Candleight Vigil for Yeardly Love
Candleight Vigil for Yeardly Love

UVA President John Casteen III delivered a chilling, emotional speech to those gathered at the candlelight vigil for slain lacrosse player Yeardly Love. His message should be repeated over and over in middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities, churches, libraries–just about anywhere there are women.

Casteen told the mourners  that we are all responsible for getting people help who are entangled and trapped in toxic, violent relationships. We can not longer just tell our friends, relatives and acquaintances to ditch a toxic relationship. We have to step forward and perhaps make some of those unpopular calls. Doing so might just save someone’s life–someone like Yeardly Love’s life.

The fraternity of silence and the culture of hiding abuse can no longer be tolerated.

President Casteen’s  remarks at the candlelight vigil for Yeardley Love:

There are profound ironies in our gathering here tonight for this purpose. This is the spring time. It’s the time of year for renewal, for new beginnings. And yet we have come here to grieve the ending of a young life, of Yeardley Love’s life, one full of promise and high prospects—and one not unlike yours.

I want to talk tonight about Yeardley Love, and I want to talk about you, and about this community—about us. Some of what I have to say is very hard. Bear with me, and listen.

First, about Yeardley: We know little at this point about Yeardley’s dying. The prosecutor has found cause to bring the charge of murder. The defense attorney has described her death as an accident. This is not the forum to examine those charges or the evidence that will eventually make its way to court.

But it is a forum for acknowledging what we do know. That includes: that Yeardley Love accomplished much in her too-brief life; that she earned the respect of those around her—her classmates, her faculty mentors, coaches, sisters in her sorority, her roommates, certainly her family; that she excelled in what she undertook to do in life, and she excelled in what she chose to be; that Yeardley Love did nothing to deserve to be attacked and beaten, to deserve to suffer the injuries of which we have all read in the police reports, to deserve to die; indeed for that matter, that woman beaten, thrown against walls, or in any other way abused has ever deserved either to suffer or to die.

My hope for Yeardley, and for you, is that her dying inspires an anger, a sense of outrage that engenders determination here and wherever Yeardley’s name is recognized that no woman, no person in this place, this community, this state, our nation need either fear for her safety or experience violence for any reason: not because of her sex, not because of her size, not because of an attacker’s advantage or arrogance or mindless sense of right to abuse, to harm, perhaps to kill; and then that memory of Yeardley’s name, her personal strengths, her successes, her human worth may survive the memory of the dying about which we ache tonight, and that you and we and all who know the story of Yeardley Love will learn the lessons of her living, of her life.
And then I want to talk about you for a few minutes: take something away from this event. Take with you the determination that you will speak up for yourself, that you will act when you see or hear about abuse or violence in the world around you. If your relationship is unhealthy or toxic, seek help, seek support. Talk to your dean. Seek out a faculty member. Come talk to me. If necessary go to the police, or let us take you to the police. If you fear for yourself or for others any form of violence, act. Seek the support that belongs to you, because you belong to us. Demand and expect support, respect, and assistance when you do that. Help your friend in the same way if she (or he) needs help of the same kind. Don’t hear a scream, don’t watch abuse, don’t hear stories of abuse from your friends—and keep quiet. Speak out. Find me; I will go with you to the police.

 
We all enjoy the privilege of living here in what we call—and rightly—a community of trust. I have believed you; you have believed one another; we have learned to trust one another here. Leave tonight with knowledge that the blows and abuse that somehow ended Yeardley’s life threaten all of us, threaten you, and threaten this community of trust—that violence and abuse left unconfronted can and will destroy this culture that we love.

Addressing the shock and the grief that all of us feel tonight is hard. It’s also something we owe to Yeardley Love, and we owe it to one another. You do not have to do that alone. If you need someone to listen, to act on your behalf, to help, call the numbers that you know, or remember 924-7133. Call 4-7133. Don’t hesitate, don’t wait for someone else – do it tonight, do it first thing in the morning. And again, if you believe that you know something that threatens one of your friends, do it for Yeardley Love—call.

The net of this as I understand this community, our place, your identities as people whom I respect and cherish is that the lesson to learn—the value for you of remembering Yeardley Love for what she was—is that you choose to live, that you guard against the events that led to Yeardley’s death by recognizing evil, by recognizing danger, by seeing it for what it is whether it is your own or your neighbor’s, by choosing to preserve this community of trust. Choose now, tonight, to honor Yeardley Love’s life. Promise yourself that wherever you go from this place in future years, you take with yourself the sense of vicious loss that tonight commemorates.

