Quoth the Raven

Not just another domestic violence case?

While perusing the Seattle P.I. this morning I stumbled upon this story:

Note by woman's body says boyfriend 'shot me dead'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TACOMA, Wash. -- Olga Carter didn't want to leave any doubt about who was responsible. Not far from her body police found a note saying her boyfriend had "shot me dead."

A plea of innocent was entered Tuesday in Pierce County Superior Court on behalf of Donnell Wayne Price, 45, charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of Olga Carter, 39. Judge Thomas P. Larkin set bail at $1 million.

Police were dispatched to the couple's home early Sunday after a woman - apparently Carter - frantically called 911 and said she was fighting with a man who had a gun. Officers said they arrived and forced open the door when they heard screaming, then withdrew to the yard after hearing a gunshot.

After a 2 1/2-hour standoff, Price surrendered and told police Carter was inside a utility room at the back of the house and needed medical aid, prosecutors wrote in documents filed in court.

In the kitchen, adjacent to the utility room where Carter was found dead of a gunshot wound to the neck, police found a note that read in part, "Mr. Price shot me dead. He thought I fooled around."

Police also found a bloody .357-caliber pistol in an upstairs bedroom.

- You know I am sure that many people read this same article this morning. Maybe some people didn't even finished reading it before they had determined that it was just another domestic violence case, as they move on to the funnies...But you need to know that this wasn't just another case of domestic violence that made the news. Not for Olga Carter and certainly not for all her family and friends that are now forced to live with the loss. I didn't get to know Olga personally, but I do know that she was someone's daughter and may have been someone's sister. She could also have been a mother but the news report does not tell us if this is the case. But we are told that she was someone's girlfriend and this person who at one time must have declared his love for her, is the person who took her life.

Thankfully, Olga had the strength and the courage to write the killer's name on a piece of paper - maybe even knowing at that point in time that her time had come. That at least it would be there in clear view when the police and the medics arrive to tranport her body to the morgue.

What makes something that may have started out so right and so innocent, turn into the macabe scene that awaited the police as they entered the residence. What possesses someone -  a man in this case - to murder in cold blood the person he declared so much love for. I could certainly rant about the need for gun control laws in this country, but I must admit that if a gun wasn't available at the time then the perpetrator would have used a knife or another instrument to brutalize this woman.

So the million dollar question is "what forces one person to succumb to the use of violence in a relationship when the rest of us choose to resolve our differences through less violent means - like communication?   

Domestic Violence defined:

According to Wikipedia Domestic violence occurs when a family member, partner or ex-partner attempts to physically or psychologically dominate or harm the other. The term "intimate partner violence" (IPV) is often used synonymously, other terms have included "wife beating", "wife battering", "relationship violence", "domestic abuse", "spousal abuse", and "family violence" with some legal jurisdictions having specific definitions.

Recent attention to domestic violence began in the women's movement as concern about wives being beaten by their husbands, and has remained a major focus of modern feminism, particularly in terms of "violence against women".

Estimates are that only about a third of cases of domestic violence are actually reported in the US and UK. In other places where there has been less attention and less support, reported cases would be still lower.

Domestic violence occurs in all cultures, people of all races, ethnicities, and religions can be perpetrators of domestic violence. Domestic violence is perpetrated by, and on, both men and women, and occurs in same-sex and opposite-sex relationships.

Awareness and documentation of domestic violence differs from country to country. According to the Centers for Disease Control domestic violence is a serious, preventable public health problem affecting more than 32 million Americans, that is more than 10% of the U.S. population (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000).

Domestic violence has many forms, including physical violence, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, intimidation, economic deprivation or threats of violence. There are a number of dimensions:

• mode - physical, psychological, sexual and/or social
• frequency - one off, occasional, chronic
• severity – in terms of both psychological or physical harm and the need for treatment – transitory or permanent injury – mild, moderate, severe up to homicide

Popular emphasis has tended to be on women as the victims of domestic violence although with the rise of the men's movement, and particularly men's rights, there is now some advocacy for men as victims, although the statistics concerning the number of male victims given by them are strongly contested by many groups active in research on or working in the field of domestic violence.

