After rereading the article a couple of times, I don't think there's enough information to really make a judgement on this, but I'm inclined to agree with the police.

Implied by the article:

1) The police had informed the mother of their desire to take a paternity test, which is now impossible.
2) The police were not otherwise opposed to an abortion happening subsequently.
3) The mother may have been complicit in the rapes
4) The mother may have been *deliberately* destroying evidence, to protect the rapist stepfather.

The bails may be the same because both father and mother are being considered in the same crime.

Also, yes, you're supposed to care about the state's interest in the investigation, *because if they don't get evidence, the rapist will walk*. And potentially rape someone else.

As with the 13-year-old ward of the state discussed sometime earlier on this site, a short delay does not necessarily qualify as undue burden, and the right to an abortion does not necessarily equate to the right to an abortion *right now* in all cases.

I think they should add something to her sentance, she just abused her daughter again as far as I'm concerned. It wouldn't have been hard for her to inform the police when and where the abortion could take place, and the police could have gotten a sample as soon as the proceedure was done. But this selfish mom just destroyed the evidence that could put her daughters rapist away. Sounds like she has ensured that it will remain a he said vs she said case, and we all know who always wins those. What a bitch. Lock her up and throw away the key as far as I'm concerned, shes just as much of a rapist.

I have to agree with Zed and Sarah. This mother was not looking out for her daughter, rather she was covering up for her husband. Although many would like to think otherwise, mothers sometimes put their spouses' welfare above that of their children. This seems to be the case for this mother. The police could have conducted a paternity test either before or after the abortion procedure. Instead the mother chose to destroy the evidence (I doubt she requested the clinic to perform any test on the fetus.).

The real question is whether the girl even wanted the abortion. The girl, though only 17, might have chose to carry the fetus to term and either keep it or give it up for adoption. Although I would want an abortion if in her position, we cannot assume that what we would do is what this girl would do. If she wanted an abortion, then she should be able to have an abortion, so long as evidence is preserved. We really do not want a predator like her step-father on the streets.

Not that you're necessarily wrong, y'all, but as the Official Internalized Sexism Fairy, I have to remind everyone here that complicity laws that arrest non-abusing parents along with abusing parents are almost never wielded against men, only women. The implication is that protecting children from abuse is the mother's job alone. Therefore it is imperative that feminists make sure that we check our internalized sexism meter and ask ourselves is we are holding mothers to a standard we would not hold fathers to before we pass judgement.

Well I think I would be equally pissed if it was her father who took her to get an abortion with out informing the police if the rape that caused the pregnancy was under investigation.

It is unfair that mothers are usually the non-abusing spouse that gets blamed for letting it happen, simply because there are more fathers abusing children then mothers. However there are a lot of mothers that let this kind of thing go on. While we have to be careful to not make protecting a child the womans job only, we also must make sure that we don't assume that women cannot be accomplices in covering up sexual assault.

Jessica, I'm not happy to add to a chorus of "Jessica was wrong," but I think you were way quick on the trigger on this one.

A seventeen year old compelled to terminate a pregnancy by her family is no better in my view than a seventeen year old compelled not to terminate a pregnancy. It's not clear she was exercising any choice here.

If the alleged abuser step-dad had taken her to the clinic, you'd be all over him for abusing her twice.

Amanda, it's not exactly common that I think you've got it wrong, either, but here I think you've got it wrong. It sounds like you're making an empirical claim that the complicity laws are not used against men _even_though_women_abose_as_much_as_men. If you're not asserting the second clause, then the first is meaningless. If you are asserting the second part, that's an empirical claim that I bet you have real trouble backing up.

Jessica:

I LOVE your site but you are really off base on this one. As I've written before I'm a Detective with the Chicago Police Department and this article interested me so much that I called a Detective I know on the Palm Beach Sheriff's department that I worked with on a case that involved both of our jurisdictions.

