GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — A Southern California woman was in custody Tuesday after authorities said she drugged her estranged husband, tied him to a bed, cut off his penis and put it through a garbage disposal.

Garden Grove police Lt. Jeff Nightengale said that Catherine Kieu Becker drugged a meal and served it to the victim, whose name was not released, shortly before the attack Monday night. Nightengale said the 51-year-old man felt sick, went to lie down and lost consciousness. The 48-year-old Becker then tied the victim’s arms and legs to the bed with rope, removed his clothes and attacked him with a 10-inch kitchen knife as he awoke, Nightengale said.

“He was conscious when his penis was removed,” Nightengale said.

Nightengale said Becker put the penis in the garbage disposal and turned it on.

DAMN.
She put it in the garbage disposal, y’all.
SRSLY.

Naturally, the Harpies had a conversation about this. The woman reportedly told the police that her husband—who had initiated divorce proceedings—”deserved it.” Maybe. Maude knows, I’ve been keeping a list of men I think deserve it for some time now (yeah, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, you’re at the top).

Anna commented that: “it makes you wonder what sort of history was there, that he “deserved” it, yeah?” Which…yeah. Maybe I’m just jaded and cynical—actually, maybe we all are—because that’s exactly what I (and we) first thought when we heard the news. After seeing case after case where rapists going free, rape victims are smeared, battered women are dismissed by the police and murdered by their partners, it makes taking a knife and firing up the disposal….well, let’s just say that, in the words of Chris Rock, “I ain’t sayin’ it’s right…but I understand.”

We don’t know much about this case—apparently there’s no reported history of spousal abuse on either side—but PhDork said: “I worry that a severed wang is going to be the least worst part of this story.”

That was certainly the case with Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s penis in 1993. Lorena Bobbitt was acquitted by reason of insanity after extensive testimony about being beaten and raped by her husband. While battered woman syndrome is very real, it always seemed to me that the jury was thinking less about the specifics of Lorena’s mental health than just going with the gut feeling that John “had it coming.”

Clearly, something very, very wrong happened here. That much is indisputable. What struck me as we discussed this is that there’s still an awful lot wrong in the world if our first thought is that the man might have been the victim of rough justice by someone he victimized rather than the victim of a horrible assault. Or that this kind of attack might be justice at all. I ask you, gentle readers, are things really that bad?

Charlie Sheen’s bizarre, rambly, manic, and deeply delusional interview on “Good Morning America” hit the 24-hour media cycle like an atomic bomb today. Facebook, Twitter, cable news, gossip blogs all lit up with some variation of OMFG Charlie Sheen WTF?!!1!? In recent days, Sheen’s gone from a “lost weekend” here and there to just plain lost.  But people can’t get enough of it, and I find the endless appetite—and endless “news” coverage—alarming, callous, and exploitative.

Charlie Sheen may have TV’s highest rated show, and be the son of a beloved actor who played the best president this country never had. But he’s a profoundly troubled individual, with a long history of substance abuse and domestic violence, both of which have been overlooked so often by the entertainment industry that his employers can fairly be said to be Sheen’s biggest enablers. In an op-ed this weekend, the New York Times‘ David Carr referred specifically to many instances of Sheen’s violent behavior and concluded:

Hollywood has long had a soft spot for male misbehavior and, in claiming to parody childish misogyny, it seems to provide an excuse to indulge in it further. Hollywood likes to pretend it has grown up and taken its seat in corporate America. But it hasn’t when it comes to violence toward women. Mr. Sheen may have gone off-script last week. But in his attitudes toward women both on and off screen, he’s right on message.

But what ultimately did Charlie in with CBS was not his history of menacing or attacking women, or his obvious, life-threatening addiction to drugs…it was biting the hand that fed him, particularly his rants directed at Chuck Lorre, the producer who ultimately writes his paycheck. Several news sources pointed out Sheen’s choice references to Lorre as “Chaim Levine”—his Hebrew name—and suggested anti-Semitism was what got him canned. Was Sheen being anti-Semitic? Yeah, maybe. But a splash of anti-Semitic subtext is, frankly, the least offensive thing Charlie Sheen’s said or done recently, so…whatever. Maybe someday he and Mel Gibson can get coffee after a 12-step meeting. I think that as soon as Charlie started biting the hand that fed him and it was clear he was too sick to shoot the show, that’s when CBS pulled the plug. They obviously didn’t care about his health—he’s been hospitalized for drug-induced psychosis several times prior to this incident. They didn’t care about his violent behavior towards women (particularly since many of those women were prostitutes or porn actresses). No, CBS wasn’t going to kill their golden goose until it was so damn stuffed with cocaine it was no longer of use to them.

