We've posted on Dad MANUEL ROSALES before, who is charged with the stabbing of his adult daughter and her infant son. The baby subsequently died, and last I heard, the daughter was in critical condition. My first impression was that there was something icky and incestuous here. Now Dad's estranged wife, the daughter's stepmother, has more or less confirmed my suspicions.
We also find out that Rosales is a custodial father.
So where is the mother? Apparently poor and penniless back in Guatemala. Seems Daddy had "tried for years" to bring the girl to the U.S. from Guatemala (Dad became a U.S. citizen around 1996). He finally succeeded when the girl was 15. I've posted at least 4 similar cases where fathers took advantage of poor moms in impoverished countries, only to abuse or kill their children once they were in the U.S. or Canada.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20100526/CRIME/5270389/Wife-of-Lehigh-Acres-stabbing-suspect-hints-at-incest
Wife of Lehigh Acres stabbing suspect hints at incest
By Evangelia Ganosellis and Gabriella Souza • eganosellis@news-press.com gsouza@news-press.com • May 26, 2010
Manuel Rosales shadowed every move made by his daughter, Karminda Rosales Salazar.
"He wanted to know at all times where she was, what she was doing," said Madeline Rosales, Manuel Rosales' estranged wife.
Her husband and stepdaughter were affectionate toward each other, hugging and kissing and holding hands. Manuel Rosales treated Karminda the way a husband would treat his wife, Madeline Rosales said.
Manuel Rosales' behavior led his wife to suspect her husband was the father of Karminda's older son, 1 1/2-year-old Brian Rosales. She doesn't believe he fathered Josue, the 3-month-old boy Manuel Rosales is accused of killing May 20.
The Lee County Sheriff's Office hinted at the possibility of incest when it reported that Manuel Rosales stabbed his daughter, although it would not confirm Wednesday it was investigating that angle.
Manuel Rosales' affection was known to turn to rage, Madeline Rosales said, and frequently, 20-year-old Karminda was the target. In the last confrontation, reports show, he slit Karminda's throat three times before he forced her to watch him slash her youngest child's throat, telling her: "Here's your bastard."
Baby Josue died hours later. Karminda was taken to Lehigh Regional Medical Center, but no recent information about her condition or whereabouts has been released.
Manuel Rosales, 43, was holding the older baby, Brian, in his arms when emergency crews arrived at his Lehigh Acres home. He is being held in the Lee County Jail without bond, facing one count each of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
Manuel Rosales will be represented by a public defender who has not yet been assigned to the case. An arraignment is scheduled for June 21.
Although Madeline Rosales, 45, said her husband is violent, she never believed he was capable of killing. She hasn't been in contact with him since November, when she moved to Miami. She plans to file for divorce.
"Since I found out, I don't sleep at night," she said. "I can't believe what he has done."
Manuel Rosales tried for years to bring his daughter to the United States from her native Guatemala. He succeeded in 2005 when Karminda was 15, Madeline Rosales said.
A native of Honduras, he had moved to Guatemala at age 18. There, he met a woman who gave birth to Karminda.
Manuel Rosales met Madeline in Miami after he moved to the U.S., and they were married in 1996. He became a U.S. resident shortly thereafter, Madeline Rosales said.
After her stepdaughter came to live with them, Madeline Rosales said, her husband would go into Karminda's room often, where he would talk with the girl for hours.
"She would come and lay next to him and lay on top of him," Madeline Rosales said. "I wouldn't think of anything bad because that's his daughter."
While Madeline Rosales doesn't believe her husband fathered Josue, she isn't sure who the father is. She remembers Karminda talking with a boy around the time Madeline Rosales moved to Miami, but she doesn't know his name.
Incest underreported
Incest is far too common an occurrence, and local abuse shelters see a number of women impregnated by their fathers, said Christine Kobie, a community educator at Abuse Counseling and Treatment.
Sexual abuse is about power and control, Kobie said.
"It's not about sex," she said. "It's an abusive person using sex as a weapon."
Incest is greatly underreported, Kobie said, because victims grow up believing their situation is normal.
As they get older, Kobie said, they usually begin to understand that the relationship is abnormal.
But by then, the teenage victims don't want to report the crime because they fear being taken away from their homes.
Although Manuel Rosales hasn't been formally accused of being sexually abusive, Madeline Rosales said he has a temper that often flares.
"He was a very abusive man, verbally and physically," she said. "He was just very aggressive. It had to be his way only, and if not, just forget it."
In 2008, Manuel Rosales was arrested and charged with beating Karminda, who took out a protective order against him. This past November, she fled to Philadelphia, but he convinced her to return, promising to change.
He used the same excuse with his wife.
"He tells my sister that all the time," said Maite Pinon, Madeline Rosales' sister. "That's how he gets them back."
Madeline Rosales said her husband beat her as well. Once, she said, he came after her with a machete, repeatedly beating her with its blunt end.
Despite his violent history, Madeline Rosales can't imagine what might have compelled him to slash the throats of Karminda and her infant son, as he's accused of doing.
"It's something crazy," she said. "I don't know what could have gotten into his head. I really don't know."
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Dad sentenced to 2 years for assault on infant son (Salem, Massachusetts)
Dad NICHOLAS PRATT has been sentenced to 2 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to injury to a child and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (Daddy threw a changing table). His infant son suffered a fractured skull during the incident. Or maybe it was from the time Daddy slammed the baby into his car seat--it's hard to say.
Witness intimidation charges were dropped as part of the plea. Oh yea, and Daddy gets to take lots of classes, too. You know, parenting, domestic violence, drugs, etc. I assume he'll get, ahem, very good grades....
