DontMakeHerMad.com News Articles

Surveillance reveals child abuse in the classroom

2008-05-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Here at DontMakeHerMad.com, we advocate the use of surveillance to expose false allegations of domestic abuse by women against men. This is not only to capture the absence of a man's abusiveness, but also to accurately portray the context in which a man may very well be constantly abused (emotionally or physically) by a woman. The reason why this is necessary is because of a prevailing attitude that doubts the veracity of a man's claims that he is being abused -- more specifically, doubts him when his word clashes with that of a woman.

It is with this in mind -- the tendency to accept a woman's word as true more often than a man's word -- that we highlight the following story. In this case, it is the word of an adult female teacher against the word of a child in her classroom. A 5-year-old boy, Gabriel Ross, had been complaining to his parents about how terribly he was being treated by his female teacher. The teacher denied any form of abuse, claimed she was being calm and professional to the boy, and suggested that the boy needed remedial counseling. To find out the truth, the boy's parents placed an audio recorder in the boy's pocket and sent him to school -- the same kind of extended play audio recorder that we recommend on this site. What the recording later revealed shocked the community.

Here is a video news story that includes a news anchor interviewing the parents, and playing excerpts of the recording:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4945581&page=1

In it, the teacher can be heard using the power of group shame, humiliating the boy in front of his classroom, calling him pathetic, telling him he is "done, period," calling him ignorant and self absorbed.

In an adult context, it is considered power and control -- even labeled as domestic abuse -- when an adult male humiliates and degrades his wife or partner within earshot of others. It is thus considered domestic abuse because he is considered powerful, controlling, and intimidating -- and she is considered helpless and powerless. We believe it's possible that, for adults, the sexes can be reversed in such a scenario (and research demonstrates it). But in this case, we have the powerful -- an adult (in a position of authority, no less) vs. a child (not only a child, but sensitive to the approval or scorn of his classmates). The notion that women who obtain social or authoritative power are not capable of emotional violence is clearly debunked in this case. What is worse is the sheer degree of the power differential between the teacher and the student:

Group-based abuse: The teacher had the power to manipulate the class as a group, so that it would impose shame. She did so.

Abuse of social authority: The teacher was in a position of authority, and used this authority as the leader of the class, and also used her professional standing to conceal her actions to the parents and the administration.

Abuse of physical advantages: The teacher's size advantage over the child was also used to intimidate. Size advantage alone does not convey guilt (contrary to what feminists assert). But in this case, we can infer that the teacher abused her advantage in physical stature because of what is said in the above news interview between the news anchor and the parents. The parents claim that the teacher put her face right up to the boy's face, and berated him. This would be considered battering in a domestic context, and rightly ought to be considered child abuse in a scholastic context.

Feminists love to claim that women who do violence (including emotional violence) in the domestic sphere are only reacting to a context of male-imposed domination and intimidation. They justify laws that punish males more severely (in sentencing and also in arrest) because they think of female abusers as mere victims, lashing out at their oppressors. Such feminist ideologues would never dream that a woman can be abusive and intimidating on her own -- either in the domestic sphere or in a professional setting. Yet, here we have proof of it.

The lesson to be learned is this: an allegation by a male against a female can be deflected by a simple denial by the female of its truthfulness. Trying to determine the truth of female-on-male violence is frustrated when all we have to work with are words; the abuse suffered by males is then considered a case of "he said, she said" and dismissed as a squabble. This is not the case when the allegations of abuse are being made by females against males; law enforcement (and, in this context, professional authorities) are usually inclined to believe a female accuser without any further argument. It is because of this bias that DontMakeHerMad.com so strongly advocates the use of surveillance to reveal the truth.

We praise the parents of Gabriel Ross for their courage to expose the truth using surveillance. We urge anyone who is facing emotional or physical abuse to record it using the equipment we have identified. Finally, we urge victims of abuse to leave such abusive situations as soon as they have collected sufficient proof revealing just who the true aggressor really is.

Remember, retaliation with abuse against an abuser tends to backfire. Keep this point in mind: Don't Make Her Mad -- just record her abuse. Record it, and show the world the silent hell that males have been living in within our hyper-judgmental culture.

Amazing: Feminist video blogger recognizes false rape claims, due to surveillance

2008-04-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

Check this out: a feminist/liberal blogger, Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, recognizes the existence of false allegations of rape as a result of surveillance footage which appears to exonerate the accused.

