Get this....bias with a plus

[Brent]

>This is so directly targeted toward men. The entire letter is
>extremely bias. If you can not see it, I can not help you.

Exactly.

I was, to be honest, a bit surprised when cinb said she didn't see anything wrong with it.

It's the same ol, same ol "men are batterers and abusers and women are their victims" stuff.

I mean, come on, it's 2005. Do people still really believe that only men commit DV??

And for the record, NO, a woman is NOT battered every 9 seconds in the US. That's another BS statistic that ranks right up there with the myth of DV "skyrocketing" during the Super Bowl.

[jilly]

Posted on Wed, Mar. 23, 2005
 
Woman slain by estranged boyfriend

Man then turns gun on self; family said woman tried separation

KYTJA WEIR

Staff Writer


PINEVILLE - Janet Martinez had many dreams, and she finally fulfilled one of them Thursday when she bought a BMW.

But within hours of getting the used car, the 42-year-old mother and grandmother lay dead in her bedroom, two bullets in her chest.

Police said her estranged boyfriend, Reginald Ragin, 46, burst into her Willow Ridge apartment around 3:20 a.m. Friday, brushing past her 72-year-old mother and the couple's 8-year-old daughter.

As police arrived, he shot her with a 9 mm Glock handgun, police said, then turned the gun on himself. He died next to her.

"She was strong. She wasn't strong with him," Marianet Martinez, 36, said Tuesday. "That was the only weakness and it killed her."

The two had troubles since the day they met, her sister said. The woman's friends kept telling her to get help. They would take Janet Martinez (who sometimes used the last name Diaz, from a previous marriage) to get a restraining order.

But at the last minute, her sister said, she would back down.

Marianet Martinez, sitting on a bed one room away from where Janet Martinez was shot, urged others not to make the same mistake.

"Tell someone before it's too late. Don't back down. You've got to see the signs," she said. "She saw them, but she ignored them."

Pineville police released the names of Martinez and Ragin on Monday, and said it was the town's first homicide in at least seven years.

Last year 80 people were killed across North Carolina through domestic violence, according to the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence. That doesn't include the 18 accused killers who then committed suicide, the coalition said.

Two weeks ago, a Mount Holly couple died in a similar shooting. On March 13, police said, Neiko Michelle Eller, 30, called 911 after her husband, Christopher Michael Eller, 28, shot her about four times and then killed himself. She died later that day.

The killings usually follow warning signs, said Marie Brodie, an N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence training coordinator, though people often mistakenly explain them as coming from the heat of the moment.

"The person is not snapping," she said. "The person probably has a long history of battering partners."

In Martinez's case, the couple had problems, but Martinez's family never thought they would turn deadly. Martinez never took out a restraining order against him, her sister said.

"She never felt he was going to hurt her the way he did," her sister said. "He kept hurting her because he wouldn't let go. She just wanted to him to accept the fact that they couldn't be together."

But the man stalked Martinez, her sister said, turning up everywhere she looked.

Still, she wanted Ragin to stay involved in their daughter's life. "She would try to let him be a father and communicate with him," her sister said. "But he wanted more than that."

On Dec. 26, Pineville police were called to the home during an argument between the couple, said Detective Sgt. Bill Connell. No one was charged in the incident, he said.

Ragin was charged three times with assaulting a female in 1987, 1988, and 1989, N.C. court records show, but it appears all the charges were dismissed. The alleged victims of those charges were not listed.

Marianet Martinez doesn't want to talk about Ragin. Instead, she wants people to remember her sister, outspoken and determined to work toward her dreams.

She was born in New York City but moved to the Charlotte area about 13 years ago for a better place to raise her two sons, now grown with children of their own.

She loved cooking, sharing her favorite Spanish dishes with her neighbors.

She also loved to salsa dance. But she rarely had time for it between her busy work schedule in customer service at Time Warner Cable and caring for her daughter and her mother.

"She always told everybody, `never say you can't,' " her sister said. " `Think positive, you can do whatever you want to do.' "

Martinez herself had a long list of things she wanted to do. In June, she planned to move to a larger apartment with an extra bedroom for her aging mother. She also had planned a trip to Puerto Rico to visit family. Eventually she hoped to buy a house in Florida to be closer to the sun.

And there was her dream car.

Martinez used to point to BMWs whenever she saw one on the street. " `See that car,' she'd say, `I'm going to have that car in the future,' " her sister said.

A medium blue, shiny BMW sedan stood outside Martinez's apartment Tuesday night, untouched in the spot where Janet Martinez had parked it the night she was killed.