The means used to measure domestic violence strongly influence the results found, for example, studies of reported domestic violence and extrapolations of those studies show women preponderantly as victims and men to be more violent, whereas the survey based Conflict Tactics Scale, tends to show men and women equally violent.

The majority of studies investigated male on female domestic violence, thus information on female-on-male (or female-on-female) violence tends to be less available.

Provocation - Defending the Indefensible

-In opposition to the provocation law in Australia -

It's disingenuous for David Neal to characterise the community horror at the manslaughter verdict against James Ramage as being driven by the 'punitiveness of the shock-jocks'. No amount of name calling will alter the fact that the law of provocation, as used by men who kill women, has effectively extinguished a woman's right to leave a relationship. Only last month Neal was up in arms about increased police powers, which he argued would compromise our civil liberties. Yet, when provocation compromises the rights of a woman, Neal switches sides. Why are the same men who express moral outrage at the Howard government's refugee policy and it's 'children overboard' lies so stone hearted when a woman is murdered in these circumstances?

It's astounding that Neal thinks the actions of a patriarchal man like James Ramage are the same as those of a 'temporarily insane' woman who kills her child. And on the basis of this spurious argument he thinks we should partially excuse wife killing. If Ramage was insane, he was insane about his loss of power over his wife. If he was depressed it was because he no longer had control of his wife in the marital bed. His answer was to avenge his honour and reassert his power. How can that ever be compared with clinical post natal depression? It's a bit like saying we should be compassionate to Adolf Hitler because his hatred of Jews was so deep seated and chronic he couldn't act otherwise.

Like all defenders of provocation, David Neal refuses to address specific cases such as R v Ramage. He has no trouble finding cases which allegedly support the retention of the law of provocation, but ask him about Ramage and he'll say he 'hasn't read the transcript.' In at least two of the cases he cites, the victim of the homicide has been responsible for incredible acts of brutality and/or violence and sexual degradation. Provocation defences where men kill women and are found guilty of manslaughter have nothing in common with these cases. Invariably, nothing more than a woman leaving a relationship and refusing to return is the reason for the killing. The most provocative thing the woman has done is say 'I'm not coming back.'

The chilling facts, as provided by Neal, are that more than two thirds of men who kill women and plead provocation are found not guilty of murder. If James Ramage is an example of the kind of man found not guilty, is this something to skite about? In the overwhelming majority of occasions when women kill men, it follows years of violence or sexual abuse at the hands of the man. That's why the ten women in Neal's sample were found not guilty of murder. It's amazing that Neal still doesn't understand the flawed conclusions of the 1991 Law Reform Commission Report. He was the chair after all. Does he seriously believe he was right in 1991 and Marcia Neave and everyone associated with this year's report is so wrong?

Funnily enough, I agree with Neal, for very different reasons, when he says the defence should be retained. If it's abolished there is the very real danger the assumptions that drive his arguments will be incorporated in sentencing. In other words, Judges will sentence according to the old patriarchal beliefs. If we tighten provocation so that a separation can never be the reason per se for using provocation, judges will be forced to affirm a woman's rights, and violent men such as Ramage will feel the full force of the law.

It's time David Neal seriously sought to address, via the law, the institutionalised barbarism refected in cases such as R v Ramage. If he thinks the defence should be 're-moulded into a partial defence of extreme emotional disturbance' where would he draw the line? If he thinks that James Ramage was entitled to a provocation defence he should say so.

To understand how discriminatory the current application of the law of provocation is, we need only ask what a woman should do to avoid provoking her death. Julie Ramage wrote a lovely letter to her husband after she left him. She didn't fight him over property or flaunt her new boyfriend in his face. She went to the house alone to look at his renovations. For all that he bashed and strangled her.