Of course, the blogger's real motivation for this concession is not to issue a "mea culpa" of the feminist tendency to give unjustified weight to all rape allegations. Rather, it is an attempt by a left-winger to belittle and neutralize a right-wing ideological opponent. The alleged rapist is a local political operative in the Republican Party, and the accuser is a gay man from a local college fraternity. Bizarre would be a word that applies, because in this case we're talking about false rape allegations following taped gay sex.

But I nevertheless call "amazing" the concession -- by a feminist -- that rape is too easy an alligation to make, disproved only through incontrovertible evidence (like surveillance, which we at DontMakeHerMad.com have long advocated to thwart false allegations of domestic violence).

Here is the video.

One final note. The above video mentions the strong possibility that the false accuser will be prosecuted for lying to police. Of course he'll be prosecuted for lying to police; after all, he is a man.

Latest feminist campaign: "Report IT on Angela Shelton Day"

2008-03-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

Today I learned of a feminist campaign to organize people to report sexual violence to police. It is called "Angela Shelton Day." It is so named because the chief organizer, feminist Angela Shelton, wrote a book in which she sought out other women named Angela Shelton and claims that 70 percent of them had been victimized by sexual violence, just like her. So she is trying to organize a campaign to get victims to show up at courthouses across the United States on April 29, known as "Angela Shelton Day." There is a Web site, and a series of videos here:

http://reportit.blip.tv/

While perusing the above sites, I notice claims that "80 percent of sexual violence goes unreported." In one video, an advocate asserts that such events are "evidence-based tools." It should be noted that the reports taken on Angela Shelton Day are billed as non-police reports, and even include sexual abuse that allegedly happened years and years ago, beyond the statute of limitations, outside the bounds of a trial in which a jury determines the veracity of the charges. Angela Shelton Day considers such reports to be evidence -- and feminists across the country will be drumming up support to inflate such "evidence" on April 29.

I posted a comment for one video, offering my qualified support:

Is there a way to also report false allegations of sexual violence? This would also be a way to reinforce true victims by reducing the skepticism surrounding reports. If we enforced laws about clear fabrications, the public (and law enforcement) would have even more confidence in those who come forward.

Report it!

Maybe we ought to have a Collin Finnerty Day (one of the men on the Duke Lacrosse team who was falsely charged with rape -- and later exonerated).

Marc Rudov to host his own radio talk show

2008-03-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Marc Rudov, an advocate for men and fathers and frequent guest on FOX News programs (as well as many other media appearances worldwide), has begun his own radio talk show. Per his recent newsletter:

On Thursday, 03.27.08, at 2PM ET (11AM PT), I will
begin hosting a new radio talkshow, "The Marc Rudov
Show." This show will succeed ONLY if YOU call me on
the air. I'll use this platform as another weapon in
my arsenal -- besides my Website, books, podcasts,
articles, and radio/TV guest appearances -- to inspire
men to take action, to improve their lives. Go to
www.MarcRudovRadio.com for details. The call-in number
is: 877.474.3302. Use it!

Also: Tell your friends around the world to tune in.
WSRadio will archive all the shows.

West Virginia Legislature Passes Bill Criminalizing False Allegations of Child Abuse

2008-03-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

Via ANCPR:

Bill would criminalize making false allegations of abuse

MARTINSBURG -- Nine times, one aggrieved father says he fought to protect his name and his relationship with his daughters after he was accused of child abuse in a custody dispute.

The man, whose name we will not use to protect the identity of his daughters, said he is pleased that West Virginia legislators last week passed a bill that slaps criminal charges on those who falsely report child abuse or neglect in order to influence a custody case.

On Thursday, state senators passed House Bill 3065, after the measure met overwhelming approval in the House of Delegates last week. The bill charges those who make a false abuse report with a $1,000 fine, or forces the plaintiff to pay for the defendant's legal fees. The misdemeanor crime would also carry a punishment of up to 60 hours of community service.

The man, previously a resident of Huntington who now lives in Burlington, Ohio, said in 2003 and 2004, he was accused of breaking and entering, assault and sexual and physical abuse against his two daughters. Faced with serving at least one year in jail and losing custody of his daughters, the man fought the charges.

