Solicit A Murder, Spend Two Years In Jail

March 15, 2005 – 1:00 am

Johnnie and Melissa Blankinship’s 2003 marriage apparently wasn’t working. In 2004, Johnnie told Melissa that he wanted a divorce. Melissa, in turn, told her ex-husband that she wanted to have Johnnie murdered so she could collect on his $500,000 life insurance policy.

The ex-husband contacted police who set Melissa up with an undercover agent. Melissa gave the undercover agent $10,000, a sawed-off shotgun and a color picture of her husband.

Given the evidence, Melissa plead guilty to soliciting murder. She might as well have plead guilty to embezzlement as the judge in the case sentenced her to just two years in jail and eight years probation.

Melissa’s attorney claimed that Johnnie had physically abused her. Which, of course, would explain why she wanted to kill him when he tried to divorce her. A court-appointed psychologist testified that Melissa was suffering from postpartum depression, a personality disorder and battered woman’s syndrome from her previous marriage. All of which, of course, are universally recognized as excuses for coolly planning a murder-for-hire.

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, when the judge announced the verdict,

Johnnie Blankinship looked to his family and said, “You’re kidding me.”

Indeed.

Sources:

Wife confesses in murder plot. Eric Stirgus, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 2, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Domestic Violence | Comments (0)

Villanova University Backs Down on Honoring Baby Killer

March 15, 2005 – 1:00 am

Villanova University found itself the focus of controversy in February over its plans to honor a professor who killed her 6-month old baby and then committed suicide in jail in August 2003.

Mine Ener had been a professor of history at Villanova and director of the school’s Center for Arab American Studies. In 2003 she gave birth to a baby girl who suffered from Down’s syndrome. According to police, Ener suffered from postpartum depression, for which she received medication, and did not want her daughter to “go through life suffering.”

So she slashed the baby’s throat. Later, while in jail awaiting 2nd degree murder charges, she killed herself by reportedly placing a plastic bag over her head and suffocating herself to death.

In 2004, a Villanova committee decided to honor Ener by creating the Mine Ener Memorial Study Space in the school’s Falvey Library. The space was designed to “commemorate Ener’s life and work” according to Villanova’s history department. A plaque was to be erected in the library, but before it could be put up, the national media got hold of the story.

The main problem with the plaque was that the university and Ener’s colleagues seemed to be skipping over the whole episode of Ener murdering her infant as if it was all but irrelevant. For example, here’s the text of the invitation that Villanova sent out for the ceremony at which the plaque was to be unveiled,

Villanova students are cordially invited to attend a brief ceremony to dedicate the Mine Ener Memorial in the Study Lounge on the first floor of Falvey Library, to take place on Thursday, January 20, at 9:30 am in the Library. Refreshments will be served.

A popular teacher and widely published specialist on the history of the modern Middle East, Dr. Ener joined the History Department faculty in 1996, and was associate professor and Director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies from 2002 until her death in August 2003.

The Memorial has been funded by donations from her many friends, family and colleagues to the Mine Ener Memorial Fund Committee, consisting of Rev. Kail C. Ellis, O.S.A., Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences;Dr. Barbara Wall, Special Assistant to the President for Mission Effectiveness; Dr. Adele Lindenmeyr, Professor and Chair of History; and Dr. Seth Koven, Associate Professor of History. The funds have been used to purchase furnishings for the new student lounge in the Library.

Many of the people who knew Ener defended the plaque claiming that the idea was to honor and remember the Ener they knew and worked with, not the person whose mental faculties progressively slipped to the point where she could murder her infant. As Dom Giordano told Cybercast News Service, however, the circumstances surrounding the murder and suicide certainly make sympathy toward her and her family understandable, but celebrating such a person is simply unacceptable.

In fact, Villanova University itself has taken the same stance in the past. In 1997, a major donor to Villanvoa — John du Pont — was convicted of the 1996 murder of Olympic wrestler David Schultz. Like Ener, du Pont was found guilty but mentally ill (he suffered from schizophrenia).

Did Villanova prefer to remember DuPont the way he was before his mental problems drove him to kill? Not exactly. Instead it quickly stripped his surname off of the basketball court/gymnasium which until then had been named after DuPont in gratitude for all the money he gave them.

