracy Basterrechea.
The couple was going through a divorce, but because they had joint custody of their son, Bacon had the child for the afternoon and was supposed to return him that night. Bacon’s wife called police after her husband threatened to harm the baby and himself. Officers went to the home around 8:30 p.m.
“My oldest boy looked outside and saw all the cop cars and all the emergency vehicles out in front of the home,” said neighbor John Meyer.
Officers knocked on the door and called inside, but got no answer. They entered the home through the garage after Bacon’s wife gave them the code to open the door.
Officers found Bacon and his son on the floor of the living room, dead from gunshot wounds. A .40-caliber handgun was nearby. An exact time of death is not known, but Basterrachea says the shootings happened before officers arrived.
“We were surprised to see the (crime scene) tape out front,” said neighbor Frank Lane. “That’s what drew our attention.”
Basterrachea says the Meridian Police Department had no previous contact with the family. Bacon, who graduated from Mountain View High School in 2008, had no criminal record and no known history of domestic violence. Basterrachsa said Wednesday that Bacon got the gun from the home of a family member without that person’s knowledge.
“We probably will never be able to explain how somebody could do this, or why, but we’re trying to bring all of the pieces together to at least give us a little more clear idea of what happened there,” Basterrachea said.
Neighbors say the family, who moved into the rental house about one month ago, kept to themselves.
“I’m sorry to hear about it. It’s sad to hear something like that is going on in your neighborhood, you know,” Lane said.
WHEN will we just “get smart” and NO DEAL on that joint custody thing?
I can’t keep up with this, but if you’re not alarmed, sickened, or politically active, something is wrong upstairs — in the thinking.
These situations are not just dropping down out of the sky, they are the products of some truly very sick dogma, philosophies, and practices.
How could a 20 year old “man” do this to a son less than a year old?
Here’s another, December 2009 — this one was jealousy, not about kids, evidently:
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — Idaho Falls School District 91 says it will have counselors and crisis teams available Monday for students and staff following what police describe as a murder-suicide involving an Idaho Falls High School instructor.
Police say 49-year-old math teacher Keith Matthias on Friday evening shot and killed a man having an affair with his wife and then shot and killed himself after police forced his vehicle to a stop a short time later.
Matthias’ wife, Jennifer Matthias, 41, is a sixth-grade teacher at A.H. Bush Elementary School in Idaho Falls.
The Post Register reports the couple have three children.
Police say Jack Purcell, 46, died about 8 p.m. Friday while sitting in his truck at a Wal-Mart parking lot after being shot in the head numerous times with a large-caliber revolver.
In 2003, Purcell was sentenced to 18 months in prison following convictions for grand theft and domestic violence in Kootenai County in northern Idaho.
The Idaho church folk that went to Haiti to rescue children should’ve been looking closer to home.. Here’s an Idaho “Silent Witness” initiative.
The figures before you represent the Idaho women killed in acts of domestic violence in 1996.
As you look at these figures be aware of the many women still being hurt. They are our mothers, daughters, sisters, and neighbors. STOP, LOOK, LISTEN!
These figures are blood red, life size wooden cutouts representing adult domestic violence victims that were murdered in Idaho last year. Each figure bears a shield with the victim’s name, dates and story of how the murder occurred.
go to: 2001 2000 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996
I keep coming back to POORMAGAZINE.Com (see my very first or second blog here).
The Un-just actions of Commissioner Marjorie Slabach continues -unchecked
Marlon Crump/PNN
Saturday, September 5, 2009;“What do we want?”
“JUSTICE!”
“Who do we want it for?”
“Poor mamas struggling!”
“With?” “When do we want it?”
“NOW!”. . .
the California Commission on Judicial Performance really that oblivious, ignorant, or even the least bit concerned of Slabach’s unethical judicial misconduct? A recent inductee was Jana Farrell, a single mother of an eleven-year old son. Miss Farrell arrived in the U.S from St. Petersburg, Russia in 1994, without any knowledge of English. In spite of that, she still wanted to contribute to this country’s work force. Jana worked one year in her current career in real estate, at Pacific Union and at Coldwell Banker for nearly three years.
In her native country, Jana earned a bachelor’s degree in Economic and Management from St. Petersburg’s University of Economics and Management, graduating with high honors. Her path of finding a job began with her enrollment at Heald Business College, where she received a science degree in accounting.
After Jana’s embrace of the United States as her second home, she attended Golden Gate University for a year and a half. While enrolled at Golden Gate, she took English as a second language program. Along the way, she met wonderful people teachers, and got married.
The marriage, however, became a failure, stating,
“It was due to his violent abuse towards me.†In 2006, Jana sought custody of their son in court.“My ex-husband’s lawyer would often submit an application for these types of motion hearings (ex-parte) and Judge Slabach would continuously grant these motions, sometimes even twice in one week without question. These motions also required me to appear at 8:45 a.m, and this conflicted with my work schedules.” Jana explained.
Jana is one of the masses of young women who are victims of these rights-robbing motions. As I mentioned in the previous “Silenced Mamas” article, these “motions” attack a person’s 5th and 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution’s Right to Due Process of law, because there is no advanced notice to the other party, from the moving side.
“I cannot agree more. As a matter of fact, those ex parte motions were leading me to a bankruptcy, loss of my job and other hardship. I’m not mentioning the toll all this will take on my son in the future.” Jana explained, in response to an online petition that I personally implemented to ultimately have Judge Slabach removed from the bench.
AND:
Queennandi Xsheba/PoorNewzNetwork
Thursday, October 8, 2009; [[False report by Social Worker…]]“Yes, I called em’ (cps) and reported abuse and neglect, because I didn’t like her!” The voice of new SF resident Sherie Lewis still echos in my ears as she confessed to me her part in the separation of Christana Martel’s family. As we further spoke, she also admitted that she called the calworks department (Alameda county) and falsely reported that Christana sold all of her food stamp benefits on her EBT card for in exchange for marijuana, (that accusation resulted in Christana paying a HEFTY price) which according to (then) neighbors Mertis Bowden and Michelle Howell was a “f-ed up lie!”, and that Christana kept “plenty of food”- Michelle explained to me that she was a guest over for dinner often. Ms. Lewis boasted on with her vengeance against Ms. Martel, attacks ranging from “manipulating” Christana’s family members just to cause dissent, and too in one case, to win a frivilous lawsuit against a former landlord.I stood there in awe as I literally watch this sista take sadistic pleasure in tearing down another sista. When I asked Ms. Lewis why, the sad and simple answer was that Christana was a poor mama. Far as CPS goes, people like Ms.Lewis whom in this case overstepped her boundaries and abused it (the Sssystem) tend to do this to “get back” at someone who was either an adversary to them, or out of plain jealousy. Either way, what is more than always overlooked is the children and their feelings towards being torn apart from their families, for no ligitamate reason other than their mama wasn’t very well liked, or “crossed” by a certain individual. CPS “stands” for Child Protective Services, indicating that if a child is in immediate danger, or if the child is being abused, there is a hotline number to call and report such actions- granted. However, there are mamaz like myself, tiny, vivian and jewnbug who strongly believe in “Tribal Intervention” and the “It takes us to heal us” theory, which is unfortunately not practiced amongst all of the members of our tribes (communities), thus the results are tribal dissent, and definitely reasonable (understatement) mistrust for the outside Sssystem.The impact of being removed from the home affected baby girl Destiny a bit more than her brothers, Dalevon and Deshawn. She was depressed, withdrawn and suffered from massive hair loss, but has been improving since Christana was given more time to spend with the children, and to see about Destiny’s mental well-being. Why is this type of CPS abuse allowed to continue? The question remains in the “smokeblower”, while mamaz such as Christana and myself ponder on non-exsistent penalties for folks like Ms. Lewis who abuse the law and walk away laughing, taking high stride pride in helping to break up fellow black families. “Looking back at the Hassani case, in my opinion, placing the children in foster care isn’t always the best option.” Ms. Martel said. “If a mother is able- bodied, mind and willing, she should be given more access to resources that would enable us to become indpendent caretakers, rather than just snatch our children away from us.”Christana Martel is a single mother of four now, who loves her beautiful, talented children dearly. Fighting and overcoming a heartbreaking situation like hers took alot of strenght, and we @poormag call for others to press on, at the same time we commend Christana on her perserverance.
Social Workers Always Know Best?
Like this one? Around Thanksgiving, 2009?
Former State Official Charged With Phone Threats
Tamara T. Hoffman, newly-former chief of staff for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, has been charged in Springfield with making harassing phone calls and texts to a woman who is supposedly involved in a love triangle with a man that both her and Hoffman have been seeing. Police say Hoffman made the calls/texts from her state issued cell phone. Authorities also say Hoffman tried to throw her political weight around with the downstate woman, allegedly telling her, “If you see him again, something bad is going to happen to you. I work for the State of Illinois, and you don’t know who you’re messing with.”
Hoffman also allegedly threatened the officer when contacted about the incidents, and posted 2 photos of herself — one posed with Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and another with her and a man holding guns — on the victim’s daughter’s Facebook page.
Followers of the Blago impeachment hearings might remember Ms. Hoffman’s testimony in front of the Illinois House Impeachment Committee, when her and department director Barry Maram got legislators’ panties in a bunch when they played dumb in regards to Blago’s controversial health care program, All Kids. Lawmakers had rejected expansion of Family Care coverage, and claimed that since Blago continued with it anyway, he displayed an abuse of power.
Hoffman had resigned her $119,400-a-year job a day before the arrest.
Associated Press – November 25, 2009 5:44 PM ET
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – A top official in a state social service agency is out of a job after allegedly using her state-issued telephone to harass another woman because the two were romantically involved with the same man.
Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz (REETZ) says Tamara T. Hoffman was arrested Saturday in McLean County and posted $2,500 bond. She will appear in court Dec. 11.
The 50-year-old Chicago woman left her $119,400 job as chief of staff for the Department of Healthcare and Family Services Friday. Agency officials would not comment further.
Rietz says Hoffman began calling a Rantoul woman about Aug. 14 threatening “something bad” if the woman continued to see the man. Hoffman did not return a message left at her home.
WELL, that’s enough for today, and not what I even came here to blog. But when you are dealing with this situation, it is thought-provoking.
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“However, in Victorville [family] court…” (Mind-reading by a judge leads to 2 deaths…)
This follows up to the Twin Peaks murder-suicide of a father and his 9 month old son, in the Tagle, Garcia case.
A newspaper article relates the sequence of events….
Family say courts shut down restraining orders
By Stacy Moore
Hi-Desert Star
TWIN PEAKS — Sunday’s murder-suicide was the culmination of months of threats and online and text rants from Stephen Garcia to Katie Tagle of Yucca Valley and her family.The mother of a 9-month-old boy, Wyatt, with Garcia, Tagle was never able to secure a restraining order against him for herself or an order for supervised visitations for their son.“This was preventable. This didn’t have to happen,” Tagle’s mother, Maria Brown said the day after Wyatt’s death.
“The system failed Wyatt. It cost him his life.”
Her family said Garcia abused Tagle throughout their two-year relationship, which ended in August 2009, when, her family said, he punched her in the face, knocking her unconscious.
Tagle brought Wyatt back to her family house in Yucca Valley, but frequently took him to visit Garcia’s parents in Piñon Hills.Garcia, her family said, did not seem especially interested in Tagle or their son until December 2009, when he discovered she was involved with another man.
“That’s when he wigged out,” Tagle’s sister Andrea Rodriguez of Hesperia said.In letters on a Web site he set up to chronicle his communications to her and her friends, Garcia cursed at Tagle and told her to return to him.
During one custody exchange with Wyatt, he proposed to her, then knocked her to the ground.
Judge denies first restraining order
On Dec. 15, Tagle asked for an emergency restraining order against Garcia, telling Judge Debra Harris in a Joshua Tree courtroom that Garcia had threatened Wyatt.
“He had sent me text messages before that if his son was around certain people … that he would kill him,” Tagle told the judge, according to transcripts of the hearing.
“And that if I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, he’d find me and kill me.”
“What about the threat to shoot you, where did that occur, to hunt you down and shoot you with a gun?” the judge asked.
“That was in a text message, Tagle replied.
When Harris asked for copies of the text messages, Tagle said she had no way of printing them out and her phone was shut off.
The judge denied the emergency order and set a hearing.
Garcia ‘doesn’t pose a threat’
At that hearing, on Jan. 12, Tagle went before Judge David Mazurek in the Joshua Tree courthouse to show cause for a restraining order.
“…On Dec. 31, we were doing our exchange, and he proposed to me, and I said no. He got angry and stole my phone and pushed me down. I made a police report about that,” Tagle told the judge, according to a transcript.
Garcia told the judge the report was “falsely made up.”
Mazurek denied Tagle the restraining order.
“If I grant the restraining order, how do you think that’s going to help with respect to you two being able to raise Wyatt together or work together to make sure Wyatt grows up happy and healthy?” the judge asked, according to the transcripts.
{{Pause for my blood pressure to go down . . . . WELL, the judge had his way, and no NOW one is going to raise Wyatt. That’s the benefits of the shared-parenting presumption when mixed with bad examples, like a man knocking down a pregnant woman. What kind of potential do you think a man knocking down a pregnant woman because she didn’t accept his marriage proposal, and before that punching her in the face, might be for a Dad? Great start in life, eh?}}
{{Go back to NOMAS and read Jack Straton, “what’s fair for children of abusive men?” Like staying alive to at least adolescence???}}{{See Lundy Bancroft’s “The Batterer As Parent” book…}} {{Well, what kind of society do we want? Violent? OK then, get those batterer Dads back in the action}}.