"They were never proven to be false. They were said to be ‘unsubstantiated.' They found me not guilty. But I know I'm innocent. I want the satisfaction of knowing that on my record it was a lie, but I'll never get that," said the man, who said he spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to prove his innocence. "People have no idea how much time and money this wastes in the system."

In West Virginia, from March 2007 to March 2008, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Child Protective Services received and did paperwork on 37,165 incidents of child abuse. From those, 26,904 cases were further investigated, said John Law, spokesperson for WVDHHR. Only 3,998 cases were found to be substantiated, or less than 20 percent of all investigated incidents.

"There are circumstances of false reports. If it's done intentionally, certainly it's wrong. But there are also circumstances where someone says something and it is later found to be unsubstantiated. It doesn't mean people lied, it means they reported in good faith something they perceived as child abuse," Law said. "A lot of (cases) are proven to be unsubstantiated."

Law said HB 3065 is a bill DHHR will be looking at "very closely."

The lead sponsor of the bill, Delegate Jeff Eldridge, D-Lincoln, said that based on the statistics shown to him, the state spends as much as $18 million per year investigating and processing false abuse allegations.

"So much paperwork and so many man hours are spent investigating abuse allegations and some of them lack sufficient evidence. This bill makes people follow through with their allegations. If they file charges, then there will be a hearing on it," he said.

Eldridge said the bill is a victory for people who truly are abused, and if passed, would save state taxpayers money.

"If the fathers or mothers are truly abusing the spouse, this bill will hold them accountable. At the same time, if they're not truly abusing them, then there will be penalties for whoever filed it. There are consequences to this behavior."

Sen. John Yoder, R-Jefferson, voted in favor of the bill.

"I think it's only reasonable that people who deliberately make false reports of child abuse should be held accountable because it causes a very high degree of disruption to the family and encourages further fighting," Yoder said. "We hold the people who go into the courtroom accountable for their words and we can charge them with perjury. I don't see why someone who swears out a false complaint should not also be held accountable."

Ron Foster, Region 4 coordinator for Men and Women Against Discrimination, or MAWAD, said HB3065 came about because more and more people have been using false allegations in Family Court to have one or more parents removed from the house.

"This is a huge issue. The children get hurt when false allegations are made because they're denied the opportunity to spend time with the parent at a time when they need the parent the most," he said.

The false allegation sets the stage for how much time the accused parent spends with the child after the alleged abuse occurs, and is a tool used regularly in cases involving sexual abuse, child abuse and domestic violence against the spouse, Foster said.

"This bill will definitely benefit child custody proceedings," he said. "We are wasting an inordinate amount of court time. We believe this bill will have a significant effect on the number of cases that go through the court system."

A study conducted in 2007 by MAWAD reviewed all requests and cases involving protective orders in Cabell County Family Court for 2006. The study determined that 76 percent of all cases were dismissed for one reason or another.

Berkeley County Family Judge Sally G. Jackson acknowledged that some of the allegations of domestic violence that she hears are proven false, but said that doesn't mean the person making the accusation lied.

"What somebody thinks is domestic violence, I may not, and I may dismiss the case. But that doesn't mean they're lying," she said. "I have to say sometimes there are cases where it seems people file charges not for very good reasons."

Jackson said many times parents bring domestic violence petitions because a child says something about one of the parents and describes the incident different than it actually was. And what a child says to one parent may not be the same thing said to another parent, she said.

It's for this reason, Jackson said, that parents must communicate with one another.

"Generally, the first thing a parent should do if a child comes home from visitation (and says something happened) is call up the other parent to see what happened," she said. "Parents need to keep their lines of communication open. Parents get so wrapped up in hurting each other, that they forget they're hurting their kids."

For the man, the bill may be too little too late, but that's because he now lives in Ohio.

"I have little to no faith in the judicial system any longer," he said. "Every time I turned around I was being arrested for something I never did. I see how easy the system was to manipulate. I don't want this to happen to anyone else. I don't want someone to go through the hell I went through."

He described his relationship with his children as "great," but every now and then, he said, they ask him why he went to jail.

Now, he said he uses the experience as a teaching tool to show his children the problems that are caused when people lie.

"I use it to teach them to be honest," he said. "I went to jail because someone lied."

