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

How is it clear that the woman was herself in a very abusive relationship?

Just because that is the line of defence her lawyer is using doesn't mean it was actually the case. And even if it was, how does that excuse her not protecting her own children?

We want to believe she was so cowed and frightened that she was somehow brainwashed into accepting the situation because it's alien to us to imagine that a woman could ever wantonly facilitate or turn a blind eye to the abuse of her own children, but the simple fact is that some women just do. Does it always have to be that women are deemed as so weak, so helpless, so stupid and so easily intimidated that they are incapable of protecting their own children from the men they are in relationships with?

If you don't feel able to stand up to your own abuser that's one thing, but when you are a mother it's your job to stand up to those who would abuse your children, irrespective of whatever you are personally going through. If you know they are being abused and you don't take reasonable steps to put a stop to it then you simply have to be held accountable.

Sorry, I don't mean 'because she did' as a blame on Ms Batty.

No doubt, Yonic, but your post is leaving an awfully bad taste in my mouth!

Apologies, I'll withdraw it and rephrase.

when you are a mother it's your job to stand up to those who would abuse your children, irrespective of whatever you are personally going through.

Wow, so mothers, no matter what their circumstances, what they have reason to be afraid of, what they are enduring, have legal responsibility for enduring their children aren't abused?

See, that's kind of the problem - the idea that it is a woman's "job" to stop men abusing her children.

Rather than that it is the responsibility of the men who abuse to stop their abuse.

Of course the abusers are responsible for the abuse. Nobody would ever question that, would they?

The question isn't whether the woman was responsible for the abuse. It is whether she participated in the abuse (possibly in this case) and whether she was neglectful in not taking reasonable measures to prevent it.

Who can know whether she wanted to act but was too frightened/unable to do so or wasn't that bothered about her children being abused so just went along with it? That was for the courts to decide.

There has to be a middle ground between "She is responsible for the abuse he inflicted" and "She has no responsibility to keep her children safe."

wow, so mothers, no matter what their circumstances, what they have reason to be afraid of, what they are enduring, have legal responsibility for enduring their children aren't abused?

Er , yes. What is so "wow" about that.? The duty applies to both parents.

Oh no it doesn't.

I cannot remember a case where a man was jailed for failing to protect his child from the violence of a woman

If there was evidence that the man was living under the same roof, completely aware of said abuse and facilitating or ignoring it then I am quite sure he would be held accountable. Besides, what we are talking about here is that it should not be defence for a woman to say that she herself was being abused. Unless she is literally being kept prisoner and is unable to leave or to summon help for the children then there is no excuse.

Ah. Living under the same roof.

Hmm

I'm not certain tbh

Can't think of a single case where it was asserted tht a man should have done more to prevent abuse by a woman (or even another man)

The details are hazy but when Baby P case was in the news, no-one asked what his biological father (who had contact with him) had done about it. Or why he hadn't noticed.

His biological father was not resident parent and was not in the picture at all as far as I can remember. At least not until it came to bleating to the press about how terrible he felt about the loss of his child at the hands of such monsters. It's always the bloody same, they don't care about them when they alive but they'll stand in front of the cameras and demand justice for their poor dead child.

I think if you didn't live under the same roof then even if you have regular access/contact you could be forgiven for not realising that abuse was happening. But how many women live separately from their children? not many, when compared to men.

Oh that's right, I knew the details were hazy, I think maybe he didn't have any contact after all.

And I don't think it's necessarily about mothers 'having a legal responsibility for enduring that their children aren't abused.' It's about the resident parent's responsibility to protect them from other parents or adults in their own home. They can't foresee or control whether an abuser will choose to abuse in the first place, but once they are aware they absolutely have it within their control to make sure it does not continue.

That would be the same whether the resident parent were a man or a woman and regardless of the sex of the abuser, or whether the RP was themselves being abused also. Otherwise, fuck it, let's just say that none of us is responsible for anything where our children are concerned.

The responsibility rests with resident parents.

Some of the posts on here are very depressing. Such blinkered attitudes, women as eternal, spineless victim with no responsibility for her actions.

Hmm. I'd question your interpretation tbh Phaedra.

Question away. There are several posters erroneously stating she's been punished for his crimes. No she isn't.

Or positing that she must have been a victim too so she can't be blamed.

In the Baby P case I believe the lodger, who didn't have any parental responsibility, went to prison for not intervening

Several?

There was also a case in Birmingham, UK where a mother beat her young son to death and if I remember correctly, the stepfather was jailed for failing to protect him.

Mengog I think the lodger in Baby P case went to jail for being involved in the rape of Baby P's sister.

He wasn't found guilty of that. His only offence was causing or allowing the death of a child.

There are probably less cases of men being jailed as it's usually men who are the culprits.

phaedra women are never responsible for anything according to some residents of this parish. We are all as you say eternal spineless victims.

I can´t believe that this woman, who had full legal representation, in a first world democracy with an advanced justice system, whose lawyer could presumably request social and psychiatric reports regarding her mental health status in order to mitigate her behaviour, and who also pleaded guilty, was not properly convicted.

No one's saying women are eternal victims, it's a little more nuanced than that.

And simply LOL at the idea that we live in a judicial Nirvana

Esp in WA. But hey, if people don't know, then there's no way of them finding out is there. If only we had an easily accessible, almost limitless repository of knowledge which we could use from the comfort of our homes to discover things.

If only....