If she hadn't left, he probably would never have killed her. Maybe that's the moral of the story. Stay and be told what nail polish and clothes to wear and when to roll over for sex. It's time David Neal accepted that the game's over and that most modern women will no longer suffer this form of control. The real challenge for men is to stop their sisters, daughters and mothers getting killed. That's more important than changing the law.

Another great article by Phil Cleary

The Murder of Julie Ramage

A businessman told police he strangled his estranged wife after she taunted him about sex, a jury heard yesterday.

In a videotaped interview segment played in the Supreme Court, James Stuart Ramage, 45, said he "lost it" after his wife, Julie, said sex with him repulsed her. He said Julie Ramage had described having "sleepovers" with another man who was much nicer and better than him.

"I hit her and I just wanted it to stop and that's when I strangled her," James Ramage said in the interview. "And you don't know how much I wish I could change that."

The jury heard later that Ms Ramage, 42, had a new lover who was a poet and wrote about horses and the bush. Ms Ramage, a keen horse rider, told her twin sister that he was "the love of her life".

Prosecutor Julian Leckie, SC, said James Ramage, after strangling his wife, did not help her, but tried to cover up the crime and dispose of her body.

Ramage placed his wife's body in the boot of his Jaguar car, cleaned up at their Balwyn home and drove to an isolated area of bushland near Kinglake. At the edge of a national park, he buried her and items including clothing worn at the time of the attack.

Mr Leckie said Ramage took the couple's teenage son out to dinner, and told their daughter that her mother was probably out with the other man.

Ramage later met a barrister friend and, after speaking with him and a solicitor, turned himself in to police. He has pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife on July 21 last year.

Defence counsel Phil Dunn, QC, told the jurors and Justice Robert Osborn that Ramage did not deny killing her, but the question was whether it was murder or manslaughter. He said the prosecution could not prove the intent required for a murder conviction. At issue was whether Ramage's actions took place under provocation, as defined by the law.

Mr Leckie said Julie Ramage left her husband about five weeks before she was killed. He said unhappy incidents in their marriage, including some violence, had caused her fear.

She moved into a Toorak apartment, taking their daughter, Samantha, now 17, with her.

In a letter left for her husband, Julie Ramage said she had let him run her life too much, and she was stifled.

"You have often said you would be happier on your own with a nice sports car, apartment and not such a great financial burden as us," she wrote.

Ms Ramage described James Ramage in the letter as staid and conservative. She said she could hate him for some things he had done, but he was a good person who worked hard and loved their children.

"I feel very insecure at the moment leaving the house, beach house and all our other assets in your hands and I hope you won't do anything stupid that will hurt the kids," she said.

"Please, please be reasonable and amicable and I promise I won't do the wrong thing by you."

Mr Dunn said the couple had married as teenagers and had dated others when they separated in the 1980s. In 2002, they had problems in their relationship, he said. James Ramage had pushed his wife out of their bed, and she had another lover she had met at the Prahran Market.

The trial continues.

* Article from The Age

'Just another little murder' Part II

After the stabbing, as the butcher's daughter lay bleeding to death in the gutter, a witness watched Keogh walk calmly away, wiping the blood "callously" from the blade. He then strolled around the corner to an auction room he knew and sipped coffee before leaving to hide the knife. By then, an ambulance officer was leaning over Vicki, trying to stem the blood flow. "Please, don't let me die," she asked him.

But by then it was all too late. Too late to stop Vicki's life ebbing away and far too late for a band of brothers to knock on a door and order their sister's lousy boyfriend out of her life. Now, they would never be rid of him.

Phil Cleary has written a book, called Just Another Little Murder, about the injustices of his sister's death and its lingering impact. It's a passionate book, because he knows no other way. He's a man with a considerable ego, and his narrative voice, as in his public life, is often hectoring, sometimes profane and typically belligerent. Cleary sees class war everywhere; to him, society has as many classifications as the natural world has to a biologist.