Glenn Sacks: False Accuser Almost Ruins Innocent Man's Life, gets Whopping 90 Day Sentence–and Her Attorney Calls It 'Harsh'

2008-02-28T13:09:00.000-08:00

"Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don't result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

"Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff's work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said."

It's rare that a woman goes to jail for making a false rape claim, even though false claims are common. In this case it happened, though--see the San Francisco Chronicle article below.

(As an aside, note her idiot husband--she cheats on him and makes a false rape accusation, and he apparently still wants her. I'll give you 10 to 1 odds that within five years he'll be filling out my Family Law Help Form.

He'll be under a restraining order, booted out of his house, unable to see his kid, and in arrears on his child support, and then he'll write to me for help. And he'll be shocked that I don't know of a pro bono attorney who's willing to drop everything he's doing and go work for him for free.)

San Mateo woman who lied about sex attack to fool husband gets 90 days
John Cote, Chronicle Staff Writer
February 26, 2008

A San Mateo woman sentenced to 90 days in county jail for lying about being sexually assaulted at gunpoint by a group of men made up the story to deceive her husband after coming home from a date, authorities said.

Karyn Galila, 24, sobbed Tuesday in a Redwood City courtroom as Commissioner Kathleen McKenna ordered her taken into custody immediately. Galila was handcuffed as her husband looked on. He tried to hug her before she was led away, but was ordered by a bailiff not to touch her.

Galila apparently concocted the story of being assaulted after her SUV broke down in Foster City to explain to her husband why she had come home late after rendezvousing at a restaurant with a man she had recently met online, according to her probation report.

"This was such a detailed, fabricated story," said McKenna, the San Mateo County Superior Court magistrate who handled sentencing. "This kind of conduct does warrant a jail sentence."

Galila was arrested after initially telling police she had been sexually assaulted the night of June 12 when her Jeep sport utility vehicle broke down on Foster City Boulevard. She admitted she had lied when she said a group of as many as five men had pushed the Jeep onto a nearby street, then assaulted her at gunpoint.

A fingerprint from Galila's SUV led investigators to Robert Salapuddin of San Mateo, whom they arrested on unrelated outstanding warrants for felony forgery and misdemeanor embezzlement, prosecutors said.

Salapuddin, 25, had met Galila online and the two decided to meet at a local restaurant that evening, prosecutors said. Police initially focused on him as a possible participant in the alleged assault, but he was able to produce a receipt from the restaurant and a witness who placed both him and Galila there when the assault was supposedly taking place, authorities said.

Galila pleaded no contest Dec. 31 to one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report.

"She at this point is still struggling to figure out why she conducted herself the way she did," Galila's attorney, Earl Jiang said at sentencing. "She is genuinely sorry for her conduct."

Jiang pleaded for leniency, saying Galila had a young child to care for. But prosecutor Rebecca Baum argued that Galila's actions warranted jail time, saying they could have led to Salapuddin being wrongly incarcerated. McKenna agreed.

Salapuddin was released in July upon pleading no contest to a single count of misdemeanor embezzlement after spending 17 days in jail, prosecutors said. Under his plea deal, he was sentenced effectively to time served.

He is now a fugitive after an arrest warrant was issued for him in November because he failed to pay $900 in restitution in that case, prosecutors said.

Galila, a dental assistant, now faces jail time and a court order to pay police about $5,000 to cover the cost of their investigation.

Jiang said outside court that he was disappointed in the sentence, calling it "harsh."

Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don't result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff's work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said.

The unique element in Galila's case was McKenna's decision to have her jailed immediately, forcing her to apply from behind bars for an alternate sentencing program, Wagstaffe said.

"It's a very, very unusual step," Wagstaffe said. "I think it was because the conduct was outrageous. We have a criminal justice system that is based from A to Z on being able to rely on the truth of our victims."

Discover how she has 'played' you. For the first time ever, a book that tells you exactly how manipulative and deceitful women win against their unsuspecting prey--and there's detailed information about what you can do about it. Read Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary's book "Venus: The Dark Side". Amazon 5 star reviewers say "An astounding book." "Required reading for all young men today." Visit www.venusthedarkside.com

"On domestic violence, no one wants to hear the truth" (Barbara Kay, National Post, Canada)

2008-02-27T15:16:00.000-08:00

From here:

In a just world, Englishwoman Erin Pizzey, who founded the world's first shelter for battered wives in 1971, would be a sought-after speaker on the subject of domestic violence. In the real world, however, Pizzey's name is a byword for politically incorrect apostasy.