The MOM along with the Step-Dad should be hung and tortured for what they did. First of all there is a history of abuse of this now 17 year old girl by this Step-"Dad". The girl has filed two previous complaints against the step-dad claiming that not only has she been forced into sexual intercourse with him but that the main pressure to have sex with the step-dad came from her MOM. The girl in one of the complaints said her mom forced her to have intercourse with the step-dad because the mom said "your step-dad really loves you and he wants to show it to you plus I'm sick of him bugging me to have sex with you so do this to get him off my back." Later, the girl would not cooperate with the complaints saying she wanted to retract the complaint and would not cooperate with it.

This time not only was a complaint filed but the girl informed the police she was pregnant and that it was the step-dad's child. Now the Sheriff's Dept. knew that if they could prove paternity even if the young girl again retracted her complaint they could prove statutory rape by the paternity case.

They told the young girl and the mother that they were going to do the paternity test and scheduled a day for the young girl to see Sheriff's Department medical personnel to do the paternity test. The mom then immediately rushed the daughter out for an abortion to get rid of the evidence.

A security guard and a receptionist at the abortion clinic both say they heard the young girl say twice "I'm not sure if I should kill my baby." and also heard her say, "Won't the cops get mad at me for destroying the evidence they want?" The police have since obtained a security tape where the statements the young girl made in the clinic are clearly heard.

The Mom was trying to protect her scumbag husband child molester. She was NOT trying to help her daughter. Both the mom and Step-Dad should rot in jail and hell.

You know I'm in a position that is very dominated by men and in my life (much less lately) I have seen discrimination against women and I proudly call myself a feminist. But feminist's often let women down. Even on this site the "feminists" on here almost always come across as anti-men and seem to almost always have a knee-jerk response to automatically take the side of the woman. Look, to be a feminist you do NOT have to hate men. I have a wonderful husband and wonderful sons (and daughters too). Appearing petty about some of these issues and appearing just as if we hate men just makes us look foolish.

I'll throw one other thing into the mix. I moonlight part-time for the Fed. Gov't as an investigator for the EEOC. I've been doing it for about 10 years. I investigate complaints by women that they have been sexually harassed on the job. I have been tremendously disappointed by this work. Now it can be very rewarding when you catch a man sexually harassing a woman and nail his ass but these cases are very rare.

My investigation partner and I (a lesbian woman who in her full time job is an arson investigator with the Chicago Fire Dept.) were discussing about a month ago how overwhelmingly these complaints about sexual harassment turn out to be completely fabricated by the woman who makes the complaint. My investigation partner and I have had 719 cases in the last 8.5 years and because we were discussing this we went back and assessed the cases and here's what we found. Of the 719 cases 21 resulted in criminal charges being filed or civil penalties and settlements being obtained from the offending sexual harrasser. Of the remaining 698 cases 247 cases were almost immediately terminated and classified as "Case closed complainant fraud suspected". What this means is we almost immediately suspected the woman of making up the charges. After an initial interview with the complainant (who has signed sworn documents detailing their complaint) we inform them that we are going to give them a lie detector test. Well, WOW, the rubber really meets the road here. I at least 15 or 20 times over these years have had women at that point literally get up and run from the office never to be heard from again. Of our 719 cases 247 women either refused to take a lie detector or more commonly they just don't show up for the appointment to do so and never again respond to our calls. Of the remaining 451 files 303 are closed cases noted as "Complainant admits fraud in complaint". These are cases where either women took their lie detector test and failed and when confronted just flat out admitted they made the complaint up or during the test just admit they made the complaint up." The remaining 148 are closed cases who's lie detector cases were classified as "non-determinative" (meaning the lie detector operator could not give an opinion as to whether the complainant was telling the truth or not). When this happens we do not tell the complainant of the test results we merely continue the investigation. Of these remaining 148 cases the evidence was overwhelming that the complainant had lied in their complaint.

