CT Teens Make a Small Error in Avenging 'DV'
July 9th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.My guess is that the teenagers in this story have seen one too many episodes of "The Shield" (MSNBC, 7/2/09). In that seemingly endless series, super tough guy detective Vic Mackey routinely plays the avenging angel, not infrequently for maidens in distress. A guy whose temperature never falls below a slow boil, Mackey burns particularly hot when a woman is injured or threatened. "The Shield" of course is fiction, so Mackey is pretty much always right about who needs his clock cleaned.
Unfortunately, for the teenagers in Torrington, Connecticut, life may imitate art, but sometimes not well enough. A 17-year-old girl heard screams and possibly an impact coming from her mother's bedroom. Concluding that her mother was being beaten by her boyfriend, the girl rounded up some guys who rounded up some baseball bats, broke into the bedroom and whaled away on the boyfriend. The only trouble was that he and the girl's mother were making love, not war. The sounds the girl heard were entirely consensual.
The girls and her friends were arrested and are now charged with assault and conspiracy.
I suppose it had to happen. With the amount of time and resources we devote to domestic violence, there's a heightened sensitivity to it. Literally dozens of articles about DV are written every day. We spend billions of dollars pretending to combat domestic violence. It's a topic for television and radio news; over the years, we've seen and read countless fictional portrayals of DV. Almost without exception, men are portrayed as the perpetrators and women the victims. That contradicts the massive weight of social science on DV that clearly shows that men and women are equally likely to commit and to initiate DV.
But the media don't report the facts about DV, so we can't very well expect the teenagers of Torrington, Connecticut to know those facts. When the whole story about DV is "men bad/women good," can we pretend surprise when a young woman calls on her male friends to play Vic Mackey for a day, and they do?
Thanks to "Fonz" for the heads-up.
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July 10th, 2009 at 5:00 am
This is 'off-topic' in a sense, but part of the problem is that we live in an age where there is somewhat of a 'moral vacuum' - institutions such as the church which once held things intact are and have been in a steady decline for some time; and preaching (by psychotherapists and others) of relativistic ideas such as 'do what makes you comfortable' has contributed to the problem. When you have this type of situation, ideologies such as feminism step in to fill the vacuum, for example into government and the courts;, and angry mobs such as the one in this case, step into the streets.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:20 am
i am for sure no choir boy, but having sex with a boyfriend while your 17 year old teen is in the house is not being a good role model, all things being equal. assuming mom was at one time married to the dad, you can bet big money he was portrayed as the main bad guy in the divorce. sweet 17 daughter is probably a chip off the old mothers block. she needs a lot of help more than she needs incarceration. the macho boys on the other hand have just found out that chivalry is no longer "always" the right path, the hard way. had the daughter called the cops, an understandable reaction i suppose, mom and boyfriend would have some egg on their faces and a good lesson would have been had for all.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:08 am
This is where stereo-typing leads to lynchings etc...
July 10th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Robert, I wanted to e-mail this to you privately, but couldn't find your e-mail address on the site.
Typo correction needed in your post: "A guy who's temperature..." should be "A guy whose temperature..."
July 10th, 2009 at 9:27 am
I didn't believe this story until I noticed that it was from the Associated Press. I don't blame the daughter or the other teens. I can only come to two conclusions:
A. The mom WAS being assaulted but claimed sexual excitement in order to protect her boyfriend.
B. The mom was clearly acting like a fool during love making and thus caused her boyfriend to become a victim. What will this incident do to his confidence?
I once lived in an apartment where the next door neighbor abused his wife. There is NO WAY to mistake screams of an assault with so-called screams of pleasure.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:30 am
LorMarie -
What a lot of hogwash. Just how far backwards can you bend to make reality fit your world-view?
These were teenagers - they won't know what good sex is/sounds like until at least their twenties. They heard a knock (hello - bedhead against the wall anyone?) and then "screams." The idea that Mum would go to the extent of allowing her daughter to face jail time rather than shop in the boyfriend is just a little ludicrous. It's not COMPLETELY out of the question, but it's very unlikely, and don't you think the cops (especially in this age of jumping to arrest the guy in any scenario) wouldn't have checked Mom for bruising / signs of injuries when called to the scene? Hell, even if they didn't, it would be the first thing that the kids' defence team would do.
If you have to pluck a theory out of the air, I would actually guess that daughter knew EXACTLY what the sounds were, didn't like the fact that Mom's boyfriend was 'servicing' her, and concoted the whole rape/DV excuse in order to justify her actions and to persuade her friends to beat the guy up.
I would suggest that the police are thinking along those lines too or they wouldn't have pushed this to the prosecution stage.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:00 am
LorMarie:
I once lived in an apartment where the next door neighbor abused his wife. There is NO WAY to mistake screams of an assault with so-called screams of pleasure.
Wanna bet? In college once, I was seconds away from entering, by force if necessary, another dorm room in order to intervene against what was "unmistakenly" a girl being choked to death. Only at the last moment did it transpire that the sounds without question derived from consensual sex.
There's a point of logic here. You cited one instance of X (the sounds of consensual sex) were clearly distinguishable from Y (the sounds of abuse). You cannot conclude from this that X is always, or even generally, distinguishable from Y. In order to test your suggested generalization, you'd need to look for counter-examples (falsifying instances); and indeed I have provided one for your benefit above.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:41 am
As I said, there is a clear difference between the sound of fear and pain vs a reaction to love making. Anyone who has to scream or make choking sounds is simply being ridiculous. I blame the mother and not the teens.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
If I had a nickle for everytime I saw some kid get in trouble for coming to the aid of a "damsel"! Usually it ends up 2 boys beating each other, ending up in the hosipital and jail while she goes home unscathed, smug in the fact she won't be punished and happy that the object of her ire was beaten.
July 10th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
So the girl and the boys are charged. I will be curious as to who ends up with a plea deal, who gets probation and who goes to jail (if any). As pessimistic as it is, I expect the girl will get a slap on the wrist and the boys will pay a higher price.
A question comes to mind. How long after the daughter heard these things, did it take for her to round up the friends? Were the mother and boyfriend fininished, or were they interrupted when the kids knocked on the door? If they were finished, then the 'heat of the moment' type of thing doesn't seem to apply. I guess that's where they get the conspiracy charge.
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Lormarie,
As I said, there is a clear difference between the sound of fear and pain vs a reaction to love making.
As disgusting as it is, those that are into S&M get off on the fear and pain, so the two could be synonomous. Just a thought.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
As usual, the report of the crime doesn't indicate that what the girl did was "domestic violence".
July 12th, 2009 at 4:54 am
I'm wondering who's to be appointed "DV Czar".