{{Consider if she’d punched HIM in the face! Would she be in jail, AT ONCE? Or would the father be put in a parenting class to teach him how to get along with her? Yeah, sure…}}
“He would have both of us still,” Tagle responded.Asked about an e-mail in which he confessed to hitting Tagle, Garcia told the judge he had slapped her during a fight, but it was Tagle’s fault for “pushing and pushing and pushing until she could get something from me.”
Tagle pointed out she was nine months pregnant when Garcia hit her.
“I kind of get an idea of what’s going on,” Mazurek said.
So glad the judge “kind of got an idea.” Are rulings from ideas, or from facts, and patterns of behavior? He kinda forgot that assault and battery (which this was) is either an (A) misdemeanor or (B) felony. …
He denied the restraining order, saying, “I don’t think that Mr. Garcia poses a threat to Ms. Tagle.”Mazurek went on to suggest Tagle might have ulterior motives for alleging domestic violence.
“I get concerned when there’s a pending child custody and visitation issue and in between that, one party or the other claims that there’s some violence in between. It raises the court’s eyebrows because based on my experience, it’s a way for one party to try to gain an advantage over the other,” he said, according to the transcripts.
WHICH CAME FIRST? THE SEPARATION BECAUSE OF THE VIOLENCE, AND THEN BECAUSE OF THE SEPARATION, A CUSTODY/VISITATION ORDER (KNEE-JERK REACTION)? OR THE CUSTODY/VISITATION ORDER AND then THE ALLEGATIONS OF VIOLENCE? THE WOMAN SEPARATED TO START WITH BECAUSE OF VIOLENCE, IT SAYS!
WHAT NORMAL SINGLE MOTHER WITH ANOTHER CHILD AND A NEWBORN IS GOING TO SEPARATE FROM THE DAD? SHE’D NEED THAT DAD’S HELP TO SOME EXTENT… THERE IS GOING TO BE A REASON SOMEWHERE.
Story predicts real-life ending
The day after the hearing in Mazurek’s courtroom, Garcia sent a text message telling Tagle to check her e-mail. In it was an anonymous message containing a story called “Necessary Evil.”
The story describes in detail Tagle’s and Garcia’s relationship, from their fights over his video-game addiction, to their breakup, to her new relationship and his failed proposal.
In the end, the story has two endings. In “Happy Ending,” the female character returns to the man.
In “Tragic Ending,” the character takes his son to a lake, puts him to sleep with Benadryl and the baby dies. “He will have a better life with you then (sic) we can give him here,” the man tells God before taking his own life.
Criminal Venue vs. Family Court Venue
Tagle called 9-1-1 after reading the story, and the responding deputy immediately went to the courthouse and obtained an emergency restraining order for her, signed by Mazurek.“Just from the very beginning, he didn’t want to listen,” said Rick Tagle, who was in the courtroom. “He started out by saying, ‘One of you is lying and I think it’s you,’ and pointing at Katie.”The judge also allegedly warned Tagle there would be consequences for lying.
Lemkau did not respond to an e-mail request for comment; the county does not provide judges’ office telephone numbers.
The following Sunday, when Garcia missed his arranged custody transfer with Tagle, she had to call a deputy to get Wyatt back from Garcia’s house.
However, in Victorville court Jan. 14, Judge Robert Lemkau would not uphold the restraining order and ordered Tagle to immediately give Wyatt to Garcia, as it was the day his scheduled visitation was to begin.
Transcripts from that hearing are not yet available, but family and friends who were in the court that day with Tagle said the judge appeared not to have read the evidence she presented, including the “Necessary Evil” story and the emergency restraining order obtained by a sheriff’s deputy.{{Been there, done that…}}Friends say discouraged and frightened by her last appearance in court, she did not seek another restraining order or custody change.“She was afraid she would go before the judge who called her a liar,” her sister said.
{{Had that feeling too, and hesitated because of it. I have limits to my traumas…}}
Thanks to her family and friends, and Rick Tagle, for getting this information out to the papers, so the rest of the world can see the bad attitude women leaving violence get in these courts, as if the initial violence wasn’t bad enough. Do you think Mazurek is going to say “oops!” and apologize to her family? Or suffer some severe consequences for that screwup?
He DIDN’T screw up, from one point of view. It’s simply one less set of customers for family strengthening classes, or parenting classes. There are more where these came from….
As I’m blogging this — surprise, surprise — here’s another one in the papers, involving a restraining order. No children, that I’m aware of, just some blood.
Oy!!!, here’s the google search for that one. As usual, it shows more than one:
Claw Hammer Restraining Order Ex Boyfriend
And the one in question:
Feb. 5–ANTIOCH (California)– Prosecutors charged a man with attempted murder and numerous other crimes Thursday, more than a week after a woman was severely beaten with the claw side of a hammer and pushed from a car outside a hospital.
The 39-year-old victim, whom police did not identify, had a fractured skull and a broken neck when she crawled inside the emergency room at Sutter Delta Medical Center at 2:20 p.m. Jan. 26 and suffered a seizure in the lobby. Doctors placed her in a medically induced coma.
She recently awakened and identified her attacker as ex-boyfriend Bradley Ruffin. She told police he had beaten her during an argument over a $1,000 winning lottery ticket.
Police reviewed surveillance video footage of her being pushed from a vehicle in the hospital parking lot. Officers then searched her court history and found that she had a restraining order against Ruffin, 47, stemming from a 2007 assault for which he was convicted.
A warrant was out for Ruffin’s arrest for violating probation, Antioch police Lt. Scott Willerford said.
Police drove to Ruffin’s home in the 2300 block of Peppertree Way and arrested him on the probation violation.
“He was in custody within a couple of hours,” Willerford said.
Now, let’s look at that info. He assaulted her in 2007 (about 3 years ago, if that, right?) and went to jail. Now he’s out again. . . . . Restraining orders around there, if I’m not mistaken, last about 3 years…
Why was she around him at all? For a damn LOTTERY ticket?
The victim told police that Ruffin had given her three scratcher lottery tickets, One of which was a winner of $1,000.
In the ensuing argument over how the winnings were going to be split, Ruffin allegedly struck her head six times with the claw side of a hammer.
When her head began to bleed, he at first told her to go wait in the street while he called an ambulance, the victim told police. When she could not move, he loaded her into a car and reclined her seat so no would see her.
When they arrived at the hospital and she could not exit the car on her own, he used his feet to push her out, police said. He then drove away, leaving her alone.
He didn’t want to go back to jail, obviously. Maybe he thought she’d just die, and he’d not be nailed? But why the hospital, then?
Ruffin is charged with attempted murder, battery with great bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, violating a restraining order and enhancements for the use of a deadly weapon and causing brain injury.
That’s why I call the restraining order process a JOKE. And women, get smart! JUST SAY NO (if possible, safely….) Because this is the direction it’s going…Whether or not the person is actually punished for the prior violence.
He remained at the County Jail in Martinez without bail.
Roman Gokhman covers public safety. Contact him at 925-945-4780.
In the Garcia case, the Family Court judge was, in his mind, obviously smarter than the sheriff who issued the EPO.
I actually READ some of the junk Garcia posted. It’s volatile, for sure.
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A man shot a woman in the head (another day, another “dispute,” another death)
- Man, woman found shot to death in murder-suicide in Oakland …
A man and a woman were found shot to death in an apparent murder suicide inside a house at 6168 Mauritania Ave. near Mills College this morning
-
Jan 23, 2010 … Man informed relatives, friends of intended murder-suicide … Oakland
Marlon King, 45, told his acquaintances that he was going to kill himself and the woman, said Officer Jeff Thomason, a police spokesman.
On Friday afternoon, a resident on the 2500 block of 67th Avenue in East Oakland, near the Eastmont Mall, got a text message from a neighbor in a nearby house that “a suicide was imminent” there, Thomason said.
Upon arriving at the house at 2:49 p.m., officers found King critically wounded and a 46-year-old woman dead. The Alameda County coroner identified her as Aprile Moore of Oakland.
Thomason said he did not have specifics on whether King was unemployed.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/23/BAE11BML80.DTL#ixzz0dTeS8RKY
> > >
- Man informed relatives, friends of intended murder-suicide
By Harry Harris
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 01/23/2010 09:23:24 AM PST
Updated: 01/23/2010 09:33:21 AM PST
OAKLAND — A man who fatally shot his girlfriend Friday afternoon then wounded himself was upset over losing his job earlier in the day and had called and texted friends and relatives about his intended actions, police said Saturday.
Police identified the dead woman as Aprile Moore, 46. In critical condition Saturday morning with a gunshot to the head was Marlon King, 45, who police said had been involved in a relationship with Moore at least three years.
{{WHY does this not read, “about three years” or “only three years”? That’s a very short time to already have a domestic violence record with calls to police…}}Police said they were told King was separated from his wife.
{{Was the fact that he was violent towards his new girlfriend a “casual” or a “causal” factor in why he separated? Does losing his wife give him the right to assault a new romance? Did she get tired of his abuse, so he moved on? We don’t know, do we…. Were there kids??}}
The shootings happened about 2:29 p.m. Friday at a house where King and Moore lived at in the 2500 block of 67th Avenue.
Sgt. Mike Gantt said King was depressed about losing his warehouse job at a Hayward company earlier Friday. It was not confirmed if he was fired or laid off.
{{Lose a job, shoot a woman??}}
Gantt said King had called and texted relatives and friends that he was planning to kill himself and possibly harm others.
{{So much for “relatives and friends,” including their ability to prevent DV homicide, know how to save a woman, convince her to flee, or what not. It sounds to me like women have to get smarter somehow, and more discriminating about their men..}}But before police were summoned to the house Gantt said King fatally shot Moore in a bedroom before turning the gun on himself. Moore was pronounced dead at the scene.
{{Police cannot be everywhere, and it should be understood that they can’t always get somewhere in time.}}
Police also said the Moore and King had a history of domestic problems and that officers had been at the house several times in the past.\
=======
My Commentary:
**According to this account, Moore appears to have been a girlfriend he moved in with (or vice versa) in the process of leaving a former wife. I wonder why his last wife was a “former” wife. … His new, non-marital relationship had “domestic problems” *** 2nd (ff). WOMEN, WAKE UP!!
{{I can’t speak for 2010, but I can speak for the 1990s. Officers didn’t give me domestic violence literature, recommend I press charges, tell me I had anyRIGHT to press charges, or offer to take the man who’d just been assaulting me out of the house. Therefore, the assaults continued until I struggled my way to a nonprofit (I think) agency that told me how to file a CIVIL restraining order with kickout, which was not respected in court. We were then funneled right to mediation, and the local friendly mediator promptly — VERY promptly — virtually undid said restraining order. . . . PERHAPS there was a better route to safety for all of us? Yet no pastor, friend, or relative was any smarter in the 1990s than they appear to be still, locally, in the 2000s.
I guess women are just going to have to develop some smarts themselves, including being a LOT more careful about a man that has an ex-wife… Sorry guys, but it makes sense to me… Perhaps they are just using you for (whatever is involved in a relationship}}
MORE on this incident:
OAKLAND, Calif. — An Oakland man who allegedly shot and killed a woman before turning the gun on himself is in critical condition Friday night, a police spokesman said.
Oakland police went to a home in the 2500 block of 67th Avenue at about 2:50 p.m. to conduct a welfare check after being called by a concerned neighbor, Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason said. The neighbor had received a text message from one of the home’s occupants, saying a “suicide was imminent,” Thomason said.
{{a man of his word, at least…}}
Officers found Marlon King, 45, and a 46-year-old woman both suffering gunshot wounds in a bedroom. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene and King was listed in critical condition at a local hospital, Thomason said.
Homicide investigators believed King shot and killed the woman before turning the gun on himself, according to Thomason, who said King had been depressed about his employment status. King had allegedly notified friends and family of his intentions to take his own life as well as that of the female victim, Thomason said.
He did not immediately release the relationship between King and the victim.
Anyone with information regarding the case was encouraged to call Oakland police homicide detectives at (510) 238-3821.
AND NOW YOU SEE WHY PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT THIS STUFF. IN SEARCHING FOR THE FOLLOW-UP, NATURALLY, I GOOGLED SOME KEY TERMS FROM THE PRINT EDITION. AND GOT THE SAME STORY, NATIONWIDE, AS WE HAVE BEEN GETTING FOR A VERY LONG TIME:
{{note: I am not going to take valuable internet time to straighten out these links: a similar google on your part might call up similar results).
yet more of the same thing:
TORONTO, ATLANTA, PHILADELPHIA, OAKLAND, OKLAHOMA (Geary, OK) . . . . Can you keep track?
Woman dead, man in hospital after apparent murder/suicide attempt …
A woman is dead and a man is in a Toronto hospital after an apparent murder, then a suicide attempt yesterday afternoon. No names have been.
www.midlandfreepress.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e… – 3 hours ago – Cached
Man, woman dead in murder-suicide | ajc.com
Jan 4, 2010 … Two people are dead after an apparent murder-suicide Sunday night in southwest Atlanta. The incident began about 9:30 p.
www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/man-woman-dead-in-266343.html – Cached
KYW Newsradio 1060 Philadelphia – Woman Hospitalized After …
Jan 23, 2010 … Woman Hospitalized After Domestic Murder-Suicide Attempt. by KYW’s Al Novack. One person is dead and a second person is clinging to life …
www.kyw1060.com/…Woman…Murder-Suicide…/6180532 – 7 hours ago – Cached
Geary man dead, wife wounded in murder-suicide attempt | NewsOK.com
Jan 18, 2010 … GEARY — A Geary woman is in the hospital and her husband is dead in what investigators are calling a murder-suicide attempt.
newsok.com/geary…dead…murder-suicide-attempt/…/3432906?… – Cached
Man and Woman Dead From Murder-Suicide at 7-11
Identified Created by Kimberlee Sakamoto on 1/4/2010 7:26:00 AM …
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Circular Reasoning – 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (with your kids)
A Quick Post (not mine, except intro & comments)
summarizing the situation fairly well:
On reading this post, pretty accurate, I thought of “50 ways to leave your lover,” by (if you don’t know this, you probably were born after the VAWA act passed the first time) Simon & Garfunkel.