In just my last 3 cases one complainant's alleged harasser was not only in the UK on the date the alleged harrassment occured but his speech to advertising executives there had been televised on a business news channel. When the complainant was confronted with this evidence she said, "Of all the days to pick. I could have picked any day and that's the day I picked?!" Another complainant it turns out had been terminated from her job and arrested for embezzling $16,000 from her company. The day she claimed her boss sexually harrassed her (the same boss who discovered her embezzlement and reported it) the complainant was in the Cook County Jail awaiting her family to raise bail on the embezzlement charges.

The third complainant was actually one of my favorite. A woman complained of sexual harrassment. Here lie detector test was "non-determinative" (it is theorized that sometimes this result could result from nerves) and we continued the investigation. The alleged sexual harasser was her boss who admitted the whole thing when we spoke with him. He admitted a pattern of sexual harrassment of this woman that continued over 3 years. We, of course, recommended the case for criminal and civil prosecution. The woman's company offered a settlement of $7.7 million fired the boss and transferred the woman (actually promoted her) to another department. The day before she was to receive her settlement the company's investigators came to us with phone tapes of the woman talking to the alleged harrasser from her desk phone (where she has no expectation of privacy, no warrant necessary to tap her line) where they chatted gleefully about the amount of money they were going to get and how they would both be able to now leave their spouses and never have to work again. They had scammed together to get the company's money.

Why am I telling this? Because I just want to emphasize that to be a feminist you do not have to hate men. In fact, there are probably just as many reprehensible women as there are men. So we just shouldn't always assume when confronted with a situation that the man is wrong and the woman is right.

I have to admit that as a cop you get pretty cynical. We tend to think almost everybody is lying when we first meet them (we have an expression: "They're all liars until proven otherwise."). But I have never found that women are any more honest or dishonest than men.

Women don't abuse as much as men, but when they do abuse, their husbands don't get arrested. But even women who are nearly helpless to stop child abuse and are victims themselves get arrested as conspirators in abuse all the time.

Come on, Amanda...

This is what I'm talking about. We have no way of knowing whether women abuse as much as men or not. But your comment about husbands not getting arrested along with abusing women is just silly. Its standard protocol in abuse cases in a household for ALL the other adults to be investigated to see if they knew of the abuse and if they did to be charged at least with reckless endangerment of a child.

Secondly, what is this bizarre feminist dichotomy. One second we are supposedly strong and independent and equal to men but then when necessary there is the the claim (as you posted) that we are "helpless" and "victims". NONSENSE. People are people and there are all types. I don't care if a woman is being abused or not when her child is being abused. She should do something about it or get out! Except in rare cases even an abused woman has access to a telephone or even the front door. If her child is being abused and she did nothing about it she is scum and should be arrested.

When I was a young detective a mother who had a stroke and was in a wheelchair and legally blind discovered that her husband was molesting their child. She waited until he fell asleep and poured boiling water mixed with cooking oil on him.

Please stop weakening women by playing them as weak little victims. Our message as feminists has always been confusing to men anyway. I'm older than you probably so my perspective is different. I remember the days when we were insisting we were equal and could do any job a man could do and said we don't need any special treatment just give us a chance.

Then we get our chance and we start demanding all sorts of special treatment. "Oh, don't tell naughty jokes in front of us they'll burn our sensitive ears." etc. Give a real woman a chance and she'll be fine and just as good as a man.

from all the evidence i've examined, cops are liars about the same percentage of the time that female "complainants" (sic) are liars.

Wow Midge:

You really reveal yourself with that comment. The only people I've ever found who thinks cops are liars are criminals. What does a cop, especially a detective have to lie about? We investigate and follow the evidence.

Then bizarrely you put the word "complainants" as if you are quoting me in quote marks and then use the language indicator "(sic)" afterward (its actually supposed to be in brackets like this: [sic], for proper usage) implying that I misspelled complainants. Sorry, its spelled correctly.

Why don't you tell us your tale of woe where the evil cops put you in jail and all the cops were lying?