And tuck away in your soul the knowledge that neither Yeardley Love nor any woman ever attacked has deserved it, that no victim in the end has to suffer, has to die, but that together we are the protection, that we must act together to protect one another and to see to it that the things we’ve learned here become and remain true in the world to which we go after this place.

May God bless Yeardley Love.

John T. Casteen III, president

May 5, 2010

[Bold highlight mine]

Please print out President Casteen’s speech for every young woman you know. Yeardly Love was prep-school educated, intelligent, wealthy, beautiful, athletic…she had it all. And her life was ended in a pool of blood, having the life beaten out of her by someone who ‘loved’ her…the same as some poor, illiterate woman from the wrong side of town and a 9th grade education. We think our daughters are too smart for such nonesense. Maybe we only hope they are. Toxic relationships are deadly and very difficult to escape.

This week we are all Wahoos……

42 Thoughts to “UVA President Sends Strong Message on Toxic Relationships and Domestic Abuse”

  1. Thanks, Moon. Good local information and help for anyone in an abusive relationship:
    http://www.actspwc.org/Programs/turning_points.asp

  2. Cindy, thanks for the link. Do we need to publish local numbers?

    I thought the UVA President was bold. I was glad to hear his forceful words on the subject of abuse and that he called it out for what it was.

  3. kelly3406

    I think this speech was a rather cowardly. It does not take a lot of bravery to call for people to do the right thing AFTER a tragic event.

    It seems pretty clear that the lacrosse team at UVa (and perhaps many other teams nationwide) was out of control. The multiple arrests and bad behavior of the team remind me of the events leading up to the Duke Lacrosse rape accusations. After the wake-up call from Duke lacrosse, UVa did nothing to rein in its own team. I bet no other university did either.

    And in this specific relationship, Yeardley Love and George Huguely reportedly had to be separated by University of North Carolina lacrosse players at a party some weeks ago. Did any of her friends or teammates report it? Apparently not. Are there any agreements in place to report arrests of its student-athletes to the University? Apparently not.

    A truly brave speech by the UVa president would taken responsibility for the failure of the University and community to prevent this tragic event. The University failed to take action against the team. Colleagues and friends failed to report specific incidents against Yeardley Love.

    Perhaps I am being too critical of the University for this incident. But I would like to know if this message was ever expressed by the UVa president prior to the murder. I would also like to know if the University supervises and potentially removes student-athletes that exhibit criminal behavior. If so, why was nothing done about the lacrosse team?

  4. marinm

    I’m not sure why criminal records and data should be shared with a school? I don’t see it as any of there business.

  5. TWINAD

    I spent more than half of my life with an abuser. Started dating him when I was 16 and I left when I was 33. He was able to slowly break me down over time to the point where I thought I was a worthless piece of crap and should feel lucky he still wanted me around. I should have seen the signs early in the relationship. Was not “allowed” to speak to any other guys. Could not go out to lunch at work with members of the opposite sex. That kind of thing. He literally would get up in my grill and scream at me for HOURS on end for leaving a wet sponge in a sink. Towards the end was the pushing and grabbing that left bruises, him calling and threatening my parents, pets anything at all that was important to me. He isolated me by starting his own business, which he needed help in running, so I had to quit my job to work for him…and of course NOTHING was ever good enough. He programmed our phone so only 10 phone numbers could get through on our line (9 out of the 10 were people that could get through to talk to him (his parents, brother, best friends). Anyone who tried to call me or wasn’t on the list of 10 numbers that could get through got some kind of message. I didn’t leave until one morning he called my parents at 6 am shouting about how “they were going to pay” and my parents called the police in the County I lived in. (They live in another state). The police officer called me on my cell and told me that he had talked to my parents and they were frantic and what they had described to him about the situation was not good and that I needed to get out…THAT NIGHT. It so happened he was going to be out that evening for several hours doing estimates, so I packed up one suitcase, put my cats in cat carriers and left.

    My whole life changed within months. All for the better. At the time someone chooses to leave, they are at the highest risk for physical injury, so the person has to be able to rely on someone to protect them in the weeks following the exit from the relationship. I consider myself extremely lucky and even more so that I could put my life back together, got a great job opportunity that I have been able to take advantage of and move up to an executive level, not to mention, the love and support of my current husband (one of those “illegals”). He has been absolutely fantastic…I had no idea what a relationship based on mutual respect and trust was like. Maybe some people think all “illegals” are criminals, but to me, he really saved me and having our son who is so awesome, makes everything that happened to me before them irrelevant to me today until I hear about someone who didn’t get out of a relationship like the one I endured. It’s a GD shame.