Which I’d like to rededicate to women attempting to do so, once they realize what “love” is and is not. Switch the gender, the song applies; and act on it sooner, rather than later. I guess — pray, carry Mace, and suggest you also enroll in law school ASAP, you’ll need it…
she said it’s really not my habit to intrude
furtermore i hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued
but i’ll repeat my self, at the risk of being crude
there must be 50 ways to leave your loverchorus:
just slip out the back, Jack
make a new plan, Stan
don’t need to be coy, Roy
just get yourself free
hop on the bus, Gus
don’t need to discuss much
just drop off the key, Lee
and get yourself free.she said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
i wish there was something i could do to make you smile again
i said, i appreciate that,
and would you please explain about the 50 ways.she said, why don’t we both just sleep on it tonight
and i believe that in the morning you’ll begin to see the light
and then she kissed me and i realized she probably was right
there must be 50 ways to leave your lover
50 ways to leave your lover…chorus
If children are involved, realize that Big Brother has a different plan for them, and you, as well. See below:
[[my comments in brackets, otherwise it’s quote. Quote ends at the line of ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]’s..]]
Note: Cross posted from Battered Mothers Rights – A Human Rights Issue.
Randi James is a brilliant writer- her site is replete with information from the top to bottom -thx you Randi James! http://www.randijames.com/
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The System Sends Mixed Messages to Abuse Victims
Do you stay, or do you leave?
If you haven’t been a victim of abuse, or a victim of the legal system, you may not be able to understand why this is even posed as a question.
Of course you should leave!
I mean, who deserves to get beat up and/or sexually assaulted in their own home…regularly…or even occasionally. Even as careful as you could try to be to make sure everything is perfect, so as not to anger your abuser, SOMETHING always sets him off…sooner or later. He is a time bomb. You are his target.
What does it mean to be a target?
When you are a target, all of your abuser’s anger is directed toward you, specifically. Typically, he doesn’t pull the same shit towards those who he considers his equals, or more powerful than he. This is about power. He needs you like capitalism needs slaves. He uses you so that he can feel better about his shortcomings. He doesn’t know how to feel good without you.
But he is a good father. He doesn’t beat the kids.
You’re right. Good fathers don’t beat their kids…But nor do they beat up on women to whom they are temporarily, or permanently committed. Getting beat in front of your children doesn’t exactly send the kids a good message. In fact, they are put in limbo because your kids will either
A) Side with your abuser because he is more powerful and gets what he wants, or
B) Side with you in attempt to protect you…But let me break that down a little more
1) In protecting you, your children become targets, and the moment will come when they take blows for you
2) In choosing to side with you or not, your children will mimic the behaviors they have seen and normalize them.
Is this what you want?
I hope not because if some outsider reports what is going on in your household, CPS will come knocking and your kids may be gone before you ever get a chance to ask questions. You will be charged with neglect, endangering your children, or failure to protect.
Why?
Because everyone on the outside thinks you should have just left. You are themother. If you didn’t leave, you must be an accessory to the abuse.
What mother allows her children to get abused?
And what mother lets her children watch as she gets abused?
You must be a bad mother. You don’t deserve to have children. If you’re lucky, maybe your relatives will do you a favor and step in and raise your children for you. If not, foster care will do a great job…because it is indeed a job when they are getting paid.
Maybe you have a chance though, if you would just leave.
That seems like the best idea. Leave.
Wait!
Are you going to tell your abuser in advance, or are you going to sneak out in the middle of the night?
Remember, he needs you…is he going to agree to all of this?
Who the fuck do you think you are leaving him, and taking his children?
He owns you. He’s paying the bills. He’s the reason you can stay home and take care of his children.
[[Comment: Not all the time. Wasn’t true in my case… Many times they are financially dependent on you as well…]]
If you go, you have reason to be fearful. Get a lawyer and a restraining order. But, back up a little. The lawyer says, if you take out a restraining order, in the near future, the judge in family court could use it against you. He (the judge and your abuser) may say this was part of your vindictive scheme to get the kids and the money and the house and the car. Restraining orders don’t prevent you from being harmed though anyway, because you still have to rely on law enforcement to act.
Get the restraining order anyway.
You’ll have record of what you tried to do, in case the news opts to report it upon your “tragic” death. But you can’t put the kids on the restraining order…Silly woman! You know fathers have rights!
In fact they have so many rights that if your abuser happens to get locked up, Responsible Fatherhood money will ensure that he has the means to transition back into his caretaking, father-role (don’t roll your eyes, we know you were doing the caretaking, but you’re not important and this is politics).
Go ahead and report the entire history of abuse.
You do have pictures, right? You mean to tell me in all these years that you have been getting assaulted, you weren’t taking pictures of your injuries and saving them in a secret location?
Did you at least tell the doctor? Is there anything in your medical record?
Where are your vaginal tears, bruises, scars?
In talking to police without evidence (or with it), your case will seem suspicious. It will be your word, against your abuser’s. Your local DA will be hesitant to take the case…well, hesitant is an overstatement because he may not even acknowledge you. DA’s only take cases they can win. DA’s aren’t interested in intrafamilial abuse reports in the midst of divorce…
[[No matter what the local DA’s office website declares, it’s often true.]]
You have bad timing. You should have reported this before you were trying to separate. Oh, whoops, I forgot, they would have charged you, too!
Maybe you can work things out peacefully without involving the court.
[[Yeah, that’s the general philosophy behind sending such cases, involving kids, to mediation… Just “work it out.”]]
When was the last time you worked things out “peacefully” with an abuser?
In good conscience, you allow your abuser to continue to have a relationship with the children he didn’t abuse, well, directly abuse (or at least you think so). I don’t know if you are really doing him a favor, or rather doing as the court would order you to do so, because you do know that the court will order you to do it, right (askMs. Leichtenberg and also ask the Paul family…family, because Monica Paul happens to be deceased)? Father’s rights.
I know, I know. Yes, you have been abused, but now, yes, yes, you will be court ordered to continue to have a relationship with your abuser because kids deserve both parents. If you try to resist, they will call in the child custody evaluators and Guardians ad Litem and they will say things you would never imagine…because you ARE crazy, aren’t you?
What mother would keep a father away from his children?
[[I didn’t, because doing so would’ve been to violate a standing custody order, ordering visitation. Consequence? I lost contact with my kids. To this date! He continued to violate without impunity thereafter.]]
You know your abuser best.
[[Yeah, right. Everyone knows that only the ‘experts’ know what they’re talking about when it comes to abuse. ‘Experts” prefer to talk with each other in their language, out of the earshot of the traumatized folk. It’s cleaner and less personally disturbing/challenging. People suffering PTSD often skip around in chronology, speak or write associatively, and can ge derailed on particularly frightening topics. It takes a lot to overcome that. . . . . . . So, in one sense, this is understandable, because after long enough living with “lethality assessments” and threats, after actual physical assualts and the very high stakes of child custody, plus retaliation for reporting, some women can sound more garbled than they really are. In reality to even stay alive, or emotionally somewhat intact, through significant abuse, esp. years of it, takes keeping track of more things that the average middle manager can, I’d be, in a rapidly changing economy. We have literal lives at stake, let alone livelihoods. Let alone the normal multi-tasking that often goes with being a mother, let alone a working mother with small kids who are growing up watching your abuse. We also are highly motivated to stay alive, knowing that if we don’t who is likely to get custody of our offspring — either the abuser, or someone who enabled it, such as a close, nonreporting, non-intervening relative. Or CPS, for which money changes hands…]]
You know that when he makes threats, he can carry them through. You know if you don’t meet his demands, you and your children will suffer. But if you try to protect yourself and the children, you risk losing custody to your abuser. And why would you want to put your kids in that situation? They don’t want to live with him and if they do live with him, you already know how their lives will turn out. They will be like lost souls.
Sacrifice yourself…like Jesus Christ. Maybe you were put on earth to suffer for the sins of others.
You were supposed to be omniscient–to know that this man you chose would end up being an abuser.
You were supposed to be omnipresent–to know that this man would abuse your children while you were away at work, or school, or while he was away with the kids.
You were supposed to be omnipotent–to protect yourself and your children and to be able to hide and simultaneously remain visible, and to be able to leave your abuser, but let him remain in your life.
How do you want to die?
[[Seems to me I blogged on this long ago — title about unacceptable choices for women.]]
What do you want the news to say about you when you are murdered?
That you were nice? No, they won’t say that! The neighbors and other members of the community will say how nice your abuser was. He was a family man. He played with the kids in the yard.
Everyone will be so shocked and sad that this happened. No one knew that you and your children were getting your asses kicked on a regular.
Your family may’ve thought you were crazy, or a bad mom, so they may’ve distanced themselves from you a long time ago. In fact, they may have ADORED your abuser.
Your children’s friends will not come forward. They are children–either they won’t tell anyway, or their parents won’t let them.
You know who else might know? The teachers. But teachers are so busy disciplining and teaching to the test…and besides, it’s too late for them to come forward now.
You see what you get for pretending and ignoring and trying to keep the family together? No credit.
Maybe the media will pull your court record and note that you tried to get a restraining order, but you didn’t show up. More than likely, they will relay gossip about how you were having an affair and how you were always provoking your abuser. Because violence is mutual. Girls hit, too.
Didn’t you know in advance that he was easily provoked? You should have checked his criminal record, or asked his ex.
Maybe your children will die, too. But everyone will talk about how tragic it was andhow innocent they are. They, not you, because you had to have done something to make a nice guy want to kill you.
Or maybe you wanted to be killed, because who stays with an abuser anyway?
See Also: Carl Brizzi: Prosecuting Battered Women
Minnesota Supreme Court Allows Judge Timothy Blakely to Profit from His Fraudulent Earnings
In Texas and Florida–Court Ordered Exortion
Pennsylvania, Corruption, and Children, Just Like Florida
How Judges Set Up A System to Rig Cases for Fathers
Technorati Tags: Rock,Hard,Place,System,Messages,Abuse,Victims,Randi,James,haven,victim,abuser,equals,needs,capitalism,father,kids,children,message,fact,limbo,Side,moment,outsider,reports,failure,accessory,Maybe,Leave,Wait,Remember,lawyer,money,orders,news,death,woman,rights,Responsible,transition,role,politics,history,pictures,location,doctor,Where,tears,word,overstatement,cases,midst,conscience,relationship,Leichtenberg,Paul,Monica,custody,Litem,threats,demands,situation,Sacrifice,Jesus,Christ,earth,life,yard,friends,affair,violence,Girls,Didn,Also,Carl,Brizzi,Women,Indiana,Bench,Paradox,Recusal,Minnesota,Supreme,Court,Judge,Timothy,Profit,Fraudulent,Earnings,Texas,Florida,Exortion,Pennsylvania,Corruption,Just,Judges,fathers,injuries,Guardians,souls,members,teachers,doesn,aren,parents
Note: Cross posted from Battered Mothers Rights – A Human Rights Issue.
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http://www.nbc-2.com/Global/story.asp?S=10697462
Joseph and Melissa Shook had been separated and a final mediation hearing for their divorce was scheduled for the 26th – two days after her disappearance.
Meanwhile, her van was located at the Alva residence, allegedly abandoned with the keys in the ashtray.
The case was then turned over to detectives with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit.
Air, K-9 and ground searches were coordinated with family and friends in attempts to locate Melissa over the following . . .[fill in the details… they tend to blur, one family after another…]
On July 29, Shook’s body was found in a shallow grave, just four blocks from the Fitch Avenue residence.
Her hands were tied behind her back with approximately 10 feet of rope and her mouth was covered in duct tape.
AND, obviously:
Wednesday, a local hardware store employee was contacted and verified the sale of a red handled shovel and approximately ten feet of rope.
Thursday, an employee positively identified Joseph Shook as the person who purchased the items.
Around 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, 32-year-old Joseph Shook was located at local restaurant and taken into custody.
He has been charged with second degree murder.
Thursday evening Amy Davies, spokeswoman for Melissa Shook’s family said, “The family is relieved an arrest has been made, that justice has been served, and the family now has some closure.”
Davies said now the family’s main concentration is providing care for Shook’s three children.
Her parents knew something was funky about those text messages declaring she was going to break up with a boyfriend. Her coworker heard her ask who wanted some lunch brought back, after dropping off child(ren) to the father….
On Wednesday, Melissa Shook’s mother took the stand to talk about texts message she received, supposedly from her daughter, the day she disappeared.
One said she and her boyfriend, Justin Castagner, were through.
Smith thought that was odd since she’d spoken to Melissa just a few hours earlier and there was no mention of any problems.
Castagner testified Tuesday that the couple had made plans for that night and she left him a note in his lunchbox that said, “I love you.”
Melissa’s father, Gary Esckilsen, also testified Melissa was happy with Castagner.
Melissa’s parents said she had a strong relationship with Castagner and texts saying she was going somewhere to get herself help didn’t make sense. They knew something was wrong.
