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

[DonkeySkin]

In line with the thread on women being jailed in El Salvador for miscarrying, this happened in Oz recently:

www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-17/mother-sentenced-over-abuse-of-daughters-by-their-father/6022518

Sometimes I think the world is becoming more woman-hating by the day

what an awful situation

years of abuse and living in fear people do not act in the way that is expected they often become totally dominated by the abuser and unable to think for themselves

she may have believed that if she left, reported him he would kill them all and why would she think that was an empty threat she is aware of what a cruel sadistic violent man he is

yes of course we all have a responsibility to protect our children this is an extreme case she has pleaded guilty I am guessing as she feels tremendous guilt

i am not sure sending her to prison what it achieves

And need needabumchange

I agree Buffy.

Buffy, you don't know the qualification of the people commenting.

As has been said above though, had it been coerced sex act the plea would be not guilty. She wasn't jailed for his crimes, she was jailed for hers. One could argue hers wouldn't exist without his but then one could also argue the crime of speeding wouldn't exist without Ford motor Co.

Sometimes people make bad choices in terrible situations which is sad - but that doesn't change the decision they made.

I do agree that people who fail to protect children from abuse - even vulnerable people - have to be held accountable for that. I'm just not sure if prison is the right way to do that and if that's the means we're going to use, then we really need to put in place proper support for vulnerable people who do report. We've got sod-all at the moment.

I agree with Thumbwitch too - it must have been a hard situation for her, but she seems to have made no effort to protect her children.

Everyone who neglects or abuses their children have a reason they do it. There are no reasons that make it ok.

The only person these children had to protect them was their mother (especially given how rural and isolated they were). She failed to do so. Yes, she was also a victim, but she could have and should have reported. Is the outcome of not doing so any worse than if she actually had? Those children have now lost her too and will be left to fend for themselves.

My own mother turned a blind eye to abuse and told me to shut up about it as an adult. She was abused herself as a child (not to the same extent) and had myriad 'reasons' for her failure as parent. I don't forgive her. Her duty as a parent was to protect me. She failed. While I wouldn't like to see her jailed for it, I would not absolve her of any responsibility.

cailin, that's completely understandable. If my mother had stood by while my father abused me, I would have a very hard time forgiving her, even if I later understood that she was also a victim of abuse.

I'm not arguing that people should feel sympathy for this woman, or that she had no responsibility or duty of care towards her daughters. I am stating that it is an outrage to jail women for violence that men commit. Men are responsible for male violence. Not women, no matter how much they may fail as mothers.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Part of the reason I am horrified by this case is the wider implications of it. If we accept that mothers should be held criminally responsible for failing to protect their children from violent men, that means any woman could potentially be charged if her partner rapes, beats or kills her child.

Rosie Batty, mother of 11-year-old Luke Batty who was murdered by his father last year, had an eloquent rant at a morning show host who said he supported proposed laws that would jail women who did not report their partners for abuse. She pointed out that her taking steps to leave her partner and reporting him to police is what prompted him to murder their son, as 'a final act of control'. And yet, under these laws, she would be the one facing three years' jail.

www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/rosie-batty-blasts-studio-10-host-joe-hildebrand-on-morning-tv/story-e6frfmyi-1226872088068

What I find scary is that while there have been a string of horrifying cases of men raping and slaughtering their wives and children in Australia, the outcome of it is that the laws are getting more punitive towards women.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.