Structural analyses are tough to come by on child abuse, and there's always a question about the subjective determinations of caseworkers, hospital personnel, cops, etc. It's not as easy as spousal abuse, where the prevalence of women killed and seriously injured by partners does not admit of another explanation. I would guess women are more violent to children, but that's conjecture. I assume it's true that women whose partners abuse children are arrested all the time -- but without a good idea of prevalence of abuse by women, it's tough to say that complicit male partner arrests are disproportionately low: disproportionate to what? If women are rarely the primary abusers, then male partner arrests for aiding and abetting it would be correspondingly rare.

Midge, she's right about how "complainants" is spelled. And that was probably an unnecessary shot on your part.

Colleen, don't get on your high horse so fast. I practiced criminal defense for a few years, and plenty of your colleagues seem to think that if they are serving the "greater truth" of getting a bad guy off the street, then details can be made to fit. I've spoken to witnesses who have been flat-out told which person to identify in a photo-array, or shown a photo ahead of a line-up. I've seen cops give patently incredible testimony to place themselves in a position to see a running suspect ditch a gun when the gun could have come from other suspects fleeing the same car (they only apprehended one guy -- if that guy didn't have that gun, no case, right?) On that occasion, an old-school Irish Catholic male judge threw the gun out, holding the cop's testimony was incredible.

I've never been arrested. And I didn't think my clients were angels -- I didn't believe their bullshit stories, either.

I don't hate cops. (I hate corrections officers. They are all scum.) I'm not saying cops lie more than other folks -- I don't subscribe to that view. Police are people, though, and people tend to lie when they have a motive to fabricate -- to make money, to avoid embarrassment, or to accomplish what they think is a worthy goal. Police are not immune from any of these temptations.

One more note -- I really appreciate what you do. I know enough cops (and represented a few -- I defended an officer in a matter high-profile enough that you'd know about it) to know that cops see the worst of people all the time. Cops deal with bad people, and with people in bad situations, from the time the clock in to the time they clock out. People react badly to cops -- fear them, lie to them, or hate them. The job has to be emotionally grinding and draining, and I think that has more to do with the silence, isolation, clannishness and depression that police experience than the danger. It's hard, someone has to do it, and I know I couldn't.

Thomas:

Thank you for your intelligent and interesting posts. I agree that cops lie at least as much as other people. But this Midge didn't mean that, she meant to imply that all cops lie and all cops are bad. The intent of my post was to make the point that being a feminist does not mean men are evil and it shouldn't mean that all women are angels. People are people.

Heck, maybe there's even some defense attorneys who are lying scum (LOL!!!!!). Actually, as you know, we tend to get along quite well with defense attorneys. People don't realize that very few cases actually go to trial, that an overwhelming majority settle, plead out. Defense attorneys often come to us to encourage the prosecutor or the the judge to go easy on their client, and we often do, especially if they aren't habitual offenders.

I believe in the system. We'll do our job, you do yours (I don't mind, I've been ripped many times on the stand by a defense attorney and never took it personally), the prosecution does theirs and hopefully the truth comes out.

Good luck to you!

Not all cops are liars. Not all lawyer are scum. A few bad cops and sleeping lawyers make us all look bad. I worked with the Texas Innocence Network for four years investigating claims by inmates that they were wrongly convicted. In the probably 100 cases I was assigned, only 1 of them involved unethical police work and an ambitious, unethical, win-at-all-costs prosecutor. (He is now on the parole board in my state.)

I have seen quite a few statistics that show WOMEN are more likely to murder or abuse their children. There are women who are complete scum just as there are men. Have read what Colleen posted about the case, I must say that this "mother" (if you can call her that, it takes mroe than giving birth to be a mother) is just as accountable as the step-"father" for the rape and physical and emotional abuse of this 17-year-old child.

I would like to see a prosecutor try to bring charges against the mom for the abortion. Yes, I did say for the abortion. A woman should never be forced to get an abortion with her consent. This is why the law (at least in my state) is written where abortion is only legla if the mother consents. If the girl didn't want the abortion, the termination resulted in more than destroying evidence.

