News flash. One is entitled to walk on city streets without being assaulted
Pop on over to Dr Cat’s blog to read her excellent analysis of this claim.
Ministers arriving for cabinet yesterday said Mr Foley was entitled to walk on a city street at any hour without being assaulted.
Victim blaming 101
Gregory Meads murdered Helen Meads just four days after she said she was going to leave their marriage. Now that he has been convicted by a jury, some more information has been released. It turns out that he beat her savagely about 18 months before he killed her.
The details are in this newspaper report, and they are horrifying. The report is *triggering*.
What the Meads jury didn’t hear
But it seems that at least one police office thinks that it’s Helen Meads fault.
Detective Sergeant Rod Carpinter, the officer in charge of the murder investigation, said the case highlighted the need for people to seek help from police, Women’s Refuge or another organisation help before family violence escalated.
“Here we have a woman who has lost her life, children left without their mother and their father facing a long term of imprisonment.”
Dude, it highlights the need for Gregory Meads to stop being a violent arsehole. Gregory Meads was the man who threw the punches, Gregory Meads was the man who pulled the trigger, Gregory Meads is the man who is responsible for Helen Meads being dead, for the children being without their mother, and for their father (that would be Gregory Meads) being in jail.
Maybe it also highlights the need for police to press assault charges a little harder. I really don’t understand why Gregory Mead’s assault on Helen Meads was not prosecuted in the first place. If police had taken their responsibilities seriously, maybe Helen Meads would still be alive, and her children would still have their mother.
Enough with the victim blaming.
The situation matters
The latest furore about violence against children in New Zealand seems to be dying down already. No doubt we will all talk about it again sometime soon, when the next horrific case hits our headlines. I made a somewhat cynical comment to this effect in this post a couple of weeks ago; I’m disturbed that my cynicism seems to have been justified.
With that thought in mind, that we need to keep talking and keep it in the forefront of our minds, and start acting, here’s an interesting article in American Scientist Online, which I found through both ScienceBlogs.com and Butterflies and Wheels. The article is about the Zimbardo effect, although Philip Zimbardo himself calls it the Lucifer effect. The effect is so called after the famous experiment run by Zimbardo in 1971, where he got a group of students, all perfectly ordinary young men, divided them into “prisoners” and “guards”, put them into a “jail” and settled down to see what would happen. It was frightening – the guards quickly engaged in capricious and cruel behaviour, and the prisoners became stressed and depressed, and started begging to be let out.
At last
Dewar has not been convicted of rape. But he has been convicted of attempting to obstruct or defeat the course of justice.
This is a good day for Louise Nicholas.
Kia kaha, Louise.