A co-worker of Melissa Shook testified as well, saying he got a call from her when she was on her way to drop the baby off at Joe Shook’s home.
He said she asked if anyone in the office wanted her to bring back lunch – and never heard from her again.
Just to reiterate my point: Mediation, frequent exchanges ordered. Was there prior domestic violence? WHY did she leave? Was the risk known? Should ALL women separating — not just ones experiencing abuse as the reason for separation — be afraid?
Or, should they learn to be cautious, period, and should the family law venue stop advising them to “just get along” for the sake of the kids, without regard to this possibility…
Was money a factor? Who knows…:
……..
Police say emotional distress led man to kill estranged wife
Mother’s death, impending divorce, lack of medication are factors in Lakemore killing
By Phil Trexler
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Saturday, Jan 10, 2009
LAKEMORE: His mother had died unexpectedly, he avoided the pills that helped combat his depression, and just this week, his wife left him.
Daniel Tice’s emotions boiled over Thursday afternoon when his wife, Brandi, came to pick up their three children, a day after announcing her intention to divorce.
Brandi Tice, 28, would never leave the Lakemore house. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head — a rifle shot that police say was fired by her estranged husband.
About seven hours later, after keeping SWAT officers at bay with his 4-year-old son by his side, Daniel Tice was shot by police, struck by a 9 mm bullet that miraculously bounced off his forehead, sparing his life.
Tice, 32, was to undergo surgery Friday for a fractured skull. He is expected to recover and be charged with murder.
Daniel Tice admitted in conversations to family, friends and police that he killed his wife of eight years, shooting her once in the head with a .22-caliber rifle, police said.
He blamed infidelity and divorce.
”[Brandi Tice] told me before she
was wanting to leave him and I said be careful because of his mom dying, [Daniel] was bomb,” family friend Janice Wood told police in a taped call. ”I was afraid something would happen.’
Wood, a close friend of Tice’s late mother Diana, told police that Daniel Tice called her after the shooting. Around the same time, police were surrounding his home.
”He said he killed his wife,” Wood said. ”He thought everybody was against him or hated him . . . he said, ‘I’m not coming out [of the house]. They’re going to have to kill me.’ ”
Daniel Tice made a series of phone calls that afternoon, including one to a sister who came to the Tices’ ranch-style home on Martha Avenue shortly after 3 p.m., saw Brandi Tice’s body on the living room floor and fled outside.
Tice’s brother-in-law struggled for the rifle outside the home, but the towering Daniel Tice won out, and retreated back inside.
At one point, Tice stood guard by a window with his rifle in one hand and his son, Noah, in the other, police said.
Shortly afterward, Tice’s daughters, Faith, 8, and Grace, 7, exited their school bus and were met by police, who rushed the girls away before they could go inside their home.
Stressful standoff
For the next seven-plus hours, police took over Martha Avenue, trying to coax Tice into surrendering and hoping to avoid more bloodshed. Lakemore Mayor Michael Kolomichuk gave the order to use deadly force on Daniel Tice, if necessary.
A small army of SWAT officers, talking by phone to Tice, crept closer over several hours — from the street, to the front door, to the living room and eventually to the basement stairs, where Tice paced below with his son.
The silence was sometimes unnerving to police, who feared little Noah was dead. As the night dragged, they hadn’t heard from the child and Tice was talking to police in past tense about how much he loved his son.
”We were worried that he had done something to Noah because he wouldn’t let us talk to the child,” Police Chief Kenneth Ray said.
Police eventually disconnected a land line into the Tice home and with the help of prosecutors, they cut off Tice’s cell phone. Negotiators then moved inside the house to bring Tice a cell phone.
By then, Tice had moved to the cover of the basement, at times hiding under the staircase. Metro SWAT members tossed a miniature camera to the basement, which gave them insights into Tice’s location.
Around 10:40 p.m., SWAT snipers from the top of the steps could see Tice and his rifle leaning against a wall out of reach. They fired two nonlethal bean bags, hoping to knock him to the floor. The bean bags didn’t faze Tice, who then made a move for his rifle, police said.
A sniper tried to fire his AR-15 assault rifle, but the trigger jammed. A second SWAT sniper twice fired his MP5 assault rifle. One shot missed; another struck Tice’s forehead, penetrating to the bone and bouncing off.
Suspect interviewed
Police interviewed Daniel Tice at Akron City Hospital shortly after he was shot.
”He confessed, that’s all he did,” Chief Ray said. ”He didn’t give a reason. He just said he did it.”
Noah was reunited with his sisters. The children are staying with Brandi Tice’s mother, Sandra Fox, 53, in Green.
”She was a good mother, she loved her kids so much,” said Brandi Tice’s uncle, Randy Renard.
The Tices spent Christmas with Renard and other family members at Sandra Fox’s home. The get-together came four days after Daniel Tice’s mother died.
Daniel Tice, who family said suffers from bipolar disorder, said little on Christmas Day. Family and police said Tice stopped taking his medication, which contributed to his erratic behavior.
”They brought the kids over for Christmas and I already heard what he was going through with his mother,” Renard said. ”He come over and he didn’t talk for four hours. He just sat in the chair with a stare.”
On Wednesday, Brandi Tice told her husband she wanted a divorce and was taking the children, Renard said. Police said the couple had a history of domestic squabbles, some of which ended with Daniel Tice’s arrest.
Daniel Tice also told friends that his wife was carrying on an affair with one of his relatives. The couple married in 2000.
On Thursday afternoon, Brandi Tice arrived at the Martha Avenue home, planning to take her daughters with her as they exited their school bus.
Brandi Tice worked the past four years with Community Caregivers, a Hartville home health care provider. She visited three or four patients every day, helping them with health needs.
Terry Smith, the company’s director, said Brandi Tice grew close with her patients, whom she would visit for more than two hours a day, passing the time sharing stories and proudly showing pictures of her children.
She hoped one day to be a nurse to better provide for her family, he said. The company has set up a fund at all Huntington bank branches to help the Tice children.
”Brandi was somebody who had been through some bumps in the road, some hard knocks,” Smith said. ”Yet she was someone who gave so much even though she had so little herself.”
Phil Trexler can be reached at 330-996-3717 or ptrexler@thebeaconjournal.com.
LAKEMORE: His mother had died unexpectedly, he avoided the pills that helped combat his depression, and just this week, his wife left him.
Daniel Tice’s emotions boiled over Thursday afternoon when his wife, Brandi, came to pick up their three children, a day after announcing her intention to divorce.
Brandi Tice, 28, would never leave the Lakemore house. She died of a single gunshot wound to the head ? a rifle shot that police say was fired by her estranged husband.
About seven (Akron Beacon Journal (OH), 1079 words.)
June 2009 — Autenreith – Pennsylvania:
Police rescued a 9-year-old boy who had been kidnapped by his father as a fatal gun battle broke out between the man and state troopers.
After arguing with his estranged wife during a custody exchange, Daniel Autenrieth kidnapped his son at gunpoint, then led police on a 40-mile high-speed chase that ended with a crash and an exchange of gunfire, state police commissioner Col. Frank Pawlowski said. Autenrieth and a state trooper were killed.
“I can’t begin to describe the hurt and sorrow being experienced by the Pennsylvania state police,” Pawlowski told a somber news conference at the Swiftwater barracks, the trooper’s home base. “What happened yesterday is nothing short of an American tragedy.”
September, 2009 (Labor Day) Minnesota:
Minn. officer reportedly killed with own gun (see video)
Holidays — family times for some — can be trouble hotspots for others.
Veteran North St. Paul police officer Richard Crittenden apparently was shot dead with his own gun during a violent struggle with a man who lunged at his estranged wife and the slain officer with a burning towel or rag.
“He died saving someone else,” said a law enforcement source of Crittenden. The source, familiar with the ongoing investigation, offered the first detailed description of Monday morning’s chaotic scene.
Crittenden reportedly pushed the woman out of harm’s way but in the process left himself vulnerable for the man to ambush him, grab his handgun and shoot him, the source said.
A Maplewood police officer was slightly wounded but shot the suspect dead during an exchange of gunfire moments later inside the North St. Paul apartment in the 2200 block of Skillman Avenue.
The scenario, based on preliminary witness accounts from the injured female officer and the estranged wife, remains to be confirmed and is the subject of an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
But the setting pieced together so far by investigative sources shed light on the likely circumstances that led to the first shooting death of a police officer in the line of duty in North St. Paul’s 122-year history.
Investigators on Tuesday released little official information about the details surrounding the Labor Day shootings — including the names of the injured officer and slain suspect, who was identified by his estranged wife as Devon Dockery.
But reams of court papers released Tuesday on Dockery’s numerous run-ins with the law show a violent and troubled man.
“Devon is a ticking time bomb ready to explode,” his estranged wife, Stacey Terry, wrote in filing for one of four orders of protection against him.
What would she know? Is she an “expert”?? However, she got those protection orders. . . . . .
October 23, 2009 Atlanta, Georgia, Strube-Allen:
(Isn’t this DV awareness month?)
Child of woman killed at Target in custody battle
Mother-in Law charged!
In April, a toddler sat in the backseat as someone shot and killed his mother, Heather Allen Strube. She had just gotten him from her estranged husband, his father, and hadn’t buckled her child into his car seat yet.
Moments after Steven Strube left the Target parking lot on Scene Highway, his estranged wife was approached by a person wearing a black wig that looked like a mop. As Heather tried to get into her SUV, the disguised person shot her. Investigators found Carson holding his mother’s cellphone. His mom turned 25 years old just six days before her death on April 26.
Carson, who turned 2-years-old last month, has been in the care of Heather’s parents — Buddy and Mary Allen.
Little Carson Luke Strube is now thriving in the care of his maternal grandparents. But his other grandmother, Joanna Renea Hayes, was charged this week with killing his mother, her daughter-in-law.
Hayes in jail facing charges of malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Carson’s father, Steven Strube, is also in jail, following a probation violation from a 2008 conviction (for what??)
Hayes is now behind bars following her murder indictment on Wednesday. Police believe she is the one who donned a disguise and killed her daughter-in-law.
Sometimes it turns into a virtual tribal warfare, with in-laws and relatives involved….
November 30, 2009 (this one, barely cold…), New Jersey:
Police Search For Motive In Fatal N.J. Shooting
Paterson Father Allegedly Shot Estranged Wife, 2 Children
PATERSON, N.J. (CBS) ―Police are still trying to figure out what triggered Edelmiro Gonzalez to go on a shooting spree, killing his seven-year-old son, and injuring his wife and other son. They are recovering at St. Joseph’s hospital.
- Related Stories
- 2 Dead, 2 Wounded When NJ Dad Shoots His Family
(11/29/2009)Police were looking for a motive Sunday in a triple shooting that left one boy dead, and his mother and brother fighting for their lives.
Detectives in Paterson said Edelmiro Gonzalez opened fire Saturday morning on his estranged wife and two young children.
“I don’t know how anybody could do something like that,” said resident Angie Rolon.Investigators said 31-year old Johanna Gonzalez, who had been separated from her husband since September and had a restraining order against him, was in the process of dropping off their two sons at her mother’s apartment on Broadway. That’s when the 54-year-old father allegedly walked up to their vehicle, armed with two handguns.
“Her estranged husband came up to the vehicle, shot several times into the vehicle, at which time her two sons, Adrian and Eldryn exited the vehicle,” said Det Lt. Ray Humphrey.
Police said
Gonzalez actually then chased down his 7-year old son and shot him in the neck near the rear of the apartment building.The boy was pronounced dead at the scene.However, the ordeal didn’t end there. Police said Gonzalez went back to the street and chased down his estranged wife. That’s when off-duty Paterson Detective Lt. Washington Griffen, a 19-year veteran who was at a nearby McDonald’s drive-through with his son saw what was happening and intervened.“He hollered out to the suspect, advised him he was a police officer, and to drop the weapon. There was an exchange of gunfire, and the suspect was shot twice,” Humphrey said.
Edelmiro Gonzalez died later at an area hospital. His elder son Edryn and the child’s mother Johanna remained in critical condition.
ReportingGunman kills estranged wife at Tualatin lab, injures two, kills self
By Bill Oram, The Oregonian
November 10, 2009, 8:49PM
TUALATIN — By late afternoon Tuesday, a lone state trooper guarded the front of a drug-testing clinic where a man with a rifle opened fire, killing his estranged wife and injuring two of her co-workers.
The gunman fired multiple shots inside Legacy MetroLab-Tualatin shortly before noon, said Tualatin Police Chief Kent Barker.The shooter was found dead at the scene, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Barker said.
The dead woman was identified as Teresa Beiser, 36, of Gladstone.
A week ago, she filed for divorce from her husband of 15 years, Robert Beiser, 39, who worked as a car appraiser for Property Damage Appraisers in Lake Oswego and as an independent contractor for The Oregonian.
They had two children, a 14-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son.
Hans Reiser Admits to Murdering Nina Reiser, Pleads to Reduced Murder Sentence
Full story: Associated Content
Hans Reiser was sentenced to 15-years-to-life Friday in an Oakland, California, courtroom for the murder of Nina Reiser. Many believe that the sentence was too lenient, that prosecutors should have given Reiser more time on his sentence. Besides, Hans Reiser was convicted in April — andconvicted without the body of Nine Reiser. But Hans Reiser, a brilliant Linux guru, had held onto one piece of information about Nine Reiser throughout his trial, a trial throughout which he maintained his innocence. Hans Reiser knew where Nina Reiser was buried.According to Wired, Hans Reiser led authorities to Nine Reiser’s body Monday in exchange for his prison sentence being reduced from a 25-years-to-life charge to 15-years-to-life charge. Prosecutors offered him the deal with the added stipulation that he waived his right to appeal the conviction. He had buried his wife just a short way from the house where he lived with his mother.
