A particularly nasty strain of the FRA virus
A lot of the men who are drawn to the FRA/MRA movement are probably just garden-variety assholes who are happy to blame feminism for their problems. But then there are the actual monsters: rapists, child-abusers, and wife-beaters who find the FRA/MRA rhetoric a convenient cover for their crimes.
The rapists are aided by a number of MRA spokesmen who claim that most rape allegations are false. Rape hardly ever happens, they say; it’s just a lie told by conniving bitches out to destroy dewy-eyed innocent men who would never hurt a fly. The child-abusers and wife-beaters have Fathers’ Rights Activists who claim that most child abuse and domestic violence claims are false. Fathers don’t really sexually abuse their kids, much less hit their wives, they say; that’s just a bunch of lies told by vindictive and/or delusional divorced mothers.
One FRA particularly devoted to the latter form of propaganda is Dean Tong, who runs a website called the Abuse-Excuse. It’s heavy on speculation as to precisely which form of mental illness could possibly be motivating all those divorced women to make such outrageously false claims about their ex-husbands. But alas for Tong, it turns out that one of the “wrongly-accused” dads he’s been advising is Darren Mack, who stabbed his ex-wife to death and shot the judge in the case. Whoops! Apparently Darren didn’t get the memo about how all accused fathers are really innocent non-violent types who just want a chance to hug their kids.
You’d think Tong would be embarrassed, but he’s obviously decided to bluff it out. Here’s what he told CNN:
Well, she had made allegations of domestic violence, that he had hit her. I had him tested by one of my psychologists, and the results of those findings and conclusions were that he had no propensity to be the monster that she was pinging him to be. I met the man last July in a Las Vegas hotel. We had breakfast together, and he certainly didn’t appear to me to be a risk to his child or his wife. So I mean, this is totally beyond surreal for me.
Yeah, who would have thought? Because of course Charla Mack couldn’t have been telling the truth — she’s a woman, women lie, women who are getting divorced lie even more, and women getting divorced who have children lie so much that if you gave them a polygraph test the machine would explode. Right? And on top of that Tong’s cadre of top-flight psychologists (who clearly got their degrees from the very best mail-order diploma mills) said Darren was fine, and during breakfast he didn’t say jack about stabbing anybody to death, so who could have seen it coming?
I would love to be able to report that the CNN interviewer smacked Tong upside the head and screamed, “HE FUCKING STABBED HIS WIFE TO DEATH AND TRIED TO KILL THE FUCKING JUDGE, YOU STUPID ASSWIPE! DOESN’T THAT SUGGEST TO YOU THAT JUST MAYBE YOUR SO-CALLED PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS ARE PERHAPS A TEENSY WEENSY BIT INACCURATE? GIVEN THAT ANY THOUGHT, PINHEAD?”
But of course no such thing happened. Instead they went on to talk about what Charla and the judge did to piss Darren off so much. (Hint: Darren just wanted to be able to hug his daughter!)
*****
Thanks to Trish Wilson, who connected the dots on the Tong-Mack business and has blogged about it thoroughly. Here’s Trish’s original post, with more from Red State Feminist and Amanda.
Darren Mack is the guy whose violence was being defended on the MRA/FRA message boards, as discussed in this post.
14 Responses to “A particularly nasty strain of the FRA virus”
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Chris Clarke says:
You seem upset.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:14 pm EST -
Violet says:
That does it — I’m going to have to write a post on how differently men and women perceive my blogging.
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Marcella Chester says:
“Instead they went on to talk about what Charla and the judge did to piss Darren off so much.”
That’s the part I find most disturbing. Lot’s of people have pissed me off and I haven’t murdered or physically assaulted a single one of them, not even my rapist.
The stimulus might be external but the cause for these men’s violence is internal. And that’s where the blame belongs. To feed into the victim blaming is to feed the violence.
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Promenea says:
The above situation is of course reprehensible but women do falsely accuse their husbands of abuse. I know this because the almost ex of my bf did just that as a ploy to try to get a bigger settlement.
There was no abuse in the 32 years they were married, there is no evidence of abuse and when asked to provide it she said that he raise his voice to her on occasion. Not only that but of the two of them, she’s the one that threw things and stormed out of the house but of course he “made” her do it.
Women can be crazy loons too. He put up with her waaay tooo long.
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gordo says:
Violent–
This is why guys like Tong love to go on Rita Cosby’s show, but avoid Nancy Grace. I think Grace would have torn him a new one if he’d tried to tell her that his psychological “experts” had determined that Mack wasn’t prone to violence.