What I find especially dismal and alarming, though, is the enormous amount of entertainment value people seem to be finding in his downward spiral. “Good Morning America” didn’t have Charlie Sheen on in the hopes that he’d have an insightful conversation. They were hoping he’d provide them with “good television”*, and he sure did: twitchy, sweaty, delusional, paranoid, grandiose, glassy-eyed, motor-mouthed, and making absolutely no fucking sense at all. It was a ratings bonanza for ABC, just as it’s been for TMZ and every radio show he’s called into in the past week.

And that, gentle readers, is what’s fucked up about this situation. Watching someone with a life-threatening addiction spiral downward into delusion and mania is being passed off as “news” when it’s really being served up as trainwreck entertainment. Producers are dying to put Charlie Sheen on the air so that his crazy cokehead antics will gin up ratings. Guess what? That shit ain’t funny. Serious addictions and mental illness are about the least hilarious thing you can imagine. If your parent, spouse, child, or someone you love is sick the way Charlie Sheen is sick? In my experience, that’s the closest you’ll get to Hell in this lifetime. Despite all the TV cameras and hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here, at the center of this media circus is a human being and father of five who is desperately ill, and likely to die soon if he doesn’t get intensive treatment.

Let’s not forget, if Charlie Sheen was still just plain Carlos Estevez with no famous daddy and no hit TV show, his ass would have been in prison a long time ago. In some ways, his privilege has protected him. But by being famous and mediagenic and now the nation’s greatest living trainwreck, Charlie Sheen’s addictions and illness are being enabled by the media simply to keep providing us with entertainment, no matter what the cost to him personally.

*Many years ago, I went to a New Yorker Festival event where Jon Stewart said, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you never want to be part of something people refer to as ‘good television.’”

In reality, however, that first domino fell long before Joe came into our lives. It fell when my mom – a smart, curious woman who would have been ambitious if given the chance – was told that, unlike her brother, she was not allowed to go to college, and that careers were for men. Instead, she was expected to marry and have children, to be a good housewife and mother; that was her role, there were no other options. After finishing high school, my mom worked as a secretary in a factory until she met my father, a line worker. I suspect she married him because it was expected of her, and because she felt suffocated by her mother and wanted to escape. Right on cue she became a wife. She had four kids. She kept a nice home. And she still felt suffocated. So she escaped once again, this time in dramatic fashion. She did the unthinkable and divorced my father.** A little over a year later, she abruptly moved us 2000 miles away and married Joe. He was her knight in shining armor who would make her feel fulfilled and take care of us all.

Except that knights in shining armor are fantasies – ones that are especially likely to materialize when a woman has few options outside of waiting to be rescued. And the men who masquerade as knights are usually anything but.

In fact, my mom’s rescuer turned out to be her biggest oppressor. Joe had effectively isolated her from friends and family by convincing her to move so far away, and then he insidiously isolated me and my siblings from her. He was incredibly controlling. For example, there were strict rules about what, and how much we could or had to eat. I recall my sister sitting miserably for more than an hour at the dinner table after the rest of us had finished, vomiting as she tried to swallow a few hated vegetables, only to be forced to continue to sit there until she could choke down the specified amount. Our weekday routine never varied: school, free time, homework, dinner, chores, a half hour of TV (always the same PBS nature show), one graham cracker and some warm milk for snack, and off to bed by 8:30 p.m. During the nature program, it was understood that only Joe could sit with my mom on the couch. Talking after bedtime (my sister and I shared a room as did my brothers) would earn you a punishment.

Punishment was a common theme in Joe’s house, and the rules were strictly enforced. Being a few minutes late meant a month of being grounded. Shorter groundings, extra chores, and revoked privileges were doled out for the smallest things. At one point, my sister had racked up so many cumulative groundings and weeks of extra chores that Joe benevolently allowed her to “exchange them” for one week of banishment to the tiny laundry room (she was allowed to sleep in her bed, but otherwise had to be in the laundry room at all times). Joe also invented excuses to punish us, like the time a small automotive battery cap in the garage went “missing” and he made us spend the entire weekend searching for it while he monopolized my mom. We never found it, but my mom later did – in one of Joe’s shirt pockets.

Joe also pitted us kids against each other. At the end of every month he’d pick just one of us to reward with an ice cream. Joe thought eating sugar caused diabetes so ice cream was a much desired delicacy in a house devoid of such treats, especially for kids like us who were accustomed to sweets. It’s sad how hard we tried to one-up each other for the honor of that stupid ice cream. But it wasn’t really about that, I think. It was more about earning some sort of positive affirmation in a house where we felt like we could rarely do anything right, where we felt unwanted, where we tiptoed on eggshells, where we were scared.

