When victims of DV are jailed

[msrisotto]

I could scream or cry reading this article. (disclaimer - it starts by describing a real case in some detail which you may well find disturbing)How the law turns battered women into criminals. It's just horrific! I can't believe this happens. The report is about the US so I don't know what the figures are like in the UK or elsewhere.

Quote -
"Over the past decade, BuzzFeed News identified 28 mothers in 11 states sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to prevent their partners from harming their children. In every one of these cases, there was evidence the mother herself had been battered by the man.
Almost half, 13 mothers, were given 20 years or more. In one case, the mother was given a life sentence for failing to protect her son, just like the man who murdered the infant boy. In another, the sentences were effectively the same: The killer got life, and the mother got 75 years, of which she must serve at least 63 years and nine months. In yet another, the mother got a longer sentence than the man who raped her son. In one more, a father fractured an infant girl’s toe, femur, and seven ribs and was sentenced to two years; for failing to intervene, the mother got 30.

...BuzzFeed News found a total of 73 cases of mothers who, regardless of whether they were battered, were sentenced to 10 years or more. For fathers, BuzzFeed News found only four cases."

I could quote and underline my horror of the whole article but i've linked it for those who want to read it all. As a comment says, it is the ultimate in victim blaming.
You can't get arrested for failing to prevent crime - unless your partner committed it against your child. WTF? The law acknowledges that we do not have control over others, but makes a special exception for couples? Why not arrest the mothers parents of all criminals too? Parental responsibility after all....

And what about all the times when DV is reported to the police and they don't do anything? Or they don't do enough? They might jail the perpetrator for a short time and see them go straight back doing the same damn thing and do nothing? Shouldn't they go to jail too? They allowed it to happen again?

Messed up, completely. The law has to be consistent though across various context.
I believe it is tied into a new law whereby you can in fact be convicted for failing to prevent a crime if you are present at the scene.
It used to be only the actual gang member who committed the murder could be convicted, so obviously gang leaders assign the job (to commit the crime) to a lesser member of the gang.
Now all gang members who are present at the scene of a crime can be arrested and convicted on the grounds that they did not prevent it.

It's awful, but it's not a problem with the courts. PP is right in that there needs to be more support after the first reports of DV by the local police to actually prevent the violence from escalating in the first place.
Victims of DV need to be able to leave and be safe. This requires intervention at a local/community level.

Really interesting (and upsetting) article. Thanks for linking to it.

I have lots of thoughts and very few words, so enraged am I about this.

Get these men away from women at the first opportunity. We have the line drawn in the wrong place.

I must disagree that it's not a problem with the courts though, they do the sentencing after all!

The US legal system in general is totally fucked up, but yes this is a problem.

In the UK a woman is more likely to lose access to her children for her failure to protect them from an abusive father, SS don't tend to pursue cases for child abuse/neglect unless a child has been killed, it's too time consuming and expensive, so if they are sure the child cannot be safe with the parent(s) including a situation with abusive father and a mother who cannot be trusted to keep the child away (either because she's frightened of the father or in love with him, it doesn't matter to SS) then they will remove the children from both parents.

If the woman is able to keep the abusive father away from her children then SS would drop the case, the issue being that the only support here to help the woman (who is just an ordinary person!) keep an extremely determined, vindictive and manipulative person away from their child are 1, refuges, which are losing funding and places at an alarming rate and 2, CAFCASS who are a ridiculously tolerant bunch of arseholes who don't appear to know the first thing about abuse.

If a child is murdered by an abusive father then the mother could be sent to prison in the UK for not preventing the act. See that case a year or two ago where the father burnt the house down with all of the children in it and both parents were prosecuted.

IMO the mother can 'consent' to her own abuse by not leaving. She is as guilty as the father if she fails to report the abuse of children.

Carol, if you read the article, you'll see that the women tried to leave and were either physically dragged back (and punished) or their families were threatened. Being terrified to leave, is common for women who are beaten by their partners. They are taught that if they do as they are told, then their partners weight calm down and might not hurt them/their children/their family. Plus they will have had years of emotional abuse and bullying.

Appalling.

As is Carol's post.

I can't get over the comments of the prosecutor in that article. She wants the women to be jailed because they weren't murdered. What does that stuff about 'being ready to lay down your life' mean? She makes it sound like it's an inevitability of motherhood. All it means in reality is that they guy would probably kill her first, and the child afterward.

Jesus Christ, that's depressing.

Sadly I have come across a very tiny minority of people like Carol in real life. No understanding of how these abusers operate.

In my brother's case, the reason he didn't leave, is he knew he couldn't leave and take his three daughters with him. XW had always told him, "if you leave, I'll hurt the girl," and while he's not sure if she ever would have actually hurt them, he was never prepared to take that risk.