The book's main purpose is to document Cleary's pursuit of Keogh, his 15-year obsession with the man who killed his sister and the justice system that Cleary maintains allowed him to get away with murder.

Vicki's killing was bad enough, he says, but what followed at Keogh's trial two years later was the real trigger for all the anger that has festered since within the Cleary clan. "People like to construct murder as the dark stranger," he says, "but the most common kind of murder is killing by an intimate. If you've got a killing by an intimate that involves a man like Keogh who lies about everything he does, and is then exonerated, then you've got the recipe for deep, deep suffering. If people wonder why I've pursued this, ask them this: 'How do you think you'd feel if a court told you that your sister somehow contributed to her own murder by way of provocation?'"

At the trial in the Victorian Supreme Court, Justice George Hampel allowed Keogh a defence of provocation. This was, says Cleary, based on the so-called provocative language Vicki had allegedly used when confronted by Keogh that morning (Keogh claimed she told him to "f... off" and leave), and on the claim that Keogh was an alcoholic depressive supposedly tormented over Vicki's departure and a new boyfriend.

The Clearys sat through the trial, growing more bewildered by the day. Who was there to speak for Vicki? Keogh had become the victim. "It was the state that was almost an ally of his," says Phil. "Parole officers continually blamed his mother. Shrinks always found an excuse for him or an explanation for his violence. He took no responsibility. Throughout his life he had barristers to speak for him, no matter how vile his crimes were.

Cleary's anger with Justice Hampel and his allowing of a provocation defence has not waned in the 13 years since the trial, at which Keogh was sentenced to eight years with a minimum of six. (He was released after serving three years and 11 months.) A few years after the trial, Cleary saw the Hampels dining at a Thai restaurant in Carlton. He bided his time and thought about whether he should approach the judge. There was never really a choice, not in Cleary's mind. "When I left, I went over and said, 'George, Phil Cleary. How are you? I just wanted to tell you I thought your decision was very bourgeois.'"

Bourgeois? "What I meant was that it related to the whole concept of marriage and property. I was saying my sister had been turned into a chattel as per the old marriage acts. And this was what the real message of the court was. He sort of smiled at me. I didn't abuse him. I left and walked away.

"If George Hampel had denied Keogh a provocation defence, my family would have just moved on. We would have remembered a beautiful girl we lost, but we would have moved on. But the provocation defence changed everything. I could never allow that verdict or ruling to stand unchallenged. I'm a political beast and that trial was a political trial, in the sense that every trial that involves the killing of a woman by her ex is a political trial. It deals with the politics of society, the politics of sex."

He never let up. After his release, Keogh had begun a relationship with another woman. When she ordered him to leave, her house was torched not long afterwards. Cleary gathered evidence and went to the police, naming Keogh as the main suspect.

One of Cleary's sisters, Donna, admits her brother has an obsession. But no-one in the family, she says, has ever told him to let it go. "I can't say that to him because I don't think he has to let it go. That's the way Phil has always been. No-one has the right to tell him to stop. And what he says, we all agree with it."

The thing about Vicki, says Donna, is that you can never remember her without the killing getting in the way. "While she was being stabbed, she never fell into unconsciousness. She fought so hard to get away from Keogh. Every time I picture her, all of that becomes part of the memory, too."

"Some of Phil's mates say he's been completely obsessed by the case, but I don't think that is entirely true," says Cleary's close friend and mentor, Doug White, a former editor of the leftist political journal Arena. "He's certainly been driven by it. Phil is an old-fashioned person in a way: he has this almost chivalrous approach, this idea that men should look after women, protect them."

Over the years, Cleary, who has two daughters in their twenties from his first marriage and two young boys with his current partner, Christine, has immersed himself in the intricacies of criminal law, hitting the books to learn more about provocation defence. There were cases he leafed through - cases of gang rape and outright brutality - where those middle-class barristers had smirked and sneered their way through trials, portraying women and young girls (working-class girls, of course) as nothing more than whores and easy lays. Like Vicki, they were women who the law was only too ready to believe had provoked the violence visited upon them.