At least I was scared. So much so that when I accidentally got a miniscule speck of nail polish on the arm of Joe’s couch, I had a full-blown panic attack. I remember frantically trying to scrub it off, the rising desperation and panic as I realized the faint discoloration wasn’t going anywhere, and lying in bed with my heart racing and fighting back tears as I waited to be exposed and punished after Joe got home. I had turned from a confident, relatively fearless kid into a meek and skittish mouse who scurried about life trying to go unnoticed.

I wonder sometimes why I was so fearful. After all, Joe never hit me or my siblings. Then I remember how cold and menacing he could be, and his skillful deployment of shame. And how, when something was stolen from our garage, he chased down our beloved dog, grabbed him by his rear legs and punched him hard in the stomach for failing to bark and alert us to the intruder. I remember our dog yelping in fright and pain, and cowering under the desk. I felt sick and powerless. When it came to my mom, there were little things, like the time he crawled on top of her and started squeezing a bump on her forehead. Even though she told him he was hurting her and tried to twist away, he kept her pinned to the ground and continued. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted to say “stop” but just looked away and concentrated hard on something else. Bigger things happened, too, although I wouldn’t know that until well after Joe was gone, and I’d finally worked up the courage to ask my mom why she’d let him put my sister in the laundry room. She told me it killed her, but she was too scared to protest. She reminded me of the time she’d insisted that he was playing his guitar off key. Later, in private, he’d grabbed her around her neck and choked her; how dare she humiliate him like that. She was instructed to never contradict or disagree with him again.

I didn’t want to hear any more.

Eventually, something happened that scared my mom so much that she could no longer stay silent. I don’t know the details. I only know it happened after my siblings and I fell asleep, and a gun was involved. The next morning after Joe had left for work and we’d left for school still blissfully ignorant, she called the police. They came and temporarily confiscated Joe’s guns, and told her in no uncertain terms that she had to take her kids and get out or something awful was going to happen. And they kept telling her that until she agreed to go to a shelter. I can’t say what was going through my mom’s mind at that time, but I can guess. She was more or less alone. If she had to crawl the 2000 miles back to her family, weary and in need, she’d have to endure the strings of shame and judgment that would no doubt attach to any help they’d offer. She had a vindictive ex-husband. She had only a high school diploma, and had been out of the work force for far longer than she’d ever been in it. She had four young children to support and care for. Leaving would confirm the horror of the situation and whip her churning guilt into a frenzy. I can understand how desperation and denial might kick in hard: I overreacted, it’s not so bad, I can stay. If I could thank the officers who helped subvert that mental trap and convinced her to leave, I would.

For me, the beginning of the end of life with Joe started with being pulled from class and sent to the principal’s office. My mom was there with my sister and one of my brothers. She talked to the principal out of earshot, and then we went to pick up my oldest brother from his school. The back of our old car was haphazardly loaded with garbage bags full of our clothes and personal belongings. It looked as confused and chaotic as the pit of my stomach felt. My mom told us that Joe had done something very bad and we needed to go somewhere safe to be away from him until he got help. Our first stop was the police station. I can tell you nothing about actual sights and sounds. Instead, I have only a visceral memory of how I felt – dazed and disconnected, like I was seeing and hearing things from behind a very thick wall of glass. I was too warm. I was painfully aware of time, which had slowed to a drag; I imagined it sounded like a series of sluggish, protracted, echoing ticks and tocs. I willed it to go faster to no avail. I fidgeted.

After what seemed like an eternity, we got in the car and drove. For the safety of the women already in the shelter, we weren’t given its specific location. Instead, we met a shelter worker at another place who got in our car and directed us along a purposefully complex and winding route designed to try to throw off any abuser secretly attempting to follow his victim to the safe house. Upon arrival, my siblings and I were deposited in the living room while my mom went to check in. Genius of Love by the Tom Tom Club was playing on the radio, and late afternoon sunlight flooded the room. I was vaguely surprised by how much the place looked like a normal house.

Our time at the shelter exists in my mind as a series of disjointed memory fragments. I remember random things, like learning for the first time that such a thing as instant mashed potatoes existed, and weighing the pros and cons of keeping a Mount Saint Helen’s postcard I found in a nightstand drawer because I coveted the little packet of “authentic” volcanic ash attached to it. We slept in a large, communal, second floor room that was lined end-to-end on each side with beds, and I remember lying awake in one of them, surreptitiously watching a new resident who’d been admitted in the dead of night settle in. I saw her remove her wig and felt ashamed of myself, like I’d invaded her privacy by witnessing that. The next morning I met her. She was a gentle, tiny woman in her 60s, and I couldn’t understand how she’d wound up in a place like that. I wondered how long she’d been suffering.

