Liberation From Cowering Fear
Violence directed toward women can happen anywhere. No woman, it seems, is exempt from male rage resulting in vile behaviour that no rational discussion can adequately explain away.
Women have demonstrated that they are capable of performing well and with distinction in any area of professional endeavour. They have challenged society to recognize that women with their lesser physical strength can nonetheless compensate with their determination and intellect and vigour.
Nothing, no medium of social and civic employment is beyond a woman's reach now.
They fight fires, they serve on the front lines of conflicts, they are at home as principals in surgical operating theatres, they can conduct orchestras, become architects, heads of giant corporations, achieve success in academia, challenge men for scientific enquiry honours, sit as lawmakers in Parliament, and become chiefs of police.
If a woman is a chief of police surely she becomes immune to personal, intimate violence?
Whatever course of employment a woman sources for herself, she is still a woman. And as such vulnerable to the same kind of emotional fall-out that any woman anywhere is susceptible to. A woman who is married, in fact in a marriage spanning several decades, with semi-grown children, is still a married woman and a mother even if she is a chief of police.
And one such woman was accused by her jealous husband of having an affair. And he tormented her verbally, and then proceeded to beat her, breaking her arm, and temporarily altering the contours of her face.
As a woman and a proud professional whose profession brings her in close proximity to other women suffering such violent indignities in their lives she saw an obligation to her wider community and bared her problem publicly.
Belleville's Police Chief, Cory McMullen, demonstrated courage in the direct line of her profession, through her decision to make her private life and its collapse, public. Feeling she owed it to her community and to the women in her community who have suffered as she has, she admitted to her predicament.
And her husband, a retired and psychologically troubled former police officer, has received his sentence for assault causing bodily harm. Thirty days of incarceration, and 18 months of probation, his DNA on record as a batterer, and a lifetime firearms ban.
And of course, he will have to live with himself.
Women have demonstrated that they are capable of performing well and with distinction in any area of professional endeavour. They have challenged society to recognize that women with their lesser physical strength can nonetheless compensate with their determination and intellect and vigour.
Nothing, no medium of social and civic employment is beyond a woman's reach now.
They fight fires, they serve on the front lines of conflicts, they are at home as principals in surgical operating theatres, they can conduct orchestras, become architects, heads of giant corporations, achieve success in academia, challenge men for scientific enquiry honours, sit as lawmakers in Parliament, and become chiefs of police.
If a woman is a chief of police surely she becomes immune to personal, intimate violence?
Whatever course of employment a woman sources for herself, she is still a woman. And as such vulnerable to the same kind of emotional fall-out that any woman anywhere is susceptible to. A woman who is married, in fact in a marriage spanning several decades, with semi-grown children, is still a married woman and a mother even if she is a chief of police.
And one such woman was accused by her jealous husband of having an affair. And he tormented her verbally, and then proceeded to beat her, breaking her arm, and temporarily altering the contours of her face.
As a woman and a proud professional whose profession brings her in close proximity to other women suffering such violent indignities in their lives she saw an obligation to her wider community and bared her problem publicly.
Belleville's Police Chief, Cory McMullen, demonstrated courage in the direct line of her profession, through her decision to make her private life and its collapse, public. Feeling she owed it to her community and to the women in her community who have suffered as she has, she admitted to her predicament.
And her husband, a retired and psychologically troubled former police officer, has received his sentence for assault causing bodily harm. Thirty days of incarceration, and 18 months of probation, his DNA on record as a batterer, and a lifetime firearms ban.
And of course, he will have to live with himself.
posted by Pieface @ 7:24 PM
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