  6. kelly3406

    @marinm
    The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial. In order to ensure a public trial, arrests must be in the public record (otherwise a government agency could simply haul someone away, never to be heard from again). Consequently, there should be no problem with a university making use of public records (i.e. a student-athlete’s arrest record) to identify individuals who have been repeatedly arrested for violent and/or disorderly conduct.

  7. Yes, Kelly, I think you are being too harsh. In fact, you are reminding me of Len Bias’s parents who wanted to blame the University of Maryland and Lefty Driesell because their son got involved with some bad dope.

    University presidents cannot be everywhere. Anyone over 18 is legally considered an adult. There is very little any university official can do when balancing privacy and liberatarian rights along with the fact that nearly all students are adults.

    What it is that the President was expected to do that he didn’t do?

    I don’t think that the UVA Lacrosse team (either men or women) was out of control, at least no more so than any other student group. Student behavior and excessive drinking has long plagued all American univerities. In fact, famous poet and author Edgar Allan Poe must have earned the title of First Drunk at UVA, although I am certain he was not.

    I have great concerns over what happens on campuses across this nation. We don’t send our kids to colleges to die. Many drink too much on campuses with rapists, looters, muggers, and sexual preditors. Others seem ill equipped to handle huge numbers of people about the same age with little personal involvement. Some become victims of student rage and mental illeness like at tech,victims of hunters like happened at Ferrum, psychopaths like the killer of 2 young people in a wildlife area near Tech, still unsolved, abduction and murder like happened to Morgan Harrington of Tech, or beheaded like the young Chinese woman also of tech…just for starters. Those are bad things that have happened to VA students in recent years.

    I certainly would not call the president a coward for addressing some serious issues that need to be addressed. He admonishes students to report things and to break the code of silence.

    Why on earth should the president take responsiblity for someone else becoming a murderer? Holy cow, you conservatives just take my breath away in amazement. You want to hang the entire lacrosse team over the actions of one person.

  8. @marinm

    It most certainly is their business. It is also your employer’s business.

    Students are supposed to voluntarily report certain criminal convictions to the school. In fact, our AG has vowed to help draft legislation to strengthen this rule involving VA schools. I approve of this.

  9. Emma

    @TWINAD It’s hard for many people to understand the cycle of abuse and the reasons why women stay so long in those relationships. You really have to have been there to understand. Or have been part of helping the abused. You are blessed to have come out of it with so much strength.

  10. Twinad, thank you for sharing a story that covers all our themes and one that is so personal. And you have a wonderful husband now. Mr. Twinad is the greatest!!!

    Emma, I agree.

    I have a very close personal friend who was in an abusive situation, although nothing like what Twinad describes. It is almost like they have to be deprogrammed just to overcome that paralysis of the abuse, even if some of the abuse is only mental. My friend and I started off with removing the expression ‘Bill won’t let me…..’ from her vocabulary.

  11. kelly3406

    @Moon-howler

    You libs amaze me as well. Eight of 41 lacrosse players on the UVa team have been charged with alcohol-related offenses. A ninth players was charged for underage possession, although he may not yet have been a student. Huguely was convicted of resisting arrest and public intoxication. Despite his violent tendencies, no action was taken by the university to alert or protect other students.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/05/AR2010050503762.html

  12. kelly3406

    Twinad: I am happy that you found someone who respects you. Nevertheless, I do not think that marriage to an American citizen should be an automatic ticket to legal residency or U.S. citizenship. Islamic terrorists who are in the country illegally have used marriage as a means to stay in the country ( http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/10/18/marriage.scam/ ). The Times Square bomber, Shahzad, apparently gained citizenship after marrying an American. El Sayyid Nosair acquired citizenship after marrying an American — and was later convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

    I am sure your husband is a very nice gentleman. But marriage between Americans and improperly vetted, “undocumented immigrants” represents an unnecessary security risk to my family. As a citizen, I will vote for candidates who will try to do something about this problem.

  13. Huguely’s situation in Lexington never was know by the University. He was supposed to notify them, as I understand it.

    So 20% of the lacrosse team at one time or another during their college career was either a DIP, DUI, or fake ID. In a college town or a university campus, those types of alcohol related offenses are almost commonplace. Go out to NOVA and if you could do a random sampling, you would probably find the same statistics.

    So what are you talking about? You want to hold the University president responsible for this out of control team? It sounds to me like they fit the statistics of any 15-30 year old male demographic. I don’t like the stats, but I think they are fairly accurate. If everyone with an alcohol related charge (not conviction, mind you) were thrown out of most of the colleges in VA or any other state, there would be a huge vacuum.

    I am not saying I think this is a good thing but it is a typical thing. It could very well be that the lacrosse team is under the norm for the rest of the school.

