Femicide…where’s the outrage?

Femicide…where’s the outrage?

 

MEDIA MISSES

REFRAMING THE MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF WOMEN

George Sodina killed three women…

George Sodini shot and killed three women and injured 11 more before killing himself in a hate crime against women Tuesday night in Pennsylvania. Sodini entered an aerobics class at a gym in the Pittsburgh area intending to take revenge on women, who he saw as rejecting him en masse, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Sodini did not know anyone in the aerobics class he targeted, according to the New York Times, contradicting earlier reports of an ex-girlfriend inside the gym. In a blog that has since been removed from the internet, Sodini wrote of his plans for the killing and his hatred of women.

“I actually look good,” Sodini wrote in December of last year. “I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne – yet 30 million women rejected me – over an 18- or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are.” Sodini also repeatedly referred to women as “hoez,” and wrote of his sexual frustration, claiming to have been celibate since 1990.

“This killer fits into a long pattern of males who harbor hatred towards all women, the image of ‘woman,’ and towards individual real women, and who take out their frustration on a female scapegoat,” Professor David Gilmore of Stony Brook University told the Christian Science Monitor.

Source: Feminist Majority

Please read Bob Herbert’s (my hero) write up in the New York Times called Women at Risk.

We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter.

Back in the fall of 2006, a fiend invaded an Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, separated the girls from the boys, and then shot 10 of the girls, killing five.

I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar.

Unbelievable, isn’t it? No outrage. No uproar. No uprising.

We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions.

For more about outrage (or lack thereof), read: Femicide: There’s not enough outrage

But, as Toronto author Brian Vallee points out in his 2007 book The War on Women, nobody counts the dead, nobody connects the dots, nobody calls out the problem.

“Compare the raw numbers,” he writes of the period 2000-06. “In the same seven-year period when 4,588 U.S. soldiers and police officers were killed by hostiles or by accident, more than 8,000 women – nearly twice as many – were shot, stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. In Canada, compared to the 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers killed, more than 500 women – nearly five times as many – met the same fate.”

There’s not enough outrage.

How many women and girls must die – often brutal – deaths before society is outraged enough to do something about it?

PUBLISHED IN:

• FEMICIDE
• JOINT CUSTODY

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KanSUCKS Governor calls for Women's prison audit- Training Procedures

http://cjonline.com/news/state/2009-10-14/governor_calls_for_prison_audit

 

They dont bother to mention that most all these women are of a ABUSED origin- self defense from battering dad and or trying to protect their children.

YOU ARE HERE:

CJOnline » News » State

Governor calls for prison audit

OCTOBER 2009 FILE PHOTOGRAPH/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Inmates and staff members estimate that as many as one-third of the employees at the Topeka Correctional Facility, a prison for women in East Topeka, were involved in trafficking banned substances.

 

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DOCUMENTS

View Gov. Mark Parkinson’s letter to Tom Beauclair, deputy director of the National Institute of Corrections, concerning an audit of the Kansas Correctional system’s policies and training procedures

U.S. Department of Justice agency asked to assist in review of policies, training procedures

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BY TIM CARPENTER

Created October 14, 2009 at 2:55pm

Updated October 15, 2009 at 9:07am

Gov. Mark Parkinson reached out to federal corrections experts Wednesday for help identifying an independent, nationally recognized prison management expert to examine state policy and training in the wake of complaints about staff sexual misconduct at Topeka Correctional Facility.

Officials with the National Institute of Corrections, an agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, were asked to assist in advancing a broad investigation of the Kansas Department of Corrections designed to promote the safety and security of the department's 3,000 employees and 8,600 inmates scattered among eight prison facilities. The all-female facility for women in East Topeka will come under special scrutiny.

"We must ensure that the policies we have in place are working, and that when people do not follow these policies, they are appropriately dealt with," Parkinson said. "An outside, objective evaluation by a nationally recognized expert will provide us the best results and most reliable information with which to move forward."

The governor's approach to the scandal unfolded 10 days after The Topeka Capital-Journal began publication of a series of stories detailing allegations that some TCF employees were trafficking in contraband and participating in sexual activities with some of the 550 female inmates incarcerated at the facility. In October 2007, an inmate became pregnant during intercourse with Anastacio "Ted" Gallardo, a TCF vocational plumbing instructor. Inmate Tracy Keith, who remains behind bars on a drug conviction, was taken by state prison staff to a Johnson County clinic for an abortion. DNA testing by the state offered a 99.99 percent assurance that Gallardo was the father of Keith's fetus.

Interviews with inmates and staff members, a review of court records and examination of hundreds of documents indicated Gallardo was involved with other women at the prison. In addition, former TCF inmates have implicated other prison employees in sexual improprieties.

