Cody
Williams
Killing Her Softly
Rashawn Mach, a young black man in New York took his own life last week shortly after shooting the mothers of two of his children in the head, killing one and leaving the other with no measurable brain activity. She later died too.
Each woman had two children and an order of protection on file against the 24-year-old auto mechanic who was described by some as a ‘good father.’ The two women, at the same time, also had both a stormy and passionate relationship with Mack. The two women, at the same time, each carried one of Mack’s babies. The two women tried to end their relationship with Mack and move on with their lives at the same time. The two women sought the courts to award them child support from Mack at the same time. The two women were buried, roughly, around the same time and their children will grow up without any of their three parents.
The charts below show an interesting and disturbing trend in murders by intimate partners in the US. Overall violent crime has gone down in the last twenty-five years in America. The number of men killed by women with whom they were intimately involved dropped almost 70% in that time. Yet, the number of women killed by the men in their lives, while decreasing slightly after a bump in 1993 has virtually remained steady. If the drop in murdered women had fallen proportionally to that in murdered men, hundreds of women across the US each year would not be dying at the hands of men with whom they share children and/or lives.
|
MURDER BY INTIMATE PARTNERS |
||
|
Year |
Number of Male Murders |
Number of Female Murders |
|
1976 |
1357 |
1600 |
|
1980 |
1221 |
1549 |
|
1985 |
957 |
1546 |
|
1990 |
859 |
1501 |
|
1993 |
708 |
1581 |
|
1994 |
692 |
1405 |
|
1995 |
547 |
1321 |
|
1996 |
515 |
1324 |
|
1997 |
451 |
1217 |
|
1998 |
515 |
1323 |
|
1999 |
426 |
1218 |
|
2000 |
440 |
1247 |
|
2001 |
451 |
1197 |
Our society considers the victimization of women entertainment. Every “Halloween 5,” “Friday the 13th,” “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs” type of slash and gore movie gets its dramatic edge from the murder, torture or maiming of women. The showings of these don’t exist in a vacuum. Even cable news networks have found the ‘damsel in distress’ story marketable. The message these movies send to young impressionable males is women are fair game. Combine this psychological green light to victimize women with an emotional motivator and it’s easy to see how men weak in character and strength, like Rashawn Mack, O.J. Simpson, Scott Peterson and others can be led to commit the heinous crimes against the women they once claimed to love.
Can misguided public child custody and support policies provide that emotional motivator? Can current child support mandates be partly to blame for a disparate number of suicide/murders and acts of violence committed by American men against the women and the children they father?
Since the early 1990’s, as welfare dependency rolls decreased, state courts have beefed-up the enforcement of increasingly less-forgiving child support mandates. These sometimes draconian laws are aimed to take the financial responsibility of bringing up baby away from the government, welfare programs and single mothers and force biological fathers to share more of the financial burden. Before, some men had gotten away with not paying anything toward the cost of raising the children they sired, roaming free to sire more. Courts label them deadbeats. Their children grow up lucky to share the last name of their fathers much less know his whereabouts, the look of his face, the sound of his voice. Women turned to the state and welfare to help raise their fatherless children. Many of them grew increasingly dependent on the government dole. In children, resentment and hatred run deep towards absent fathers. Scars caused by their absence fester for generations. Folks who inhabit our prisons, homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers and street gangs share stories blaming their lot on absent fathers – deadbeat dads. Taxpayers grew resentful of picking up the tab of their irresponsibility.
Bill Clinton was elected into office partly with the promise to “end welfare as we know it.” The plan called for shifting the financial responsibility of raising dependent children back to their fathers. Washington rewards states for the deadbeats they tract down and force to pay up.
Today men who miss paying court-ordered children support, unlike before the end of welfare, face contempt charges and are arrested and put in jail. It is a powerful tool women use to force these men to be more financially responsible. More men are forking over more money for the children they bring into the world than ever before. These stringent laws have also had another unintended effect. States with the strictest child support payment enforcement laws have also witnessed a sharp decline in the birth of babies born to teenage and unwed mothers.
Pocket-book politics did what Planned Parenthood policies failed to do with a whole lot of liberal public initiatives. Men with no intentions of sticking around to raise their children seem to be a little more diligent in not making them. However, some men can’t handle the pressures put on them by the court to pay support and faced with the threat of being tossed in jail, like Rashawn Mack, too often choose a deadlier option. They kill the women they blame for their misfortune, often taking themselves and their children to glory with them.