    Now back to the question: what is it you think that the president should have done that he didn’t do?

    Second question: Is it ever possible for you people to discuss issues without name calling like ‘coward?’ If there is something he should have done, say what is is…but to just throw out the name of coward sickens me. WHAT IS IT YOU WANT TO MAN TO HAVE DONE?

  14. Peacelover

    Please stop attacking each other. We’re all sick about what has happened to this young woman, and need to learn from it. I appreciate the fervor with which you’re all responding to this issue, but let’s take advantage of our outrage and channel it into a unified love for our fellow man, be he liberal or conservative. This country was founded on our right to choose, and sometimes our choices do not serve us well. God bless the family of this young girl whose life was taken too soon.

  15. Kelly, do you really think that visitor and student visas vet people thoroughly? How about mail order brides and husbands? How about those who bring in spouses from other countries?

    It seems to me that Twinad is being singled out.

    The USA has had about 10 years to vet Mr. Twinad now. What’s taking so long? I don’t think that Twinad expects rubber stamping. I think she does expect to be able to have her legal husband go through normal procedures and attain citizenship. Right now he is locked out because of when they applied. They missed the cut off by a month.

    I have no more reason to question Mr. Twinad’s safety factor than I do your wife’s (who I am sure is a very nice lady.) Geographical location of one’s birth doesn’t necessarily make someone a good or bad person.

  16. Peacelover, bad things happen every day to young women. Most do not get this kind of national attention because they are just average Janes.

    Silence is the worst enemy. We here on ‘howlings.net will not be silence about these things even if we have to shout at times. No more code of silence on abuse and domestic violence.

  17. Wolverine

    Moon — I share your concerns about what is happening on college campuses across this nation. However, when we place our children under the control of the administrators of a college for nine months or more of the year, we have every right to demand that those same administrators run a tight shop as a preventive measure against all sorts of bad behavior. I refuse to give them a pass by letting them exclaim that they cannot be everywhere at once or use the old saw that “Kids will be kids.” We pay a lot of cash to provide these people with administrative staff and campus police. If something goes radically wrong on a Navy ship, it is the captain who pays the price. In my opinion, it ought to be the same on a college campus.

    I won’t name names here; but we raised our kids in a very strict manner with a strong emphasis on personal deportment. Two of them were accepted into the honors program at a major Virginia university. After visits to that campus, they both turned down the offer because they felt that the rules of deportment were far too lax on that campus, including an almost total loss of administration and legal control with regard to alcoholism and drugs. So, they both went to another Virginia school, smaller but also well known. And they both began to complain of similar problems at that school. In fact, when they re-visit that campus as alumni, they come back very critical of how the situation has gotten even worse. My daughter now swears that she will never send her children to her own alma mater. Also somewhat embarrassing for a father whose son has a chance to become a legacy member of dad’s old social fraternity to be told by the son that he doesn’t want to join because the frat houses in general have an unsavory reputation involving excessive alcoholism. The only child who does not talk about such things is the one who went to college locally and saved a ton of money by commuting.

  18. Wolverine, the flaw in your argument is based on both of us being geezers. When I was in school, your parents had the final say until you were 21. The kids in college nowadays aren’t kids in the eyes of the law. You don’t get their grades. You don’t hear about their disciplinary scrapes unless they choose to tell you.

    In my day, they would have called my parents. My parents would have probably pulled me out or done something to uphold their imagine. Back then, my poor behavior was a reflection on my parents.

    Things have changed. Parents aren’t turning their children over to an in loco parentis situation. Their children are legal adults.

    Not saying it is a good thing, just the way things are. Blame the 26th amendment.

  19. Wolverine

    Discipline is discipline, Moon. You misbehave in the military, you pay for it. You misbehave at work, you pay for it. If college administrators do not get a handle on misbehavior at their own institutions, they are, in my book, falling down on the job. Maybe the parents do not get informed as they used to be. But they certainly do wind up with grief when the bad things happen. There is no reason why there cannot be stronger action against the misuse of alcohol and drugs on campus.

    O.K., so the kids, too many of whom act like juveniles, must be treated as adults? Then make them pay an adult price. Perhaps that will wake some of them up. That fraternity to which I alluded has drastically changed its modus operandi at a national level. Nowadays, if you screw up, your chapter loses its charter real quick. No reason why school administrators cannot be equally as tough, especially when their own academic reputations are on the line. Too many management excuses these days for my taste. And the serious, disciplined students are too often the losers.

    Too often of late I have been told of local students who go away to school as freshmen, get caught up in the campus crap, see their grades go to the bottom of the well, have to come home, and then have to get a grip on personal behavior and academic seriousness at NOVA before making another try at a campus elsewhere. Maybe if the college administrators “elsewhere” took certain disciplinary control steps, we would not see so much of that cycle.

