December 1st, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
While we’re on the subject of domestic violence, I may as well mention this little matter.
It seems that the police and various members of the domestic violence establishment of Bangor, Maine got together for a press conference recently to bemoan the state of domestic violence in the state. If you thought that would be an occasion for some vast misrepresentations about the facts of DV, you’d have been right. View the video here.
Unlike Dr. Drew who simply engaged in promoting the current overreaching definition of domestic violence, the good folks in Bangor demand nothing less than the re-engineering of – you guessed it – men. It seems there’s been a spate of domestic murder-suicides in Maine over the past several months, and that’s got the local DV establishment up in arms.
It’s true of course that murder for any reason is a senseless tragedy about which we should all be deeply concerned. So the people speaking into the microphone are right to be concerned. I’m concerned too.
But it’s too bad that their appropriate concern also includes false claims of fact and wild conclusions about what they believe to be the degraded state of men.
Leading off the press conference is a speaker who tells one and all that we have to “define differently what it means to be a man…” Exactly what that means we’re left to guess, but what’s not speculative is what viewers will make of the statement. It’s safe to conclude that the usual DV establishment narrative will be absorbed – men are the perpetrators of DV; women are its victims. And worse, it’s something inherent in men that makes us violent against women. After all, what else would require a new definition of what it means to be a man?
That of course assumes that most or even all men commit domestic violence against women. That’s not true as countless studies show, but the DV establishment long ago ceased caring whether its “facts” were accurate. Since men and women are equally likely to commit DV, that must mean that we need a new definition of what it means to be a woman, but you didn’t hear anyone at the press conference saying that.
Likewise, reliable data on DV show that men and women are equally likely to commit non-reciprocal violence. But when the violence is two sided, 70% of the incidents were started by women. That in turn tends to result in injury to the woman. So if DV advocates truly wanted to protect women from harm, one of their slogans, repeated again and again, would be “don’t hit first.”
But we never hear that from DV advocates. That’s because they doggedly refuse to acknowledge the truth about DV – that women have an equal role in stopping it. This is not news. Back in the early 1970s, Erin Pizzey, who opened the first women’s DV shelter in the UK, realized that a large percentage of the women coming to her shelter reported being violent themselves. Pizzey recognized immediately that, to protect women from harm, she needed to teach them to control their own violent aggression.
For that little act of apostasy, Pizzey was drummed out of the movement amid a hail of death threats and the murder of her dog. The DV establishment has been traveling the wrong road ever since. Simply put, pretending that women don’t commit DV means that women can’t get help; because they can’t get help, they continue to attack their often larger, stronger partners, sometimes with tragic results.
Men need to learn to avoid violence in their intimate relationships. So do women. To date, the DV establishment is content to look at only half the problem. Is it any wonder that their “solution” to the problem doesn’t work? Not for nothing have bureaucrats who monitor VAWA said frankly that there’s no evidence that it has had, after 17 years, any effect on levels of domestic violence.
Meanwhile, back at the press conference, one speaker did hastily say that both sexes commit DV, but that truth must have been too traumatic for her because in her next sentence, she lied. She claimed that, of the 11 deaths due to DV in Maine this year, all were perpetrated by men.
I guess she forgot about this case (True Crime Report, 6/27/11).
It seems that, back in June, Bangor resident Roxanne Jeskey overheard her husband Richard talking on the phone to an ex-girlfriend. A few hours later, Richard Jeskey was dead, apparently brutally murdered by Roxanne who is now in jail without bail indicted for his murder.
He was found bloody and brutally beaten in the bathtub. His entire body showed signs of massive trauma.
Wrote Detective David Bushey in an affidavit: “These included nose fractures, loss of an eye, rib fractures, rectal incised wounds, and internal hemorrhage from an instrument(s) pushed through his scrotum into his abdomen. Further, Mr. Jeskey was strangled with sufficient force to break the hyoid bone of his neck.”
Needless to say, Roxanne claims to have been a victim of Richard’s DV, but to date there’s no evidence of that. Her lawyer claims she was covered from head to toe with bruises, but her mug shot shows none.
More importantly, the pair lived in an apartment with neighbors on either side. This article quotes them as saying the Jeskey’s seemed like a normal, quiet couple to whom nothing untoward seemed to happen (Bangor Daily News, 6/23/11). There were never any reports of shouting, blows or impacts emanating from their apartment. The pair were often seen together and Roxanne was a talkative, cheerful neighbor.
Did anyone ever see bruises or indications of violence? No one mentioned any such thing.
But on the night of Richard’s slaying, they heard a lot. Indeed, two different neighbors came to the Jeskey’s door on separate occasions, only to be met by Roxanne who reported that everything was fine.
So my guess is that her claim of victimization is a crock, a lie concocted in the hope of avoiding prison for her brutal act. We’ll see how the trial plays out.
While we wait for that, the press conference held the other day can be seen as, in part, an attempt by the DV establishment to exonerate her for her apparent crime, to which she’s pleaded not guilty. After all, the claim that there have been no DV-related deaths in Maine this year committed by women is outright false. The claim that we have to change the definition of what it means to be a man is a direct slam at a dead man whose wife claims, against all the apparent evidence that he deserved to die.
So, far from opposing domestic violence, the people at the press conference seem to find some DV perfectly fine, thank you. If they didn’t, wouldn’t they say so? After all, that’s what press conferences are for.
Thanks to Tatyana for the heads-up.