Oh, and check out Dad's former line of work. Renting out "bounce houses" for children's parties. Oh yea. Great. Just the guy you want to be handling your kids.
http://www.salemnews.com/local/x2023222321/Man-jailed-for-assault-on-child
May 27, 2010
Man jailed for assault on child
By Julie Manganis
Staff writer
SALEM — A Salem father was sentenced to serve two years in jail Tuesday after admitting to charges stemming from the injury of his child last year.
Nicholas Pratt, 25, formerly of 4 Bertuccio Ave., had originally been charged with shaking and slamming the child, who was found to have suffered a skull fracture after the Mother's Day incident a year ago.
But under the terms of a plea agreement reached between Pratt's lawyer, William O'Hare, and prosecutor Karen Hopwood, charges of assault and battery on a child causing injury and intimidation of a witness were dropped.
Instead, Pratt pleaded guilty during a hearing in Lawrence Superior Court to permitting injury to a child and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a changing table he threw.
Police said Pratt slammed the baby boy into a car seat, but were not able to prove whether the skull fractures stemmed from that or some other incident.
On the day Pratt's trial was set to get under way, Judge Richard Welch sentenced Pratt to 21/2 years in jail, ordering him to serve two years of that term, followed by four years of probation, the terms of the plea agreement.
Welch also ordered that Pratt have no contact with either the child, who is now about 18 months old, or his mother, pending a review by the Department of Children and Families, which took custody of the couple's children after the incident.
He was also ordered by the judge to take part in parenting classes, a program for men who abuse women, drug and alcohol treatment, and to maintain steady employment.
At the time of his arrest, Pratt was working for a company that rented out "bounce houses" and other amusements for children's parties.
Pratt has spent much of the past year in jail. He was briefly released by a Superior Court judge but was returned to custody after the man who had offered to let him stay in his Route 1 trailer had a change of heart.
Pratt was given credit for 341 days he's spent in custody, meaning that he will become eligible for parole in about three weeks.
Witness intimidation charges were dropped as part of the plea. Oh yea, and Daddy gets to take lots of classes, too. You know, parenting, domestic violence, drugs, etc. I assume he'll get, ahem, very good grades....
Oh, and check out Dad's former line of work. Renting out "bounce houses" for children's parties. Oh yea. Great. Just the guy you want to be handling your kids.
http://www.salemnews.com/local/x2023222321/Man-jailed-for-assault-on-child
May 27, 2010
Man jailed for assault on child
By Julie Manganis
Staff writer
SALEM — A Salem father was sentenced to serve two years in jail Tuesday after admitting to charges stemming from the injury of his child last year.
Nicholas Pratt, 25, formerly of 4 Bertuccio Ave., had originally been charged with shaking and slamming the child, who was found to have suffered a skull fracture after the Mother's Day incident a year ago.
But under the terms of a plea agreement reached between Pratt's lawyer, William O'Hare, and prosecutor Karen Hopwood, charges of assault and battery on a child causing injury and intimidation of a witness were dropped.
Instead, Pratt pleaded guilty during a hearing in Lawrence Superior Court to permitting injury to a child and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a changing table he threw.
Police said Pratt slammed the baby boy into a car seat, but were not able to prove whether the skull fractures stemmed from that or some other incident.
On the day Pratt's trial was set to get under way, Judge Richard Welch sentenced Pratt to 21/2 years in jail, ordering him to serve two years of that term, followed by four years of probation, the terms of the plea agreement.
Welch also ordered that Pratt have no contact with either the child, who is now about 18 months old, or his mother, pending a review by the Department of Children and Families, which took custody of the couple's children after the incident.
He was also ordered by the judge to take part in parenting classes, a program for men who abuse women, drug and alcohol treatment, and to maintain steady employment.
At the time of his arrest, Pratt was working for a company that rented out "bounce houses" and other amusements for children's parties.
Pratt has spent much of the past year in jail. He was briefly released by a Superior Court judge but was returned to custody after the man who had offered to let him stay in his Route 1 trailer had a change of heart.
Pratt was given credit for 341 days he's spent in custody, meaning that he will become eligible for parole in about three weeks.
Judge slams police for letting abusive dad off easy (Doncaster, England, United Kingdom)
The nice policeman let UNNAMED DAD off with a warning the first time he punched his young daughter. Then in a second incident, Daddy smacked her in the face, which resulted in a bruised lip. The daughter is now "happily" in foster care.
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT: All this is very interesting, because while there is one brief reference to Dad's "partner," there is no mention of a mother at all (e.g. yet another case of the Invisible Mother--very common in abusive father stories.) Maybe because there is no mother, at least in this home. So is this a single or custodial father? As usual, everything is very vague.
As for Dad, he's going to jail for 5 months, followed by one of those domestic abuse programs.
http://www.thestar.co.uk/doncaster/Judge-slams-police-letoff-over.6322377.jp
Judge slams police let-off over daughter attack
Date: 27 May 2010
A JUDGE has condemned South Yorkshire Police for letting a Doncaster dad off with a caution after he punched his young daughter.
The 31-year-old Bentley man went on to attack her again when she broke a shoe while getting ready for school.
Criticism of the police decision to caution him was made during the prosecution of the father for the second incident involving the girl, who is now eight years old and living happily with foster parents.
Doncaster's new resident judge, Jonathan Durham Hall QC, branded the original decision to caution the man "disgraceful."
Prosecutor Carl Fitch told Doncaster Crown Court the defendant's past record included the caution in August 2007 for an incident in which he smacked the girl and then punched her in the eye.