And they were right. Despite what DuPont may or may not have been like before his mental illness drove him to murder, killing another human being is not just something you can cast off to the side over refreshments at a ceremony honoring someone.

Villanova eventually caved, and removed the plaque honoring Ener.

Sources:

Catholic University honors popular teacher who killed her baby. Kathleen Rhodes, CNSNews.Com, January 27, 2005.

Villanova Removes Plaque. WPVI.Com, January 31, 2005.

Silent reminders in Villanova halls. John Grogan, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 18, 2005.

Mom Kills Infant Daughter With Down Syndrome, Then Kills Self. Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express, September 3, 2003.

John du Pont Convicted of Murder. Ginny and John Dover, Schizophrenia.Com, 1997.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Violence | Comments (0)

Oregon Researcher Finds Young Women More Likely to Engage in Interpersonal Aggression than Men

March 15, 2005 – 1:00 am

Research involving domestic violence has suggested that men and women tend to be equally likely to engage in acts of violence, though due to size and other differences women are more likely to sustain a serious injury from such violence. Deborah Capaldi, a researcher at the Oregon Social Learning Center wanted to study interpersonal violence in a controlled setting and was surprised by the results — young women in her study were four times more likely to initiate physical aggression such as slapping, poking and kicking.

Capaldi brought young couples in to her lab and gave them problem-solving exercises they had to work together to solve. Capaldi then recorded their behavior and analyzed who initiated physical aggression. She found that women aged 18 years old were four times more likely to initiate aggression than men. This effect gradually went away with age, until 26 when women initiated aggression only slightly more often then men.

Capaldi told The Register-Guard (Oregon),

Who were the primary initiators of such slaps, pokes and kicks? The women. . . . Women engage in aggression and we’re not doing them any favors by denying they have any part in it.

According to The Register-Guard, Capaldi was surprised at some of the acts of physical aggression they observed in a laboratory setting,

Capaldi said she and her colleagues expect some verbal arguments but were surprised by the extent of slaps, pokes and kicks as partners discussed such assigned topics as planning a party, where to go on a date, or how to deal with such issues as jealousy and lack of money.

If hit or poked, the men and women were about equally as likely to respond in kind. None of the physical aggression was severe, which researchers would have halted, Capaldi said.

Capaldi’s research is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Family Violence.

Finally, The Register-Guard interviewed for its story Margo Schaefer, who runs Womenspace which is a domestic violence shelter. Schaefer told The Register-Guard that there is a difference between men and women when it comes to violence,

The most common cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44 is domestic violence — you don’t see that for men.

The claim that domestic violence is the number one cause of injury for women or some subset of women is one of those myths that simply won’t go away. In fact, the number one cause of injury for both men and women are accidental falls. Domestic violence doesn’t occupy the second spot either, with that being claimed by automobile accidents. In fact, only about 1 percent of women’s injury-related visits to the emergency rooms appear related to assault by a male intimate.

It doesn’t benefit anyone to either downplay or exaggerate the extent of domestic violence as Ms. Schaefer and other domestic violence advocates routinely do.

Source:

Fingering the aggressor. Jeff Wright, The Register-Guard, January 29, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Domestic Violence | Comments (0)

Blaming the Victim in a Domestic Violence Case

March 15, 2005 – 1:00 am

When is it okay to blame the victim in a case of domestic violence that leads to murder? When the victim is male.

Consider the case of Ruth Anne Willis and her ex-husband Russell Bailey. Willis and Bailey were divorced in 1996 and Willis was granted sole custody of their two daughters, and Bailey was granted visitation every other week and one evening per week. Ms. Willis later relocated her daughters in the Summer of 2001 over Bailey’s objections.

As divorce lawyer Larissa Fedak told the Dundas Star News, the family law process worked very well for Willis until recently when a dispute arose about where her youngest daughter would attend the Canadian equivalent of high school.

The daughter wanted to attend a private school near Bailey’s residence. Willis apparently was vehemently opposed to any sort of private education. After discussing with his daughter her desire to attend the private school, Bailey decided to file for sole custody of his younger daughter in order to allow her to attend the school. Apparently Willis believed that he was likely to succeed.