Cleary, now a consultant at La Trobe University, never used his four years in Canberra to try to bring about changes in the justice system because, he says, he felt it would be wrong to put his own needs ahead of his electorate. But now, "on reflection, yes, I should have done more. I should have generated a big debate in the Parliament about what produces these kinds of verdicts. The right time would have been to do it then."

But that's another thing about murder. It forever condemns those affected by it to a life of "what ifs" and "could have beens".

Peter Keogh committed suicide a year ago at the age of 53, gassing himself in a car. Cleary would like to think that his haunting of the man, his constant hounding and investigation into all his crimes, had convinced Keogh he would never be free.

But, like Donna and the rest of them, Phil experienced no satisfaction with his passing. Keogh's death, he found, did not bring any closure to the case. Even the writing of the book, he admits, has still not answered the questions that keep tumbling over and over again. "This book is the retrial we never had ... hopefully it will bring some kind of closure."

Murder, he writes, changes everything. It never goes away. And Phil Cleary, the angry political firebrand from a family of Irish storytellers, will forever be a character in a tale that will never, truly, find an ending.

"He needed a bit of old-style treatment.

He needed the brothers to appear on the doorstep ... But we didn't do that":

This was just one of the great articles on Phil Cleary's website, you can go here to read numerous others, or just purchase his book. (I stumbled upon his story on a domestic violence website and realised that he was one of the teachers from my high school, many years ago - what a small world it really is!)

'Just another little murder' Part I

When Vicki Cleary was stabbed to death by an ex-lover in 1987, her older brother Phil was racked by grief and guilt. But it wasn't until her killer's trial that the anger really kicked in. Garry Linnell talks to the former footballer and MP about the injustice that became his abiding obsession.

He has a question. When a killing takes place, everyone has questions. But if someone can provide him with the answer, then finally - finally - he might be able to bring this dark, haunting tale he has lived and wrestled with for 15 years to some kind of conclusion.

Of course, Phil Cleary figured out a long time ago that the answer might remain forever beyond his reach. But it still won't stop him asking the question again and again.

"How" he says," does a 25-year-old girl drive her car to work on a bright August morning, begin to park the car, only to be accosted by a man she's left three months before, and then find herself dragged to the passenger seat where he attempts to stab her numerous times?'                                                      Peter Keogh

Cleary is now perched on the edge of a chair inside his study. He rubs a hand across a face of white, wiry whiskers. His voice, a powerful instrument he has always prided himself on, a voice that has boomed through the halls of Federal Parliament and across crowded suburban football fields, is growing louder, angrier. He screws up his face as if tasting this outrage for the first time.

But we must go on. "Her hands are cut. The blade slices through her fingers. She's got a deep wound to her lip, running right down her lip and chin. She's completely traumatised. He then pulls her out of the passenger-side door and he stabs her another four, five, six times. Slices her liver and her lungs. Drops her to the ground. He walks across the road. Wipes the blade on a handkerchief or tissue. Puts it in a homemade scabbard and goes around the corner and has a cup of coffee."

All the old bile is back now, eating away at him like acid. This rage, it never goes away. "Tell me how, in a civilised court in Australia, that man got a manslaughter verdict, instead of murder, and [served] three years and 11 months. What ... is ... wrong?"

She was only young, this sister of his, when she was killed in 1987. A good, honest woman, too - but then, that hardly needs saying. Vicki was, after all, a Cleary. And in the northern Melbourne working-class suburb of Coburg, not one of the six Cleary kids had fallen off the rails or brought shame on a family with proud Irish Catholic roots.

Ron Cleary's butcher's shop, planted in the midst of a hardened housing commission area, managed to feed, clothe and educate his large family. He and his wife, Lorna, saved hard to buy a set of encyclopedias in a home built on generosity and education.

The Clearys were storytellers. Phil's grandfather had been a left-wing seafarer and spruiker for the working class, while the Cleary home in Dublin had been an IRA safe house in the 1920s.

