Augusta, Canada–This story encapsulates many of the problems with the modern domestic violence system–it’s anti-male bias, it’s insistence on holding only men accountable and sweeping female violence under the rug, and “Zero Tolerance”-style idiocy.
In this case, the woman says she was just as responsible as her ex was for the domestic violence incident, yet he’s the one in jail. Then when she visits him, he’s sentenced to serve nine months in jail because he violated his restraining order. How? By not refusing to see her when she visited him in jail!
The best line in the story is this:
Asked how an inmate could have avoided contact with a banned person while incarcerated, District Attorney Evert Fowle said Crandall should have notified jail officials.
“He should have said, ‘I’m not supposed to have contact,'” Fowle said.
Get it? See, the woman is a child who should not and cannot be held accountable for her own actions and decisions. The man–because he’s the only one in the scenario who can be treated as an adult capable of being held accountable–has to be responsible for her decisions. She decides to visit him? He needs to make the decision for her–or he’s punished.
It’s kind of a shame, too–instead of playing victim-for-gain, the woman here voluntarily took responsibility for her part in their problems. Sad to see her class act turned upside down.
From Jail visits lead to more time locked up (Kennebec Journal, 6/25/08):
AUGUSTA — As soon as an inmate from Vassalboro had a visitor at the Kennebec County jail in Augusta, he was violating a court order.
Marshall Crandall IV, of Vassalboro, was sentenced to serve nine months in jail Tuesday at a Kennebec County Superior Court hearing after he pleaded guilty to three counts of violating conditions of release for having contact with the visitor.
Crandall, 39, had been arrested April 4 and charged with domestic assault. That charge was dropped Tuesday in exchange for his plea to violating the court order.
A condition of release on the domestic assault charge banned him from contact with the woman — the same woman who visited him at the jail.
The violations occurred April 5, 10 and 15, when the woman named as the assault victim visited Crandall, according to jail records.
The woman told the judge on Tuesday the domestic assault was mutual, and that she could have been charged with the same offense in the incident.
“I picked him up three or four times and slammed him on the ground,” she said.
The incident ended when the woman said she asked a neighbor to call police.
“All I wanted was for them to take him for the day so I could move my stuff out of the house,” she said.
Read the full article here. To learn more about the problems with the domestic violence system, click here.