Category: Violence

NOW Continues to Defend Yates, Avoid the Real Issues

After trying to distance itself from the Andrea Yates trial, National Organization for Women was back in the spotlight after the jury’s verdict (which this writer wholeheartedly agreed with) as Deborah Bell defended Yates and attacked the jury in the case.

According to an Associated Press story shortly after the verdict was announced,

But Bell, president of the Texas chapter of the National Organization for Women, said she was stunned at the conviction in light of so much evidence of mental illness.

She said Yates was “persecuted, not prosecuted,” and the verdict unveiled a need for public education, understanding and compassion about mental illness.

Leave it to NOW to want a reeducation campaign to make Americans better understand a woman who murdered her vie children and repeatedly said she knew what she was doing was wrong.

Bell is correct, however, about the need for a public education campaign, but that campaign needs to be about child and infant murderers.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta released a report in early March noting that homicide was the 15th-leading cause of infant deaths in the United States. Children have a greater risk of being murdered during their first year of life than at anytime until they reach the age of 17.

Oddly enough, unlike Yates, murderers of infants rarely spend much time in jail. Typical of such killers is Melissa Drexler. On June 6, 1997, she gave birth to a baby boy in the ladies room of a catering hall where her high school prom was being held. She suffocated the newborn infant, threw the body in a trash can and returned to the prom. Drexler was released after serving just barely over 3 years in jail.

Such short sentences for killing infants are typical. Were the fathers of these infants responsible for the vast majority of them, you can be sure that NOW would have a special campaign to crack down on such a lenient court system. But the reality is that 89 percent of the known killers of infants under one year of age were females — usually the mother. Which, of course, means NOW and other groups are simply uninterested.

The jury that convicted Yates did an important service by sending the message that as a society we will not tolerate the murder of children. The next step is to have an equally strong response to people who murder the most vulnerable members of society, infants. A woman who suffocates her newborn son and then goes to the prom should not be able to walk out of prison after only two to three years.

Source:

CDC: First year of life a dangerous one. Associated Press, March 8, 2002.

Verdict sparks passionate reactions. Associated Press, March 12, 2002.

Are Men War Mongers?

Even when she temporarily strays away from animal rights ever so slightly, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals chief ignoramus Ingrid Newkirk still manages to spread falsehoods and nonsense wherever she goes. This week, Bruce Friedrich posted an article by Newkirk, “Violence at home,” to an animal rights news list. Within the first three paragraphs, Newkirk manages to make three demonstrably false claims about violence and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States.

Newkirk opens her article by writing,

Is it a conicidence that, in the wake of the attacks on Washington and New York, most men speak of retaliation while most women express an urge to return to peace?

No, Ingrid, it is not a coincidence, its a complete falsehood. Zogby International interviewed 1,018 likely voters September 14-16, asking them, “Would you support or oppose an all-out war against countries which harbor or aid terrorists?”

Of those polled, 78.9 percent of men and 71.0 percent of women said they would support such an all-out war. When asked, “Do you agree or disagree that such a war would be worht it even if it involved substnatial American casualties?” 77.0 percent of men said they agree,d while 64.8 percent of women did as well.

The number of men and women who outright oppose such a war on terrorism are almost identical. Only 16.1 percent of men said they opposed an all-out war on terrorism, while 18.7 percent of women said they opposed such a war.

Apparently when Newkirk writes that “most women express an urge to return to peace,” she’s talking about her and her 5 closest friends, rather than the general female population of the United States.

Newkirk then goes on to describe a speech by Colman McCarthy. Newkirk writes,

At the Washington Center for Teach Peace, Professor Colman McCarthy has fretted over the fact that, year after year, his female studnets are always more open than his male students to the concept of peace. A Georgetown law student thought she had the answer. “Women want to know about nonviolence more than men because we are more victimized by violence than men. And, victims always want solutions quicker.”

This is pure nonsense. Aside from rapes that occur outside of prison, the overwhelming victims of violent acts are men. The risk of being the victim of an assault, murder or other act of violence is much higher for men than it is for women.

Finally, Newkirk repeats an oft-repeated but completely fake factoid.

The leading cause of injury to women is being beatne at home. Some women have more fear walking into their homes than walking out of them.

This claim is one of those factoids that appears commonly in domestic violence literature, almost always, as in Newkirk’s case, unattributed. This is because both Justice Department and Centers for Disease Control studies suggest that about 1 percent of women’s injuries are caused by their male partners.

Source:

Violence at home. Ingrid Newkirk, September 21, 2001.

When a Mother Kills

Donna Laframboise wrote a perceptive article about the way violence by women is perceived differently than violence by men.

Laframboise notes that last summer there were two prominent Canadian domestic violence cases. In one instance a man from Pickering, Ontario, murdered his estranged wife and then killed himself, while in the otehr a man from Kitchener, Ontario killed his four children and his wife before killing himself.

This year, however, the Andrea Yates case is of course occupying the media, as is a Toronto case where police recently charged a woman with killing here two kids and then attempting to kill herself. But the public reaction is a bit different from the reaction to the male killers. According to Laframboise,

Radio station phone lines aren’t lighting up with people condemning anti-domestic-violence programs as inadequate. Governments, police and the courts aren’t being accused of doing too little to protect the vulnerable. No one is asking how many more innocent children have to die before these offences receive proper attention. The term “child abuse” is also noticeably absent from the discussion. We aren’t being inundated with statistics telling us how many children are killed by their parents — particularly mothers — each year.

Laframboise thinks the reason is that people are so used to hearing about violence against women that they immediately “slot” stories where women are the victims into that category, while the corresponding lack of publicity about violence where women are the perpetrators makes people see it as the exception to the rule (which perhaps explains why commentators often say they cannot imagine why a woman would kill her children, but rarely do such questions arrise when fathers kill their offspring).