10 Warning Signs of Abuse

1. Withholding approval as punishment if you say something partner doesn't like.

2. Making derogatory comments about your family and friends.

3. Pressure to be intimate too soon with premature declarations of love.

4. Playing "games" to exercise physical and/or emotional power.

5. Battering behaviors in previous relationships and family history of violence.

6. Poor coping skills, alcohol and drug use, blaming others for problems.

7. Constant questions about your whereabouts.

8. Criticizing you through jokes, insults and other passive-aggressive behaviors.

9. Ignoring or minimizing your thoughts, feelings and goals.

10. Damaging or destroying your property when angry or upset.

SOURCE: Mecklenburg County Women's Commission, Stop the Violence and the Justice Department.

[cinb85]

Perhaps you should write to her and ask her to explain herself.

I know that there's alot of bias about men when it comes to fatherhood, custody and child support.  I just don't think that this particular letter was intended to be biased.  We are all entitled to our opinion

[Brent]

Murder by Mercedes?      
   
Prosecutors say Clara Harris, left, with her lawyer, ran her husband down last July after confronting him with his mistress at a Houston hotel.

By Matt Bean
Court TV

A Texas jury began Wednesday to deliberate the case of a Houston woman who ran down her adulterous husband with a Mercedes last July, with attorneys from both sides urging them to consider the defendant's intent at the time of the accident.

Clara Harris, 45, allegedly hit her husband in the parking lot of a Houston hotel on July 24, 2002, after confronting him in the hotel lobby with his mistress. If convicted she could face life in prison.

Lawyers had their final say Wednesday morning, with prosecutors calling the killing deliberate and her defense attorney focusing on the affair Harris's husband was having Gail Bridges, his receptionist.

"His body was run over at least two times, two different directions," said prosecutor Mia Magness.  "There was impact, and then there were crushing injuries."

The proximity of Valentine's day was not lost on Harris' defense attorney, George Parnham, who reminded jurors during his hour-long closing argument that Harris, 45, married her orthodontist husband on Valentine's day 1992.

The avuncular lawyer recounted in detail the marital history of David and Clara Harris, which turned sour when David Harris strayed.

"They were all together until somebody knocks on the door of the home, and somebody knocks on the heart of that family," said the lawyer.  "Gail Thompson Bridges is a home wrecker.  I don't care how you slice it, she is a home wrecker."

The jury of nine women and three men deliberated into the night before retiring.  They have a number of murder charges to consider, but could also find Harris guilty of the lesser charges of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide.

Prosecutor Magness reminded jurors that numerous witnesses, from hotel employees to bystanders, testified that Harris ran over her husband at least three times.

Lindsey Harris, David Harris' daughter from another marriage, was in the car with Clara Harris that evening.  She told jurors the defendant exclaimed, "I'm going to hit him" before running over her husband.  She then "stomped on the accelerator and went straight for him."

Harris' testified during a tearful two-day stay on the stand that she was aiming for the SUV of her husband's mistress — which she had "keyed" earlier that evening — when her car went awry and hit her husband.

On Wednesday, she again shed tears as her lawyer described the hotel lobby confrontation with her husband and his mistress.  As she sobbed silently, her eyes closed, her tears dripped onto her green velvet suit coat.

Parnham himself even appeared to choke up as he summed up his closing argument.  "I want this jury to acquit her," he said, trailing off.  "Pardon me."

Prosecutor Magness, in closing, asked jurors to set aside the marital strife that Parnham focused on during their deliberations.

"If a man is cheating on you do what every other woman in this county does—take his house take his car take his kids, take his respect in the community, make him wish he were dead—but you don't get to kill him," said Magness.  "But we're not talking about a divorce.  We're talking about a killing."

The jury, which is sequestered, will return Thursday to resume deliberations.

[cinb85]

clothing to only women.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that the author intended to say that only women are battered!  You are I both are reading that one particular line totally different.

When she says that this is a problem for both men and women, I read that to mean that BOTH men and women are battered and this is a problem in this world.

I KNOW that there are women who commit DV everyday!  No one deserves to be abused!

I was just trying to understand where you were coming from.  I like to hear all sides!

[Brent]

>Perhaps you should write to her and ask her to explain
>herself.

Why? Here's the first line of her letter:

Did you know that a woman is physically abused every 9 seconds in the United States?

Gee, I think that explains her viewpoint pretty well. What's to misunderstand?



>I know that there's alot of bias about men when it comes to
>fatherhood, custody and child support.  I just don't think
>that this particular letter was intended to be biased.  

I don't care what she intended, the point is that this letter perpetuates the notion that only men commit DV, and it does it in a very emotional way.


>We are all entitled to our opinion

No way, we're all entitled to my opinion.   ;)

[cinb85]

The point being this particular letter (only).  Don't get me wrong!  I realize that domestic violence affects both men and women.  I think that there is an increasing volume of DV against men by women.  It IS a problem.  

[MYSONSDAD]

They heard from me loud and clear, sent information from the Government agencies that have done the reach and found women just as capable.

Give them a little food for thought.

"Children learn what they live"

[cinb85]

Just curious.

[MYSONSDAD]

The CEO of bias

respond to: [email protected]

"Children learn what they live"