"No one in our corrections system -- whether it's an employee or inmate -- should ever be exploited or abused," Parkinson said.

Parkinson had previously condemned exploitation of any inmate in the state's prison system and called upon DOC Secretary Roger Werholtz to launch a review to make certain all was being done to limit sexual contact between prisoners and corrections staff members. The governor also said his staff was exploring the potential of amending state law to raise the severity level for "unlawful sexual relations," for which Gallardo entered a guilty plea and was placed on probation in Shawnee County.

Werholtz and Parkinson have expressed confidence in a majority of DOC employees, and both said the agency had a zero-tolerance policy for sexual impropriety.

"The department deals with issues of staff misconduct each time those issues arise," Werholtz said in a statement. "Having sex with inmates and trafficking in contraband are illegal. Those laws are enforced."

TCF inmates and correctional officers at the prison estimated that as many as one-third of employees at TCF were involved in trafficking banned substances into the prison. State prison officials said a more accurate estimate was that 2 percent of state corrections department staff were involved in black market enterprises and other illegal activities on prison property.

The National Institute of Corrections' mission is to provide training, technical assistance, information services and policy development aid to federal, state and local corrections agencies.

Parkinson wants the review to be completed before the start of the 2010 legislative session in January.

Specifically, the governor sought input from Tom Beauclair, deputy director of the National Institute of Corrections, to locate a management expert "to review the policies and training procedures related to staff sexual misconduct and cross-gender supervision in the Kansas correctional system."

Parkinson will seek insight about the general effectiveness of corrections department policies and procedures, the state's training of employees on issues of sexual misconduct, prison facility reactions to allegations of staff wrongdoing, the education of inmates about avenues for reporting incidents, the adequacy of security equipment and the level of staff supervision.

Murder-suicide in Fairfield Township devastates families (PA)

 

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/westmoreland/s_648104.html

Mary Pickels can be reached via e-mail or at 724-836-5401.

By Mary Pickels
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Buzz up!

The brother of a Fairfield woman allegedly slain by her husband earlier this week in an apparent murder-suicide mourned the loss of his sister and his brother-in-law Wednesday, offering prayers for both devastated families.

The Rev. Thomas A. Federline, pastor of St. Paul Parish in Hempfield's Carbon section, said Jeanette C. Brinkos, 62, and Conrad J. Brinkos, 71, had been married for 10 years. It was a second marriage for both.

"My sister was very intelligent, very bright, very hardworking," Federline said yesterday. "She had a lot of friends. She loved life and celebrated life. She loved to travel. She loved to care for animals, both pets and wild."

His sister was the oldest of seven children, he said.

"She was a wonderful big sister," he said. "She had a very special relationship with Mom and Dad, being the firstborn. She and Mom talked almost daily."

"They are broken-hearted," he said of his parents. "It is so tragic."

Westmoreland County Deputy Coroner John Ackerman pronounced both Brinkoses dead shortly after noon Tuesday. Both died of gunshot wounds to the head. Yesterday, the coroner's office determined that Jeanette Brinkos was shot by her husband, who then shot himself.

Autopsies were deemed unnecessary, according to the coroner's office.

The couple enjoyed traveling together, Federline said. They recently had bought a motor home and planned to travel to Florida.

Federline said his brother-in-law enjoyed going for walks and playing with the couple's miniature schnauzer, Gretchen.

"She was basically a lap dog for Conrad," Federline said.

The couple often joined family members for dinners and get-togethers, he said.

"We got concerned because no one had heard from them," he said.

Federline said his mother spoke with Jeanette Brinkos on Sunday.

"No one heard from them for the next 24 hours," he said. "I went out to the house and found them. I could see through the front door. I called 911."

Conrad Brinkos came from a small family, with a brother and sister-in-law.

Federline said Conrad Brinkos' brother also was broken-hearted.

"We will cry together and get through this," he said.

Whatever happened inside the couple's rural home, Federline said, "is too difficult to try to figure out."

"It is very sad, very unfortunate," he said. "We feel consolation for his family. We are all praying for both sides of the family."

Funeral arrangements for Jeanette Brinkos are being handled by the Leo M. Bacha Funeral Home, 516 Stanton at Green streets, Southwest Greensburg. Friends will be received from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Friday. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Saturday in St. Paul Parish, in Hempfield's Carbon section. (Everyone please go directly to the church on Saturday). Interment will follow in the Twin Valley Memorial Park, Delmont. www.bachafuneralhomeinc.com.

Funeral arrangements for Conrad Brinkos could not be determined last night. His family could not be reached for comment.