In the early 1980s, Vicki, the oldest of Phil's three younger sisters, met this bloke, Peter Keogh, and he moved in with her. The Clearys didn't like Keogh. The boys, particularly, didn't trust him. They knew his type. He was 13 years older than Vicki, with a gallery of crass tattoos that were little more than crude advertisements for the man they covered. His elbows were wrapped in inky spider webs and he rarely looked you in the eye.

Keogh was working-class, too, but from "a substratum in the culture that we wouldn't piss on", says Cleary. He was sullen, moody, unresponsive. One time, Vicki brought him along to the football to see Phil play. In the clubrooms afterward, Keogh sat at a table, surrounded by empty glasses. Phil looked at him and saw his dead eyes. "He just had a look in his face and I thought, 'He's no good, this bloke.'

The family said nothing. Ron even gave him work in the butcher's shop. "It was that generosity, almost naivete, that let Keogh slip under our guard," says Phil Cleary. "Mum and Dad weren't fond of Vicki's relationship with him, but what do you do? History tells us you never win those battles. We never believed a man would do what he did. That's how he got under our guard. He needed a bit of old-style treatment. He needed the brothers to appear on the doorstep and say, 'F... off'. But we didn't."

No, they didn't. When it became clear after Vicki finally left him that Keogh couldn't let her go, that he would always be there to stalk and harass her, the brothers offered to pay him a visit. Their father Ron knew the truth of it. "She's never going to be free of that man until he's dead," he'd said one day. But Vicki, who never really told them how bad it had all become, always refused. Don't worry, she would say. It's under control.

There would be guilt later on, of course. Phil, because he was the oldest, would blame himself. He should have been there for his sister, protecting her. But what he and the rest of the family didn't know was just how violent and soulless Keogh was. "How could I know I was looking at a misogynist savage?" asks Phil. "This bloke made the Taliban look like Germaine Greer."

Long before he met Vicki, Keogh had been described by a judge as a "man of violence who committed outrageous indecencies" when he sexually assaulted a nine-year-old girl in 1975. In 1976, a parole officer described him as "a woman hater" - he'd once taken a female co-worker into the basement of a city building and repeatedly smashed her head against the wall. His past was littered with similar offences.

Of course, the Clearys have asked themselves another question over the years. Why was Vicki attracted to such a man? She was gentle, almost naive about some things in life. She took people at face value. When he'd first met her, Keogh had showered her with compliments. It was much the same with other women in his life.

When Vicki left Keogh in May 1987, Phil was content. "When she declared it was over, I thought, 'Yes, it's run its course. I've not even had to say a bad word about him or get into an emotional struggle about it.'" He remembers Vicki turning up to watch him play his 200th game for Coburg, cheering him on from the terrace. They were playing against Frankston that day, a far more talented and skilled team. But Coburg gave them a hiding and Phil Cleary, at 34, was among their best players. In the smoky, beer-drenched social rooms afterwards, he looked across at his sister. "I remember thinking, 'What an absolutely beautiful sister I've got. The last three or four years I haven't seen much of you because of Keogh...'"

But the relationship hadn't run its course. Keogh was outraged that she had left. He rang constantly, abusing and threatening her. On Wednesday, August 26, 1987, the morning after Vicki had failed to meet a demand by Keogh to visit him, he arrived outside the kindergarten where she worked, an hour before she was due to arrive. He was wearing bright yellow overalls and carrying a large knife, rubber gloves, another blade and masking tape. At his trial, he would tell the court he intended only to vandalise Vicki's car.

Read part II here...