In a clear message to South Yorkshire Police about their policy on giving cautions to offenders rather than taking them to court, Judge Durham Hall said: "That's a disgrace and one of the matters I intend to resolve in this part of the county.
"That seems to be a bizarre decision."
After hearing details of the second attack on the girl the judge sentenced the father to a five-month jail term, suspended for two years, with compulsory attendance on a domestic abuse programme.
The judge said the maximum sentence for common assault, which the father admitted, was six months. But the guilty plea would entitle him to early release.
Instead Judge Hall said he would sentence him to the 'harsher and more positive' domestic abuse programme.
He ruled that if the father breached the programme the case would come back to court before him personally. He warned: "If you don't do the order I can try and put the record straight."
But the father, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his child, did not walk free. Jailing him for 21 days for the separate bail offence of not attending a previous court hearing last week, the judge said it provided "some small measure of satisfaction".
Mr Fitch had earlier told the court the girl was getting herself ready for school when she accidentally snapped the strap on a new pair of shoes.
The defendant was in bed but was woken by his partner. Mr Fitch said: "He remonstrated with the child to such an extent that he hit her with the back of his hand to her mouth.
"She was very upset by this and told a friend on the way to school and then reported the matter to the headteacher," said Mr Fitch.
Police were informed and the dad was arrested but insisted she was making the allegation up, even though she had a bruised lip.
Mr Fitch said the girl was now "flourishing" in the care of foster parents in Doncaster.
Defence counsel Andrew Smith said the child no longer wanted to see her father and he was never going to be responsible for her care in the future.
Mr Smith said the defendant was in denial about the matter because he had been abused as a child. He said: "Violence breeds more violence.
This view needs to be challenged because he is at high risk of harm to children if he can't address his behaviour.
"This offender will not want to go on the integrated domestic abuse programme because he will have his behaviour challenged, and he doesn't like that."
The judge also banned him from working with any child under 16 or living in a house with a child for the next two years.
After the case, a South Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "This man was appropriately cautioned under the circumstances at that time."
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT: All this is very interesting, because while there is one brief reference to Dad's "partner," there is no mention of a mother at all (e.g. yet another case of the Invisible Mother--very common in abusive father stories.) Maybe because there is no mother, at least in this home. So is this a single or custodial father? As usual, everything is very vague.
As for Dad, he's going to jail for 5 months, followed by one of those domestic abuse programs.
http://www.thestar.co.uk/doncaster/Judge-slams-police-letoff-over.6322377.jp
Judge slams police let-off over daughter attack
Date: 27 May 2010
A JUDGE has condemned South Yorkshire Police for letting a Doncaster dad off with a caution after he punched his young daughter.
The 31-year-old Bentley man went on to attack her again when she broke a shoe while getting ready for school.
Criticism of the police decision to caution him was made during the prosecution of the father for the second incident involving the girl, who is now eight years old and living happily with foster parents.
Doncaster's new resident judge, Jonathan Durham Hall QC, branded the original decision to caution the man "disgraceful."
Prosecutor Carl Fitch told Doncaster Crown Court the defendant's past record included the caution in August 2007 for an incident in which he smacked the girl and then punched her in the eye.
In a clear message to South Yorkshire Police about their policy on giving cautions to offenders rather than taking them to court, Judge Durham Hall said: "That's a disgrace and one of the matters I intend to resolve in this part of the county.
"That seems to be a bizarre decision."
After hearing details of the second attack on the girl the judge sentenced the father to a five-month jail term, suspended for two years, with compulsory attendance on a domestic abuse programme.
The judge said the maximum sentence for common assault, which the father admitted, was six months. But the guilty plea would entitle him to early release.
Instead Judge Hall said he would sentence him to the 'harsher and more positive' domestic abuse programme.
He ruled that if the father breached the programme the case would come back to court before him personally. He warned: "If you don't do the order I can try and put the record straight."
But the father, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his child, did not walk free. Jailing him for 21 days for the separate bail offence of not attending a previous court hearing last week, the judge said it provided "some small measure of satisfaction".
Mr Fitch had earlier told the court the girl was getting herself ready for school when she accidentally snapped the strap on a new pair of shoes.
The defendant was in bed but was woken by his partner. Mr Fitch said: "He remonstrated with the child to such an extent that he hit her with the back of his hand to her mouth.
"She was very upset by this and told a friend on the way to school and then reported the matter to the headteacher," said Mr Fitch.
Police were informed and the dad was arrested but insisted she was making the allegation up, even though she had a bruised lip.
Mr Fitch said the girl was now "flourishing" in the care of foster parents in Doncaster.
Defence counsel Andrew Smith said the child no longer wanted to see her father and he was never going to be responsible for her care in the future.
Mr Smith said the defendant was in denial about the matter because he had been abused as a child. He said: "Violence breeds more violence.
This view needs to be challenged because he is at high risk of harm to children if he can't address his behaviour.
"This offender will not want to go on the integrated domestic abuse programme because he will have his behaviour challenged, and he doesn't like that."
The judge also banned him from working with any child under 16 or living in a house with a child for the next two years.
After the case, a South Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "This man was appropriately cautioned under the circumstances at that time."
Dad left 2 preschoolers alone for hours; charged with felony child abuse (Grand Island, Nebraska)
Dad DAVID W. GODBEY was stopped by the police for driving with a suspended license, and taken off to jail. Well, Daddy apparently forgot--or figured he better keep quiet about--the two preschool-age sons he had left at his home, locked in their rooms. Officers later received a call requesting a welfare check (from whom? Mom?), and that's when they discovered the little boys, who had that point had been alone for about 7 hours.
