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May 14, 2012, 05:02:00 PM
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Isn't that a nice sentiment? "A happy and harmonious family is important to you." A father in Maine thought so too, so he sent this fortune cookie message to his ex-wife, in the same envelope that contained the child support check he wrote to her every month. The ex-wife, terrified by this vicious and unprovoked "attack", contacted the authorities. Defying common sense as well as logic, Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson prosecuted the father for a "domestic violence violation". In the end the father was convicted, receiving a six-month suspended sentence from Judge Thomas Delehanty.
Later, District Attorney Anderson stated that "Anything we do to make the victim feel safe, to instill a sense of confidence in us and our concern for them, is important." (Emphasis added)
Now, maybe it's just us, but we the only "victim" we see here is a father who is being persecuted out of all proportion to his "crime" by a vindictive ex-wife and an overzealous government office staffed by people who aren't familiar with the word "priority".
The reason for all this insanity is that Cumberland County just happened to get a $500,000 grant from the government for a "domestic violence unit". The unit is comprised of not just one, but two prosecutors, three "victims' assistants", two secretaries, a pair of state probation officers and a "victims advocate". (That seems like a heck of lot of people to tie up prosecuting some guy for sending a fortune cookie slip through the mail, but but they are government employees, so maybe that explains it.) Since Cumberland County got the money, now they have to make it look like they are actually doing something with it. And they are doing something with it- just not anything that makes any sense.
Lois Reckitt, Executive Director of Family Crisis Services, apparently feels that this dangerous fortune-cookie type of domestic violence must be treated seriously, lest it escalate: "If we're going to prevent domestic violence homicides in the state, domestic violence really has to be high on the list of priorities," she says.
Yes, Lois, we can imagine all too well where this kind of thing might lead if it isn't stamped out now- the next offender might make use of an Oreo® cookie, or even do something like send a greeting card. This kind of ridiculous "connect the dots" thinking is an example of a classic feminist technique: equate a virtual non-incident like this to "domestic violence homicides", as if they were one and the same.
And speaking of "priorities", we have to wonder- is this the kind of thing that the Executive Director of Family Crisis Services considers to be a priority? (We suppose in her mind it's easy to see how something like a fortune cookie message could spark a wave of "domestic violence homicides".)
Think for a moment, though: Is this what the drafters of this statue had in mind it would be used for? Was this the kind of "abuse" they envisioned? If they're the kind of gender-bigoted feminists we've seen recently, we'd have to say "yes". (Our guess as to the number of women in Cumberland County who were prosecuted for similarly frivolous charges is "zero".)
Let's face it- the only abuse going on here is being committed by the Cumberland County District Attorney. To prosecute anyone for an "offense" like this is an egregious misuse of the Office of the District Attorney. Does anybody really think that if the mother sent this in the mail to the father (with her child support check, of course) that she would have been prosecuted and convicted? Does anyone really believe that a father would have even called the police for something as stupid as this?
We may never know the answers to those questions, but one thing seems clear- only a District Attorney steeped in today's culture of feminist "logic" could have prosecuted someone for this kind of nonsense and not been laughed out of court.