Stop the Violence

If you read my previous post then you are well aware that I have just completed a class titled 'Gender Violence & Social Change' and we covered such topics as Sexual Harassment, Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Incest, Femicide, Pornography & Prostitution. I admit that I found the course totally interesting, though at times somewhat disturbing. Oh, and please don't assume that this class was made up of a bunch of men-hating women who just wanted to verbally bash them for the ills that they have caused in society. Yes, I must admit that there are men who have commited atrocious acts against other men, women and children...but women have also commited unbelieveable crimes. Our class was made up of both men and women who were interested in the content, and had a strong desire to do something about the gender violence perpetuated in our society. Even though I felt that I had a pretty good foundation in most of these topics via educating myself through books or personal experience; mine and other peoples, I was still able to walk away with a wealth of information that will has only caused me to want to be proactive in my community about violence.

The header for this post, Stop The Violence sums it up. We must Stop the Violence perpetrated against men, women and children in our communities because it will not just end on its own accord. Those victims of such crimes will grow up and continue to live under the cloud of that title - VICTIM - and this title will effect everything they do, and everyone they meet, and those they choose to devote themselves to. While the perpetrators of violence will go on hurting, killing and victimizing. Instead of allowing this cycle of violence and victimization to continue we must do something. Each and every single person has an opportunity, sometimes on a daily basis, to encourage or discourage violence. Lets be courageous enough to stand up and be counted! Take a stand against violence in your home, in your neighborhood, and in your city. Together we can make this world a kinder, and better place for our children to grow up in! Ok, so I don't have children - I still want our society to be a place that is safe for someone's children...

I have since decided to devote more time and posts** to combating violence, especially the area of Domestic Violence that is prevalent in the society we live in. I don't know if it is because of the patriarchal society we still live in; or the violence that is visible on television & the internet; or if it is learned behavior; do we blame religion or various cultures; or does it happen because of gender stereotyping. I guess I would say it is not just one thing, but all of these that help the cycle of violence to continue. We can make a change!

Look our for future articles that speak about domestic violence - from the men, women and children who have become the victims. But always from people like you and I because domestic violence never discriminates against race, age, sex, or socioeconomic status. It happens to people just like you, and people just like me.

- keep the Faith -

* This banner was displayed at a march against gun violence at Wilson Senior High School.

** Before you get too alarmed that I gotten all serious I must remind you that I will still continue to write posts about senseless crap, stupid jokes and total trivia. So relax!

Stop the Cycle of Domestic Violence

TV Commercial found with the help of Clipland

If you, or someone you know is in a domestic violence situation please call the

National Domestic Violence Hotline on 1800 799 SAFE (7233) or call 911.

If you would like more information on Domestic Violence you can go to the

National Domestic Violence Hotline Website

BREAK THE SILENCE, MAKE THE CALL TODAY!

New Maine Law Shields Animals in Domestic Violence Cases

Susan Walsh told Maine legislators a chilling tale in January. She said she had wanted many times to take her two children and leave her husband, ending a relationship she found frightening and controlling.

Susan Walsh with her dog Lazlo and some of her farm animals in Ellsworth, Me. Ms. Walsh says that her former husband would harm and even kill their animals as a means of keeping her under his control.

But she said she was afraid he would harm the animals on their 32-acre plot called Blessed Be Farm in Ellsworth, Me. In the past, she said in a telephone interview yesterday, he had retaliated against her by running over her blind and deaf border collie named Katydid, shooting two sheep and wringing the necks of her prized turkeys.

"It wasn't just the cats and the dogs I had, it was the sheep and the chickens — I was terrified for their welfare," Ms. Walsh, 50, said. "I knew if I were to leave, he wouldn't hesitate to kill them. He had done it before."

Experts on domestic violence say accounts like that of Ms. Walsh, who is now divorced, are not unusual. They say many men who abuse wives or girlfriends threaten or harm their animals to coerce or control the women.

To address the problem, Maine's governor, John Baldacci, signed a bill yesterday that allows animals to be included in protection orders in domestic violence cases.

"Many national studies on victims of domestic violence tell us that their abusers have threatened to kill, threatened to harm or actually harmed their pets as a means of keeping the victim from leaving the relationship," Mr. Baldacci, a Democrat, said. "With this new law, we hope to help remove another tool for emotional and physical violence used by the abuser to exert power and control over their victims."