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT: Given that there is no mention of a mother, is this a custody/visitation case?
http://www.omaha.com/article/20100527/NEWS97/100529677
Published Thursday May 27, 2010
Tots found alone; father is charged« Crime/CourtsRSS SHARE
GRAND ISLAND —A Grand Island man accused of leaving his two preschool-age sons home alone for several hours was charged Wednesday with two counts of felony child abuse.
David W. Godbey, 37, was also charged in Hall County Court with one count of misdemeanor driving during suspension.
He was released from the Hall County Jail on his own recognizance but was ordered not to have any contact with the children unless he was under State Department of Health and Human Services supervision.
Police stopped Godbey about 8:20 p.m. Tuesday for driving with a suspended license. He was taken to jail but made no mention of his children, Grand Island Police Officer Roger Philbeck said.
Officers later stopped at his home after the emergency center received a call requesting a welfare check on children there, Philbeck said.
When the officers arrived about 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, they found the two boys, ages 3 and 4, locked in their bedroom with no adults at home, he said.
Police believe the boys had been alone since 5 p.m. Tuesday, he said.
The boys were sleeping when they were found. They weren’t injured, he said.
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT: Given that there is no mention of a mother, is this a custody/visitation case?
http://www.omaha.com/article/20100527/NEWS97/100529677
Published Thursday May 27, 2010
Tots found alone; father is charged« Crime/CourtsRSS SHARE
GRAND ISLAND —A Grand Island man accused of leaving his two preschool-age sons home alone for several hours was charged Wednesday with two counts of felony child abuse.
David W. Godbey, 37, was also charged in Hall County Court with one count of misdemeanor driving during suspension.
He was released from the Hall County Jail on his own recognizance but was ordered not to have any contact with the children unless he was under State Department of Health and Human Services supervision.
Police stopped Godbey about 8:20 p.m. Tuesday for driving with a suspended license. He was taken to jail but made no mention of his children, Grand Island Police Officer Roger Philbeck said.
Officers later stopped at his home after the emergency center received a call requesting a welfare check on children there, Philbeck said.
When the officers arrived about 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, they found the two boys, ages 3 and 4, locked in their bedroom with no adults at home, he said.
Police believe the boys had been alone since 5 p.m. Tuesday, he said.
The boys were sleeping when they were found. They weren’t injured, he said.
Dad gets 18 months for sexually abusing daughter (Ottawa, Canada)
UNNAMED DAD, even by pedo standards, is one sick freak. He thought he was a "kindly grantor of sexual favors" when he abused his daughter? I think I need to vomit.
INVISIBLE MOTHER ALERT: And where is the mother in all this? Or was this a single adoptive dad? I gotta wonder.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2010/05/26/14133856.html
Man gets 18 months for abusing daughter
By MEGAN GILLIS, QMI Agency
OTTAWA -- A judge sentenced a man who seemed to regard himself as a “kindly grantor of sexual favours” to 18 months in jail Wednesday for repeatedly sexually abusing his adolescent daughter.
He claimed the girl initiated the sex acts.
The man, who can’t be identified to protect the victim, had pleaded guilty to two counts of invitation to sexual touching and sexual assault against his adopted daughter, who was between 12 and 14 at the time.
“He claimed he was afraid of his daughter and allowed the offences to occur out of fear she would physically harm him if he did not acquiesce,” said Judge Lynn Ratushny, who condemned his victim-blaming.
The man engaged in fondling, oral sex and masturbation with the girl. He took her to buy condoms, saying he didn’t want her to get pregnant, although intercourse wasn’t alleged.
“A father’s duty is to protect his child, not to introduce, instruct and subject her to sexual violations over and over,” Ratushny said.
“(The man) misunderstands and, it seems, continues to misunderstand that he is the adult, he is the parent and it is morally wrong and a serious crime for him to use his daughter’s vulnerability, her young innocence and her young body together with her misguided and uninformed compliance with his sexual demands for his own gratification.”
His lawyer sought house arrest but Ratushny said she had to impose jail time to deter him and others.
She noted that the 18-month sentence is at the lower end of the range but that the Crown wanted to encourage the man to plead guilty to spare the “very fragile” girl, now 16, the ordeal of testifying at a trial.
The girl said in a victim impact statement that she misses her father.
The Nation: When teen pregnancy is no accident - by Lynn Harris
Excellent piece from the Nation on how abusers coerce their partners into getting pregnant, or otherwise sabotage their birth control efforts--all as a way of exerting long-lasting control over their partners' lives. It's an issue known as "reproductive coercion."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127209931
The Nation: When Teen Pregnancy Is No Accident
by Lynn Harris
New studies suggest that many partners of young women are coercing pregnancy, or sabotaging attempts at prevention.
May 27, 2010
Leyla W. couldn't figure out where her birth control pills kept going. One day a few tablets would be missing; the next, the whole container. Her then-boyfriend shrugged and said he hadn't seen them. She believed him — until she found them in his drawer. When she confronted him, he hit her. "That was his way of shutting me up," says Leyla, who is in her mid-20s and living in Northern California. (For her safety, Leyla wishes to withhold her last name and hometown.) He also raped her and, most days, left her locked in a bedroom with a bit of food and water while he went to work. (A roommate took pity and let her out until he came home.) Thanks to the missed pills, she got pregnant twice, the second time deciding against abortion.
Despite his role in getting her pregnant, when Leyla decided she did not want to have an abortion, her boyfriend did a 180, screaming at her belly that he didn't want the baby to live, threatening to "kick the baby out" of her stomach and even, one day, pushing her down a flight of stairs. Her pregnancy was "hell," says Leyla. Perhaps mercifully, it ended at thirty-seven weeks — the baby arriving three weeks early, her doctor speculated, because of his mother's profound stress. (Her doctor was aware, to some degree, of the abuse, and told Leyla the best thing she could do was leave.)
