'Fatal
Fathers' Myth Promoted in Wake
of Peterson, Hacking Cases
by
Glenn Sacks ©2004
In the midst of the Scott Peterson trial and in the wake of the
apparent murder of Lori Hacking, many are declaring the murder of
pregnant women by their male intimates to be a nationwide crisis.
The New York Post thunders "Pregnancy's Greatest Risk: Daddy," and
the Chicago Tribune says that Peterson and Hacking represent a
"violent, horrific trend." Media Life magazine warns that the "Laci
Petersons of the world [are] becoming more common," and a recent A
&E special called "Fatal Fathers" declares that the Peterson murder
is part of a "frightening" and "much larger" phenomenon.
While one cannot fault observers for looking for culprits in such
heartbreaking situations, a few facts are in order. According to the
US Census Bureau, there are nearly 100 million women age 18 or over
in the United States. Of these, only one out of every 75,000 are
murdered by a male intimate each year. Moreover, contrary to popular
belief, there are as many wives and girlfriends who murder their
male partners as vice versa.
According to official Department of Justice statistics, there are
about 1,300 female intimates and 500 male intimates murdered each
year, excluding those killings deemed to be in self-defense.
However, this apparent 2.6 to 1 ratio is distorted by several
blinders which greatly conceal female murders of men. These blinders
were delineated by author Warren Farrell, a high profile expert
witness in domestic violence cases.
One blinder is that women generally use less detectable methods to
murder intimates than men do. One of the most popular female methods
is to poison the victim, and these poisonings are often mistakenly
recorded as "heart attacks" or "accidents" instead of murder.
Another blinder is that women are much more likely than men to use
"contract" killers, and contract killers often disguise murders as
accidents or suicides. Even when a paid killer is caught and the
truth is known, the DOJ counts the murder as a "multiple-offender"
killing instead of as a murder of a man by a female intimate.
Also, men who murder women tend to come from lower income
backgrounds, whereas women who murder men are more likely to come
from middle-class backgrounds. The financial disparities allow for
women to have better legal representation, resulting in more
acquittals. According to a Justice Department study, women are nine
times as likely as men to be acquitted in a trial for the murder of
a spouse, and 10 times as likely to receive probation instead of
prison time.
Chivalry and our stubborn insistence that women are innocent and
morally superior also play a role. The wife of a murdered husband is
far less likely to be considered a serious suspect than the husband
of a murdered wife. And even when women are suspected, they are much
more likely to be seen as having acted in self-defense.
The DOJ's statistics are further distorted by the roughly 7,800
unsolved murders of men and 1,500 unsolved murders of women which
occur each year. If one were to combine the known number of murdered
intimates with reasonable estimates of how many unsolved murders
were committed by intimates, men would comprise over 40% of all
intimate murder victims. This is consistent with the DOJ's survey
Murder in Families, which analyzed 10,000 cases and found that women
make up over 40 percent of those charged in familial murders. In
fact, the total may be far higher, since many murders of men by
female intimates are not even recorded as murders.
Men have no monopoly on violence, cruelty, or murder. Convicted
Texas killer Clara Harris ran her husband down in her Mercedes as
the fallen man's daughter begged her not to kill her father.
Convicted Texas murderess Susan Wright stabbed her husband 193 times
and claimed self-defense. As tragic as the murders of Laci Peterson
and Lori Hacking are, their husbands--if guilty--are aberrations who
are no more representative of American husbands than Harris and
Wright are of American wives.
Glenn Sacks
This article originally
appeared in the Daily Breeze
Website
and appears here with the permission of the author.
Copyright 2004 Glenn
Sacks, all rights reserved