“Linda,” another resident, and her five children had been in shelters before. Her husband had told her that if she tried to leave him again he’d hunt her down and kill her. She had no backup plan, and didn’t know where she was going to go once her current stay expired. A few days after they left, we found her three youngest kids listlessly hanging out in a park near the shelter. They told my mom they were so hungry they felt sick. I’ll never forget how my mom, despite our own precarious circumstances, walked straight to the grocery store and bought them food. I’ll also never forget that the overarching emotion my siblings and I felt during this time was happiness. I hesitate to say that because I don’t want to create the impression that being in a domestic violence shelter is like a fun holiday; it’s not. The fact that we could feel joy there just underscores how miserable we were with Joe, and how ecstatic we were to have our mom back. Once we were in a place where the shroud of anxiety that had blanketed our lives was finally lifting, we were able to realize its full weight, and reveled in relief.

We reveled in partial relief anyways, because Joe wasn’t completely out of our lives yet. My mom had agreed to go home if he got counseling, but first he had to provide our neighbor with proof of such so that my mom could confirm his attendance. Each day she used the pay phone outside of the nearby 7-11 to make two calls; the first was always to our neighbor. I pretended to busy myself with drawing shapes in the gravel with my foot, but my apparent nonchalance was just a ruse to get as close to my mom as possible in an attempt to hear her end of the conversation and discern our fate. I would hold my breath and pray fervently to god, please, please, please make it so that Joe didn’t get counseling so that we wouldn’t have to go back. I felt bad, like I was betraying my mom with my thoughts, but I couldn’t stop them. Then she’d call Joe.

As far as I can remember, she never directly told us the outcome of the phone calls, and we never asked. We just waited nervously to see what we’d do next. I figured if we didn’t go and pack up for home, we were safe, at least until the next day. Day after day, we didn’t go home. A few times we went into the 7-11 and bought fixings for sandwiches, soda, and chips, and had a picnic in the park. It was just cheap Oscar Meyer ham and yellow mustard on Wonder Bread, and the same chips and soda we’d had a hundred times before, but on those days it was heaven. And we all took turns sitting by our mom.

Every day that Joe let my mom down I’m sure her stress increased, while I was able to exhale and breathe a little easier. He never got counseling. Instead, he decided to do his own leaving. He promised to clear out of the house by a certain date, and after we got confirmation that he appeared to be gone, we left the shelter. The fear, however, took some time to dissipate. When a friend reported a possible sighting of Joe’s distinctive car, my mom made us stay with neighbors for a few nights, and we worried about her because she stayed at home. Thankfully nothing came of that, and we tried to get on with life. My mom defiantly refused to go back to our home state. We used, I believe, some public assistance for a short time to help us get by while she looked for a job. She signed up with a temp agency and got work as a secretary, a gig that turned into a full-time, permanent job. We had to find a new place to live and what we could afford was a tiny rental that was literally falling apart in places. My mom did the best she could to spruce it up, and promised it would only be for a year or two until we got back on our feet. (We were still in that house when I left for college.) She told me recently that she used to cry on the way to work every morning because she was so overwhelmed and scared.

It soon became clear that my mom’s day job, and the ridiculously small amount of child support my father paid was not enough to cover the bills so my mom got a second job as an evening gas station attendant. Around Christmas and back-to-school time she would often take on additional odd jobs so that she could afford presents, school supplies, and some new school clothes for us. We weren’t impoverished, although we lived hand-to-mouth, and were “poor” by our community’s standards.

I can’t say with any certainty how much our experiences with Joe contributed to what followed in the coming years. My sister, who suffered so much under Joe’s controlling ways, slowly crumbled and had a major schizophrenic break at the age of 12. Her doctors opined that the trauma of that time could have been the environmental “trigger” that unleashed the genetic wrath of her illness. One of my brothers descended into drugs and alcohol. The other just sort of withdrew from life. I continued to do what I learned to do so well in Joe’s house – fly as far as possible under the radar. This was a stifling way to live in its own right, a strategy based primarily on the fear that even one slip-up would doom me to relive my mother’s experiences. But it served a purpose. I stayed out of trouble and did well in school because I’d been taught that education was the key to a better life. In fact, my mom drummed college so deep into my consciousness that it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t go. And after that she encouraged me to get a graduate degree, to build a career, to travel, and to be independent. She, unlike her own mother, insisted that her daughter have options.*** I can’t say I’ve always made the best of them, and I’ve fought, and continue to fight my share of personal demons. But I am in a far better place than my mom ever had the chance to be. And that is a testament to her strength, determination, and wisdom, as well as my own.