Colleen, I only have one issue with what you have said. If a woman is abused by her husband, she may suffer such emotional and physical abuse that she fears for her life and the life of her children if she tries to stop her husband from abusing her and the children. I know what you are going to say . . . she could pick up a phone, run to a neighbor's house, anything to save the children. The reality is that abused women do not think like you and I. I do not think cops should assume spousal abuse and let the mother off, but I do think a history of spousal abuse that debilitated the victim should be considered.

Otherwise, I completely agree with you, Colleen. Just like there are some great men out there (though it took me a while to find mine), there are some great ladies. There is also the flip side of that.

actually, colleenkelly, i DID mean that cops lie the same amount as everyone else. you kind of implied an omniscence from your sect of authority that i think is definitely a shortcoming of the justice system. but they're just as human as everybody else and capable of criminal acts, too.

A couple notes:

Midge: You didn't say that cops lie about the same amount as everyone else; you said that they lie *as much as the female complainants*. In the context of Colleen's numbers, you just made the claim that at least 550 out of 720 cops definitely lie about their investigations, and the number is probably closer to 650 out of 720.

I'm more distrustful than your average person (possibly because I track a lot of police corruption issues), but even I have to admit that your claim is patently offensive and utterly unsupportable.

Colleen:

Even with the above out of the way, I find your numbers somewhat suspect because of your reliance on lie detectors. It's been pretty widely proven that the damn machines *aren't reliable* (the very name is a misnomer, since they detect stress, not lies), and there have been cases of fraud on the part of lie detector examiners to deliberately manipulate outcomes. There's a reason polygraph results aren't admissible in court. If offered to take a lie detector test in a personal case, I'd want to decline too, simply because it wouldn't prove anything, wouldn't be admissible in many courts, and I wouldn't be able to tell what the outcome would be.

That said, you may not be too far off. For the general population, lie detectors as psychological weapons to induce confession are pretty valuable, and I'll concede that the vast majority of people who declined probably did so because they *didn't* know that lie detectors are unreliable, not because they *did*.

Also, while the overall percentage of corrupt cops may be low, in some areas its much higher than in others -- and once you reach a certain critical threshold, it's impossible even for an honest majority to stop a corrupt department head. While I don't support Midge's statements, and I cast no aspersions on you or any of your specific work partners, please understand that there are quite a lot of people who think that the police are untrustworthy whenever accusations against a fellow officer or personal politics come into play.

I have a lot of sympathy for people who deliberately expose themselves day after day to the dregs of society so most people don't have to. Unfortunately, there have been enough problems with corrupt departments that I also have a lot of sympathy for the people can't tell the difference between cops and any other bad guys with guns and radios anymore.

Incidentally, Colleen, since I didn't mention it in my previous comment, thanks for taking the time to find more information on this.

Secondly, what is this bizarre feminist dichotomy. One second we are supposedly strong and independent and equal to men but then when necessary there is the the claim (as you posted) that we are "helpless" and "victims".

Colleen, "helpless" is not the same as "victim" and I am deeply, deeply offended on the behalf of people who are victimized by sexism that you think that being victimized means that you are somehow not a strong person who is equal to men. Rapists, for instance, don't check to make sure you're not a feminist before they attack you.

Amanda, Amanda, Amanda...

Either English is not your mother tongue and you just don't read it very well or you are intentionally misstating what I wrote.

You feign being offended that I "think being victimized means that you are somehow not a strong person who is equal to men." Of course, as you know, I never said anything about anyone BEING victimized I wrote about people "claim(ing)" to be victimized. And when assessing my comment in context it is clear that I meant falsely claiming to be a victim.

You copied and then pasted my statement into the beginning of your bizarre rant of misunderstanding. Here's my quote as copied by you:

"Secondly, what is this bizarre feminist dichotomy. One second we are supposedly strong and independent and equal to men but then when necessary there is the the claim (as you posted) that we are "helpless" and "victims"."

See that little word there: "claim"??? I said nothing about BEING a victim but I referred to women CLAIMING to be a victim.