Leyla eventually did just that, getting herself out of her abusive relationship and into a support group. "I do ask every day why I stayed with him for seven years," she says (though she now says that witnessing her father abuse her mother corrupted her sense of what counts as "normal" in a relationship). She married a "wonderful" man last November who is, she says, "a great father" to her son, Eddie, now 2.
Leyla's story turns a modern fable on its head: that of the woman — call her the femme fertile — who conspires to get pregnant, perhaps by "forgetting" to take her birth control pills, as a way to "trap a man" and force marriage — or at least keep him in her life. In reality, experts researchers on dating violence and unintended pregnancy say, it's Leyla's version of that story is all too common. Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women's health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. ("Control" may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.) Together with earlier small-scale studies and reports by those in the field, the new figures help fill out the picture of a long-known, but under-addressed, phenomenon now referred to as "reproductive coercion," in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The new data confirm that we must expand not only our assumptions about who's forcing whom to get pregnant but also our understanding of the meaning and causes of "unwanted" pregnancy. "If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it," says Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has been a leading advocate on the issue.
A new study has found that among 71 women aged 18-49 with a history of intimate partner violence, 74 percent reported having experienced some form of reproductive control, including forced unprotected intercourse, failure to withdraw as promised or sabotaging of condoms. Women who became pregnant were coerced to proceed in accordance with the wishes of their partners, who in some cases threatened to kill them if they had an abortion. Study authors Ann Moore, Lori Frohwirth and Elizabeth Miller, MD, recommend that service providers in women's health clinics ask questions designed to identify women who may be experiencing reproductive coercion, and should be aware that some women may need birth control (such as IUDs) that can be hidden from partners.
In the largest study of this phenomenon to date, "Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy," published in the January issue of the journal Contraception, lead researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who'd sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e. who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they'd experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.
Three years ago, Miller, now assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine and a practitioner at UC Davis Children's Hospital, published what is said to be the first study in adolescent health literature to document the role of abusive partners in promoting teen pregnancy. The study was based on interviews with a racially and ethnically diverse group of sixty-one girls from Boston's poorest neighborhoods, all with histories of intimate-partner violence. Fifty-three of them were in abusive and sexually active relationships at the time of the interview; of those girls, 26 percent reported that their partners were "actively trying to get them pregnant" by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control" — many reported trying to hide their birth control from boyfriends — or simply sweet-talking them about "making beautiful babies" together. One girl reported that her boyfriend deliberately got her pregnant, and then made her have an abortion.
"Pregnancy is an extremely contested area of human relationships," says Miller. "It's likely that there are women who try to get pregnant on purpose in order to maintain or change a relationship. But now we can also say that there is another part of this story that we have not paid enough attention to: men's direct role in promoting pregnancy against women's wishes. It's not the only cause of teen pregnancy, but it's one that we'd managed to miss for a very long time."
The new data is both alarming and promising. While it adds wrinkles to the often-linked problems of unwanted pregnancy and intimate partner violence, it may also provide new clues as to how to address them.
What we now know about reproductive coercion could begin, for one thing, to shine some light onto recent upticks in rates of teen pregnancy and abortion. In January, the Guttmacher Institute reported that between 2005 and 2006 the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 had jumped for the first time since 1990, by a factor of 3 percent. "There are a multitude of reasons for the recent increase in teen pregnancy," says Miller. "Reproductive coercion may be one piece of the puzzle."
Longitudinal studies are needed, Miller says, along with further exploration of the well-documented but puzzling phenomenon of "pregnancy ambivalence," a term those in the field use to describe sexually active women who say they don't want to get pregnant, yet who don't try consistently to prevent it. "We need further research to find out if part of what we've been addressing as 'ambivalence' is in fact male-partner influence on women's reproductive health and autonomy," explains Miller.
A better understanding of reproductive coercion also offers a new — though not always sufficiently early — warning system for intimate partner violence. Unwanted pregnancy should not be considered just a fait-accompli consequence of a series of individual and societal failures. Rather, Miller and others say, healthcare providers should treat unplanned pregnancy (or repeat pregnancy or STD testing) as a potential red flag for relationship abuse. (This is something Miller began to suspect a decade ago when, while working as a volunteer counselor in a Boston clinic, she gave a 15-year-old girl a pregnancy test — negative — and sent her on her way with the usual information about birth control; two weeks later, the girl wound up in the ER when her boyfriend pushed her down a flight of stairs.) In fact, Miller's latest, still-unpublished research has shown that when counselors at family planning clinics are trained to ask questions designed to reveal unhealthy relationships — "Did your partner ever mess with your birth control or try to get you pregnant when you didn't want to be?" — not only are they able to detect cases of relationship violence that might otherwise have fallen through the cracks but the young women at risk are also significantly more likely to get themselves safely out.
Of course, protecting and educating women is only half — if that — of the equation. Why do men abuse in this way in the first place? In one 2007 study, some young men said outright that they'd insisted on condomless sex as a way to establish power over female partners. (There is some evidence of analogous male-on-male violence, but no in-depth studies exist.) Other research shows that men consider a request for a condom an accusation — or admission — of cheating. Advocates such as Patti Giggans, executive director of Peace Over Violence, also hear male gang members say things like "I'm not gonna be around forever. I've got to leave my legacy." (That said, anecdotal evidence — to say nothing of wide reports that even philandering celebrities and politicos eschew condoms — shows that the phenomenon is not limited to the most economically depressed classes.)