Source:

Domestic violence isn’t a gender issue. Donna Laframboise, National Post, July 18, 2001.

South Carolina’s Home Invasion Policy

South Carolina’s Attorney General, Charlie Condon, has made national headlines for leading his state’s controversial anti-abortion efforts. Condon’s actions have made him enemy number one among some feminists. In January, however, Condon announced a new policy that should help women (and in fact already has in one case), and yet the media is raking him over the coals for it.

After hearing several reports of home invasions in South Carolina, Condon announced that the state would not prosecute individuals who killed intruders in their home. At the time Condon said,

The message needs to be sent loudly and clearly that the state is going to back the homeowner if their home is invaded. I’m putting home invaders on notice that if an occupant chooses to use deadly force, there will be no prosecution.

Apparently many in South Carolina thought Condon’s statement was a gimmick for public consumption — Condon made his announcement less than two weeks before beginning his campaign for Governor. But then a woman in South Carolina killed her boyfriend, and Condon stayed true to his word.

The case seems pretty straightforward. On February 17, Lisa Gant, 36, had an argument with the father of her child, William Brock, Jr., 39. Brock lived about 20 miles from Gant, but occasionally stayed at her house and had clothes and other possession in her apartment. Gant told police she argued with Brock and that he slapped her and put her in a headlock after she told him she wanted to end their relationship. She managed to get Brock to leave the apartment, slamming the door behind him and locking it.

Brock then proceeded to break down the locked door. When Brock entered the kitchen, Gant stabbed him in the chest with a filet knife. Brock staggered out to his car, and was found dead by police who arrived shortly thereafter.

Should Gant face prosecution?

Condon said no, and essentially ordered prosecutors, who had charged Gant with murder, to drop all charges. Local prosecutors and police would have preferred to place Gant on trial and let a judge and jury sort out whether or not she committed justifiable homicide.

In the absence of any evidence that Gant was untruthful about the events that transpired on February 17, 2001, what could possibly be served by putting her on trial. What is the point of asserting that people have a right to defend themselves only to put them before a jury to decide if Gant was really scared when her boyfriend broke down her door to get at her?

Condon nicely summed up the problem with viewing Gant and others like her as criminals who have to undergo an expensive trial to assert their right to defend themselves from intruders in their own homes,

You don’t want to put the homeowner in the position of saying, ‘If I use deadly force, I might be cleared after a trial.’ That’s tantamount to saying that people have rights, but there’s a huge cross attached to it. Most courts have a laissez-faire attitude about these things, figuring that everything will come out fine after a trial. But I think we need to send the messages that the home is sacred ground, period.

Source:

Home-invasion policy ignites South Carolina. David Firestone, The New York Times, March 16, 2001.

Taking No-Fault Divorce a Bit Too Far

In November 1995, David and Christine Alexander decided to get a divorce and David helped Christine move her things out of the couple’s home in Canada. In the middle of the moving process, Christine Alexander pulled out a handgun and shot her husband point blank in the face once and then repeatedly bashed him on the head. David Alexander survived.

Christine says she’s not sure why she tried to kill her husband, but it definitely wasn’t for self-defense. She was convicted of attempted murder in 1997 and paroled in 1999. Since her husband was fortunate enough to survive, she is now suing him in divorce court to obtain part ownership of the former couple’s house as well as temporary financial support.

And she’ll probably get it. Canada has a strict “no fault” divorce law that precludes any testimony about a married couple’s prior behavior, possibly including details about a murder attempt. According to family lawyer Philip Epstein, “Her conduct isn’t admissible under the Divorce Act. Technically speaking, the fact that she shot him in the face doesn’t bar her from a support case.”

If she wins such support, it would likely be the first time in Canadian history that a victim of a murder attempt was forced to compensate his attacker. That’s taking the principle behind no fault divorce a bit too far.

Source:

Victim is sued for support. Martin Patriquin, The Toronto Star, January 23, 2001.

Violence Policy Center Pushes Deadly Myths

Should women buy guns for self-defense? According to a Violence Policy Center study, the claim that women can protect themselves with guns is a myth. Unfortunately the statistical analysis they use to make this case is absurd and an excellent example of how poorly designed statistical analyses are used to deceive.

The actual statistics cited by the VPC are accurate enough. In 1998 only twelve women shot and killed an attacker in a justifiable act of self defense. In the same year, about 1,100 women were murdered by attackers who used handguns. Since a woman is more than 100 times as likely to be killed with a handgun than use a handgun to kill an attacker, the VPC argues that the notion that handguns are a viable option for self-defense is ridiculous.

The problem with this claim is it assumes the only time a woman successfully uses a handgun to defend herself is when she shoots and kills a would-be attacker. What about the woman who shoots her attacker, thereby disabling him, but he survives? Not an act of self-defense according to the VPC. What about the woman who pulls a gun on her attacker causing the attacker to flee without the woman firing a shot? Not an act of self-defense according to the VPC.

We know from analysis of handgun use by police and private individuals that when a person uses a gun in self-defense, rarely does that use result in the individual actually firing the gun, and rarer still does the use of a gun in self-defense result in the death of the attacker. The mere presence of a gun is often more than enough to convince an attacker to flee the scene rather than risk serious injury or death.

By focusing equating successful self defense with the death of a perpetrator, the VPC tries to mislead women by drastically diminishing their likely usefulness in defending against an attacker. The VPC should be ashamed of itself for giving out such distorted information and perpetuating its own deadly myth.

Source:

A Deadly Myth: Women, Handguns, and Self-Defense. The Violence Policy Center, January 2001.