According to his confession, which was part of the plea deal, Hans Reiser killed his wife, Nina, on the afternoon of September 3, 2006. She had dropped off the couple’s two children for the Labor Day weekend. The two were going through a bitter divorce.
FYI: All I googled was “estranged wife exchange of children”
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Did you enable any of these events? I bet you’d say, Heck NO!
But, wait again (US residents) — do you pay taxes? Well then, perhaps you did….
The Trap Door They Don’t Tell Divorcing Mothers, or separating-from-abuse partners about — almost ANYwhere…
Forcing the Connection through “Access Visitation Funding” and social policy closing the exit door.
Taxpayer funds enabling these events, sometimes, through federal grants to encourage contact with noncustodial “parents” (Dads).
Meanwhile, nationwide HHS-funded “Access/Visitation” funding encourages more, and more frequent, contact between children and noncustodial parent (if male), and advertises this through child support services (“OCSE”):
GEORGIA:
These services are offered at no cost to OCSS clients and include the following:
- Coordination of visitations or parenting time
- Mediation between the parents (non-legal, non-binding)
- Written parenting plans
- Group parenting education
- Counseling on access issues
Funding for all of these projects comes from grants from the Administration for Children and Families
What is access and visitation?Mississippi’s Access and Visitation Program (MAV-P) is designed for noncustodial parents to have access to visit their children as specified in a court order or divorce decree.
[[HUH? The court order or decree ALREADY specifies this, so why do we need this program?]]
Assistance with voluntary agreements for visitation schedules is provided to parents who do not have a court order.
NOTE: Participation without a court order is strictly voluntary. Both parents must agree to be involved.
What are the goals for MAV-P?The ultimate goal is to afford services that improve the quality of life for separated families by providing noncustodial parents opportunities to participate in their children’s growth and development.
[[If it didn’t have a noble-sounding goal like this, it might not have passed Congress or anywhere else. Who wants to vote for, after-all, exchange-related gunshots, stabbings, and officers/bystanders-down headlines? But if you read details of many of these articles above, it’s in there.
“Improve the quality of life.” How does this resemble “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness” eh? Come here. We have federal grants to improve the quality of your life. TRUST US…]]
Other goals include:
- Encouraging family agreements through mediation;
- Providing parent education plans to enhance parenting skills;
- Furnishing a safe, neutral facility for visitation, as needed; i.e., [pushing Supervised Visitation]
- Promoting compliance to the noncustodial parent’s court ordered support obligations; [[Translation: reducing support obligations in hope to bribe the other parent to better comply. This is called “helping.” ]]
- Aiding custodial parents in honoring court ordered visitations; and
Women are regularly jailed when they fail to comply with court ORDERS. Recently, a 14 yr old young man in Michigan was jailed himself, briefly, for refusing to comply. So what is this a sort of persuasive pleading session, or brainwashing? The legal process provides for a contempt process. When custodial parents are women, this is often enforced, regardless of consequences. When they are men, a different standard seems to apply.
- Working with fatherhood mentors and coaches through a Fragile Families Initiative Program.
Now WHY doesn’t that surprise me?
What are the benefits of the program? The program benefits include:
- BOTH parents being involved in the development stages of the child’s life.
- BOTH parents providing emotional, medical, psychological and financial support.
- BOTH parents sharing in the child’s character and core values development.
- BOTH parents agreeing on scheduling and time-sharing.
Potential side-effects, where an overentitled abuser, a man off (or on) medication for depression, or someone not in control of his emotions is involved — death. That’s a potential “benefit” in certain contexts. But let’s not talk about that in THIS setting, OK?
Who is eligible to participate in MAV-P?Individuals interested in participating in MAV-P are not required to have a child support case or affiliation with the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Paternity must be established for all cases. Participants seeking assistance with supervised visitation must have a verified court order or divorce decree. Finally, the custodial and noncustodial parents must agree on scheduled mediation, parent education, unsupervised or supervised visitations, as needed.
(EVER tried to “agree” with an overentitled abuser? See Randi’s article, above….)
What services are provided in MAV-P?
- MEDIATION includes MAV-P staff working with both parents to develop a peaceful resolution to visitation disputes. This process is a face-to-face interview and/or telephone sessions.
- SUPERVISED VISITATION is scheduled for parents with legally established visitation directed by a court order or divorce decree.
- EDUCATION is offered through parenting classes which address the basic needs of the child, money and stress management, child abuse, co-parenting and the concerns of the parents for their child(ren)’s well-being.
Take time for THIS link: a “wiki-leak” an “mit” site. I’m OUT of time for today….
fathers who do not pay their child support are more likely to have frequent contact with
their children (many on a daily basis) than fathers who pay their child support.
fathers’ rights groups would argue that spending time with one’s children (especially on
a daily basis) should be counted in terms of reducing that father’s financial obligation.
More generally, advocates of increasing parental responsibility would argue that it
is now time for the federal government to focus more attention on the “non-financial”
benefits associated with preserving the connection between noncustodial parents and their
children. Many policymakers and analysts maintain that a distinction must be made
between men who are “dead broke” and those who are “deadbeats.” They argue that the
federal government should help dead broke noncustodial fathers meet both their financial and emotional obligations to their children and vigorously enforce CSE laws against deadbeat parents.
+/- $1/million/state/year for Access/Visitation grants (ongoing) can’t be all wrong, despite headlines, and despite reality of the consequences of frequent exchanges, more time, with resistant disgruntled fathers..
I may take up that document in a later post; it illustrates the system involved in these issues.
Randi, good writing, thank you –I find it pretty darn close to the reality.
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Religion, Child-rape, cop-killing, mental illness
Boy, those are “nice” topics for a post. However, these are headlines, and behind them, one keeps seeing: child molestation, inexplicable release, further crime. Sometimes, mixed in there, is also religious conversion.
I’m not knocking religion per se (in THIS post), but it does make you wonder:
The Seattle cop killer had a child-rape accusation (not proved yet?), bail was met, and angered, he went heading for some police officers, and simply killed them. Were there any warning signs? Darn right there were…. Was there DOMESTIC violence in the background? You judge:
Clemmons’ criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. The record also stands out for the number of times he has been released from custody despite questions about the danger he posed.
Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.
He was released from custody just six days ago, even though he was wanted on a fugitive warrant out of Arkansas and was staring at eight felony charges in all out of Washington state.
Clemmons posted $15,000 with a Chehalis company called Jail Sucks Bail Bonds. The bondsman, in turn, put up $150,000, securing Clemmons’ release on the pending child-rape charge.
…
He was married, but the relationship was tumultuous, with accounts of his unpredictable behavior leading to at least two confrontations with police earlier this year.
During the confrontation in May, Clemmons punched a sheriff’s deputy in the face, according to court records. As part of that incident, he was charged with seven counts of assault and malicious mischief.
In another instance, Clemmons was accused of gathering his wife and young relatives around at 3 or 4 in the morning and having them all undress. He told them that families need to “be naked for at least 5 minutes on Sunday,” a Pierce County sheriff’s report says.
“The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus,” the report says.
…
As part of the child-rape investigation, the sheriff’s office interviewed Clemmons’ sister in May. She told them that “Maurice is not in his right mind and did not know how he could react when contacted by Law Enforcement,” a sheriff’s report says.
“She stated that he was saying that the secret service was coming to get him because he had written a letter to the President. She stated his behavior has become unpredictable and erratic. She suspects he is having a mental breakdown,” the report says.
Deputies also interviewed other family members. They reported that Clemmons had been saying he could fly and that he expected President Obama to visit to “confirm that he is Messiah in the flesh.”
Meanwhile, we got women all over the country in jail (or being threatened with it) for one reason or another, typically trying to protect their kids from one or another version of the above characters, failing to force a kid to visit for more molestation, or not being able to afford child support payments.
Go figure.
Also, one wonders, with INTER- and INTRA-family crime being dismissed by family law professionals, clear and present danger though it would seem to present to the families (and the general public), how it ALSO gets missed when it ain’t intra family.
Anyhow, perhaps I should file this one somewhere near the Garrido page.
Four Police were shot, execution style — and little time was lost in nailing the suspect, who is now dead. Get this:
Here below is quote, with a brief comment between the {{ }}s. Draw your own conclusions.
I am Jesus … and on the lam, Seattle cop killer Maurice Clemmons told NY bishop Bernard Jordan
BY Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Originally Published:Tuesday, December 1st 2009, 5:26 PM
Updated: Wednesday, December 2nd 2009, 1:17 AM
Bishop Bernard Jordan in his church at 310 Riverside Drive. Jordan had two bizarre encounters Maurice Clemmons, the man who executed for police officers in a Seattle coffee shop.
Madman Maurice Clemmons, 37, who was shot and killed by Seattle police on Tuesday
Related News
Seattle cop killer Maurice Clemmons – shot dead Tuesday by a lone patrolman – drove to New York in June to see a Manhattan minister, declaring God told him to make the trip.
He disturbed a June 13 prayer service, trying to rush the stage and yelling, and then approached Bishop Bernard Jordan at his gala 50th birthday banquet the next day.
“He said he was Jesus. I was kind of shocked,” Jordan told the Daily News.
“We said, ‘If you keep talking like that, you will be locked up and put away.’ I’m not a professional in mental health, but you can always tell when someone’s nuts.”
Clemmons, 37, told Jordan he was running from the police, who wanted him for vandalism. He said he had driven for three days to New York because “God called me.”
The minister – who claims to be a prophet and runs a lucrative “cyber-ministry” on Riverside Drive – told him to go home and turn himself in. “I told him, ‘I am sensing strongly that this is something you should do. You should not be on the run. You should get help,'” Jordan said.
Clemmons, a devotee of Jordan’s online chats, appears to have listened. Two weeks later, he showed up at a July 1 Seattle court hearing and was promptly arrested on charges ranging from vandalism to child rape.
When he made bail last week, he was so angry at his imprisonment that he shot four random uniformed cops doing paperwork in a suburban Seattle coffee shop Sunday, officials said.
{{Will we ever know whether those charges were true or not?}}
{{NOTE: women who confront their abusers, or the abusers of their children, face similar anger.. and sometimes pay in the same way. So WHY do such people get out? (See “toms river” posts, this blog).}}
“The only motive we have is that he decided he was going to go kill police officers. He was angry about being incarcerated,” said Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer.
Patrolman Benjamin Kelly ended the manhunt for Clemmons at 2:45 a.m. when he stumbled upon the suspected killer by his broken-down stolen car.
Clemmons refused orders to show his hands and Kelly shot him, authorities said.
Police then began rounding up a half-dozen friends and relatives who helped the ex-con while he was on the lam.
“We don’t think anyone helped him plan this murder, but his family has enabled him. Even after he killed four officers, they continued to try and save him,” Troyer said.
He said they gave Clemmons medical aid, phones, cars and money and tried to help hide him. There was speculation they also made some bogus 911 calls that had police running all over town, chasing ghosts. “They are going to pay for it,” Troyer said.
A huge memorial for the slain officers is planned Tuesday in Tacoma.
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Decisively Addressing Dangerous Conduct
Maybe we’d be much better off if cops — who understand life-threatening situations — ran family law, rather than psychologists and mental health professionals (oh yes, and mediators, evaluators, and organizations where all these get together). Maybe not — but I enjoyed the common sense in this article below.
Too bad it’s not applied when a family law case is involved. Rather, the real “danger” is fatherlessness, for which a whole profession has been spawned (like that reference? 🙂 ), Supervised Visitation. This facet is also handy for chastising protective parents, and is also a field for futher federal funding of how-to conferences (in addition to the existing parent education, and so forth).
Disclaimer: I am posting fast, due to reduced internet access, and more stuff to do in the limited hours (kind of like family law, right?). My purpose is only illustration and to provoke some thought.
Thank you, retired police officer Steve Gray. May as much common sense start — SOMEday — to be used in “domestic disputes” throughout the land.
Right now, when dangerous or illegal behavior shows up in the context of divorce and in family courts, the opposite tactic and policy is being intentionally! used: Rather than removing the catalyst [parent who engaged in illegal behavior]– the policy is to force repeated and stressful contact with the catalyst (where abuse or violence has ALREADY occurred) and then sell services — and/or drugs? — to force the unwilling party/parent to conform to this treatment, on the philosophy that a person’s biology and family role is more important than his character, or humanity.
Readers Forum: BART officer acted properly, but the Times didn’t
By Steve Gray
Guest Commentary Posted: 11/28/2009 12:01:00 AM PST
As s gratefully retired police lieutenant and enduring Times subscriber, your editorial chastising the BART officer for the arrest of the “bombastic” rider left me with one lasting impression: I’m glad the Times is not in charge of recruitment and training of cops.
Officers understand that discussion with an obviously belligerent provocative suspect, in a confined space, with the possibility of retaliation from persons either hostile to or allied with the suspect, only exposes the officer and others to unnecessary risk.
The principal rule in any hostile arrest situation is to remove the catalyst — which the officer did. Had the officer waited to act, the possibility of escalation would increase exponentially.
Add into consideration that the officer was alone, was likely afraid himself, and had no idea whether the suspect was armed, makes The Times editorial posture not only specious but dangerous.
Officers are aware that any arrest situation exposes them to acute risk. During my career three of my fellow officers were disarmed and shot with their own firearms. One of those officers, Sgt. Jim Rutledge of the Berkeley Police Department, was fatally wounded. The suspect in that case later shot and killed a child hostage.