*I don’t mean to ignore domestic violence that occurs in low income, and/or non-white households. At the time my family was dealing with this issue, we were middle class, and we are white. Thus, when I thought about what domestic violence was “supposed” to look like in a home that was at least somewhat like mine, these were the examples that came to mind.

**To be clear, my mom didn’t just flee because she was bored. My dad was a piece of work who I ultimately cut out of my life for the sake of my own emotional well-being.

***My brother made us all proud by getting clean and going to college. He started and runs his own successful small business. My mom tried to help my other brother through college but that proved impossible. He dropped out and continues to struggle with depression. My sister was in and out of psychiatric hospitals throughout her adolescence. Nevertheless, my mom fought relentlessly with the local school system to get her a good education despite her problems. She’s been stable for many years now, and lives a simple but happy life in an assisted living environment.

Last week, Baltimore County Judge Darrell Russell married a domestic violence suspect and his alleged victim, at the suspect’s request. On the same day he was supposed to hear a criminal complaint against Frederick Wood, Russell granted the man’s wish to be married to his alleged victim. When Wood appeared in district court for trial on charges of assault, his lawyer asked for a postponement so the defendant could get married and come back to resolve the case. The lawyer said his client’s new wife would invoke marital privilege, which prevents a person from being required to testify against his or her spouse.

Russell excused the couple to drive to another town to get a marriage license. When they returned, Russell officiated their wedding that very afternoon. The criminal case resumed, and Wood’s new wife invoked her marital privilege. Russell acquitted Wood.

The judge’s parting comment to the defendant was, “Mr. Wood, I found you not guilty, so I can’t sentence you as a defendant in any crimes, but earlier today, I sentenced you to life married to her.” I’m glad the two could get some male bonding in before their busy day was over. Russell has since been reassigned to chambers work.

Mrs. Wood was held hostage in Judge Russell’s court. Russell knew Frederick Wood’s motive for getting married, and played right along. The woman told the officer who responded to her call that she thought Mr. Wood might try to kill her and that he had threatened to kill her and her children in the past. Still, Judge Russell explicitly sided with the alleged perpetrator and made it clear that he had no regard for the victim’s safety. The woman had no choice but to marry Wood. She obviously believed he posed a threat to her and her children. Judge Russell deserves much more than a reassignment.

Then there is the case of the Australian judge who has ruled that two young sisters must spend weekends with their sex offender father. Family Court Judge Robert Benjamin demonstrated a shocking ignorance of sex abuse by ruling that the girls “need some protection from (their father), particularly at night,” but that the chance of sexual abuse was “diminished when they are awake and alert.”

The father was convicted of three child pornography offenses in 2007, including filming images of child pornography on his computer and creating links and shortcuts to child porn sites. Additionally, the Family Court found the father had invited one his daughters into his bed and had “demonstrated affection toward her in a way that was, in all the circumstances, inappropriate for a child of that age.”

Benjamin said there must be a lock on the girls’ bedroom door for protection. The girls must share a room until the youngest (now eight) turns 14, “…so they can have the mutual support of one another.” He is knowingly placing these children in danger whilst putting the onus on them to protect one another. Benjamin also ruled that the father must have an “adult friend” stay with him when the girls sleep over. AN ADULT FRIEND. I’m sure he’ll keep the girls’ best interests at heart when he chooses his own chaperon.

The eldest girl has told counselors that she was afraid to stay overnight with her father. But what does a child’s comfort and safety matter when a man’s “rights” are at stake? In each of these cases, a man’s word, his desires, his freedom, have been privileged above the safety and autonomy of the women and/or girls in his path. This is your courtroom on patriarchy.

Finally, a judge in Ohio has ordered rape victims to submit to polygraphs. I will not even call the polygraph a “lie detector test,” because it does not accurately detect dishonesty. Cuyahoga Juvenile Court Judge Alison Floyd ordered polygraphs on four separate occasions after she found the defendants delinquent (guilty, in juvenile court). The legal grounds for doing this are anyone’s guess. The results would have no relevance to the cases, on which she had already ruled. The only reason to do such a thing is to send victims a message: We don’t really believe you.

All four teens refused the judge’s orders, and the mother of one girl said:

I believe even more damage was done by the judge letting the perpetrator know she was ordering the victim to take the polygraph. He apparently took this to mean the judge did not believe her and he used this to tell their peers that the judge did not believe her and was ordering her take a lie detector test.

