It's a familiar story. A mother and father fight, shouting at first, then grabbing one another, and it ends with one of them bruised and bloodied. Police arrive. They cuff the perpetrator. A social worker takes the children into custody.
But in a twist, the police put the cuffs on the parent who's bleeding.
Why would the police arrest a woman who's been abused, rather than her abuser?
Because in this case it was the father who had been abused, not the mother. And despite his explanation that he was the victim, the police cuffed him anyway.
Here's the story about David Woods, by Glenn Sacks and Ned Holstein:
No one believed me.
Please let me know what you think.
A pretty disturbing story, Paul. It's continually troubling the way society seems to have real difficulty fine-tuning and treat people as individual cases -- determining which parent gets custody, determining which parent is abusive, etc. solely on the basis of sex is ridiculous, but I guess putting people in those boxes makes it easier for authorities to make decisions and move on -- like racial profiling does for the police. Lord knows, we wouldn't want to spend the money required to allow the system to make a more considered determination.
ReplyDeleteGender profiling. Interesting thought, James.
ReplyDelete