Cops must carefully weigh and measure not only the risk to themselves, but as in the BART situation, the risk to multiple passengers as well. A passive response may result in a riotous or retaliatory situation; an aggressive response may do the same. Either choice may minimize the risk to bystanders, but escalate the risk to the officer and/or suspect.
It is axiomatic that there is no singular manner in which a cop should respond. Each situation is fluid. The principal rule is that police officers should decisively address dangerous conduct, which is exactly what the officer in the BART incident did.
I found it ironic that the same day the Times published the article critical of the BART officer, it also published an article naming two Bay Area cities as among the nation’s most dangerous. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly different articles supports a syllogism that police have long understood: Police confidence and community safety are directly correlated. If officers sense that a community supports criminal conduct, they will passively respond to calls for help.
That is why the Times editorial is not only myopic, but dangerous. If officers get intimidated and feel they don’t have community support in addressing lawlessness, they will conform to community standards and adjust their responses accordingly. Before responding assertively to calls for help from our wives, parents and children, officers will first be wondering “how will this affect me.” That should be a frightening prospect.
This is not an endorsement of police misconduct. Officers are — and should be — held to extremely high standards. Scrutiny and transparency are very important, and there is historical evidence of police misconduct that justifies such scrutiny.
However, I believe that the Times has a responsibility to carefully evaluate and measure what appears on the editorial pages. That includes approaching an issue from different perspectives.
What is chronically missing is any substantive discussion of the consequences of governmental agencies being dissuaded from doing their duty. That represents corruption of a different type, but corruption nonetheless. The Times has a journalistic responsibility to meticulously consider editorial content, and clearly understand the impact of such editorials.
I think it is important to note that the officer involved in the BART incident was injured representing the interests of the persons on the train being victimized by the offender’s behavior. I only hope that other cops continue to do their job protecting us and are not dissuaded or intimidated from doing so by editorials or a political minority posing as a political majority.
It was refreshing that the BART passengers, recognizing the propriety of the officer’s actions, applauded when the offender was removed. Your editor should be applauding as well.
[[Gray was a police officer for 31 years in Berkeley, Hayward and Mountain View and he retired as a lieutenant. He is a resident of Martinez.]]
Well-written! Let’ s not be “Mypioc” and “Dangerous” when dealing with dangerous situations. Clear and present danger is NOT “lack of resources in Family Law” (see last post) but spousal batterers, and that’s per a law on the books, California legislature. Cops understand that…
Courts, I believe, also do, but apparently simply have a different agenda.
Again, people talk about what’s important to them. So why are these all these “court” organizations and professionals focusing on lack of finances, when the mothers involved have stayed focused on safety — their own, and their children?
Perhaps if they squandered less of the federal grants with “Required Outcomes” of custody matters, there’d be less financial pressure on the parents, and fewer family wipeouts.
Again, just think about it.
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Oconomowoc, not Oconto, Wisconsin. Quiz for my readers…
OK, skim through the articles below — I did. And here are a few questions.
(1) Was this a “family” matter? If so, how many states (and countries) are involved, to date?
(2) The little boy involved was 4 years old (and now his Mom is dead and father in jail, on $2 million bail). He was in a fatherless home. To correct this situation, his father (allegedly) hired someone ELSE to kill her so he could get custody (since the courts weren’t about to fork over the kid), solving the “noncustodial parent” issue, and so forth.
My question is, whose mug shot isn’t up here?
Three arrested in Smith murder
Posted: Nov. 19, 2009
(1)
3 arrested in Oconomowoc slaying; plot to gain child’s custody alleged By Mike Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Updated: Nov. 19, 2009 1:31 p.m.
Waukesha — Kimberly Smith was murdered in her Oconomowoc home Oct. 1 as part of a plot for her ex-boyfriend to get custody of their 4-year-old son, authorities said Thursday in announcing the arrests of the ex-boyfriend and two other men on homicide charges. Darren Wold, 41, the ex-boyfriend, is accused of conspiring with a longtime friend, Jack E. Johnson, 65, formerly of Waukesha, to kill Smith, and Justin Patrick Welch, 26, of French Camp, Calif., is accused of traveling to Wisconsin and stabbing her to death, Chief David Beguhn said during a news conference at the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department. Authorities on Oct. 27 had identified Welch as a suspect in the homicide after his DNA was found on a knife and latex/vinyl-type gloves recovered in a sewer drain near Smith’s home in the 300 block of S. Maple St., according to court records. An arrest warrant was issued for Welch that charged him with first-degree intentional homicide. At the time, police said Welch might be driving a Jeep Patriot that was reported stolen in California. Investigators launched a nationwide manhunt for Welch, and through their investigation, connected him to Johnson, of Obrero Rosarito, Mexico, Beguhn said. Authorities placed an alert with U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking that they be notified if Johnson attempted to cross the border. Johnson was taken into custody about 1:10 p.m. Wednesday as he attempted to enter the United States. About 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Welch was arrested by Mexican authorities after a brief vehicle pursuit near Rosarito, Mexico. Police were attempting to stop the Patriot because it was stolen, Beguhn said. Welch was turned over to U.S. authorities. Both Welch and Johnson are being held in the San Diego (Calif.) County Jail. Johnson is charged with party to first-degree intentional homicide. Wold was arrested Wednesday night at his Lubbock, Texas, home. He is being held in jail there on a charge of party to first-degree intentional homicide. All three men are being held on $2 million bail. Smith, 39, was found dead about 9:30 a.m. Oct. 1 in her home in the 300 block of S. Maple St. Her hands were bound and she had been stabbed a number of times, court records state. Her 4-year-old son, Jackson, was home at the time of the slaying but did not witness the killing. Smith’s current boyfriend, who lived with her and Jackson, found Smith’s body in the living room and called 911. The boyfriend said he had left for work about 6 a.m. and returned after learning that Smith didn’t show up at her job, according to Beguhn. Welch’s ties to Wisconsin are not known, and investigators do not know if Smith knew him. Smith’s relatives told investigators that they do not know Welch.
(2)
Oconomowoc investigators get break in murder of Kimberly Smith
Bob Moore FOX 6 Reporter
October 27, 2009
WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE – Oconomowoc investigators get their first and only break in in the murder of Kimberly Smith. Smith was found dead on October 1st. Tuesday morning, a Waukesha County judge issued an arrest warrant for a California man, Justin Welch.
Police collected evidence from an Oconomowoc home on the morning of October 1st. Last Friday, a DNA analysis of several items matched the DNA of 26-year-old Justin Welch.
Welch is now the focus of a nationwide manhunt. The Waukesha County arrest warrant is for first degree intentional homicide. He’s suspected of killing Kim Smith. Welch is wanted in California on a felony, no-bail warrant for a parole violation.
Police are now trying to determine the connection between Welch and Wisconsin. They suspect Welch and Smith may have connected on the internet.
If you have any information about where authorities might fight Welch, you’re urged to call the Oconomowoc Police at 262-567-4401 or the Waukesha Co. Sheriff’s Dept. at 262-446-5070.
(3)
Kim Smith remembered for big smile, thoughtfulness
Oconomowoc murder victim identified
By Katherine Michalets and Jeff Rumage Freeman Staff
Oct 3, 2009
. . .
According to a news release, Smith was found dead in the living room of her residence at 334 S. Maple St. The police department was notified by dispatch at 9:32 a.m., and officers and rescue personnel arrived on the scene within two minutes.
Oconomowoc Police Chief David Beguhn said the boyfriend that she lived with left for work at 6 a.m. When he called her at the Waukesha County Department of Health and Human Services where she works, he was told she had not come in, so he returned home to find her dead body, Beguhn said.
Police believe the murder took place sometime between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.
Smith was also living with her son, who was unharmed by the event. After the murder, the young boy underwent a forensic interview at a specialty care center in Waukesha. Based on those interviews, it did not appear the young boy witnessed the event, Beguhn said. The boy is staying with his grandmother, he said.
Online court records show Smith was involved in a yearlong custody battle with the father of the boy. Beguhn said police contacted the man Thursday, and he was in Texas, where he lives.
Police File Four Sealed Search Warrants In Oconomowoc Homicide Case
No Arrests Have Been Made
POSTED: 6:50 pm CDT October 6, 2009
UPDATED: 10:47 am CDT October 7, 2009
etc.
QUIZ:
- These are the ages involved:
26, 4, 65, 41, 39
- These are the geographies (state/country):
Wisconsin, California, Texas, Mexico
- These are the last names, not including the boy: Welch, Wold, Johnson, Smith, Beguhn
Question1: Who’s who?
Match age to state to last name — quick now… can you keep them straight?
Question 2: How many generations, so far, has this one event affected?
(answer — apparently, four. youngster, 20 yr old, 40yr olds, 65 yr old.)
Question 3:
- Did anyone (article) mention domestic violence yet? Want to place a bet whether there was or was not such a criminal record? (I’m thinking, probably not). Would a restraining order have helped her somehow? Was she aware of her danger (lethality assessments)? (Note: 3rd party involved, bound hand and feet, she maybe didn’t have her first cup of coffee or get out the door to work yet). Was she in an unsafe place? YES: Her home, after a custody battle.
Question(s) 4:
- What was Dad doing in Texas? Did having Dad in Texas make anyone safer?
Question(s) 5ff:
- Did fast response by police, or a live-in boyfriend make her any safer? No, she’s dead. But his fast response helped probably catch the killer.
- Did her expertise in Health &Human Services make her any more alert to the danger? (Apparently not).
Finally:
Do I have time to analyze this one?
Answer: no.
Instinctive response (no wrong answer):
What word comes to your mind in regards this case? Summarize/label it…. Answer must be in 3 words or less.
You know what word comes to mine? In light of the: Wisconsin/California/Texas/Mexico connection, plus a 4 year old boy and willingness to KILL to get custody…. what a dedicated father. . . .
Child-trafficking. But maybe that’s just me.
Sure, it’d have been better if they’d had a better marriage, or married, or stayed married. But suppose there had been a mismatch, and there had been violence — should she have kept herself and her son around for more?
What about that shared parenting theme? Wasn’t Dad interested, or wasn’t he allowed? It’s dangerous pissing off a Dad these days, apparently…. Maybe that’s part of the formula with this fatherlessness thing. It’s countercultural, it’s not accepted culturally, and that can get REAL sticky with cultures (or religions) that place themselves above the law. Or individuals.
Here’s another excerpt from (I think) first article link, above. Catch the drift?
Long-running dispute
Smith was entangled in a custody dispute with Wold, and the proceedings were favoring her.
Question: Which one of my posts handles the hazards of actually winning in court?
Court records show that Smith and Wold, who previously lived together in Germantown and in Pennsylvania, have been fighting for more than two years in Washington County Circuit Court over custody of the boy.
As these things can go, that ain’t ‘squat.’ Look at the Oconto County, WI case. There are ways to keep it going, and going, and going. . . .
In July, Wold was ordered to spend 60 days in jail after being held in contempt of court, but the jail time was to be imposed only if he failed to follow certain conditions for a year, records show.
He had lied about where he was living and failed to make court-ordered payments.
LYING, in court especially, about where one is living is a character indicator. Courts ought to wake up. Guess this was a family court…
QUICK now, before you’ve thought about this, one there are others. I can’t keep up, myself…
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“Why does he DO that?” A walk on the wild side…. [with some 2013 updates]
I am speaking as an owner and long-time appreciator of the book. “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry & Controlling Men.”.. which showed up like a savior, emotionally, right as my case plummeted from stablized position under protection of a restraining order, into the volatile, “mandatory-mediation” arena of Family Court, which reminded me of “Chutes and Ladders”, with more chutes than ladders.
You take one false step (or have your family placed at the top of a chute through being hauled into this venue) and are on a chute.
Kind of like life WITH the abusive guy (or woman) to start with, anyhow, huh? Hmm… Wonder why they function similarly!
(The post on “Family Court Matters a la board-games” is in pre-development stage, meaning, a little gleam in the blogger’s eye still. Paper, Scissors Stone (last post) got me thinking for sure…..)
If you haven’t read Lundy Bancroft’s material AND/OR you are not yourself a victim or being forced to co-parent with a batterer, you’re not fully informed in the domestic violence field, period.
(2013 Update, In Hindsight):
Then again, if we’d all been talking about something besides “batterers” perhaps neither Batterers Intervention Programs nor “domestic violence” would have developed into “fields,” coalitions, or industries.
And the conversation about those fields and how THEY operate is the conversation that no one seems to want to talk about, even as updates to “The Batterer As Parent” have been published and being circulated in various circles.
I mean, think about it (why didn’t we earlier??) There is a crime called “assault and battery” — but by the time someone has become a “batter-er” that means, it’s habitual — which means someone else is experiencing “domestic violence.” How can you domesticate “violence” and what’s domestic about it? (Well, you can tame down its labeling and call it domestic “abuse” — which has been done…
In fact, as it turns out, “BIPs” are actually diversionary programs to criminal prosecution for the beating up on others. Some people figured out, along with programs like, “moral reconation therapy(tm)” and Psychoeducational classes for kids undergoing divorce — that the more programs the merrier. I guess… The money is made upfront in the trainings, yours truly (The United States Government, which is essentially “yours truly” — the taxpayers) set up the policies and the corporations and then runs the population through them every time someone shows up actually needing some realtime social service — or justice — or help.
