Here we go again. Yet another "ignore the elephant in the corner" news story. Daddy and his "girlfriend" arrested for, well, basically torturing his teenage son.
Let's discuss the elephant, shall we? WHERE IS MOM?
Basic biology tells us that fathers may very well invest 5 minutes or less in "fathering"--typically at the very beginning of the pregnancy, if you catch my drift. So to have a child in a single-mother household is something of a default development. Unless the father makes a conscious commitment to the mother and her offspring, you have a single-mother household.
Fathers DO NOT create single-father households unless there has been deliberate act to create them. They are not "natural." Mothers give birth, not fathers. This should be obvious, but to this reporter and the countless commenters on this article, it apparently is not.
So the question that SHOULD be raised--and seldom is--is HOW DID THIS CHILD END UP IN THIS HOME? Is the mother deceased? Was the father married to her, and thus get custody by default through her death? If he was not married to her, or even living with her, who decided he should have custody upon her death? The father's custody is a SOCIAL/POLITICAL determination, not an act of nature.
Likewise if this father stripped a living mother of custody--the more likely scenario--then that is also a social/political act within a society that determines that fathers/sperm donors (and their 5 minute contributions) have rights and privileges that are "equal" to the human being who actually carries the child through nine months of pregancy and gives birth.
So who were the people who determined that torturer dad HUGO DOMINGUEZ and his sicko gal pal would have custody? Why aren't they identified? And what happened to the mother? Why has she been erased from this story?
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/4014805-418/prosecutors-dad-kept-teen-chained-to-dryer.html
Prosecutors: Dad kept teen chained to dryer
BY TINA SFONDELES Staff Reportertsfondeles@suntimes.com Feb 26, 2011 02:04AM
A south suburban teenager was routinely chained to a dryer and viciously beaten by his father and his father’s girlfriend with everything from bamboo scratchers to yardsticks to a broken ax handle, Cook County prosecutors allege.
Hugo Dominguez, 38, of Glenwood, admitted he kept the 13-year-old boy captive in the laundry room most nights while he and his live-in girlfriend, Mary Ramirez, slept, authorities said.
The couple routinely unchained the Brookwood Junior High School student in the morning and kept him in the garage before school, court records indicated.
The boy told investigators that Dominguez and Ramirez, 38, often hit him with many objects, including wooden ax handles, yardsticks, bamboo scratchers, belts and rulers that had been taped together.
Dominguez also recently stabbed his son with a knife, prosecutors said.
Authorities began investigating the couple after school officials called to report the alleged abuse Tuesday.
The teenager currently has a large laceration to his left elbow, bruising on a large portion of both arms and lash marks on his lower and middle back and lower legs, prosecutors said.
Dominguez was ordered held in lieu of $250,000 bail Friday for aggravated domestic battery, according to state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton. Ramirez was ordered held in lieu of $100,000 bail for unlawful restraint.