Raising pity elsewhere, for women…,
…but should we not be concerned about crimes against humanity in our own backyard?
One woman’s nightmare, and a crime against humanity
Robert Fisk in Amman
Call her Hanan. She sits in front of me, a red scarf tied round her long intelligent face, her wide, bright eyes sparkling as she tells her story, her two-year-old son Omar restless on the chair beside her. To save the “honour” of her family – and to avoid being killed by her youngest brother – she has married her own rapist. To save the “honour” of her family – to stay alive – she is now divorcing her rapist. Omar, drinking orange juice, jumping on his plastic chair, is the rapist’s son….
That is a fine label to give to a small boy to grow up with. Let’s hope that his mom does not keep a clipping of that article in her personal effects, for the boy to find when he grows up or when he is an adult.
I don’t see a reference to a corroborating police report that identifies beyond a doubt that the boy’s mother is telling the truth. After all, she does have her life to protect, and, when it comes to honour killings, it would be in her best interest to claim that she was raped. Aside from that, rape accusations are easy to come by.
Just this morning there was an article in the Edmonton Journal (on the bottom of page B8) about a Calgary man who had been incarcerated for two years on account of having been wrongfully accused of brutally raping a woman for ten full hours. There was a mistrial earlier, due to an issue with one of the jurors (the article was no more specific than that) but just the other day, in a re-trial of the man’s alleged crime, the woman who had accused him admitted under cross-examination by the defence attorney that she had made the whole story up and had lied about it all along. The next day she did not even show up in court. It appears that no warrant for her arrest was issued. The woman’s name was not mentioned. The man’s name is John Francis Dionne. He was to be released later on Friday.
Will anything be done to fully compensate the man for the time he spent in jail and to have his reputation and career destroyed? I doubt it. Will his accuser be made to make full retribution for the crime against her victim that she committed? I doubt that even more.
Cases like that are legion, some for no other reason than that a woman accuser wanted to come up with an acceptable excuse for showing up late for a meeting or for supper with her family.
Robert Fisk’s article concludes,
….The two-year-old struggles down from his plastic chair and demands chocolates. But given his mother’s painful struggle, what world has he been born into?
Robert Fisk should have come up with a more appropriate ending: “Given his mother’s hatred for his father and for half of the boy’s genetic heritage, will the poor boy be able to respect his mother, his father, any men or perhaps even himself when he grows up?”
Robert Fisk is not helping. He appears to have appointed himself judge, jury and executioner, and all of that apparently for no other reason than the complaint by a damsel in discomfort. What a world the Robert Fisks have created!
The article by Robert Fisk contains an estimated statistic: “Hanan is the victim of a vast, corrupt system of “honour” crimes that plagues the Middle East, and takes the lives of at least 5,000 women – perhaps four times that number – a year, a vicious patriarchal system of extra-judicial killings in which a chance conversation between an unmarried woman and a stranger,…” and “….Policemen and judges often connive with the murderers.”
Other than that, his article consists of a long tale of anecdotal evidence as told by the woman who claims to have been the victim of a rape. Is the story true? Why should we accept her word as the sole authority for the story’s veracity? There were no other witnesses to the alleged crime.
Aside from that, an opposite bias by the judicial and law-enforcement authorities in the so-called free West is without a doubt the cause of the deaths of about exactly 30,000 men in North America a year, out of a population of 340 million people, compared to an alleged 5,000 (or “perhaps four times that number”) in the Middle East, out of a population that is much larger than that of North America.
It seems to me that when in search of victims for personal monetary gain, Robert Fisk and others like him should go by rank based on size of victim group to raise sympathy and pity for those who deserve consideration most, not necessarily by what is politically correct and easiest to sell by the word count in the articles he earns his bread-and-butter with.
At any rate, all that stands as the dividing line of the legal reality of a man being or lover or being a rapist is the plausibility of a woman’s word, and women often lie. The woman who lied about John Francis Dionne is a prostitute, but she is still deemed to be a victim whose name needs to be protected.
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To kevpaul (#3, February 25, 2011 at 10:23 pm) and anarchy (#4, February 27, 2011 at 1:35 am)
You both appear to labour under some misunderstandings. Kevin, John Francis Dionne is not my buddy. I never met him in my life, but are you not much closer to him? Is he not a former neighbour of yours?
Anarchy is not exactly a confidence-inspiring pseudonym. Aside from that, Anarchy, I did not defend a “fine upstanding man, a real father figure,” as you put it. Unless you can find any evidence of me identifying him as such, don’t put words into my mouth.
Both of you need to focus on the real issue that seems to have eluded your clouded perspective.