According to Miller and Giggans, innovative, male-focused violence prevention programs are popping up all the time. But Miller says that recent research demonstrates that there's a clear need for relationship violence prevention to be integrated into pregnancy prevention and sexual health curricula, and vice versa. Given her findings, after all, preventing unwanted pregnancy appears to be about more than making contraception available, accessible, and acceptable. Never mind abstinence-only education, which would be irrelevant, to say the least, to someone experiencing sexual coercion — even the most comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed — or all the free condoms in all the fishbowls in the world — won't deter a sexually abusive partner, and won't magically protect a girl from a partner who deliberately damages a condom or suddenly removes it mid-intercourse. "Ideally, we'd discuss healthy relationships as a foundation for sex ed before we discuss mechanics," Miller says. Given how embattled sex ed already is, that will be a slow, state by state, curriculum by curriculum process. In fact, some dating violence educators, Miller says, are a bit resistant to tie the issue too explicitly to pregnancy prevention, for fear that too much discussion of sex could jeopardize the inclusion of their entire curriculum.
But changes are already beginning to take place — at least ten states have passed laws requiring (or at least "urging," though not necessarily funding) dating violence education — and teen advocacy groups are generally on board with the notion of broadening pregnancy prevention curricula to include coercion. Members of Miller's team, for example, have been working with the writers of the California pregnancy prevention curriculum to add a vignette in which a girl asks a guy to use a condom but then he removes it during sex. (Right now, Miller says, "that kind of conversation is just not happening.")
As important as it is to address the dangers of coercion, experts agree with Miller that the best big-picture approach is to educate young men and women alike about healthy relationships. "It's imperative that we teach kids comprehensive sex ed that includes awareness of violence and coercion. The more we can help them understand what constitutes a good relationship and where you go for help when something's not good, the more they have a fighting chance," says Debra Hauser, executive vice president of Advocates For Youth.
On the upside, there is at least one sense in which talk of sex-ed innovation is not pie in the sky: there may actually be some money for it. For all the warranted concern about reappropriation of funds for abstinence-only education, in December 2009 President Obama signed into law a $114.5 million teen pregnancy prevention initiative based on medically accurate, research-based information. While $75 million is reserved for programming already proven effective, at least $25 million is earmarked for research and testing of innovative new approaches.
The increasing awareness of the interpersonal complexities of unintended pregnancy — plus the potential funding — make Sarah Brown, executive director of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, "uncharacteristically optimistic," she says. "Sex ed has mainly been focused on reproduction, not relationships. But people in the field have been beginning to understand that — while there is a role for specific pregnancy prevention and harm reduction — it's all part of a larger picture that also includes substance abuse and overall life planning. It's not just about body parts or pathogens or the mechanics of contraception; it's about what constitutes a respectful, warm relationship. If it weren't for the money, I wouldn't be so sanguine, but five years from now we'll have seen many more efforts to talk about the particular sex and safety topics within the larger context of healthy lives and relationships."
And, of course, school isn't the only place where prevention and intervention can take place — or be improved. The Family Violence Prevention Fund, in collaboration with the Office on Women's Health of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has just launched a $3 million violence-prevention initiative called Project Connect, which is designed to find new ways to identify and respond to domestic and sexual violence, including reproductive coercion, in public health settings. Working with ten state health departments and violence-prevention advocacy groups nationwide, the fund will train staff at family planning, adolescent health, home visitation and other maternal child health programs to understand domestic violence and reproductive coercion so that they recognize it when they see it and know how to help.
Given what we know now — and can do about — the link between violence and pregnancy prevention, there's hope for steps forward. "My dream is that we'll see a comprehensive public health response to domestic violence and reproductive coercion in the way we've seen for smoking cessation and HIV prevention," says Lisa James of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, director of Project Connect. "We're starting with just ten sites, but we know this will become the national standard."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127209931
The Nation: When Teen Pregnancy Is No Accident
by Lynn Harris
New studies suggest that many partners of young women are coercing pregnancy, or sabotaging attempts at prevention.
May 27, 2010
Leyla W. couldn't figure out where her birth control pills kept going. One day a few tablets would be missing; the next, the whole container. Her then-boyfriend shrugged and said he hadn't seen them. She believed him — until she found them in his drawer. When she confronted him, he hit her. "That was his way of shutting me up," says Leyla, who is in her mid-20s and living in Northern California. (For her safety, Leyla wishes to withhold her last name and hometown.) He also raped her and, most days, left her locked in a bedroom with a bit of food and water while he went to work. (A roommate took pity and let her out until he came home.) Thanks to the missed pills, she got pregnant twice, the second time deciding against abortion.
Despite his role in getting her pregnant, when Leyla decided she did not want to have an abortion, her boyfriend did a 180, screaming at her belly that he didn't want the baby to live, threatening to "kick the baby out" of her stomach and even, one day, pushing her down a flight of stairs. Her pregnancy was "hell," says Leyla. Perhaps mercifully, it ended at thirty-seven weeks — the baby arriving three weeks early, her doctor speculated, because of his mother's profound stress. (Her doctor was aware, to some degree, of the abuse, and told Leyla the best thing she could do was leave.)
Leyla eventually did just that, getting herself out of her abusive relationship and into a support group. "I do ask every day why I stayed with him for seven years," she says (though she now says that witnessing her father abuse her mother corrupted her sense of what counts as "normal" in a relationship). She married a "wonderful" man last November who is, she says, "a great father" to her son, Eddie, now 2.
