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Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?
New York, 3:43 PM
Sun Nov 29
21 posts in the last 24 hours
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Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All? |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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When I was a wee one, my mom had a habit of taking up with abusive men. They beat her regularly. I saw it, my brother saw it. We knew about it.
However, it wasn't until one of the assholes in question started in on me and my brother that mom came to her senses and got the fuck out.
I don't want to judge this woman, but I don't like the excuse 'Well, she was being abused too' because my mom was in a very similar situation and the line was drawn at her children. She could take a beating, as far as she was concerned, but me and my brother were off limits.
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Abused women do need help and sensitivity, but they don't need to be infantilized. They are grown women, and as grown person you make choices.
Years ago my brother got a bit sideways on his oldest son and mom took him aside and asked him if he had enjoyed being beaten as a child and if he thought that was right. Of course his answer was no.
My mom always tells us that yes we've had a hard life, but that doesn't excuse us from acting like decent human beings.
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.
11/17/08
I do not like the concept of the 'mother lion tendency'. It's too emotional and subjective. If this was a agreed upon experience, then no woman should be surprised at the amount of time this woman got in this case; in fact, there should be time added, like hate crime statutes, for women in cases like this.
But, I am neither a mother nor a woman, so obviously my sentiment will probably not be agreed upon by many here.
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This is just my belief as I also stated in my comment and because it is just my belief, I cannot unfairly hold anyone to anything.
Still, the propagation of all life forms (except perhaps bacteria) would not have happened if at least part of what I just said was untrue. While this inclination to care for and protect our offspring may be adversely affected or diminished by factors outside of oneself, i.e. poor upbringing, abuse, hormones etc. to deny that this inclination exists is more than a bit asinine.
Still this inclination is not measurable or consistent across all women all of the time. Thusly, it has no place in litigation, I concede to this fact and thought that I'd stated it clearly.
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[en.wikipedia.org]
11/17/08
I've found one lengthy article in particular that I am having to read just one page at a time, distracting myself with other things in between pages to keep my sanity intact. I have this consuming urge to hold my daughters and cry until I can't even breathe.
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his sentence should be upped, not hers lowered.
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A lot of factors played into the sentencing, which I pulled from the article in the thread. Even the mother's defense thought she'd get 32 years, the fact that the judge did not run the manslaughter charges concurrently wasn't as large as a factor as you'd think.
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I like the fact that we tend to stick up for the victim on this site, but I'll never think that being the 'victim' of domestic abuse excuses 1)your own cruelty towards your child or 2) your refusal to seek help when someone else is cruel to your child.
Being a victim does not give you a pass. At some opoint even a 'victim' has to stand up and fight.
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The prosecution was not sure they'd get a conviction on the greater offenses of manslaughter or negligent homicide so they threw four lesser offenses at her because they were confident they could secure at least those convictions . It's by chance (or luck, depending on how you look at it) that they got the more serious offense to stick.
It's more a matter of strategic lawyering than anything else.
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I'd only feel it was unjust if she were convicted of something she didn't actually do.
11/17/08
(It comes from the other direction, too -- there's a form of low-expectations bigotry involved in being somehow "unsurprised" that a man would beat a child to death (we put that down to a tragedy we almost "expect" to happen, to someone, somewhere), but being extraordinarily shocked and appalled that the child's mother would be either complicit in it or hapless to stop it.)
11/17/08
Bigotry?
Maybe "relying on crime statistics" ?
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The point is that we are unsurprised and lacking in outrage about certain crimes because we "expect" them -- and sometimes this means we'll give harsher punishment for crimes we somehow don't "expect." Even if the crimes are similar, or our expectations are wrong.
11/17/08
That part always stuck with me because I can't imagine a mother being mad at her own child for being raped by her stepfather.
This whole case is just so shocking and sad.
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More likely, it just goes to show Nixzaliz Santiago's unbalanced state of mind. She also kept a miscarried fetus in a jar and blamed her daughter for the miscarriage.
11/17/08
I can't wrap my brain around this. The most depraved imaginations couldn't come up with a story this fucked up.
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P.S.: Your excellent screenname is from one of my favorite books ever!
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The real tragedy is if you want to see someone go away for a long long time (life or darn near) they need to be convicted of either (1) premeditated murder or (2) selling/buying drugs more than once. To me, THAT'S a bigger problem.
11/17/08
A "bad mother" is someone who lets her young children eat candy for dinner and watch rated R movies until 2am on school nights, not someone who stands by idly as someone KILLS her child.
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Don't think I'm excusing her. I'm just saying that BF's mother didn't step in once to stop his father through all of the years and all of the things he went through, and she herself perpetrated some of the abuse. He says she did it partially to save herself from the pain, insomuch as not stopping his father, and I'm wondering how much of that is in play here.
The poor child, why does this have to happen?
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