Prosecutor Bill Mason’s office has filed briefs in two of the cases so far, asking Floyd to stop ordering rape victims to take polygraphs. At least someone in the system is standing up for those girls.

Domestic violence is a strong predictor of increased use of health care services. That makes sense. Insurance companies understand there’s a good chance that a woman who’s knocked around today will seek treatment for a broken bone tomorrow. Aaaaand you know what that means…

Amanda Marcotte discusses some of the unintended consequences of this sort of policy.

Obviously, the major one is that the fear of losing insurance coverage might drive victims to avoid reaching out for help, and it may even mean that they don’t get treatment for their injuries after an abusive incident. And of course, the less a woman reaches out for help, the less likely she is to get out of the situation.

Just a little collateral damage in the psychopathic insurance industry’s single-minded quest to amass and hold on to money. Health insurance companies need to be sent to the non-existent death panels.

Flashy, but fleeting. Via spud murphy @ Flickr.

My Mondays are currently such that I’m out and about a lot, away from the computer and other forms of media, but even I knew that Chris Brown had released a public apology, although I didn’t get to view it until this morning.  Not only has a  little piece of my soul died as a result of viewing it at TMZ’s website, but I’m unimpressed and unsurprised.

Back when this story first broke, “Chris” did a guest post for us.  You might want to read it again.  You’ll find at least when it comes to fauxpologizing, he’s a man of his word.  Technically, he did apologize, using the words “I’m sorry,” but he didn’t make it clear what he was apologizing for (to wit:  beating the shit out of the woman he claimed to love).  Instead he used the phrase “what occurred in February” (which was when he beat the shit out of the woman he claimed to love).  He said he was disappointed and saddened about “the situation” (which, lest we forget, was beating the shit out of the woman he claimed to love).  He mentioned his mother and spiritual teachers several times, too, and spoke of his determination to be worthy of the title “role model” (presumably by refraining from beating the shit out of the women he claims to love). 

And this was his good, months-in-the-making apology.

You might guess that we Harpies are unsympathetic.  You would be right.  As BeckySharper wrote in email late last night:  “eat shit and die, Chris.”  I can’t know what’s really going on in his head.  I’m sure he feels bad (poor lamb!); abusers do.  For a while.   But it got me wondering about whether men who beat their partners can ever really redeem themselves–not by pro forma apologizing, but by genuinely changing their behavior through therapy, anger management, whatever it takes.  My super-quick query on DV recidivism points to studies indicating that between 41 and 44% of offenders become violent again within a 2 to 2-1/2 year period.  So, statistically anyway, some–even most–men can go on to have violence-free relationships.  Or at least relationships that don’t result in police intervention.

My experience with relationship violence is limited to a high school boyfriend, who, in the heat of an argument, raised his arm as if to backhand me, only to stop when I asked, half in fear, half in scorn:  “oh, you’re gonna hit me now?”  That relationship ended that night, and is long in the past, but I still occasionally wonder about that situation, and his subsequent relationships.

I want Chris Brown to legally “pay” for his crimes, sure.  But more than that, I want him to never ever ever raise his hand to a woman again.  How can we assure that?  Do you think an abuser is always an abuser?  Can a man be abusive in one relationship, but a mature, non-violent adult in another?  Would you get involved with a man if you knew, or thought, he had a violent history?

Under terms of the agreement, Brown will serve five years of probation and must serve 180 days in jail or the equivalent — about 1,400 hours — in “labor-oriented service,” said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. He must also undergo a year-long domestic-violence counseling class, she said.

Brown’s sentence is comparable to other felony sentences when the defendant has no previous record, she said. ”This is not an easy sentence,” Gibbons said.

Community service with no actual prison time sounds like a slap on the wrist to me, so I asked our resident domestic violence expert, Anonymous Prosecutor, whether this seemed like a reasonable sentence and got this reply:

Although I think he deserves much, much more, sadly this sentence is in line with first-time offenders, especially when the victim is not cooperative, which I believe is the case here. In cases like this I pushed for jail but I’m not surprised by the sentence. It’s only “reasonable” in the sense that others who are not famous might get the same thing. It’s NOT “reasonable” in the sense that the guy should be in prison for many years for what he did.

Chris Brown’s attorney, Mark Geragos, described his now apparently contrite client as:

“a kid who’s never been in trouble before” who wants to “move past this” and get out the message that domestic violence is not acceptable.

