Man to Serve 9 Months in Jail for Wife Visiting Him in Jail

Marshall Crandall IV is either the most in love guy or the dumbest guy on the planet, but does he deserve jail time for his wife coming to visit him when he was in the county jail? Evidently yes.... Marshall Crandall of Vassalboro, Maine was sentence to nine months jail time this week after pleading guilty (not surprising given the "advice" accused guys are given by their attorney's....) to three counts of violating conditions of release by allowing his alleged victim to have contact with him in his jail cell. Wait a minute, am I hearing correctly? That's right, even though his wife told the judge the domestic assault for which Marshall was arrested was mutual and admitting that she, "picked him up three or four times and slammed him on the ground," that didn't matter. What mattered was that when his wife came to visit Marshall in jail he didn't remind her (HELLO her paperwork says the same thing) that he was to have no contact with her, the victim, he didn't "shoo" her away. Yep, that's the law in Maine (and elsewhere) if your alleged victim approaches or calls you and you allow the contact it's "my bad" as far as the law is concerned. Read more about Marshall Crandall IV situation below: AUGUSTA, MAINE — As soon as an inmate from Vassalboro had a visitor at the Kennebec County jail in Augusta, he was violating a court order. Marshall Crandall IV, of Vassalboro, was sentenced to serve nine months in jail Tuesday at a Kennebec County Superior Court hearing after he pleaded guilty to three counts of violating conditions of release for having contact with the visitor. Crandall, 39, had been arrested April 4 and charged with domestic assault. That charge was dropped Tuesday in exchange for his plea to violating the court order. A condition of release on the domestic assault charge banned him from contact with the woman — the same woman who visited him at the jail. The violations occurred April 5, 10 and 15, when the woman named as the assault victim visited Crandall, according to jail records. The woman told the judge on Tuesday the domestic assault was mutual, and that she could have been charged with the same offense in the incident. “I picked him up three or four times and slammed him on the ground,” she said. The incident ended when the woman said she asked a neighbor to call police. “All I wanted was for them to take him for the day so I could move my stuff out of the house,” she said. Crandall was indicted in 2002 on charges of assault, violating conditions of release, violating a protective order, aggravated criminal trespass and tampering with a victim, among other offenses, and was on probation for some of them when the April 4 domestic assault charge was lodged. Crandall’s attorney, Hank Hainke, said afterward he expects Crandall to be successful on probation this time. “My client’s been in jail for 82 days, and he thinks this is a good way for him to handle this matter,” Hainke told Justice Donald Marden. Now that the assault charge is dropped, Crandall is not prohibited from seeing the woman. Asked how an inmate could have avoided contact with a banned person while incarcerated, District Attorney Evert Fowle said Crandall should have notified jail officials. “He should have said, ‘I’m not supposed to have contact,’” Fowle said. Url where this article can be found: http://www.badcopnews.com/2008/06/25/man-sentenced-in-kennebec-county-maine-superior-court-to-9-months-in-jail-after-women-visits-him-in-jail-judge-and-county-officials-seen-standing-around-a-huge-bonfire-watching-our-tax-dollars-go-up/

An Open Letter to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).

An Open Letter to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).

The National Domestic Violence Hotline with support from the United States Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women has announced a 10-year Blueprint to redefine domestic violence primarily or only as, violence against women. The Press Release notes that 33 million American women are abused each year. The press release ignores male victimization, perhaps believing similar to the majority of domestic violence advocates, public policy makers, the main-stream media and the general public, that male victimization is so rare that they need not care or know about it.

However, what surprises this author is that it appears that the DOJ, through the Office on Violence Against Women, has decided to publicly disclose that the DOJ is either not aware of or simply does not care about the male victims of domestic violence.

If you visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH) website http://www.ndvh.org/ it is obvious that the NDVH is concerned primarily about violence against women.

Although the NDVH receives millions of dollars from the federal government it is a private organization and it has the right, as it website documents, to minimize, marginalize or ignore male victimization. However, the Office on Violence Against Women, as an integral department within of the United States Department of Justice, should not be “driven by ideology and stakeholder interests [i.e. NDVH] rather than by plausible theories and scientific evidence of cause.”

