- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
When these people have children the law should prescribe:
1. Mandatory parenting classes.
2. Anger management control classes.
3. Marriage relationship counseling.
4. Often 12-step programs for substance abuse.
When these brawls result in serious injury, the children should be removed from the custody of both parents and the parent who inflicted the serious injury should have no unsupervised visitation with the children. Chances are that someone willing to inflict serious injurt on his/her spouse is likely to be dangerous to the children by virtue of temper alone.
When you see these sorts of cases, there is usually other types of abuse going on as well. The children are often at risk and the courts should evaluate the extent of that risk before returning the children to the home.
Sadly, this rarely happens.
_____________________________________________________________
An interesting story: I once had an older student who claimed that his wife was battering him but he kept getting unfairly arrested. He was unhappy with me as a teacher the minute he set eyes on me. He informed me that a male teacher was supposed to teach the class and that he had "issues" with women.
I told him that he was free to change his schedule. He was quite offended and demanded a male teacher. I told him to take it up with administration. I was hired to teach the class and contracted to teach the class and I was not changing my plans.
It turned out that this guy was a total nut and a coke addict to boot. He did everything he possibly could to disrupt the class. He plagiarized every paper he turned in -- one straight off the internet. When I zeroed them, he tried to find out my home phone number and where I lived. He said he wanted to come over to my house personally and address the problem.
I later found out that he had actually put his wife in the hospital with his blows.