Leyla's story turns a modern fable on its head: that of the woman — call her the femme fertile — who conspires to get pregnant, perhaps by "forgetting" to take her birth control pills, as a way to "trap a man" and force marriage — or at least keep him in her life. In reality, experts researchers on dating violence and unintended pregnancy say, it's Leyla's version of that story is all too common. Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women's health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. ("Control" may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.) Together with earlier small-scale studies and reports by those in the field, the new figures help fill out the picture of a long-known, but under-addressed, phenomenon now referred to as "reproductive coercion," in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The new data confirm that we must expand not only our assumptions about who's forcing whom to get pregnant but also our understanding of the meaning and causes of "unwanted" pregnancy. "If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it," says Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has been a leading advocate on the issue.
A new study has found that among 71 women aged 18-49 with a history of intimate partner violence, 74 percent reported having experienced some form of reproductive control, including forced unprotected intercourse, failure to withdraw as promised or sabotaging of condoms. Women who became pregnant were coerced to proceed in accordance with the wishes of their partners, who in some cases threatened to kill them if they had an abortion. Study authors Ann Moore, Lori Frohwirth and Elizabeth Miller, MD, recommend that service providers in women's health clinics ask questions designed to identify women who may be experiencing reproductive coercion, and should be aware that some women may need birth control (such as IUDs) that can be hidden from partners.
In the largest study of this phenomenon to date, "Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy," published in the January issue of the journal Contraception, lead researcher Elizabeth Miller and others surveyed nearly 1,300 16- to 29-year-old women who'd sought a variety of services at five different Northern California reproductive health clinics. Among those who had experienced intercourse, i.e. who could be at risk of unintended pregnancy, not only did 53 percent of respondents say they'd experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner, but one in five said they had experienced pregnancy coercion; 15 percent said they experienced birth control sabotage, including hiding or flushing birth control pills down the toilet, intentional breaking of condoms and removing contraceptive rings or patches. These figures were consistent from clinic to clinic.
Three years ago, Miller, now assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine and a practitioner at UC Davis Children's Hospital, published what is said to be the first study in adolescent health literature to document the role of abusive partners in promoting teen pregnancy. The study was based on interviews with a racially and ethnically diverse group of sixty-one girls from Boston's poorest neighborhoods, all with histories of intimate-partner violence. Fifty-three of them were in abusive and sexually active relationships at the time of the interview; of those girls, 26 percent reported that their partners were "actively trying to get them pregnant" by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control" — many reported trying to hide their birth control from boyfriends — or simply sweet-talking them about "making beautiful babies" together. One girl reported that her boyfriend deliberately got her pregnant, and then made her have an abortion.
"Pregnancy is an extremely contested area of human relationships," says Miller. "It's likely that there are women who try to get pregnant on purpose in order to maintain or change a relationship. But now we can also say that there is another part of this story that we have not paid enough attention to: men's direct role in promoting pregnancy against women's wishes. It's not the only cause of teen pregnancy, but it's one that we'd managed to miss for a very long time."
The new data is both alarming and promising. While it adds wrinkles to the often-linked problems of unwanted pregnancy and intimate partner violence, it may also provide new clues as to how to address them.
What we now know about reproductive coercion could begin, for one thing, to shine some light onto recent upticks in rates of teen pregnancy and abortion. In January, the Guttmacher Institute reported that between 2005 and 2006 the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 had jumped for the first time since 1990, by a factor of 3 percent. "There are a multitude of reasons for the recent increase in teen pregnancy," says Miller. "Reproductive coercion may be one piece of the puzzle."
Longitudinal studies are needed, Miller says, along with further exploration of the well-documented but puzzling phenomenon of "pregnancy ambivalence," a term those in the field use to describe sexually active women who say they don't want to get pregnant, yet who don't try consistently to prevent it. "We need further research to find out if part of what we've been addressing as 'ambivalence' is in fact male-partner influence on women's reproductive health and autonomy," explains Miller.
A better understanding of reproductive coercion also offers a new — though not always sufficiently early — warning system for intimate partner violence. Unwanted pregnancy should not be considered just a fait-accompli consequence of a series of individual and societal failures. Rather, Miller and others say, healthcare providers should treat unplanned pregnancy (or repeat pregnancy or STD testing) as a potential red flag for relationship abuse. (This is something Miller began to suspect a decade ago when, while working as a volunteer counselor in a Boston clinic, she gave a 15-year-old girl a pregnancy test — negative — and sent her on her way with the usual information about birth control; two weeks later, the girl wound up in the ER when her boyfriend pushed her down a flight of stairs.) In fact, Miller's latest, still-unpublished research has shown that when counselors at family planning clinics are trained to ask questions designed to reveal unhealthy relationships — "Did your partner ever mess with your birth control or try to get you pregnant when you didn't want to be?" — not only are they able to detect cases of relationship violence that might otherwise have fallen through the cracks but the young women at risk are also significantly more likely to get themselves safely out.
Of course, protecting and educating women is only half — if that — of the equation. Why do men abuse in this way in the first place? In one 2007 study, some young men said outright that they'd insisted on condomless sex as a way to establish power over female partners. (There is some evidence of analogous male-on-male violence, but no in-depth studies exist.) Other research shows that men consider a request for a condom an accusation — or admission — of cheating. Advocates such as Patti Giggans, executive director of Peace Over Violence, also hear male gang members say things like "I'm not gonna be around forever. I've got to leave my legacy." (That said, anecdotal evidence — to say nothing of wide reports that even philandering celebrities and politicos eschew condoms — shows that the phenomenon is not limited to the most economically depressed classes.)