I can’t explain it too well in a single post, but this conflict was staged and manipulated in order to obtain more and more central control (literally, an economic stranglehold) on most of us through those of us that are willing to sell out for collaboration, sales, and the conference circuit. As sincere or genuine as these individuals may be, I do know they are playing on empathy to increase sales. I do not know whether or not they see the endgame, after their own use has expired in the long-range plan of bankrupting Americans so we are left as a human resource without other options than begging or slavery, at a sheer subsistence level.
Some of us have been their in marriage, we have been there AFTER filing restraining orders, which were intended to protect us (allegedly), but we were NOT there after even a year or two in the family court Archipelago.
Somehow, in this destitute and distressed state, we grasp at straws of empathy and keep referring friends and neighbors to explain our own situation to the same types of information — such as if only someone would JUST UNDERSTAND batterers’ psyches, our kids would be safer, and life would be better.
Anyhow, what follows was from very early in this blog (October 2009) and shows my understanding at that time. Even then, I was questioning the logic of the question.
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Linus, MN — derailing the DV conversation, again. How dare they!
It was misfortune, it fell down from the sky, accidentally, 2 days after an irate man with a fourteen-year history of violence was released from jail after the 48th DV call. Now, let’s not talk about that bail, let’s talk about HER losing the battle, oh well.
Perhaps because restraining orders aren’t bullet-proof, I just have a hunch. They equipped her with PAPER, and let him out of jail. Now, oh dear, she lost the batttle. . . . . . PERHAPS we should look at the strategists this time, not the foot soldiers.
Police: Murder-suicide victim did ‘everything she could’ to protect herself
LINO LAKES, Minn. — It seems there’s never a typical neighborhood, and there’s never a typical victim when it comes to domestic violence.
TRUE, but there are typical policies when dealing with it. See if you catch one, below….
Friends say that’s definitely true of 48-year-old Pamela Taschuk, a woman they say was “vibrant.”
“She was upbeat. She was moving forward with her life, whatever the circumstances. And that was consistent with the way she did everything. She always had a sort of upbeat, vibrant attitude and just brought a spark of life whereever she was at,” said Jeffrey Schulz, who worked with Taschuk at BlueSky Online Charter School.
On Thursday night, Taschuk was killed (*) in her Lino Lakes home in what police believe was the final act of a long history of domestic abuse(**).
(**) Did police call it domestic “abuse” or domestic “violence,” which is more accurate?…. “Violence” sounds like “vile” which it is. “Abuse” well, it’s just a little softer sounding.
I have an idea why it’s called “abuse” in Minnesota (as well as other places). One is called Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs and the other is called the Domestic Abuse Project.
(*) (2nd in order becuase I didn’t notice this first time through) . . . . Taschuk was killed. Well, ain’t THAT a little evasive. What happened to the whoDUNit? Of course, the story then gets to it:
Police say Pam’s husband, 51-year-old Allen Taschuk, dropped their 16-year-old son off at a nearby gas station. Taschuk then returned home, police said, and killed Pam with a single gunshot wound. He called 911 to request someone pick up his son before turning the gun onto himself.
Officials say the case is both tragic and ironic — prosecutors say Pamela had met with them the very day she was killed. {{See later in story — she ALSO, the same day, attended a DV support group. I’ll get to this (one thing at a time. . . . but here it is: “Moore says Pam was even at a support group just minutes before her murder.”}}
ONE thing that seems obvious to me — her support group was near the home — “just minutes” away. She hadn’t left the family home. Maybe the support group, in light of this, might speak to their organizers and consider recommending that women take an IMMEDIATE precautionary and SWIFT location-change. And then let the prosecutors communicate with her, via fax, phone, mail, or from another prosecutor’s office, if necessary, perhaps?
“She was doing everything she could do to help us have a successful case,” said Paul Young with the Anoka County Attorney’s Office.
(Although 14 years after the assaults had begun — and I’m not faulting the woman, but I think perhaps this is a word to the wise for those women who may have access to internet and not wish the same fate….There is an element of gambling in these processes…. I don’t like gambling with the stakes being human lives, especially Mom/Dad parent lives . . . Anyhow . . . . .}}
Someone pressed charges after he beat her:
Pam’s battle against her domestic abuse spanned more than a decade.
Wow, A husband beating a wife just got gender-neutraled. For that, see this: The Grammar of Male Violence
{{I’m quoting a radical feminist publication, so therefore by association I must be a radical feminazi and lesbian, right?}}
Well, is that relevant to whether or not there is more than one way to describe a situation on which the details were known? For example, where is the culprit in that decade? Who was hitting WHOM just got deleted. If she’d been hitting him, do you think the news media would have omitted this? (and the answer is probably No. On the 2nd part, but it’s going more towards the feminazi, if this will help save lives, than away from it, if moderation will not. I don’t think violence towards women is a moderate act that should elicit a moderate response on the part of friends, neighbors, clergy, or law enforcement. And friends should examine themselves, as should immediate family, in these matters. Which, admittedly, ain’t always easy or comfortable.
Finally, BOTH of them are now permanently deleted, by bullets. And yet the descriptors remains (as reported by police, or at least these reporters), when HE assaulted HER, it comes out as HER battling “domestic abuse.” Because it takes two to tango, and she’s tangleed up in this sentence, I will presume that an aggressive male who eventually shot his 2nd wife, leaving his children fatherless, and stepmotherless (where is previous wife, or their mother?)
In a press conference on Friday, Lino Lakes Police Chief Dave Pecchia said police had responded to 48 calls to the Taschuk home in the last 14 years (neither of the couple being available for comment, we’ll have to take this at his word, unless someone on-line wants to look the records up))
In August, police arrested Allen after he beat Pam and wouldn’t let her leave.
What about the other 48 calls — did THEY result in any arrests? Why did THIS one — because it was beating AND false imprisonment? Or because they have a limit of 4 dozen per decade per couple? Or because the first 47 were just domestic disputes, and now that two people are dead, the polic want to emphasize that they DID arrest this dude?
I’ll tell you something. MOST beatings have an element of false imprisonment in them. Unless you buy that women like it, most won’t stick around voluntarily. If we could see something beyond the short time, generally, at shelters, for us, and/or our kids, and/or how to work after or in a shelter. “Hi. I’m going to beat you. Could you hold still for a while? Please?”
But two days later, he posted bail and was released.
You know what? Perhaps this should be the headline and not “murder/suicide victim…” First of all, the second word came second, and by then she wasn’t alive enough to be a victim of it. First all, she wasn’t. Sometimes I HATE the deletion of active verbs, condensed into adjectives to make room for a sentence spreading a sense of futility and helplessness — “she did everything she could to protect herself.”
>>>
{{What about exercising her 2nd Amendment rights to meet potential escalated violence (it’d been escalating, right?) with more than externalized paperwork and meetings? I believe abusers are cowards at heart. ESPECIALLY of women. Picking on someone helpless, and resorting to this to dominate, is a sign of weakness, and need to feel superior, but not the guts to face someone equal in stature and with equal means. Who knows what a batterer might do if he (or she) ever had to face and armed VICTIM, as opposed to armed responding officers after they’d already shot (or whatever the means) their unarmed, often female (or male), victim? For starters, they’d probably go target someone else, unarmed, which may not solve the problem they carry with them — but it MIGHT solve the problem for that one person being targeted..}}
{{You know what? When I read a report about two people shot that shouldn’t have been shot, I don’t like PASSIVE tense and I don’t like “generic nouns” to describe something that obviously had a person, acting, involved. “Generic nouns” are good places for things like rain, clouds, tides, and so forth. Sun rising, and whatnot. I don’t think murder-suicides following someone incarcerated for only 2 days when the history of violence dates back 10 years……should be packaged in as commonplace language as events we take for granted. Even so-called “acts of God” {{meaning, in insurance terms, “natural” disasters}} have a scientific causality.
That he “was released” is not an act of God or a happening, it was MATERIAL to two deaths, and it had a human agent. If that human’s hands were tied by policy, then the thing is to untie the policy noose. On the other hand, did that human in this case VIOLATE an existing policy? We’ll never know, and this article is CERTAINLy not interested in asking WHY he “was released.”}}
The door just opened. It just happened.
QUIZ: Do arresting officers set bail? (I think not). Judges do. DO judges have guidelines, and if so, do they follow them? So then (“Cast, Characters, Script, Action” in the repeat performance of a domestic violence murder/suicide after a man who’d just been confronted on it was inexplicably given a bail low enough to meet, posted it, and went for his gun…. This is, I repeat, a REPEAT performance in the same old script..not to mention a repeat review. Do they have boilerplates for this type of reporting? “Ask the police, ask the prosecutors, as a friend or so and commerorate her, comment on how unavoidable it was, and promote the local domestic violence shelter, which she wasn’t in, or program, or support groups,..which she was. Or batterer’s intervention groups which he was, passing with flying colors, right up til that 2nd shot… Spin the tale, frame the conversation…….)
Can we try a variation on this?
who just got deleted from this account of what happened? Answer — the JUDGE. Who deleted it, or didn’t report it? The author (or editor), probably Karla Hult of KARE11.com news. She was doing her job, I know. Typical report. He posted bail (HOW MUCH? DID ANYONE BRING UP, ON SETTING BAIL, THAT HE HAD A DECADE LONG HISTORY OF ABUSE, 48 CALLS IN 10 YEARS, AND REPRESENTED A DANGER? NOW THAT MIGHT BE A STORY. REMINDS ME OF THE OCEAN CITY (TOMS RIVER NJ) ACCOUNT. See my blogroll — it’s usually one of top 5 posts visited. And I asked that question: WHY was the dude released then?
But prosecutors, friends and domestic abuse advocates say Pam kept fighting. Earlier this month, she got an order of protection against her husband. She was also getting a divorce.
.
I’d like to review these two sentences again. My mind can’t just quite wrap around the verbal equating of “Pam kept fighting” with (14 years after he began assault & battery behavior against her (that’s what it is) with two activities: Getting a protection order, and getting a divorce. One more time, in blue, the 3 categories of Monday Night Quarterbackers, post-game analysts who ARE still alive (and probably still employed too) have this summary, and trick of language metaphor:
But prosecutors, friends and domestic abuse advocates say Pam kept fighting. {{HOW did she fight? With what weapons? Possibly as advised:) (1) Earlier this month, she got an order of protection against her husband {{actually that’s not fight, that’s closeer to flight, only not really for it, because no change of location was involved for HER}} (2) She was also getting a divorce.
How did her husband fight? The last time, with a gun. How did she fight? with a protection order and a divorce.
Filing for both the protection order AND the divorce, we ALL should know by now, the temperature is escalating — this woman is attempting to change the dynamics, and is getting help with it, too. The “I rule THIS neck of the woods” dynamic is being shaken up. She is in more danger now (if this be possible) when she was at home taking it on the chin, so to speak (wherever it landed). if those were NOT life-threatening, although intolerable, illegal, and an indicator that her life WAS in danger, whatever it was then, it is now even moreso unless she gets ALL the way to safe FAST, because she is saying “STOP!”
So let’s look at this logic. Things are going to heat up. She is attempting to re-assert control, even defense. Now ALL parties involved should know this by now, or they simply are illiterate and do not get on-line about DV, at all. You can’t read too far before running across that truth. “The most dangerous time is when a woman tries to separate….” So let’s assess the survival tools this report just credited her (post-mortem, literally) with:
- Man just out of jail with Gun v. court rulings (paper, theory).
- Man just out of jail, and history of DV, with Gun v. court rulings. Let me see, which is likely to win? Gun, or court rulings? Place your bets, after all, it’s not YOUR life.
Which will win? Well, that depends on the context and some variables. Court rulings (“paper” or electronic) restrain in THEORY.
Guns can restrain in PRACTICE, and for good. They are heart-stopping (case in point)
QUESTION: If it was someone you cared about, would you gamble on someone’s psychological or lethality assessment of a 14-year batterer, and logically, then wish the person attacked to have to live in a constant state of gauging that assessment, OR would you recommend something which would err on the side of SAFETY, for example, immediate and significant SEPARATION (distance wise, etc.) or DETERRENT-wise?
Where’s your love at? Where’s OUR love at?
Is it moral or practical to play “paper, scissors, rock” with other people’s lives, at public expense?? After they have come to a public entity (or nonprofit) for help and safety? If unclear what this game is, see next section. it’s a simple, context-sensitive game of wit, or odds, and only requires hands to play. The losers may be humiliated, but aren’t hurt by the game, per se. . . Kids play it, grown-ups sometimes, too….
“Paper, Scissors, Stone.“
Reminds me of that kids’ game, “paper, scissors, stone.” The key is context, and the thrill is not knowing what your choice will be met with from the other player’s. For those who don’t know, I’ll let Wikipedia and Youtube illustrate:
Now, let’s reconsider Pam kept fighting: She got a protection order and was getting a divorce.
Her weapons: court orders.
His, Previous times:- ?? only those two, and any witnesses know for sure. (Maybe the previous 48 calls to the home revealed). This last time, a gun. Who had the better odds, given that this guy wasn’t the most law-abiding sort, evidently. . . . ?? The odds were stacked against her. Her weapons were metaphors, his were tangible and had projectiles. Moreover, whoever kept encouraging her to get these obviously doesn’t read the newspapers that often, or at least, the policies are at odds with the evidence.
Now, let’s consider. Let’s analyze (again): Who’s alive, who’s dead, and whose advice did the dead woman follow? Perhaps if she’d had and been able to follow better advice, SHE’d still be alive.