So on one of the weekends in which Bailey’s younger daughter was visiting him, Willis drove with her 15-month old baby to confront him. While Bailey was on the phone with a 911 operator, Willis put the baby down in its seat, picked up a semi-automatic gun, and shot Bailey 8 times, including once in the head while he was on the ground. Willis tried to continue shooting, but the gun failed to fire on the 9th shot.

Willis was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the first 13 years of her life sentence. She is considering appealing the sentence.

Anyway, what caught my eye was this assessment from Sally Palmer, professor emeritus of McMaster University’s social work program, who told the Dundas Star News,

The seeds for the murder are in the violent relationship that started long before the custody issue, and it’s really impossible for us to know whether one parent contributed more to this than the other. But they were both guilty of putting their own needs before those of their two daughters by engaging in mutual violence.

Color me skeptical, but I can’t imagine Palmer making the ludicrous claim above if Bailey had murdered Willis rather than vice versa. It’s amazing how there’s no excuse for interpersonal violence . . . except, of course, when there is.

Source:

Dundas shooting highlights emotion of custody battles. Craig Campbell, Dundas Star News, January 28, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Domestic Violence | Comments (0)

British Prison Service Settles Complaint with Lesbian Guards

March 15, 2005 – 1:00 am

Great Britain’s Prison Service reached a settlement with nine lesbian prison guards who had accused the Prison Service of sexual discrimination.

Back in March 2002, the nine prison guards were transferred out of Holloway Prison after a five-month investigation claimed they were part of an organized group that was sexually harassing female staff at the prison.

At the time, the women were accused of harassing heterosexual female staff and trying to pressure them to become lesbians. Martin Narey, then director general of the Prison Service, said at the time,

The findings of the investigation report into bullying and intimidation of staff at Holloway have deeply concerned me. The findings reveal that sexual harassment, bullying and intimidation of staff have taken place, and have not, until now, been properly challenged. Behavior of this kind will not be tolerated in the prison service. Management should be tough. It should be robust. But it should never be intimidating. Bullying and sexual harassment are totally unacceptable. These staff who have been there some time effectively established themselves as an alternative management structure. They turned Holloway into an unhealthy place in which to be going to work.

Former Holloway staff member Terry White went further, telling The Observer,

They wanted the challenge of turning straight women. They would target the best looking and most feminine of the new recruits, especially the young ones from outside London.

The women responded with a complaint calling the allegations unfounded. In January, the Prison Service reached a settlement that explicitly stated the sexual harassment claims were in fact unfounded. The Prison Service also agreed to a six-figure settlement with the nine women and allowed them to apply for jobs at Holloway Prison in the future.

Sources:

Damages for lesbian prison guards. The BBC, January 28, 2005.

Lesbian Prison Officers Disciplined. The Observer, March 18, 2002.

Lesbian prison officers claim sexual discrimination. Dan Thomas, Personnel Today, January 13, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Sexual Harassment, Great Britain | Comments (0)

Monkeys Will Pay for Porn

March 12, 2005 – 1:00 am

Just like members of a certain other species, researchers at Duke University Medical Center discovered that male monkeys will pay for pornography.

According to a press release describing the research,

In the new work, researchers Robert Deaner, Amit Khera and Michael Pitt . . . tested this hypotheses by measuring how much fruit juice monkeys would accept or forgo to see photographs of familiar monkeys, permitting the researchers to compare monkey’s valuation of different types of social information. Male monkeys “paid” in juice to view female hindquarters or high-ranking monkey’s faces, but required “overpayment” to view low-ranking monkeys’ faces. Despite living in a captive colony, the value monkeys placed on information about potential sexual partners and powerful individuals matched the relative importance of these individuals for behavioral success in the wild. This study demonstrates that monkeys assess visual information by its social value and provides the first evidence that they spontaneously discriminate between images of others based on the social rank or classification of individuals.

The monkeys in this case were rhesus macaques. Apparently no one told the researchers that monkey pornography is just like terrorism.

Sources:

Monkeys pay per view. Press Release Cell Press, January 27, 2005.