You in all of your being "offended" are a perfect example of this. My statement did not victimize you or anyone else. BUT, you have falsely CLAIMED I victimized you. See the difference? I said "claim", and then you lied and tried to make it appear that a "claim" that one is a victim is necessarily the same as "being" a victim.

For example, you are severely busted and now humiliated for being so red-handedly caught "claiming" that I wrote something that I didn't. This "offensive" behavior of yours has "victimized" me!

Girl, if you struggle with the language don't make semantic accusations. Or buy a dictionary and study the meaning of words starting with "claiming" and "being". Okay?

Critical reading, not lack of mastery of the Enlgish language, is the problem. Often people start to read (or hear) things they don't agree with thus they either glaze over (or tune out) from the rest of the statement, having already formed an opinion. Considering I was in my second year of law school before I realized I was notorious for doing this, I don't think those who jump to conclusions, no matter how flawed, are stupid people. They just need to read more critically. See what is on the page, not what you want to be on the page.

Colleen, I am offended and it is tiring to see someone buy into the anti-feminist mantra about "victim feminism". People may perceive victims as "weak", but that's one of the things that feminists are trying to overcome. The equating with being "weak" and having been hurt damages men more than women in a lot of cases, too, as men feel it's emasculating to admit that they have been the victim of anyone.

And no, you're not "victimizing" me. You are "offending" me. Reading comprehension and all that, ya' know?

Amanda:

Please study the language. I never claimed I was "victimizing" you, I said YOU were victimizing me through your lies.

You are of the far-left, hate-men and women-are-always-right and women-are-always-victimized ilk of feminism that disgusts and repels thinking Americans and results in so many women (the majority of women) not wanting to self-identify as feminists.

Modern feminism has been hi-jacked by two groups: 1)Lesbians who at the least have no use for men and most often just flat-out hate them; and 2) Unattractive women embittered by their self-imposed sense of not fitting in and therefore strike out at men senselessly and take every opportunity possible to claim victimization.

There was a time when feminism was about women being strong and just wanting to be equal and have the same opportunity as men. Now its all about hating men and hating families and demanding BETTER treatment than men and MORE opportunity than men.

The majority of women do not self-identify as feminists because they are not lesbians and because they have brothers, fathers, sons and friends who are male and happen to like them and do not spend every waking hour looking for some way to feel victimized by sexism.

Sexism still occassionally rears its ugly head but not at every turn and sometimes it is directed at men... MOSTLY by feminists.

Amanda, unknot your stomach, stop hiding in your home reading Ms. magazine and mumbling "men are horrible beasts who want to victimize me in everything" and go out into the light of day. Its actually quite nice out here.

Wow, you really do get the weirdest trolls.

At first, I thought ColleenKelly had a really good point: the mother should be in jail, after reading the case, it seems that in THIS particular case, she shares some guilt, and destroyed evidence. This is a difficult precedent to set, however, because I don't want to see a mom who is LEGITIMATELY trying to help her child get smeared. But, CK had a point: we did tend to get a distorted reading from the feministing post.

But then, she just went crazy, repeating that tired old "strong and empowered vs. helpless and victimized" bullshit. Admitting and recognizing that you are/ can be a victim is not weak. Women should be strong and empowered, but if they do get abused, it shouldn't be an embarrassing act to get help or demand help.

The last post was so fucked-up I'm not even going to begin to address it. Myth of the man-hating lesbian? Wow....wow. I'll just say, even though never personally meeting Amanda, I read her blog, and she doesn't strike me as a man-hating beast that never sees the light of day.

You are of the far-left, hate-men and women-are-always-right and women-are-always-victimized ilk of feminism that disgusts and repels thinking Americans and results in so many women (the majority of women) not wanting to self-identify as feminists.

I love these people that think feminists were SO POPULAR back in the day and they are so certain they'd be one. Do you know that suffragists had shit thrown at them in public? That pro birth control feminists were thrown in jail and driven to suicide? That it took nearly a century for women to get the vote, feminists were so popular in the day? Did you know that some women have always called feminists "extreme" and fluttered their eyelashes at men and declaimed wanting the vote/birth control/a job/their own name? Whatever.