Maine is believed to be the first state with such a law. But the issue has captured attention around the country as police departments, domestic-violence programs, animal protection societies and state officials become increasingly aware of a link between domestic violence and animal abuse.

A new program in Columbus, Ohio, takes animals of victims of domestic violence and places them in a women's prison, where the inmates care for them. In Nashville, the city gives such pets a safe haven for up to 30 days. And in St. Louis, the Domestic Violence Pet Assistance Program finds foster homes for the animals.

"There are some batterers who are prone to using coercion and terrorizing tactics who very well know how strongly attached their partner is to the animals in her life," said Frank A. Ascione, a psychologist at Utah State University. "It's the dynamic of preying on the love and affection that women often have for the animals in their lives, who may be their only source of solace, their only source of unconditional love."

In the late 1990's, Dr. Ascione and colleagues interviewed 101 women in shelters for battered women and 120 women who were not victims of domestic violence.

They found that 54 percent of the battered women said their abusers had harmed or killed their animals, compared with 5 percent of women in the other group. Thirty-four percent of the women whose pets had been both threatened and harmed delayed going to the shelters out of concern for their pets.

In 2002, Dr. Ascione said, he interviewed 42 men in prison who had had violent relationships with women and found that half of them said they had hurt or killed pets.

"Police and prosecutors are well aware of the very close link between threats to pets and threats to family members," Maine's public safety commissioner, Michael P. Cantara, said. He cited a 2002 case in which an abusive husband had beaten the family's cats to death, buried them in the backyard and threatened a similar fate for his wife and children.

"To our horror," Mr. Cantara said, "that yard was filled with dead Maine pets."

Karen Days, president of the Columbus Coalition Against Family Violence in Ohio, said of her work at the Columbus city prosecutor's office: "I had a victim who was in my office, and the prosecutor agreed to issue a warrant for the arrest of her partner. But she was just adamant that she be able to go home first and get her dog. When I asked why, she said, 'When I left him before, he started mailing me pieces of my cat to tell me if you don't come back this is what I'm going to continue to do.' "

Ms. Days and others said that battered women without children might be the most attached to their pets. But in homes with children, there are other concerns, Dr. Ascione said.

He said that seeing animals abused made "some kids likely to act out what they may have witnessed," while others "get even more strongly attached to their pets," which can be dangerous if the "children start trying to intervene to protect the animals."

Jill Morris, the public policy director at the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, said that she had not heard of another law like Maine's but that some judges had begun to include animals in protective orders.

Ms. Days said her organization would be lobbying the Ohio Legislature to make penalties for domestic violence stiffer if animal abuse was involved.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said his organization conducted workshops for police departments, prosecutors and social workers on the problem.

"Oftentimes these situations go on for a long period, say months or years," Mr. Pacelle said. "We really try to spread the word about this."

It's a miracle?

Bush has finally done something right! This most definitely must be a first time since he became President, and I am talking about the first time since the first election! Call me a cynic if you will, but hey, take a look at the photo below, even Mrs Bush looks surprised?

I just received this email from the wonderful people at Amnesty International:

"We are delighted to announce that President Bush signed the Violence Against Women Act yesterday afternoon. This law will provide approximately $3.9 billion over the next five years to help combat domestic violence in this country. A special thanks goes out to all of you. You helped to make this happen.

While the United States has made considerable strides toward combating abuse in the last decade, four women still die at the hands of their partners and 700 are raped or sexually assaulted each day. This renewed legislation now emphasizes early intervention, a critical component of saving lives.

Amnesty International recently joined with the National Organization for Women and Break the Cycle to deliver a petition with 100,000 signatures to key lawmakers in December as they negotiated the final version of the bill. More than 90,000 of these signatures came from all of you.

We encourage you to get more involved with Amnesty International's life-saving work. Visit our Web site today to find out how you can help free prisoners of conscience, abolish the death penalty, stop torture, and ensure that every person enjoys full human rights."

Together we can make a difference.