Monkeys pay to view porn. BetterHumans.Com, January 28, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Pornography | Comments (0)

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko Denies Rwandan Genocide Charges

March 12, 2005 – 1:00 am

Lawyers for Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the first woman to be charged with genocide by the international tribune prosecuting those alleged to have participated in the Rwandan genocide, maintained their clients innocence as the defense began its part of the trial.

Nyiramasuhuko and her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, are accused of organizing and inciting troops in the Rwandan town of Butare to carry out genocide. According to the prosecution, Butare was a town in which Hutu-Tutsi relations were generally good before the genocide, so the government sent Nyiramasuhuko and her son to the town to ensure that soldiers their followed through on the genocide plan.

Witnesses have testified at her trial that she instructed soldiers to rape the best looking Tutsi women before killing them. Ntahobali is accused of participating in the raping and killing of Tutsi women.

Source:

Rwandan denies genocide charges. The BBC, January 31, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Rwanda, Pauline Nyiramashuhuko, Rape | Comments (0)

Affairs Major Reason for Divorce in UK, Where Women Initiate Almost all Divorces

March 12, 2005 – 1:00 am

In January, the BBC reported on a UK survey of divorce lawyers that asked the lawyers to provide statistics on the causes of the divorces they handled.

According to the survey, adultery was the number one cause of divorce in Great Britain, with 27 percent of divorces being initiated because one of the partners had an affair. In 75 percent of those cases, the adulterous spouse was the husband.

After adultery, 11 percent of marriages ended due to family-related strains, and 17 percent from emotional or physical abuse.

The study also reported that women were overwhelmingly the initiators of divorces, petitioning for divorce in 93 percent of the cases handled by the lawyers in the survey.

Source:

Affairs ‘main reason for divorce’ The BBC, January 23, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Marriage, Great Britain | Comments (0)

Woman Accused of Faking Internet Harassment

March 12, 2005 – 1:00 am

Bess Carney, 27, made national news in January after being accused of a strange fake Internet harassment scheme.

The Vermont woman is accused of setting up an e-mail account in the name of a former co-worker after said co-worker began dating one of Carney’s friends. Carney allegedly then used the e-mail account to send herself harassing and bizarre e-mails. She then forwarded the e-mails on to other associates to make it look like her former co-worker was unstable and harassing her.

Carney apparently also reported to police that the former co-worker was harassing her via e-mail.

As a result of all this, she was arrested in January and charged with charged with one felony county of identity theft for allegedly pretending to be the former co-worker in the e-mails, along with misdemeanor charges of filing a false police report and unauthorized computer access. She faces up to 3 years in jail and a $5,000 fine on the felon identity theft charge, and up to six months in jail and a $500 fine on each of the misdemeanor charges.

Carney plead not guilty to all charges.

Source:

Woman said to have using co-worker’s e-mail to make fake threats. Associated Press, January 28, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Vermont, Miscellaneous | Comments (0)

Canadians Can Go Back to Masturbating in the Comfort of Their Own Homes

March 12, 2005 – 1:00 am

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned a man’s conviction in one of the most bizarre cases this writer’s heard of — a British Columbia man had been convicted in 2000 of indecency for masturbating in his own living room.

Two of the man’s busybody neighbors were able to witness the event through an opening in the man’s living room blinds. Of course in order to do so, first they had to uses first binoculars and then a telescope (the husband actually tried to videotape the man).

The man already served a four month prison sentence (!), but the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that since the man clearly did not realize he was being watched — and who expects the idiot neighbors to pull out a telescope (doesn’t Canada have Peeping Tom laws?) — he was not acting indecently.

Writing for the court, Mr. Justice Morris Fish wrote,

I do not believe it [the indecency law] contemplates the ability of those who are neither entitled, nor invited, to enter a place to see or hear from the outside — through uncovered windows or open doors — what is transpiring inside.

Thank goodness it is once again safe to masturbate in the comfort of one’s home in Canada.

Sources:

Court OKs masturbation at home. Wendy Cox, Cnews, January 27, 2005.

Living romo window not public, Supreme Court rules. Globe and Mail, January 27, 2005.

By Brian Carnell | Posted in Miscellaneous, Canada | Comments (0)