Yeah, every criminal in history wants “to move past this” once they’ve been caught and prosecuted. And I don’t buy for a second that the plea deal constitutes remorse or manning up or anything like it. The truth is, Chris Brown didn’t want this case to go to trial, attract tons of publicity and drag all the sordid details of his disgusting behavior into public view. A taste of what court observers could look forward to is in the official detective’s statement:

It [describes] the assault in great detail, saying Brown punched her numerous times and put her in a head lock, restricting her breathing and causing her to start to lose consciousness. He threatened to “beat the s–t out of you” and kill her, according to the statement, and also bit her ear and her fingers.

Eventually, “Robyn F. began screaming for help and Brown exited the vehicle and walked away. A resident in the neighborhood heard Robyn F.’s plea for help and called 911, causing a police response. An investigation was conducted and Robyn F. was issued a Domestic Violence Emergency Protective Order.”

And then there are those pictures of Rihanna’s injuries. No one wants to see those again, least of all Chris Brown.

But wait:

At the end of his statement, the detective said Brown sent a text message nine days later, apologizing.

A text? A TEXT? Jesus, talk about a million days late and a million dollars short. I mean, I realize at that point there was a restraining order in place, so it’s not like he could deliver the apology in person–nor should he even try. But a text? Something like: “SRY I TRD 2 KILL U?” Give me a fucking break. And don’t get me started on his “public apology.” I couldn’t possibly top what PhDork had to say about it.

The case was a slam dunk for the prosecution, and Chris Brown knew it, and knew he had more to lose by going to trial than by pleading. He had a competent–and expensive–lawyer who knew it too, even though he now says that Chris is a good kid who’s learned his lesson. What the fuck ever, counselor. Your client doesn’t get a cookie for pleading guilty when he knew he was going to be convicted anyway.

Anyhoo, enjoy your community service, Chris. And because I’m a mean bitch who hates men who beat up on women, my fingers are crossed that you do something stupid and violate your probation so you wind up in jail where you belong.

]]> http://www.harpyness.com/2009/06/22/the-best-deal-chris-brown-will-ever-make/feed/ 7 http://www.harpyness.com/2009/06/17/gordon-ramsay-hypocritical-nightmare/ http://www.harpyness.com/2009/06/17/gordon-ramsay-hypocritical-nightmare/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:00:36 +0000 BeckySharper http://www.harpyness.com/?p=7754

Via Stevens Bruno @ Flickr.

Gentle readers, I confess that among my guilty reality show pleasures, I occasionally enjoy “Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,” mostly because my inner clean freak is always deeply gratified to watch Gordon go berserk on restaurant owners whose kitchens are filthy and roach-infested.  He’s also a palate-cleansing shot of vinegar compared to fellow Brit foodie star, Jamie Oliver, whose goofy, gee-whiz routine gets old quickly (although neither of them can hold a candle to my snarkily delicious love-munch, Anthony Bourdain. Tony, call me!)

You don’t have to watch Gordon Ramsay for long to know that he’s a total rage-aholic with some serious boundary issues, and this month his mediagenic rage psychosis finally come back to bite him in the ass.

Foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay has shocked a public audience by vilifying high profile Australian journalist Tracy Grimshaw in an obscene, sexist rant. The putrid tirade, which included references to Grimshaw’s looks, sexuality and depictions of her as a pig, shocked audiences…at the Good Food and Wine Show in Melbourne.

Ramsay told an audience of several thousand people that Grimshaw was “a lesbian”, the Sunday Herald Sun reports. When the crowd reacted with gasps, he said: “What? I’m not saying she’s a …”  (ed: Rhymes with ‘mike’?) Ramsay also showed a picture of a woman – who appeared to be naked – on her hands and knees with the features of a pig and multiple breasts.

Well now. As India Knight of the Times reported:

Australia’s prime minister waded into the row, volunteering the opinion that Ramsay’s comments reflected “a new form of low-life” and were “off and offensive”…eventually a spokeswoman for Ramsay conceded that “with hindsight he realises that his comments were inappropriate and offensive and he has unreservedly apologised to Tracy Grimshaw”.

But the most striking thing about the Gordon Ramsay scandal isn’t mentioned in most of the coverage, which is that Ramsay has been an active fund-raiser for battered women’s shelters, and wrote an op-ed piece for CNN about growing up in a violently abusive home:

A home should be a place where you feel safe and loved; when I was a kid, our home was anything but that.

Growing up, my father was less than a perfect role model. He became terribly violent with my mum, to the point where she feared for her life. Every time he got violent, any present that my brother, sisters, or I had given mum would be smashed, simply because he knew it belonged to her. There were instances when the police were called to take him away; mum was taken to the hospital while we kids were taken to a children’s home.

Don’t have to be a licensed psychologist to figure out why Gordon has rage issues, huh? But in the same essay he writes:

I could never see myself behaving the way my father did when I was a child. I want to be a role model for my children and have them look up to me.