The above quote is from page 6 of the National Research Council report, Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women. I suggest that someone from the DOJ needs to read this important scientific evidence-based NRC report that is free of ideology and reconsider the DOJ decision to ignore male victimization.
The data below is from page 48 and 49 of that report. The report in its entirety is available online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10849

Richard L. Davis

WIFE 'BEATS' HUBBY

For the Complete Article, go to: http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/20070623/news/news1.html WIFE 'BEATS' HUBBY A wife who is charged with wounding her husband wept bitterly in court yesterday and had to be consoled by her loving partner who, amid the laughter of some persons present declared, "Mi still love har, yuh Honour." The court learned that the petite wife had a dispute with her burly husband in early June, during which a knife was used to inflict a wound to the man's forehead, which required eight stitches. The wife was subsequently charged by the police with unlawful wounding, but was later bailed at the station. When the case was called up, a defence attorney representing the wife, told the court that there was a history of disagreements in the family and that on the day in question, it was while the wife was trying to get back in the house, after been forced out, that the knife accidentally caught the husband. She, then asked the court to dismiss the case. However, R.M. Lorna Errar Gayle would have none of it and remarked, "If it was a male who had done this to a female, I would not have thrown out the case. So there needs to be some balance in the administration of justice." The R.M. later mentioned that she would enlist the services of the probation department to counsel both parties after getting an admission from the male that on about seven occasions during the five-year marriage, he had been beaten by his wife. All this time the woman kept crying in the dock. The case will again be mentioned in late July.

Women are doing virtually everything these days

Women are doing virtually everything these daysthat men are—–including physically assaultingtheir spouses or partners. Research in the area of intimate partner violence(IPV) has been going on for decades. A great deal ofthe research on IPV has been primarily focused onviolence against women by their male intimatepartners. For years the research has shown that themost prevalent and injurious type of domestic violenceis men’s violence against women. However, as we learnmore about domestic violence; it’s causes, it’svictims and it’s perpetrators, researchers and othersworking in the field of domestic violence arediscovering and acknowledging that both women and menin heterosexual and same-sex relationships can bevictims and perpetrators of this insidious problemthat plagues our society. A recent study focused on reciprocal and nonreciprocalIPV in heterosexual couples conducted by DanielWhitaker, Ph.D. and his colleagues at the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC) had somesurprising outcomes for the researchers. Find out more information at the DAHMW website. Simply click on Newsletters.

True Stories

TRUE STORIES LEE'S STORY I'm your basic middle class male who was raised to respect women and never hit them. I am a good provider and a hard worker. I have authored 2 best selling books and sold a self-started company. My attitude didn't change when I got married. I regularly helped my wife cook and clean when I came home from a long day of work. That's why I am also one of those in total disbelief this would ever happen to me. JOHN AND CAROL My wife, Carol (not real name), and I would seem to most observers to have the perfect life. Carol is 48, very pretty, and still has the figure of a teen. She has a masters degree in education and teaches third grade at the elementary school in the school system in which she was raised throughout her own childhood. AMY AND GEORGE Here is a shortened version of my story. Yes you may print it. You can email me back if you have any questions or if anyone else does. I would like to be able to give something back to the universe for all the things I took away. Thank you very much for listening to me. BILL AND PATIENCE The story I have to tell is one of great injustice. I will talk about abuse, slander, hatred, and ultimately, issues of life or death. My life with my former wife "Patience" was a nightmare that is hard to relive. What follows is an account of the years I suffered, years that were part of my life. Years that nobody can give back to me. ANONYMOUS SUBMISSION When my wife and I met, we were both going through a divorce. She told me she had left her husband because he was a drunken wife beater. She told me how she had had to wear sunglasses all the time to cover up the black eyes and she'd had to wear turtlenecks to cover the choke marks around her neck. She told her 3 year old son that they were leaving because "daddy is always yelling at mommy" MORE... ANONYMOUS SUBMISSIONANONYMOUS SUBMISSION

Am I in an Abusive Relationship?

QUESTIONS ABOUT AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP Questions that may help a person decide if he/she is in an abusive relationship: Do you often doubt your own judgment or wonder if you are crazy? Are you often afraid of your partner? Do you express your opinion less and less freely? Have you developed fears of other people? Do you tend to see others less often? Do you ask your partner's permission to spend money, take classes, or socialize with friends? Do you spend a lot of time watching for your partner's bad and not-so-bad moods before bringing up a subject? Do these statements fit you? I am frightened of my partner's temper. I am often compliant because I am afraid to hurt my partner's feelings. I am often afraid of my partner's anger. I have the urge to rescue my partner because my partner is troubled. I have been hit, kicked, shoved, punched, bit, spit at or had things thrown at me by my partner when he/she was jealous or angry. I find myself apologizing for his/her behavior when he/she has treated me badly. I make decisions based on what my partner wants or how my partner will react. My partner drinks or uses drugs. Why men won't tell: Many men cope with being abused by taking on a macho "I can handle it" attitude. Even if you have been hurt much worse than an athletic playing field, that is not the same thing as being physically attacked by your intimate partner, which hurts emotionally as well as physically. Allowing this pattern to continue can result in depression, substance abuse, loss of confidence, even suicide. Men typically face a greater degree of disbelief and ridicule than do most women in this situation, which helps enforce the silence. Domestic violence victims make excuses for injuries that show ("It was an accident" or "it happened while playing sports") when friends or medical personnel ask about them. Abusers are expert at making victims feel no one is on their side, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy--the more you withdraw from friends and family to protect your partner, the less other people will be able to help you by confirming your experiences.