If my brother's XW said that to him, Carol needs to imagine what kind of cruel and manipulating things the many abusive men are saying out there, that make women stay.

In all the cases above, the maltreatment of the children had been on-going for a while, so not the threat of violence but actual harm to the children, who are unable to seek help. Unless the mother is imprisoned, they had the opportunity and duty to report this to the authorities.
I have huge sympathy for abused women/people but if you choose to have children, and with abortion available, it is always a choice, you must protect them ahead of your own issues.

Carol, firstly you're missing the fact that these women are frightened. If a man is already hurting the children and he says he'll kill them if you tell anyone, it is not unreasonable to believe he'll carry out his threat and thus misguidedly think the thing that will keep them safest is to not report. Remember victims are very used to reporting and not being believed so they might well think it will make things worse, not better.

Secondly, your belief that there is a moral equivalence between the perpetrator of violence and the victim who fails to save other victims, is shifting the blame and letting the perpetrator off the hook. If the person who knowingly hurts a child says, 'It wasn't all my fault, someone else should have stopped me,' do you take any notice of that? Because that is what you are agreeing with.

Not that I expect you are going to take any notice of this. People who blame victims as you are doing usually do so for deep-seated personal reasons, not because logic is on their side.

I am not saying there is a moral equivalence. I believe the perpetrator deserves significantly more 'punishment' than one of the victims.
I am saying, however, that the mothers in these cases are not guiltless.
They chose to have children and therefore adopt a duty of care. If the authorities do not support them, that is the fault of the authorities, in these cases the mother was wrong as no intervention could have ended in a worse result, in the interim, the children are beaten on a regular basis, with no possibilty of respite.

If you spend any time on the relationships board here, Carol you will see that the greatest fear is sometimes that you will successfully leave, then the partner will get 50% or visitation. All those cases you see of men killing their children after women have left them... how do you suggest women prevent that?

If the options are that you are there with them, hopefully mitigating, and trying to protect, and taking the brunt OR that you leave then your ex gets to be alone with those children... I hope I never have to make that choice.

MrsTerry raises an important issue. I was in a position where I was struggling to protect myself and my DC from ex (initially EA but slowly becoming more physical) while remaining with him because he told me that if I left him he would ensure he had contact and he would harm the DC. I knew there was a good chance that if I did leave him the courts would not block contact. I could not prove anything and most of the harm was emotional. At the same time this was happening, someone I knew through work was in the same position. She had left her EA ex but she was involved in horrendous court case and the judge flatly refused to believe that her ex would harm her DC. She had a break down over it and I still don't know how it was resolved. The problem seems to be a mismatch in the way that DV is dealt with by different professionals. It's well described in this paper bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/5/837.short
though you may not be able to get full text access.

It's not just the threats of violence/abuse either. It is the fact that some of these women know no different. They were brought up in abusive households; the relationships they have had and see around them are all abusive. Their boundaries are being constantly eroded (often without them even realising). Some even feel they deserve no better.

Your views, carol, come from a position of privilege.

Plus the chance of the father being awarded dual custody is higher in the US I believe. There is no agency like CAFCAS (who are far from perfect themselves) to protect children of abusive fathers.

Carol - all of those women in the article were beaten and abused by their partners as well. How can you expect them to protect someone else when they couldn't even protect themselves?

Sorry that happened runner. All too common.

I agree that the mismatch between how different agencies deal with DV is wrong. Social Services and the Police blame women for staying with abusive partners, despite offering no real alternative, despite the numbers of refuge places being reduced every year, despite all the research which shows outcomes for children who witness DV. If a woman stays with an abusive partner, she is not only blamed for it, but will often be threatened with losing or will actually lose custody of her children.

The idea that a woman can easily protect her children from the man who is abusing them all is a total crock and shows a woeful lack of understanding of the dynamics of abusive relationships. Violence is almost never the first option for these men, they have a wide range of weapons in their arsenal, all designed to keep their victim where they want them.

In several of the cases in the article, the Police had been called, many times and had done precisely nothing. They are generally poor, often PoC and have NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. What are they to do, Carol? With your huge sympathy?

When you're in an abusive relationship, you go through the looking glass. Things that seem completely normal and easy for those lucky enough not to be in one are like wading through treacle. Honestly, unless you know what you're talking about, it's better to keep silence.

no one gets helicoptered into the middle of an abusive relationship

Would you care to make your point Petula?

sorry?

i just meant that it creeps up on people, it's stupid to suggest that someone in an abusive relationship should do what i would do if i were suddenly landed in that situation (call the police and get the hell out of there), because that's not what has happened to them