Regardless of what the media state right now, there has not yet been a court hearing that established beyond any reasonable doubt that he is guilty of the charges that you so eagerly accept.
I am not saying that it is impossible that he is guilty of having committed what is being reported, although fortunately not much appears to have happened. However, would it not be a good idea to listen to both sides of the argument before you declare him to be guilty of charges that, as far as you know, have not even been completely formulated?
Aside from that some men are more biased than others in accusing men of being brutes and beasts, both of you have no problem with the inherent bias in media reporting when it comes to reporting of offences committed by sex offenders of either sex.
Do yourself a favour and very critically examine these comments on female and male sex offenders. Of course, don’t bother doing that if sort of bias does not bother you.
From those comments:
You are prime examples of that bias, and I am glad that you proved my point so nicely. What’s in it for you, brownie points with your girlfriends?
anarchy
says:fine upstanding man, a real father figure, you choose to defend:http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/02/27/17425531.html
kevpaul
says:so what do u think of your good buddy john francis dionne now? not quite the upstanding citizen now is he? but i suppose the little 10 year old girl probably lied about being kidnapped and really just wanted to roll him for all his crack…..i hope u feel like a complete arse right about now cause you sure look like one. pst…and how long did it take your good ol buddy to get out of prison to strike again? 4-5 months. Maybe when the justice system lets him out again, you can let him move in with you and your family. I mean c’mon, all the guy needs is a “fresh start”…..oh, and dont forget his lawyer..he probably could use some pity from you too…..
dtj
says:John Francis Dionne was NOT found innocent ….[snipped — overly long and somewhat off-topic]
John Francis Dionne wasn’t found ‘innocent’, nor was he found ‘not guilty’ nor was he ‘exonerated’.
Response by F4L: Dale, there has been a trial by media, and all we can go by, without you providing a link to the court transcript, is what the media reported:
Other than that, you need to check the rules for this blog, at http://blog.fathersforlife.org/about/
Consider the original topic on which you commented, “Raising pity elsewhere, for women…,” and that you used up a fair bit of space to comment on a short paragraph in the original posting, namely this:
This comment had originally been made at the wrong blog entry.
According to Dale Johnson, his comment was supposed to be posted at the topic shown here.
My responses are inserted between Dale’s lines.
Dale, John Francis Dionne has been exonerated. The woman who accused him stated that what she had said was a lie. She said, in court, “I made it all up.”
Right. She testified twice, and the second time she recanted.
Right. John Dionne stated to the police that he never had any involvement with his accuser. His lawyer said something different. Does anyone know whether John Francis Dionne is telling the truth or whether his lawyer does, or why they tell different stories?
His lawyer is not the one who got accused, but he gets paid one way or another.
The court said that John Francis Dionne was exonerated. The RCMP vilified him anyway. That looks like abuse of power. Doesn’t it?
So, proximity to a school yard makes John Francis Dionne a danger to females aged 10 to 42. Aside from that being age discrimination (women over 42-years of age are still interested in sex and are still attractive to sexual predators), what does that make you. What does close proximity to a school yard, the same school yard, make you?
Suppose you would have been the one who was falsely accused and were at risk to go to prison for many years. Do you think that you might have been moved to utter a death threat or two against your accuser?
“Just maybe,” she may have skipped town because she had been exposed as a liar. However, just aside from that, you surely are reaching with your speculations.
You would be better off to stick to the topic and if you were not to expand the scope of the debate so much.
What does Al Capone’s conviction have to do with John Francis Dionne case? Nothing.
John Francis Dionne case has everything to do with a false accusation of sexual assault. An accusation like that is easy to come by.
In the US, there are an estimated 520,000 false rape allegations a year — 98.1% of all reported cases. (Eeva Sodhi, Debunking Domestic Violence Statistics; Rape)
There would be far fewer false allegations of rape if the women who lie about having been raped would be sentenced so that it will truly hurt them.
To use false rape allegations to hurt men is violence by proxy.
Whatever happened to the constitutionally guaranteed right to be considered innocent until proven guilty? Does that not matter to you?
Let’s hope that nothing like that will ever happen to you or to anyone else, but that is clearly not the case for millions of men.
Nevertheless, you will have the beliefs of the RCMP trump the decision of a court of law, and to heck with constitutional rights of men.
Can you blame him? If your were living next door to someone like you, would you want to stick around after having been found innocent by a court of law?
Right, and very often the innocent are judged to be guilty.
You base your condemnation of John Francis Dionne on feelings, not on the evidence in the case. The judge in the case did things right, we hope, but he acted according to the law.
Going by what the law states about such things, your persistence in declaring John Francis Dionne guilty, is slanderous and libelous.