According to Miller and Giggans, innovative, male-focused violence prevention programs are popping up all the time. But Miller says that recent research demonstrates that there's a clear need for relationship violence prevention to be integrated into pregnancy prevention and sexual health curricula, and vice versa. Given her findings, after all, preventing unwanted pregnancy appears to be about more than making contraception available, accessible, and acceptable. Never mind abstinence-only education, which would be irrelevant, to say the least, to someone experiencing sexual coercion — even the most comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed — or all the free condoms in all the fishbowls in the world — won't deter a sexually abusive partner, and won't magically protect a girl from a partner who deliberately damages a condom or suddenly removes it mid-intercourse. "Ideally, we'd discuss healthy relationships as a foundation for sex ed before we discuss mechanics," Miller says. Given how embattled sex ed already is, that will be a slow, state by state, curriculum by curriculum process. In fact, some dating violence educators, Miller says, are a bit resistant to tie the issue too explicitly to pregnancy prevention, for fear that too much discussion of sex could jeopardize the inclusion of their entire curriculum.
But changes are already beginning to take place — at least ten states have passed laws requiring (or at least "urging," though not necessarily funding) dating violence education — and teen advocacy groups are generally on board with the notion of broadening pregnancy prevention curricula to include coercion. Members of Miller's team, for example, have been working with the writers of the California pregnancy prevention curriculum to add a vignette in which a girl asks a guy to use a condom but then he removes it during sex. (Right now, Miller says, "that kind of conversation is just not happening.")
As important as it is to address the dangers of coercion, experts agree with Miller that the best big-picture approach is to educate young men and women alike about healthy relationships. "It's imperative that we teach kids comprehensive sex ed that includes awareness of violence and coercion. The more we can help them understand what constitutes a good relationship and where you go for help when something's not good, the more they have a fighting chance," says Debra Hauser, executive vice president of Advocates For Youth.
On the upside, there is at least one sense in which talk of sex-ed innovation is not pie in the sky: there may actually be some money for it. For all the warranted concern about reappropriation of funds for abstinence-only education, in December 2009 President Obama signed into law a $114.5 million teen pregnancy prevention initiative based on medically accurate, research-based information. While $75 million is reserved for programming already proven effective, at least $25 million is earmarked for research and testing of innovative new approaches.
The increasing awareness of the interpersonal complexities of unintended pregnancy — plus the potential funding — make Sarah Brown, executive director of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, "uncharacteristically optimistic," she says. "Sex ed has mainly been focused on reproduction, not relationships. But people in the field have been beginning to understand that — while there is a role for specific pregnancy prevention and harm reduction — it's all part of a larger picture that also includes substance abuse and overall life planning. It's not just about body parts or pathogens or the mechanics of contraception; it's about what constitutes a respectful, warm relationship. If it weren't for the money, I wouldn't be so sanguine, but five years from now we'll have seen many more efforts to talk about the particular sex and safety topics within the larger context of healthy lives and relationships."
And, of course, school isn't the only place where prevention and intervention can take place — or be improved. The Family Violence Prevention Fund, in collaboration with the Office on Women's Health of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has just launched a $3 million violence-prevention initiative called Project Connect, which is designed to find new ways to identify and respond to domestic and sexual violence, including reproductive coercion, in public health settings. Working with ten state health departments and violence-prevention advocacy groups nationwide, the fund will train staff at family planning, adolescent health, home visitation and other maternal child health programs to understand domestic violence and reproductive coercion so that they recognize it when they see it and know how to help.
Given what we know now — and can do about — the link between violence and pregnancy prevention, there's hope for steps forward. "My dream is that we'll see a comprehensive public health response to domestic violence and reproductive coercion in the way we've seen for smoking cessation and HIV prevention," says Lisa James of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, director of Project Connect. "We're starting with just ten sites, but we know this will become the national standard."
Dad charged with trying to poison children (Wyoming, Michigan)
Dad JOSE ENRIQUE OLIVA-ROSA has been charged with attempted murder after he threatened to poison his two children. Given that the setting is distinctly identified as the Dad's home and that police had to force their way in, I wonder if the mother even lived there, or whether this is a custody/visitation situation.
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=122045&catid=14
Wyoming man charged with trying to poison his children
WZZM 13 ONLINE
Updated:5/27/2010 3:03:04 PM - Posted: 5/27/2010 2:14:54 PM Comments
WYOMING, Mich. (WZZM) - A 25-year-old Wyoming man is in police custody, charged with trying to poison his two children.
Wyoming Police say on Tuesday May 25, they arrived at the home of Jose Enrique Oliva-Rosa and had to force their way inside. Authorities were told Oliva-Rosa was going to poison his 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, and then stab himself.
Once inside police say they took Oliva-Rosa into custody without incident.
The children were in the living room with him and taken to the hospital. The children were monitored for a while and eventually released to the care of their mother.
Oliva-Rosa is the father of the children remained in the hospital overnight. He is charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of poisoning, and two counts of felony child abuse. His bond was denied.
http://www.wzzm13.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=122045&catid=14
Wyoming man charged with trying to poison his children
WZZM 13 ONLINE
Updated:5/27/2010 3:03:04 PM - Posted: 5/27/2010 2:14:54 PM Comments
WYOMING, Mich. (WZZM) - A 25-year-old Wyoming man is in police custody, charged with trying to poison his two children.
Wyoming Police say on Tuesday May 25, they arrived at the home of Jose Enrique Oliva-Rosa and had to force their way inside. Authorities were told Oliva-Rosa was going to poison his 2-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, and then stab himself.
Once inside police say they took Oliva-Rosa into custody without incident.
The children were in the living room with him and taken to the hospital. The children were monitored for a while and eventually released to the care of their mother.
Oliva-Rosa is the father of the children remained in the hospital overnight. He is charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of poisoning, and two counts of felony child abuse. His bond was denied.
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