O RLY? Are they proud of a dad who swears and shouts and breaks things on national television and says vile, hateful things about women in front of large audiences? Gordon Ramsay may not beat his wife and children the way his father did, but in that CNN essay he observes:

Domestic violence is not identified solely by violent physical abuse; instead, it is defined as physical, sexual, psychological, financial, or emotional violence… Eventually, this develops into a pattern of coercive and controlling behavior.

Sound familiar? I thought so too.

Oddly enough, Gordon reports that his mom gave him a good “bollocking” for his behavior toward Tracy Grimshaw, which was part of what inspired his apology. India Knight of the Times sarcastically called bullshit on Ramsay’s motive here: “Ah, good old Gordon, he can’t be that bad because he loves his mum and she’s a woman.”

The only thing I hate worse than a misogynist is a hypocrite, and Gordo’s got a gold medal in both. Ramsay got dinged for being such an outspokenly nasty pig, but I’m surprised that no one also drubbed him for being a fucking hypocrite. Here’s a guy who condemns violence against women while he make a living being flagrantly, theatrically abusive–and in this case, obscenely woman-hating–for public display. And he doesn’t even bother with the standard “oh, it’s just a character I play for the cameras” excuse (not that we’d buy it if he did). Does the media truly think that the philanthropy and the raging can be compartmentalized? That because he does one, he gets a free pass for the other? Seems like it to me, and Gordon Ramsay clearly thinks there’s nothing contradictory about hosting star-studded fund-raisers for battered women’s shelters and being a disgusting woman-hater and raging bully for pay.

Put it together. Via ajgelado @ Flickr.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve told my students that humans are pattern-making (and -breaking) and pattern-finding animals.  A huge proportion of the accomplishments of humanity in both the sciences and the arts has to do with those skills.  We’re very, very good at it.

Except when we’re not.  In this op-ed from the Tampa Tribune, Casey Gwinn, founder of the San Diego Family Justice Center, points out how very bad we–or at least some of us–are at finding patterns in social data connecting domestic violence incidents to further, often lethal, crimes.

Gwinn notes:

There have been 13 mass killings in the past two months in the United States. In 12 of the 13, the killer had a history of abuse against women or the cases were directly related to or defined as domestic violence.

Now, I’m not sure how we, as a country, have ignored that there have been 13 mass killings (Gwinn seems to define “mass” as “ending in two or more deaths”) in two months. But as I read through the list Gwinn includes in his editorial, I realized that I (who spend an absurd amount of time reading and sifting through media of all sorts) hadn’t heard of at least half of the cases he cites. That could be because not many of them happened terribly close to where I live, or because the media is more concerned about what condiments President Obama prefers, or who may or may not have a baby bump. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because many of these crimes happened in private residences, and the victims were intimates (spouses, children, or siblings) of the perpetrators. Because such crimes technically fall under the banner of “domestic violence,” they are often considered “private matters” (as we have seen with the Rihanna-Chris Brown affair) or freakish tragedies. We see these crimes as horrifying exceptions to the peace that many of us take for granted. We don’t see the pattern.

Gwinn is asking us to think about them in a different way: as the logical extension of a society that ignores, excuses, or downplays the realities of domestic violence. Gwinn asks us not only to raise our voices and votes to create legislation and social programs that keep guns away from violent men, and provide services to women and children in need of protection, but even to revise our language:

We must call it what it is. It is not violence against women. It is most often violence by men against women.

That violence by men against women is a serious problem is probably no surprise to our regular readers, but we’re used to seeing patterns that non-feminists miss, or choose to ignore. I’m gratified that Gwinn is speaking out, even as I despair that it might take a man’s opinion on the matter to make the papers, and a measurable difference. Go read the whole thing.

P.S. Not that we want it, but the shooting death of college student Johanna Justin-Jinich by her stalker, Stephen Morgan, might serve as another grisly data point on the subject.

Too many states don’t take dating violence seriously. Virginia law, for instance, limits protective orders to cases where the victim and perpetrator have been married or lived together. Obviously those conditions do not apply when teenagers are involved.

Some Ohio lawmakers are promoting a bill that would allow juvenile courts to issue protection orders for minors. It was inspired in part by an Ohio girl named Johanna Orozco, whose ex-boyfriend shot her in the face. She had wanted to get a protection order against him but Ohio courts don’t issue them against minors. Ohio got a failing grade on its report card this year. Hopefully lawmakers across the country will soon wake up to the fact that intimate partner violence affects young people as well as adults, and revise the laws to reflect that sad reality.