Sharing the blame for child abuse
Keith Thompson

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Stanford associate professor Carol Delaney has a four-letter word for people who brutalize children. The word is male.

"No one is stating the obvious," Delaney declared in a letter to The Chronicle ("Crimes are by males," Aug. 5). Citing the graphic string of high- profile child abductions and murders in recent months, she added: "These hideous crimes are being committed by men."

"What has gone so wrong in the rearing of males in this society?" Delaney asked. "I am disappointed by the silence of decent men who are not taking this on as a men's problem."

Delaney stopped short of saying what's probably on the minds of many cable news viewers these days. Males are violent because violence is masculine; females are the ones who suffer. Conversely, female brutality is rare and almost always unintentional - the result of provocation, mental illness, or various "situational" factors that cause women to believe violence is their only option.

The consensus for these beliefs runs deep in post-feminist America. We could just embrace them as self-evident truths and start from there, except for a niggling complication. The beliefs aren't supported by facts.

To the contrary, empirical data from numerous studies decisively challenges the notion that child abuse in America is exclusively -- or even primarily -- a men's problem. "Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States, a greater share of physical child abuse, an equal rate of sibling violence and assaults on the elderly, about a quarter of child sexual abuse, an overwhelming share of the killings of newborns, and a fair preponderance of spousal assaults," writes feminist author and crime journalist Patricia Pearson in her book "When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence. "

A study by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System found that approximately 879,000 children were victims of child maltreatment in 2000. Based on reports provided by U.S. child protective services agencies, 60 percent of perpetrators were females and 40 percent were males. The Department of Health and Human Services reached a similar conclusion for the prior year: "Female parents were identified as the perpetrators of neglect and physical abuse for the highest percentage of child victims."

Powerful cultural prejudice works against recognizing abusive women as a widespread malaise. For instance, a Washington state human services professional reported that an accused female offender was brought before a judge who dismissed the case, declaring, "Women don't do things like this." Boston psychologist Laurie Goldman, who analyzed how society minimizes the scale and impact of female sexual abuse, initially located only one woman offender willing to discuss what she had done. Goldman knew from reliable sources that female perpetrators were getting treatment, but clinic administrators insisted that no such women were under their care.

Pearson says women in Western culture learned to express their bids for power in ways concealed from men. Paradoxically, many women also learned to hide their capacity for aggressive violence from themselves, "as if half the population of the globe consisted of saintly stoics who never succumbed to fury, frustration, or greed," she writes in "When She Was Bad."

If shining the spotlight on female perpetrators is overdue, it doesn't warrant holding male offenders less accountable. Fathers were responsible for 22 percent of sexual abuse in 2000, according to the NCANDS study mentioned above. So Carol Delaney's question waits. Why haven't decent American men as a whole accepted responsibility for the ghastly murders of Polly Klaas and Samantha Runnion?

Probably for the same reason decent American women didn't collectively confess to the wanton killing of Michael and Alex Smith. Remember them? They died horrendous deaths strapped to their car seats after their mother, Susan Smith, deliberately released the emergency brake on her car and let it roll into a South Carolina lake. Smith stood on the shore and watched as the car containing her defenseless sons disappeared under the water's surface.

If David Westerfield's murder of Danielle van Dam is a collective men's problem, does it follow that Smith's drowning of her young sons is a collective women's problem? Not unless we're ready to head down the road to full-blown ideological idiocy.

Still, collective responsibility has its place. As a culture, let's start by recognizing Westerfield and Smith as two faces of the same sadistic beast, concealed by gender wars that will end only when we're ready to see the universal face of human cruelty. In the meantime, maybe a minimum requirement for "decent" persons could be the refusal to exploit the tragedy of exploited children from the sanctuary of great universities.

Keith Thompson

The My Lai Massacre (pronounced mee-lye) (Vietnamese: thảm sát Mỹ Lai) was the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, by U.S. soldiers on March 16, 1968, in the hamlet of My Lai, during the Vietnam War. It prompted widespread outrage around the world and reduced American support at home for the war in Vietnam. The massacre is also known as the Son My Massacre (Vietnamese: thảm sát Sơn Mỹ) or sometimes as the Song My Massacre.

Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, Americal Division arrived in Vietnam in December 1967. Their first month in Vietnam passed without any direct enemy contact.

During the Tet Offensive of January 1968, attacks were carried out in Quang Ngai by the 48th Battalion of the NLF (National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam). US military intelligence formed the view that the 48th Battalion, having retreated, was taking refuge in the village of Song My. A number of specific hamlets within that village—labeled My Lai 1, 2, 3 and 4—were suspected of harboring the 48th. US forces planned a major offensive on those hamlets.


Calley was charged on September 5, 1969, with six specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians near the village of My Lai, at a hamlet called Song My, more commonly called My Lai in the U.S. press. In this well documented incident, 500 villagers, mostly women, children, infants and elderly, were assembled and then shot by soldiers of Charlie Company, Americal Division. Some women who survived were gang raped by U.S. soldiers instead of being summarily executed.