Pizzey's crime? A humanist, she challenged the belief system dictated by radical feminists, who colonized her shelter and made her presence untenable. Their ideological mantra, still alive and kicking, insists that men are the default perpetrators in domestic violence (also known as "intimate partner violence," or IPV, in the jargon) while women are invariably innocent victims who inflict violence only in self-defence. But Pizzey knew from her own experience (her wealthy, socially elite parents were mutually abusive, and her mother violent to Erin), and from what the women in her shelter told her, that most partner violence is reciprocal.

Holding women responsible for their violence was so at odds with the received wisdom of the movement's activists that, for her whistle-blowing pains, Pizzey's dog was killed and her entire family received death threats. Undaunted, she pursued her equal-responsibility crusade in the United States for many years in a fusillade of articles and books.

While dramatically extreme, Pizzey's story is nevertheless emblematic of the hostility truth-tellers confront in the domestic violence industry.

Another outlier, University of British Columbia psychology professor Don Dutton, is acknowledged by his peers as a world expert on IPV. He has proven, over and over again -- most recently in his definitive 2006 book, Rethinking Domestic Violence -- that the tendency to violence in intimate relationships is bilateral and rooted in individual dysfunction: Men and women with personality disorders and/or family histories of violence are equally likely to be violent themselves, or seek violent partners.

But Dutton's scientific credentials and extensive 25-year archive of peer-reviewed research cut no ice with Canadian policymakers, none of whom has ever solicited his advice.

Instead, pseudo-science absolving women of violent impulses, delivered on demand to interest groups by the same tiny, incestuous coterie of ideologically sympathetic professionals, is routinely applied in training police, family law judges, social workers and women's shelter personnel.

A lazy, politically correct media dutifully spreads the party line by reporting uncritically on bogus selection-biased "studies" by non-accredited stakeholders, who extrapolate to the general population data that are based on testimonials from men in court-mandated therapy programs or women in shelters.

Ah, women's shelters! Southern Ontario resident Mariel Davison offers up a rather damning story of what happens when naively impartial volunteerism collides with women's shelter groupthink.

Davison has an honours degree in psychology. A few years ago, considering herself an "equal opportunity feminist," she volunteered to serve at a local women's shelter. During eight weeks' "training," Davison was subjected to relentless male-bashing and junk science. That, and the puzzling incongruity of the female-as-victim message with the battered lesbians who also sought refuge -- lesbian violence was a taboo subject amongst trainees -- led to further intellectual inquiry.

Davison thought her trove of cutting-edge findings would prove welcome, but instead they got her turfed by her peers: "I was told I had too much education to volunteer at the shelter."

Incredulous, Davison dogged the shelter's supervising and financing government ministries with demands that they review objective literature, but was stonewalled at every turn. Nothing came of her campaign.

And nothing will for the foreseeable future, because the domestic-violence industry is a closed shop, from Women's Studies courses (don't look for Pizzey's or Dutton's research there, or in Men's Studies, since there are none), to women-only shelters, to Status of Women, to the National Judicial Council, to the Supreme Court of Canada. They're all reading from the same myth-riddled hymnbook.

Erin Pizzey and Don Dutton were both keynote speakers at a recent Sacramento, Calif. conference sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children. Pizzey accepted a lifetime achievement award to a prolonged ovation.

Pizzey told her standing-room-only audience that for gender politics "Canada is the scariest country on the planet." Scary to men who suffer because of it, certainly, but apparently not to most other Canadians, who remain curiously indifferent to the demonstrable misandry permeating the institutions that define and shape our culture.

bkay@videotron.ca

Evidence Proves Innocence After 24 Years

2007-08-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

This is a story about a man who was falsely accused and convicted of rape, sentenced to 45 years in prison, and exonerated by DNA evidence 24 years later. Prior to the exoneration, local prosecutors had refused to look into the case and test the DNA, while the crime lab had repeatedly indicated (falsely) that the evidence was lost. By sheer luck, a worker in the facility where the evidence was stored heard about the case from another man who knew the defendant and was himself exonerated by DNA evidence.

