Feb. 12th, 2010

jadedmusings: (Default)
A woman in Florida is killed by a man who stalked her for two years after a judge refused to issue a protection order. ABC News posts the story on their website, and what do they put in the middle of it?

Click HERE to learn how to protect yourself from being harassed or stalked

Great pseudo adverstiment, right? Oh, that's not all.

"So what is going to happen after a court hearing? If he is a predator he is still going to prey. If he is locked up for a few months, he is still going to target her. In my professional experience, separation is the best solution," Welner said on "Good Morning America" this morning. Welner suggested that if you cannot immediately escape to a location where the stalker can't find you, ask your neighbors and your workplace security to be your eyes and ears.

"Get yourself escorted to the parking lot, or escorted [into work] until the courts can make a difference or until laws change to allow civil commitment of people who are a danger to someone in the community. But the key thing is [to] limit your communication. Be very specific. Get separation, and until you can get separation, don't allow yourself to be alone,"
Welner said. [Emphasis Mine]

"If he is a predator he is still going to prey. If he is locked up for a few months, he is still going to target her."

So, tell me, if he's still going to prey (assuming you are luckier than Alissa Blanton and can manage to get a judge to actually listen to you), what the fuck are the police and judges there for? Also, note how it's up to the victim to stop communication. We'll just kindly ignore the fact that the problem with stalkers and predators is that they don't listen to the word no full stop. And how nice it is that a woman who is being stalked/harassed/threatened by an abuser must live her life in fear. She can't even go down to the fucking mail box or, as in Alissa Blanton's case, her fucking job alone. An adult woman who is a victim of a crime is expected to give up her privacy and her ability to even walk outside of her home by herself while the perpetrator(s) get to walk around free until they do something serious enough to be locked away.

Do you think this is an isolated case with a single judge? Think again. Stephen Garcia told his ex-wife he was going to kill their nine-month old son and then himself. He even wrote a story about it and sent it to her. She tried to get a restraining order, and she told the judge the reason she left was because Garcia hit her hard enough to knock her unconcious when she was several months pregnant.

At that hearing, on Jan. 12, Tagle went before Judge David Mazurek in the Joshua Tree courthouse to show cause for a restraining order. “…On Dec. 31, we were doing our exchange, and he proposed to me, and I said no. He got angry and stole my phone and pushed me down. I made a police report about that,” Tagle told the judge, according to a transcript.

Garcia told the judge the report was “falsely made up.” Mazurek denied Tagle the restraining order. “If I grant the restraining order, how do you think that’s going to help with respect to you two being able to raise Wyatt together or work together to make sure Wyatt grows up happy and healthy?” the judge asked, according to the transcripts.

Asked about an e-mail in which he confessed to hitting Tagle, Garcia told the judge he had slapped her during a fight, but it was Tagle’s fault for “pushing and pushing and pushing until she could get something from me.” Tagle pointed out she was nine months pregnant when Garcia hit her.

“I kind of get an idea of what’s going on,” Mazurek said. He denied the restraining order, saying, “I don’t think that Mr. Garcia poses a threat to Ms. Tagle.” Mazurek went on to suggest Tagle might have ulterior motives for alleging domestic violence. “I get concerned when there’s a pending child custody and visitation issue and in between that, one party or the other claims that there’s some violence in between. It raises the court’s eyebrows because based on my experience, it’s a way for one party to try to gain an advantage over the other,” he said, according to the transcripts.

“If I grant the restraining order, how do you think that’s going to help with respect to you two being able to raise Wyatt together or work together to make sure Wyatt grows up happy and healthy?”

We'll never know if Wyatt can grow up happy and healthy because Garcia carried through with his threat and killed little Wyatt before killing himself. Once more, the victim is punished because the people who are supposed to be there to help - the ones who are supposed to protect you when you are unable to protect yourself - don't do their jobs. They accuse victims of lying, of making things up because, well, what's a woman's word worth to them? Those women just want to take the children away from their daddies and cash in on child support and alimony, right? And if the big bad man is coming after you, well, just find a friend to stay with, and get someone to walk with you everywhere you go. Surely you can do that much, even if you're in an area where you don't know many people well, or even if your friends have jobs and lives that they need to take care of too. They can drop everything and babysit you, but of course they won't be much help when the bullets come flying your way. Nobody is bullet proof.

Alissa Blanton changed jobs, but her stalker kept coming after her for two years. She kept every unsolicited e-mail he sent her, and she told the judge she feared for her safety. And it wasn't enough. Instead, her husband got to hear her die over the cell phone when she called him to say that her stalker was in the parking lot of her work place and she was alone.

Katie Tagle told the judge she had been hit hard enough to lose conciousness and that she had been threatened. When her ex-husband threatened the life of their son, she still couldn't get a restraining order because the judge feared getting mixed up in a custody battle. Her nine-month old infant paid the ultimate price because no one was willing to believe that a woman was speaking the truth.

What do women have to do in order to be heard? What do we have to do in order to be believed? We jump through your hoops, we play by your rules, and we're still dying. Our children are still dying.

I fucking hate humanity.
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Via [livejournal.com profile] lupabitch: A family needs donations after a house fire destroyed all their possessions, but more importantly one of their children passed away in the fire. Click here for details.

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Wrathful and Unrepentant Jade

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