Mother jailed for failing to protect daughters from sexual abuse by their father

There's nothing to suggest that the dd that escaped knew her younger sisters would be abused

From the article:

Judge Scott said while the woman may not have specifically known the two girls were being abused, she should have realised they were at risk.

Arguably, so should the elder daughter.

There's nothing to suggest that the dd that escaped knew her younger sisters would be abused, whereas the implication is that the mother was complicit in the abuse. There have been cases in the UK where older siblings who stood by whilst abuse went on had a responsibility to do something and I think someone referenced a case where a brother was jailed.

I didn't see the 'mother of seven' line, thought there were just two more children. Of course that does make things much more difficult.

I agree it could potentially be a really bad judgement.

A court holding a woman criminally responsible for failing to stop her partner's violence towards their children sets a very dangerous precedent, one that has sinister implications for all women with children trapped in abusive relationships, and which fails utterly to comprehend the dynamics of those relationships (in which it is well documented that many terrorised women develop Stockholm Syndrome).

Totally agree. None of us know the full details, but taken at face value it's shitty victim blaming. The article mentions that the eldest girl was abused for many years and left when she was 18, and then the father started to abuse the two younger girls. It was the middle daughter that eventually reported to police - 7 years later. This is all clearly horrible, but as an adult, is the eldest daughter then also criminally responsible for her younger sisters' abuse? She could have reported it too and stopped it, couldn't she? What real difference is there between her and her mother, as a victim of abuse by this man?

Escaping with 6 younger kids would be many times harder than escaping on your own though. Especially if you don't have transport.

I don't think that there are enough details in that report to make any significant conclusions, but I do note that the eldest daughter, despite having been abused for many years managed to escape and escape successfully (seven years before the next child went to the police) so not impossible. I didn't much like the judge's summary there seemed to be quite a bit of extrapolation, but the report is so skimpy it's difficult to come to any understanding as to what happened.

If the mother was sexually assaulted in front of the daughter why would she plead guilty to performing a sexual act in front of her? She wouldn't have 'performed' the act, she'd have been forced into it and presumably she had a defending lawyer/ solicitor who was privvy to exactly what the mother's case was. How can any of us judge based on the very few details provided in that article?

For failing to protect to that extent, she should not be able to have unsupervised contact with her own, or any children, as she has illustrated her inability to provide appropriate care.
However, it does sound excessive to jail an abused woman for failing to stop the criminal activity of her abuser. I would be concerned that this is the thin end of the wedge, holding women accountable for men's criminal actions, and thereby absolving them of responsibility.

OP woman hating? Which woman, the mother or the three daughters.
Women can be as evil as men.

I'll be interested to see what the man in the situation gets when his case is heard.

On the rest of it I can see both sides TBH and it's really all dependent on the full situation.

For one, I don't know much about how things work in Australia, social services, divorce, support services, anything. It says she lived rural and didn't drive - I remember watching progs about people in farms in Australia having to have the flying doctor and get educated by radio and stuff because they were so far away from even their neighbour - if it was like that then it's a level of isolation I can't comprehend and all sorts of weird stuff can start going on when people are isolated to that extent look at religious sects out in isolated areas in the US.

So, I dunno, really. Really really depends on whether she was complicit and knew she could have got them out and chose not to, or whether she and the children were controlled to the extent they were captive and she couldn't have got help if she tried IYSWIM.

I'm afraid you, OP, sound to me like the woman hater. This is an adult, not a minor incapable of making decisions, and as an adult has adult responsabilities.

Even children are held to account for their actions despite having been victims of abuse themselves and I would much rather see a child protected from the consequences of their actions or inactions, than an adult woman.

I do agree with DonkeySkin that a lot of the impetus behind punishing women for not protecting their children, is based on the idea of holding women accountable for men's violence.

That case where the woman was given 20 years and the actual abuser only 15, is pretty horrifying.

Donkey, she's not being jailed for his violence, as far as I can see. She's being jailed for the fact that allowing your child to be abused is classed as severe neglect. She would be jailed also if she failed to feed them or provide them with adequate shelter.

Like I say, my one concern is how her sentence compares to that of the father. It should definitely not be more than his.

I agree that adequate support systems are not in place to allow women to leave abusive partners. In that context, expecting women to take action against abusive men is often unreasonable as there is no safe way for them to do that.

But her fearing losing her children doesn't have to mean her thinking she'd lose them to the care system. It could as easily mean her thinking he would get custody and she would no longer be able to even minimise the abuse. Not hard for an abusive man to convince his victim that's how things stand, especially as it sometimes is.

Well, while I feel enormous sympathy for Rosie Batty, I don't see how she would be prosecuted under that set up, because she had taken steps to protect her son - the fact that the authorities hadn't helped her out made them culpable, not her.

As an adult, she had the option to leave the relationship and protect her DC from abuse (her DC did not), she chose not to so that makes her just as complicit as the abuser IMO.

If I turned a blind eye to a woman being raped, I would expect to be charged as an accessory, not sure why you think that wouldn't apply because it was their own children it was happening to .

Again Thumbwitch, that's it isn't it - it's an issue of choice. The mother in this case took a choice to ignore and enable her partner abusing their DCs. Now, it could well be that she judged that the alternative choice was much worse for her/them, but it was still an active choice to do this, to put her DCs in this situation over and over rather than take the other choice to take action to stop it. Who knows what she really thought the alternative choice would be, although in court she said she feared losing her home and children (assuming she thought they would go into the care system) - so her lifestyle basically, she chose that.

She is being punished for making the choice that her DCs being abused was preferable to her than the alternative.

Buffy, I was referring to "in the minds of people who don't have to live that life, in that moment" whilst I agree none of us were there, I'm saying you don't know what people have been through or what choices they have made to qualify them to comment on this story. There may be more than you suspect.

This is an interesting article about the crime of "enabling child abuse" in America.

In this case I'll wait to see what the sentence for the husband/father is before deciding my opinion. So far I think she did wrong but his crime far outweighs her's.

This case is particularly worrying: the mother was sentenced to 20 years and abusing father got 15.

The 'that's exactly it' was to Mary!

That's exactly it really. I am trying and failing to find what I think is a similar case but not involving a woman. It was one of these big child abuse cases that eventually resulted in the child's death - I think he was 4. Anyway his big brother at 18 yrs old was convicted as an accessory, because he knew the neglect and abuse was going on and did not report it. I thought it was right. There have to be limits, we all know certain behaviours are unacceptable and we are judged adult at 18. Somewhere we have to take responsibility. Otherwise most abusers could and should be let off as something turned them into what they are.

I could hope that having obtained the legal judgement of guilt, the 'punishment' would focus on counselling and therapy rather than just prison. In a way that's a separate issue though.

And I don't think it's reasonable to equate this with the horrors of criminalising miscarriage in Central American countries - the women who miscarry are not doing it through choice, are they now!