US Army Lt William Calley was convicted in 1971 of premeditated murder in ordering the shootings and initially sentenced to life in prison; two days later, however, President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison, pending appeal of his sentence. Calley served 3½ years of house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was then ordered freed by Federal Judge J Robert Elliot. Calley claimed he was following orders from his captain, Ernest Medina; Medina denied giving the orders and was acquitted at a separate trial. Most of the soldiers involved in the My Lai incident were no longer enlisted. Of the 26 men initially charged, Lt Calley's was the only conviction. The entire episode inspired what is known today as a Medina standard.

On 17 March 1970, the United States Army charged 14 officers with suppressing information related to the incident. Most of these charges were dropped.

William Calley-Lieutenant who led C-Company, the only person convicted
David Mitchell - Sergeant
Ronald L. Haeberle - Company Photographer
Charles Sledge - Radio Operator - testified he saw Calley deliberately kill a young child
Paul Meadlo - Private First Class - testified he was afraid of being shot if he didn't participate
Dennis Conti - Private First Class - stated he was originally lost and had to find his company
James Dursi - Private First Class
Allen Boyce - Private First Class
Ronald Grzesik - Private First Class
Robert Maples - Private First Class, stated to have refused to participate
Varnado Simpson - Private First Class, committed suicide in 1997, citing guilt over My Lai
Harry Stanley - claimed to have refused to participate
Gary David Roschevitz - Unknown
Elmer Haywood - Unknown
William Lloyd - Unknown
Lenny Lagunuy - Unknown
Sidney Kye - Unknown
Robert Bergthold - Unknown
Robert Mauro - Unknown
Robert Lee - Unknown
Isaiah Cowan - Unknown
Bruce Cox - Unknown
Harry Stanley - Unknown
Charles Hall - Unknown
Roy Wood - Unknown
Herbert Carter - Unknown
Gregory Olsen - Unknown
Daniel Simone - Unknown

NB "Charlie Company" — the squads deployed in My Lai 4 on the day of the massacre — was overseen by Captain Ernest Medina. According to the sworn eyewitness testimony of many Charlie Company soldiers, Cpt Medina did not merely exhort his subordinate troops to commit wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of the civilian inhabitants of My Lai 4 but was directly responsible for an unspecified number of civilian deaths himself. It also should be noted the platoon led by Calley was one of at least four that swept My Lai 4 on 16 March 1968. Other platoons are therefore implicated in the massacre at My Lai even if Calley's bears the greatest burden of criminality. The above list then supplies only a partial catalogue of the principal alleged perpetrators.

Several years ago when I was still doing construction I had come home off a job from who knows where,I was home for a few days before I would be sent on another job.
It was late sunday afternoon, and I had been watching a football game on tv, my wife was in the bedroom lying on the bed reading a book, my two youngest sons were not there so that left her and I alone, so I walked to the bedroom door and just stood there watching her.

She looked so inviting laying there, so i ask the question, wanna fool around? She answered that question with a question, aren't you hungry? Well yes was my answer!
So she said let me fix dinner, that way we will have the rest of the night, and if we do that now you will fall asleep and wake up hungry later! Well now that sounded like a plan to me, a quiet dinner, just her and I and then, oh what a night.

After dinner she chased me from the kitchen, and she began to doing the dishes, i went to the living room, parked myself in A recliner to watch tv, just waiting for that special time with her.
she came into the room about 1:30am and awakened me from the recliner, and ask, are you comming to bed? I have finished my book!
I fell asleep and she finished her book, oh what a night!

So now I wonder, since she knew that food and sex had the same effect on me, when she ask me if i was hungry, if she just wanted to finish her book, I should be mad now that i think about it...

Let's see if I understand how the world works lately...

If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami at work, he blames
the
restaurant.

If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer,
Your
family
blames the tobacco company.

If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, he
blames
the bartender.

If your grandchildren are brats without manners, You blame television.

If your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you blame the gun
manufacturer.

And if a crazed person breaks into the cockpit and tries to kill the
pilot at 35,000 feet,
and the passengers kill him instead, the mother of the crazed deceased
blames the airline.

I must have lived too long to understand the world as it is anymore.

So, if I die while my old, wrinkled fanny is parked in front of this
computer, I want all of
you to blame Bill Gates

This is an email i got from my daughter in Honolulu yesterday,just i little humor.....

Daddy,

you're gonna love this.

See ya later.

Love, Tracy

Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:28:08 -1000
From: "Ken Coleman"
To:
Subject: Damn Republicans

Plain Text Attachment [ Scan and Save to Computer | Save to Yahoo! Briefcase ]

Three Florida surgeons were playing golf together and discussing
surgeries they had performed. One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon
in Florida. In my favorite case, a concert pianist lost seven
fingers in an accident, I attached them, and 8 months later he
performed a private concert for the Queen of England.

The second surgeon said. "That's nothing. A young man lost an arm and
both legs in an accident, I reattached them, and 2 years later he won
a gold medal in track and field events in the Olympics."

The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a
woman was high on cocaine and marijuana and she rode a horse head-on
into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with
was the woman's blond hair and the horse's ass. I was able to put them
together and now she's a senator from New York