I suspect (though I may be wrong, but I bet) had she not been murdered by her husband, her husband MIGHT not have felt it necessary to make a quick end to THAT process (rather than stay in jail — remember, he’d just spent 2 days in jail, and was probably VERY committeed not to going back again…)
Homicide in the U.S. — Plenary Panel from the 2009 NIJ Conference
(references something tried in Baltimore, based on in part the J. Campbell assessment)
In Maryland, you can see that our partner homicide averages about 1,200 per year. Sixty.nine men, women and children in Maryland. Our goal was to use this instrument, directed by this committee, to look at what an officer can do on the scene to deal with the danger of death at the scene at the time that they’re there. Sort of the golden hour that the health care industry uses, or the golden 24 hours, to get intervention into that home.
A lot of the committee members included DSS, which are critical; the prosecutors of course; law enforcement; and domestic violence advocates, our nonprofit providers. Dr. Campbell found some key things in her research, and she helped us to identify the things that many law enforcement officers know by instinct. What is the victim’s perception of what’s going on here? What is their fear level? What is the access to weapons? What happens with the threats of violence at the scene? What’s the suspect’s employment status, et cetera? You can read the rest…
…
What were the leadership issues we experienced as an agency? Of course, our relationship with external partners was critical. If you don’t have them, it’s a little hard to build this base. We were really blessed to have a lot of that infrastructure in place.
Culture. What is the attitude of your officers in the area of domestic violence? Is there emotional intelligence, or is it an immature culture about the issue? And how do you, as leaders, attend to that? What is the attitude in general with your county of the role of the state’s attorney, prosecutors, judges, et cetera?
(AHA!!)
. . . . So, I would err EVERY time on the side of safety, caution, and take NO risks, rather than unacceptable risks. We have gotten to the point in some situations were restraining “orders” are instead red flags, instigating further escalations. When people are in an “intimate” relationship, it’s part of this to let down their guard somewhat. People who take advantage of this by REPEATED physical assaults have made a MAJOR transggression, and this needs to be addressed as such. ONE call to the police is unacceptable, and a huge red flag.
I have 3 short proverbs, or “gifts” (of information) to the next women (or men) hoping to restrain and out of control intimate partner, or one that has been ejected from the home by them already. Or, if they are considering it. AGAIN, I’m not an attorney and every one is to judge her situation and LISTEN to her instinct, and do NOT listen to people who say, listen to US, not your instinct; we aree the experts.
In the field of survival we have God-given instincts (or, if you prefer, natural) for this. Appreciate them! Do not sign them over the closest entity saying “let us help you.” Help is needed, but as you had that guard up with the aggressor, also be alert from people that are taking your confidences and advising you how to get out. It may be a way out, or it may be a dead end, such as this one. Then afterwards, you will
OH — closer to the bottom of the article about the VICTIM, here’s actually something about the SHOOTER.
Allen Taschuk served on the Centennial Fire Department as a paid, on-call firefighter for the last 20 years, accoridng to Chief Jerry Streich. He was put on administrative leave within the last year for undisclosed reasons.
“Pamela did all the things she could do in terms of protecting herself,” said Connie Moore with the Alexandra House Domestic Abuse Shelter in Blaine.
WELL, HERE’S ANOTHER COMMENTATOR, NOT THE JUDGE WHO ENABLED THIS WIFE-BEATER TO GET FREE BY WHATEVER BAIL WAS POSTED. And I bet he wasn’t too happy about even those 2 days in jail, either, I mean the husband. Future women in trouble should call this shelter. (Free plug — come to us!) You too, might end up like Pam.
Moore says Pam was even at a support group just minutes before her murder.
So much for support groups! I rest my case! Safety FIRST, support, SECOND.
and this is why (post-restraining order) I stopped attending, because I wished to devote my time instead to something which might stop the trouble, and it was escalating — and not learn how to endure it. I already knew how to endure it, from practice, years of it, but the more freedom I tasted the less taste I had for returning to abuse. This is when things OD escalate, when this is sensed by the other person.
Given her long battle, Moore says . . .
This tells you who, perhaps, Ms. Moore has been hanging out with. i recommend she carefully review “The Grammar of Male Violence” and change her talk. Stop talking about the women that lost, and analyze the case in terms of who did what.
Ms. Moore, if you’re reading this, could you get a copy back to PRAXIS and BATTERED WOMEN’S JUSTICE PROJECT AND ANY OTHER TRAINING CONFERENCES YOU ATTEND AS A SHELTER WORKER? I know they have organizations up in Minnesota that teach cultural sensitivity as to subgroups of people being assaulted by their partners. There’s funding for Rural, for Native American, and I know there’s IAADV for African-American issues, with Dr. Johnson. Would you relate, from me, that it’s not “her long battle” but (seems to me, at least this case) someone’s incompetence, that let this one “suddenly spiral out of control.” after a guy just got released from another beating on bail. Stop deflecting blame onto the woman. Sounds to me like she was doing HER part, but others weren’t doing THEIRS. Maybe that why “she lost ” “her battle.”
Where were the analysts? They were collaborating on how to train all the folks that weren’s supposed to set that low a bail, but give her time to get the heck out of there, and TELL her to!
Please show grammar sensitivity for the sub-group of WOMEN and stop blaming them when their prime shortcoming was simply bad advisors, who didn’t say GET OUT and STAY AWAY!
Pam’s death highlights what else needs to be done in the court system and community to protect domestic abuse victims.
Not it doesn’t, it’ OBFUSCATES what else needs to be done in the sentencing procedure. Chalk it up to another mess-up. It was just a few dozen or so domestic disputes, that’s all.
I’m going to rewrite that: “to empower battered women.” or “to STOP or RESTRAIN men who batter women.” And stop calling it “abuse!” Stop giving the standard post-murder/suicide spin, and start quoting from court pleadings and police reports, if you can. The next time a reporter contacts you after an “event” tell them some graphic truth and be blunt about it. You might lose your job, though, but maybe a better calling might ben investigating these bail orders handed out. . . . If they force traffic violators (speeders, drunk drivers, etc.) to sit through accident footage, why is this less?
“If a victim is saying ‘he’s threatened me, he says he’s going to kill me,’ we need to take that seriously,” Moore said.
We who? How many (more) women, boys & girls, and/or men are going to die before the full panoply of that “we” starts to try something different? Can something be diverted from, say, abstinence education, to helping families in danger MOVE while he’s incarcerated?
Moore said the court system should consider following a “lethal assessment” policy that requires officials to gauge exactly how great a threat a suspect poses to his potential victim. She said officials could then choose a more aggressive response with those suspects who pose a greater risk. {{they COULD do this now, and aren’t. It’s not really rocket science...}}
You know what? The court systems is considering its own behind, associates and paychecks. The sooner DV victims realize this, the better. I say that from the perspective of the fatherhood movement, superrvised visitation movement, access visitation movements, and the inane acting like a lethal incident just “dropped out of the sky” and was the dead people’s (or fortune’s) fault.
THIS lethality assessment stuff is maybe one of the latest “lines” (myths) going through the training advocates loop. Lethality assessments go back to 1985, as does the habit of ignoring this in favor of “Designer Families.” It presumes officials don’t have a clue that someone is going to get killed next time, just like they say in the post crime scene cleanup press conferences. MOreover, these are used to promote organizations that don’t seem to check long-term follow-up — when that thing goes into the family law system, which doesn’t LIKE calling a crime a crime (see AFCC.com, “about” & history pages), then what?
Ms. Moore, please seek outside opinions. Is this what women tell YOU, or is it what you are to tell the women?
It presumes the experts know BETTER than the women themselves where safety is and what a danger is. That is a lethality risk in itself, they don’t! Why not? It’s NOT THEIR KDIS and THEIR LIVES or THEIR WIVES.
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
Intergenerational Impact of Ongoing Molestation…McNeill/Vargas case
with one comment
Sunday, the SF Chronicle (print edition) had a front page article on a young man who, after years of molestation by a certain older man (from the time he was ELVEN [11] into his TWENTIES [20s]) took matters — and a gun — into his own hand, and calmly shot the guy, to death, in front of his wife. The young man was Vargas, the older one, McNeill.
There are lessons to be learned in the article, and in how the press handled it.
Mr. Vargas has a young daughter, per the account I’m linking to today, and the older one, McNeill, apparently having finished his run of molesting the young adult, was seeking contact with this granddaughter.
Let’s think about the Grandparent Visitation issues, as well as the ACCESS/Visitation issues, acknowledging that where abuse HAS occurred, either of beating a parent in front of a child, or of using a child for one’s personal gratification (either one is illegal, inappropriate, and consists of USING a person, whether an adult person, or a young person, to satisfy one’s primal instincts, rather than finding a creative — and LEGAL — outlet for expression of them.
I too, searched on-line for this, and it was NOT featured under front page links to the same newspaper. Our society is so communally stressed, I think they just cannot handle the hard truths until they hit home. Even then (collectively), only temporarily.
So here are some High School Seniors from San Mateo (per blogsite) commenting on this event. The blog is: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to National Affairs.” As I have found personally, the younger people are, typically the more honest they are going to be in general on some of the deep issues of life.
The focus of the article had been what the TOWN thought about how to punish this young man, as well as the surviving widow. My paragraphing is probably different than on their site..
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Cold-blooded murder. Town says it was justified?
I searched on this same site for “Domestic Violence” and found a link to a huffington post article. A “Tip O’ the Hat” to the blogsters….\
When Getting Beaten By Your Husband is a Pre-Existing Condition
My personal experience, both in marriage, and in court, is that when human terms clash with economic terms, the economic terms, in general, prevail. However, economically-motivated practices — like endless attempts to TEACH judges and others that woman-beating and child-molesting is wrong, but NOT wrong enough to deprive the woman-beater or child-molester of ongoing contact (supervised — at someone’s expense — or Unsupervised, with eventual consequences to society) — or even of contact PERMANENTLY (as a deterrent to OTHER woman-beaters or child-molesters) – – are often sold with a human-terms window-dressing.
That’s how Bush sold Abstinence AND marriage education. We can see who is and who isn’t supposed to abide by those standards by reading the headlines involving political, sports, and celebrity headlines. Or by taking a typical look at one’s local high school.
The fact is, economies are BUILT around allowing abuse to continue — but just to certain populations. And other economies are BUILT around, supposedly, handling it.
Here’s a link to the fact that the SF Chronicle’s PRINT-ONLY policy (and the 9 headline stories it did NOT have on-line. May be on-line Tuesday?).
Worth The $3? Today’s Print Only Chronicle With Bonus Video!
by Eve Batey [[Thank you, Eve]] February 21, 2010 3:00 PM
February 21, 2010 3:00 PM
——–
WHY NO NEWS ABOUT AARON VARGAS — JAILED FOR KILLING HIS ABUSE (Fort Bragg forum, Sept, 2009)
The relevant factoid I just picked up — Mrs. Liz McNeill is a second wife — the former wife reported his abuse. A lot of “next women,” will need to overlook prior abuse, or naturally discredit it, in the interests of their new relationship.
Don’t think men don’t know this. I’m glad Liz McNeill is doing the right thing — thank you. I’m sorry for HER loss as well — including the loss of the illusion of who was that man she was married to. And maybe a better understanding of his former wife.
I feel required to say, from experience, that men like McNeill know where to find their next women, and how to charm them. If we are society that undervalues women and over-values men, this is a partial consequence. People will NOT NOTICE things they otherwise would, in interest of relationship #2.
I do not doubt Mrs. McNeill when she says, there was NO evidence of the abuse. Child molesters can’t keep it up without secrecy. Vargas’ own mother didn’t know, either, til her told her.
[[Back to my commentary, here…]]
PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY CAN GET JUSTICE IF THEY ARE GOING TO REPORT THEIR OWN ABUSE AND TRUTHS ABOUT IT.
This is not that hard a crime to prosecute from evidence of who shot whom, and as such, the prosecutors went right for it. Abuse is harder, because abusers have to maintain secrecy, lies, and so forth. It’s HARD to speak up.
I have been repeatedly, repeatedly, citing this SITE:
Bridging the gap between childhood trauma and negative consequences later in life
But, We have a different “Clear and Present Danger” according to the professional organization basically running the family court system:
Is clear and present danger to the physical and mental health of the citizens of the State of California, a spousal batterer? (like the California code says, at least last time I read it, and it’s on this blog, too).
Is clear and present danger the economic crisis? Here’s a search result from last April, as this man says?
Commentary: Budget a ‘clear and present danger’ to our kids
Sen. Gregg wrote:
Let’s see what the AFCC conference has to say. I already blogged twice on this
First time:
“Clear and Present Danger”…fuzzy usage by AFCC « Let’sGetHonestBlog
Second time:
AFCC Feb. 2010 Presenters — Family Law Vocabulary 101… « Let …
AFCC – The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts
www.afccnet.org/conferences/chapter_conferences.asp –
A Legacy of Innovation and Collaboration
The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) took root in California in the spring of 1963 with the creation of the California Conciliation Courts Quarterly, the first publication to promote the interchange of ideas between California’s conciliation courts. Judge Roger Alton Pfaff, presiding judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, wrote:
Judge Pfaff’s words proved truly prophetic. The publication, which now goes by the name Family Court Review, is presently read by thousands of subscribers around the world in countries including Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Meanwhile, AFCC has grown from a handful of California counselors and judges to an international association of judges, lawyers, mediators, custody evaluators, parenting coordinators, parent educators, court administrators, counselors, researchers, academics, and other professionals dedicated to the resolution of family conflict.
For more on that, see JohnnyPumphandle site and “free Richard Fine” sites!
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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
February 22, 2010 at 1:03 PM
Posted in After HE Speaks Up - Reporting Child Sexual Abuse, Fatal Assumptions, Lethality Indicators - in News
Tagged with Access-Visitation, Child Molestation, domestic violence, family annihilation, social commentary