And yeah, I think women are always right. For instance, I totally agree with both Phyllis Schafly and Gloria Steinam. Sheesh.

But I agree--if a man abuses a child, by all means find a woman to blame. We don't want to be man-haters, do we?

And Antigone, if I'm a man-hating lesbian hosebeast and an over-sexed silly dumb bunny. That is the verdict of the trolls, and we have to live with it.

Amanda,shamefully wrote:

"But I agree--if a man abuses a child, by all means find a woman to blame. We don't want to be man-haters, do we?"

It's so funny how helpful you are. I make the point that just because someone is female that that does not automatically make them right or innocent or even blameless.

The father that was abusing this child sits in jail awaiting trial and hopefully he'll rot in jail and hell (oops, sorry to offend the liberals on here, "hell" suggests religion and you all hate religion). BUT, the mother was an active part of the crime. Facilitating it and encouraging it and lived with full knowledge and support of it. You say because she is a woman we as feminists should automatically absolve her because afterall, at one time women didn't have the vote. Of course, let's ignore the fact that the daughter -- the victim of the crime, the victim of both of these monsters, the mother and the father -- is a WOMAN, why no feminist outrage for this WOMAN-CHILD who was the victim of this horror of a father and mother?

Amanda is so wrapped up in her hatred of men that she feels the mother's clear involvement of the crime should be overlooked because she is a woman. The mother forced her daughter to have this abortion against her will (which also bother's neither Amanda or any of the lefty-liberals on here because abortions are wonderful things to be encouraged and celebrated: what a wonderful way to get even with men, by killing their babies!) not just to cover up the father's horrible crime but to cover up her own. If the state can't prove the crime the mother cannot be charged with facilitating it.

Its good to know that Amanda, the great feminist, is willing to sacrifice this innocent young woman, the daughter, to protect this pig of a mother who was part of the crime.

This pig mother's crime just may result in the pig father getting off for his crime and the daughter returning to live with both this father and mother again.

Amanda would be recommending the mother for a special "Mother of the Year" award, but she won't because that would sound as if she supports families, and we all know how horrible families are.

It's strident, unthinking, infeeling radical-feminists like Amanda that allow anti-feminists to caricature us in all the negative sterotypes that they do. Wow, Amanda, what a wonderful feminist you are: send the raped young girl back to live with her rapist father and co-conspirator mother but make sure the mother is protected from prosecution for her crimes, because afterall... she's a WOMAN.

ColleenKelly = SocialWorkerQueen ??

Wow, you go away for a weekend and all hell breaks loose...

As far as folks thinking I was off base with the post:

If the teen’s mother did coerce her into having an abortion in a move to protect the rapist, clearly she’s fucked up. But outside of the police claim that she was “protecting her daughter and her husband,” there isn’t any proof what her motivation was. I think a bigger concern is that the police seemed to think that their permission was needed for this girl to get an abortion.

What’s conspicuously absent from the article—which I should have noted in my post—is what the teen wanted to do. While my assumption that the abortion was voluntary and wanted could have been off base, I think that the assumptions in this thread that it was forced are just as likely to be wrong. Unfortunately it seems that the teen’s voice was silenced in all of this and—as usual—others are speaking for her, whether it’s her mom, the police, or me through my writing about her.

I don’t even know that I can get into the ridiculousness that is ColleenKelly. The whole feminists are ugly lesbians argument is just so hackneyed it pains me to take it on.

And I can’t really take anyone seriously who just makes shit up—unless you’re getting this from a source I can’t find:

BUT, the mother was an active part of the crime. Facilitating it and encouraging it and lived with full knowledge and support of it.

Where in the world did the article (or subsequent coverage) say that?

And yes, tfreridge, she most certainly is. I called her out a while ago on her IP address, but her fervor for the word “pig” is what really gives her away.