Analysis: Positive development for men. It is positive that yet another falsely accused man has been freed based on DNA evidence proving his innocence. But what is shocking is the lengths to which the prosecutor's office and the crime lab went to ignore or prevent even a DNA test. Technology has been a godsend to falsely accused defendants, in this case DNA technology. But what could have prevented this whole mess is an alibi. Without another human being verifying his whereabouts, how could the defendant in this story, Johhny Briscoe, have proven that he couldn't have committed the crime? DontMakeHerMad.com promotes surveillance technology to prove innocence, before a case can even get to trial. There are now devices that can be nominally used as security cameras, but functionally establish a person's actions and whereabouts with specific time stamps on the images. These devices are called Digital Video Recorders (DVRs).

Ensuring your alibi with surveillance: To men who fear they are at risk of a future false allegation, we recommend one particular device. It's called the EZ Witness (pictured on the right), and costs $198 (USD) at the time of this writing. This device captures video to its internal memory and can be configured to store several weeks worth of images, all timestamped with the current date and time. It is more than enough to demonstrate where you are, when you were there, and what you were doing (or not doing) in the event you are falsely accused of a crime. It is unfortunate that such technology is necessary, but it ensures that one is protected from bogus allegations without requiring the presence of a friendly and accurate human witness.

Court rebuffs McDermott in phone case

2007-05-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled on May 1 that a congressman who shared an illegally taped call with a reporter was not protected for this action by the free speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The recorded phone call in question was an intercepted cell phone conversation taken in 1996 of then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, as he spoke with fellow legislators while driving on the freeway. Political activists opposed to Gingrich intercepted the call, and transferred it to Congressman Jim McDermott (also a political opponent of Gingrich). McDermott then provided the recording to the press, and it is this act that resulted in criminal charges against him, charges which the appeals court refused to overturn. McDermott now has a window of several weeks to decide whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Analysis: Positive development for men. We have written about this case before, on October 31, 2006. The reason why this case is important is that it presents an opportunity for falsely accused men to capture proof of their innocence electronically, and without fear of legal consequences. The reason why this is a positive development for men is that the court ruled that only McDermott is at fault -- and only because he was a sitting member of the House Ethics Committee. The ruling against McDermott, therefore, SETS NO PRECEDENT that would constrain falsely accused men from providing evidence of their innocence to reporters (for example, if elements of the judicial system tried to suppress, penalize, or otherwise block such evidence from exonerating the accused). If McDermott plans to appeal the ruling, we will continue to monitor this case until the final outcome is determined.

Women Escape Jail After Forcing Toddlers to Fight with Weapons

2007-04-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

<a href="http://video.news.sky.com/skynews/video/?&videoSourceID=1261727&flashURL=/feeds/skynews/latest/flash/archive02/toddler_westwood_p5808.flv">Video here</a>.

Four women who were found guilty of forcing toddlers to hit each other with objects have escaped jail, having been given a suspended sentence. The women filmed a 2-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, and forced them to hit each other with a magazine and a hair brush. When the 2-year-old boy refused to fight, they called him a "wimp" and a "faggot."

When the children's father — home from Iraq — found the video, he was searching for film footage of the children merely playing. He reported the abusive women to social services, and now the children's grandmother has care of the children.

In a police interview, one of the abusive women — Carole Olver — said, "I didn't see any harm in toughening them up; I done the same with my own children."

Analysis: Negative development for men. Thousands of military men are risking their lives for their country, yearning to reunite with their families. For such a man to learn that such abuse existed, then to report it only to have the perpetrators let free, is simply an injustice.

Women are routinely given less severe sentences for their crimes, compared to men. Men can be separated from both their children and their own homes merely on the word of a woman, via a restraining order. But even when a man has videotaped proof of women committing a crime, four women are essentially given a slap on the wrist. This double-standard in the application of the law hurts men, imposing harsher punishments on flimsy evidence. It hurts society by teaching women offenders that the consequences of their actions are not serious. Most of all, it hurts children by separating them from their fathers on the flimsiest of evidence, and by assuming children are always better-off when left in the care of women.

Women must be treated with the same harshness — or mercy — as men, in criminal procedings. Prosecutors should have the courage to pursue justice against female criminals, without fear of public backlash merely because the suspects are women. In this case, the judge should have imposed jail time — but instead allowed four proven child abusers to go free.