Promenea–
Do you imagine that the married man you’re sleeping with is an honest person? I guess you’ll find out soon enough if he’s abusive.
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Andrea says:
Yeah, and I bet they hardly ever had sex too, right Promenea?
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Violet says:
Gordo, actually the interviewer in that exchange was Nancy Grace.
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Violet says:
The above situation is of course reprehensible but women do falsely accuse their husbands of abuse.
Yes, occasionally, just like occasionally people falsely allege rape and occasionally people fake their own deaths. The rate of false reporting is pretty low.
However, FRAs and MRAs pretend that false allegations are common, and that’s simply wrong. Most abuse allegations are true. The epidemic of lying is by men who deny that they’ve abused their families.
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promenea says:
“Promenea–
Do you imagine that the married man you’re sleeping with is an honest person? I guess you’ll find out soon enough if he’s abusive.”
We’ve been together for 2 1/2 years. He’s the most easy going guy I know. Not even one sign of a red flag. His ex is a liar. I’ve also seen the way she manipulates her adult kids and refuses to take any responsibility for her life. She’s a confirmed victim.
Violet – can you point to statistics that actually show the proportion of lying to truthful accusers?
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Violet says:
Promonea, here you go:
That page is from Trish Wilson, who’s been having trouble commenting (technical difficulties) and was kind enough to send me that link. It’s an excellent compendium of information from her website. Thank you, Trish!!!
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txfeminist says:
shorter Trish:
false accusations have been documented by reputable sources at about a rate of 2% – and that stat holds both in- and out- of marriages. it’s also about the same rate that other crimes have for false-accusation rate.
So, what we learn from that is,
a) women don’t “claim abuse” to get the upper hand in a divorce because there is no difference in the rates whether a divorce is in process or not;
and
b) abuse allegations are only as common as any other false allegations of crime. which debunks that MRA/FRA story about how false allegations are so widespread in DV cases.
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ginmar says:
Trish also linked to a study that showed that men were four times more likely to lie about wives than wives were to lie about husbands. And why wouldn’t they? When men lie, it’s the truth; when women tell the truth, it’s a lie.
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silverside says:
Ma’m, you’re not out of the doghouse yet.
Abusers are not “out of control.” They know very much what they are doing in most cases. That means they are perfectly capable of being charming and playing the innocent victim of a vindictive wife as long as they need to do so.
My ex played this game, but I never knew his ex-wife long enough to confirm what was going on (she left the area and doesn’t seem to be traceable – hint #1?). Oh yea, he was very good at the innocent, I’m just a country boy bedeviled by these evil women shtick. His current gf has been conditioned to believe that I’m the incarnate of EVIL too. That my child must be saved from me at all costs. Well, the gf looks pretty depressed these days. Hasn’t been able to get a real job in her profession. But she still blames me for what has become of her life. As Lundy Bancroft would tell you, many abusers are talented at recruiting allies that they use and discard as needed.
A couple of years ago, a woman moved back to this area. I heard through the grapevine that her child’s father was the ex. Met with her, and sure enough. Same pattern of abuse. She still puts up with him periodically showing up at her door to harrass her.
Before you assume “the bitch is lying,” check around some more. Don’t hook yourself up with a serial abuser, and wonder in a few years how you missed the obvious signs. It may be too late then. You might have had kids with this guy, in which case he will be in your face till they’re adults.
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Theresnojustice says:
The PAS cancer is alive and well in Dallas Texas where children get sent with their abusers whenever the Judge decides that they would rather support the father’s cause or maybe it’s the father’s attorney’s cause. It is a cancer in our country that allows for the abuse of children. This is court ordered abuse. Judge Marilea Lewis placed her court appointed “experts,” John Zervopoulos PhD(PAS proponent investigator, Gail Inman( PAS proponent therapist) and Joseph Amberson (I don’t care about the child at all and will do whatever the judge wants me to do, Amicus attorney)into position with a plan to exonerate the abuser. These court appointed people then convinced a jury to ignore the words of the child and the findings of Child Protective Services and to award full custody to the person that CPS said was sexually abusing the child. It is hard to believe that such a heinous act happened here in America. Even the majority of criminals in the world do not accept sexual abuse. It is a criminals crime. These criminals in Dallas Texas do this as a routine. These “experts” do this routinely and they have abused many children. Only public exposure and scrutiny will stop these foul acts. These blatant court abusers even did their act in this case in which there was a clear CPS finding of abuse and when Dad even admitted to touching the child in his privates at the age of ten. How do they all sleep at night, or is it possible that they believe as Gardner did that the sex with children is normal. It is shocking and nauseating.
