Also I liked some of his (Ted Poe's) punishments, particularly the one where he made abusive husbands apologize to their wives on the steps of city hall. And I would like to see the CEOs of Halliburton/KBR put sex offender signs on their lawns.

Don't make me point out the obvious. The man (Ted Poe) went to the State Department to rescue Jamie Leigh Jones from a cargo container box, and is working with John Conyers to get the Justice Department to investigate the matter. He is worthy of some praise.

Also I liked some of his punishments, particularly the one where made abusive husbands apologize to their wives on the steps of city hall. And I would like to see the CEOs of Halliburton/KBR put sex offended signs on their lawns.

You frequently raise good points; however, as to my examples, I can only use those which I personally have experience of. I have not been a victim advocate in some time and, when I was, there was not a single instance of a woman personally committing a sex crime or a male being victimized domestically. Not one. Increased awareness of sexually predatory women and of domestic violence against men may have changed that somewhat.

Much of the statistics that we can rely on depend upon either reporting or retrospective studies of adults. When people don't report or adult victims don't speak out, we lack evidence.

I have been a CASA more recently, but CASAs do not deal with domestic violence that does not affect children. A CASAs only concern are those incidents which affect children. The child is in fact the CASA's "client" and CASAs not only research the case of abuse or neglect, but they also spend time talking with the children involved, not questioning the child so much as doing careful listening.

When I was a CASA, the most horrendous cases that CPS had involved child murders by men -- not women -- in which drugs, alcohol, or just plain bad temper were involved. Only one death was directly attributable to a woman. This was a mother who had put her child very close to an indoor heater on a cold night and this child had asphyxiated. Now you may ask, legitimately, where were the mothers in those cases where men killed. One was at work. One was at her parent's house. One was in the house. None of them directly attacked their children. Two of them turned a blind eye to indications that the men were aggressive against the children. One of these was quite cowed by abuse herself. In the case where the child was asphyxiated, the father was in the house and had observed the mother being hostile, careless, and neglectful to the child. In all but the case where the mother was at work, the other (not directly abusing parent) served time.

The simple truth is that when the Obnoxious Anonymous charges that mothers commit more child abuse and neglect, he is only being half honest. Mothers are simply more often the custodial parent, often because the father has defaulted. Neglect is often compounded by poverty. Physical abuse covers a wide range of behaviors, but hitting that kills is more often carried out by fathers or male partners. In other words, a man is simply physically much stronger and more capable of killing with his bare hands. I don't say this to minimize other types of abuse. Over the span of a child's life ongoing physical and psychological abuse takes a terrible toll. The stories are just not as immediately dramatic to the new media -- which is now obsessed with headlines and ignores substance.

If you want to read about the harm that a mother can do if she is abusive, I suggest you start with a book called A Child Called It. I could not get past the second chapter. I was not tough enough to read it.

Of abusive mothers, the stories I know best are my own and the story of a good friend who was sexually, physically, and mentally tortured by her mother. These are personal stories and not stories from work I have done.

Leftychris, if you have not figured out by now that I am all about the welfare of children and about healing the abused and neglected child who lives within the adult, then you simply do not get me. Perhaps you will never understand this. Far more than being a feminist, I am at heart at children's rights advocate.

That is why when Obnoxious Anonymous asks me about presumptive custody, I can only respond that in custody matters it is the child's well being that should prevail, not the father's rights or the mother's rights or men's rights or women's rights. People choose to bring a child into the world. No one forces anyone to become a parent. Parents should put their children first for that reason alone.

Tyler_Mason: Amen to the first sentence of your post. It's hard to expect justice in any case involving US forces and contractors in Iraq now after we've seen such meager consequences be meted out to so many of those responsible for so many terrible incidents. But one would think that this case is different, as the alleged victim is an American woman. The Iraqi victims of American violence are the ones seen by too many as subhuman or as deserving or at least unsympathetic victims.

(K)night: It sounds like you have the wrong male friends. Anyone who would discount the whole idea of domestic violence is an insensitive prick. Why do you continue to associate with such people? Also, you're painting with too broad a brush when you ask what it will take to "make men behave humanely toward women (and other men)". That describes a small criminal minority of men. Most men act humanely--or at least normally, reasonably, and non-criminally--to others, including women. Plus, of course, there are some women who behave inhumanely to others--men and women. So perhaps it would be better to ask what it will take to make humans in general behave more humanely and compassionately toward other humans?

CoastalCohort: We stopped being the "good guys" the minute we launched an illegal war of aggression against a country that hadn't harmed us and posed no credible threat to us or its neighbors.

fetboy: Why are you praising Ted Poe? He's a draconian "hanging" judge from Texas--normally something that would make progressives cringe. His "creative" sentencing sounds more like public showboating to me, and that's always something to be wary of in judges. Some of his sentences sound overly harsh and punitive, some of them sound like more symbolism than actual substance. Why is this worthy of plaudits?

AKA Smith: The list you compiled is certainly terrible stuff, undoubtedly stories you've accumulated from your work as a victims' rights advocate. But it seems awfully one-sided and biased, toward female victims and sex crimes in particular (perhaps that was only due to the subject matter of this thread.) Can we all agree that "ugly stuff" happens to a lot of people, regardless of their gender or race? Whites and men suffer from injustice and systemic problems too, and it's no more or no less tragic when it happens to them than when it happens to others. White power, adult power, judicial power, religious power, political power, and yes, even MALE power have been known to sh*t on plenty of individual men over the years, and continue to do so today. For instance, the strong gender bias in criminal courts that goes leniently on female defendants and harshly on male defendants for similar or equivalent crimes derives, ultimately, from old-fashioned sexist chauvinism and paternalism and thus patriarchal attitudes. Thus men are largely to blame for their own biased treatment in this regard (although not too many women, even feminists, have spent much time fighting against THAT gender inequality, for rather obvious reasons.)