Former professional football player, Rae Carruth, conspired to murder the woman carrying his baby to avoid sharing his wealth with someone with whom a brief tryst resulted in a pregnancy. Carruth is now serving time behind bars for the murder of Cherica Adams who was seven months pregnant when she was murdered.
Nothing can justify the actions of these men. However, it would help us all to look at pressures placed on individuals that lead them to behave in ways that, unfortunately, many men would when dealing with the same set of circumstances.
“My Humps” is a new hit song by the popular Hip-Hop group, The Black-Eye-Peas. In its video, young nearly naked women brag about using their rumps and breast (humps) to get money from men. It’s a game as old as time.
Few men like being used. Vamp messages in videos like My Humps must be denounced.
We can’t disregard the fact that, like welfare, unfortunately some misguided women, who may not have access to athletes and music stars, use the courts, their bodies and pregnancy to extract money from men they could not get otherwise. Some women play the risky game of getting pregnant to guarantee access to a man’s earnings.
I’m a black man who lives a part of each week separated from his children. It hurts. I have stood in front of condescending legal professionals too quick to label me a deadbeat or uncaring father. I’m neither. I’m one of many men I know of who have suffered the emotional abuse and mental anguish of losing a family, lack of parental control and parental alienation. Despite what too many people believe being away from the children we bring into the world eats away at a man just as much as it would a woman. I believe the reason many men turn to unproductive vices is an effort to fill the nagging and painful void left in their heart from being separated from the children they love.
The bible says it grieved God to be separated from his Son. We are our creator.
At 22-years-old, Justin Grey had a brief affair with a 38-year-old woman who got pregnant and gave birth to a set of twins. After this tryst, Justin met another young woman and married her. She had one child before the couple quickly had two others. Justin worked hard to support his new family. Without a high school diploma Justin took a job stocking groceries in a neighborhood market. The older woman filed to receive child support payments that Justin simply could not afford to pay. He was held in contempt, arrested and put in jail. In jail he could no longer go to work and support the three children he diligently tried to provide for.
Combine the lack of opportunity to make honest wages, the anguish of being separated from their children, the anger of feeling used by a woman, the injustices of the legal system, the anxiety of being thrown in jail and the prospect of losing all they’ve worked for is it any wonder some me vent in violent and deadly ways?
A lot of men can’t articulate the stress, heartache, humiliation and turmoil experienced from being reduced to nothing but studding bucks and having financial obligation forced on us that don’t take into account employment statistics that show some men are generally still the very last hired and always the first fired in any job market.
Four times every day somewhere in America a woman is killed by the man in her life. Do we have to accept this? Can we live differently? Can we all be better -- men, women, the courts?
I think each of us has to. Change can happen.
The courts should not automatically award custody and child support solely to women just because they are women. Joint physical custody should be the norm. (Connecticut lawmakers recently considered a bill that would do this.) With joint physical custody comes shared financial responsibility and it assures that divorced fathers will stay a part of their children's lives. (Sixty-seven percent of all children of divorce don't have an ongoing relationship with their fathers) We as a society have to recognize and support efforts to keep men in their children’s lives with the same vigor we now use to get money from fathers. Studies show men who are a part of their children’s lives support them financially.
“I don’t believe fathers want the responsibility of physically raising their children,” one New York State family judge bluntly told me. Judges routinely award custody and child-support to females, believing men have more pressing “career obligations.”
This judge is wrong I believe. Rashawn Mack had just lost a bitter custody battle for his young son. Could a legal compromise have changed the tragic fate of that one family? We will only know this when our family courts leave the antiquated notions of parenting to June and Ward Cleaver on late night cable TV reruns. Men today should be allowed to step up to the plate of being the fathers children need them to be, instead of just financial relief for cash strapped government programs. We need better relationship, family and parental training than BET and MTV music videos.
We also need to look at what we feed as entertainment to our young people. Do we need more “CSI Miami,” “CSI NYC” or “Crossing Jordan” glorifying the victimization of women?
Men and women need to be taught, in our churches and schools, that violent retribution, regardless of the circumstance, is not the way to settle any family dispute.
We are not going to bring the murder statistics for women in parity with that of men by tiptoeing around these thorny issues.
Let’s change, as our times are changing.
© 2005 Cody Williams www.codywilliams.com
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