  20. The rules as far as alcohol go have to be based on state law for public schools. Obviously, Liberty can institute different rules than UVA or Wm and Mary.

    I don’t know what the answers are. I do not think you can compare a navy ship to or a military anything to other institutions. The military isn’t run like anything else.

    I believe we have to compare college to college. Why does one college have acceptable behavior and another not? We also have to compare public institutions to other public institutions. Private to private. Comparing BYU to Cal Tech isn’t going to work. Comparing West Point to Old Miss won’t work. We would have to start with a college that had desirable behavior and then start our search…what makes that college have good behavior.

  21. marinm

    kelly3406 :@marinm The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial. In order to ensure a public trial, arrests must be in the public record (otherwise a government agency could simply haul someone away, never to be heard from again). Consequently, there should be no problem with a university making use of public records (i.e. a student-athlete’s arrest record) to identify individuals who have been repeatedly arrested for violent and/or disorderly conduct.

    100% agree with you about the 6A but I don’t think you’re applying it in the way that I am questioning.

    I asked why criminal records should be shared with a school (so the scenerio would be the school requesting records at set intervals OR that the police would somehow know what school the adult student attends and forwards those records to that school).

    I think it’s inappropriate and a waste of time/resources.

    Now, looking at what you said. I do appreciate and stand with the sentiment that records maintained by the govt should be open to public inspection. So, if the school requests a criminal check of a student then the record should be made available to them just as if I pulled the same record from a courthouse. But, is that an appropriate use of finite resources? Do we take current funds from elsewhere in the school to support a constant cycle where employees are running criminal records checks on students to then somehow intervene with that student? What about non-public schools? Do we mandate this on them? Who covers the tuition hike – the students?

    Lets continue with this. Lets say the school pulls a record of a criminal assault. They track the student down at his dorm room to have a intervention-type meeting with him. As an adult he tells them to pound sand and leave his apartment? What then? Put him in jail for his own safety? …very ghestapo.

    I don’t think this ‘idea’ will work, will have way too many unintended consequences and will only provide a FALSE SENSE of security.

    I do appreciate that you brought up the 6A though as it’s often forgotten by people.

    My gripe within PWC regarding public records access (outside of the school system which is a huge violater of FOIA) is… public access to zoning code enforcement requests. When someone reports that a neighbor has 15 cars on there front yard that report should be viewable by the public. I know off topic but the county govt gets a free slide on that and it should not.

  22. Schools and employers have every right to know a person’s criminal record.

    Opinion only. Not a constitutional lawyer.

  23. kelly3406

    Good discussion from various folks on this topic.

    Here is my answer to MH and MarinM. I basically agree with the statements of Wolverine.

    Universities have various behavior codes, i.e. honor codes to prevent cheating, speech codes to prevent making minorities feel badly, etc.

    So universities could easily implement more rigorous behaviour codes, if that was important to them. Misuse of alcohol/underage drinking should have real penalties beyond simply being on probation. For example, it could require 100 hours of community service, with the service being performed at 6am on a Sunday to clean up the stadium after a football game. In other words, it should be a penalty that students would really want to avoid.

    Student-athletes occupy an esteemed position on campus. As such, they should be held to a higher standard. I would recommend that universities conduct a periodic records check ($15.99) for their scholarship athletes. There should be strong penalties for arrests and convictions. Any conviction involving violent behavior (resisting arrest, assault/battery, etc.) should be banished from campus for at least 6 months. Simply being arrested should carry a penalty also (i.e. the student-athlete should show proper judgement by avoiding such situations).

    The university should take similar action against non-athletes if it becomes aware of a convictions/arrest although it could not routinely run records checks. However, if there is a student who appears to be a problem, then such a record check might be warranted. Again, any convictions of violent crimes would result in banishment from the campus.

    There should also be agreements with the local police to notify the university of arrests involving university students. It could be viewed as a community relations issue to ensure that students do not harass/cause trouble for the local community.

  24. I would want the same standards for everyone. That’s when you get in to lawsuit territory–when you have different rules for different classes of people. I have no problem with throwing people out of school for offenses. Assault and battery? Gone, if convicted. Schools don’t need to put up with that crap. Theft? gone.

    I went to a college with a very strict honor code. They took the position that you were either honorable or dishonorable. No shades of grey. It involved lying, stealing and cheating. (not social stuff) We took unproctored exams. If you cheated, you went before honor council that was made up of faculty and peers. If convicted, you were gone. Not sure for how long but I think it was expulsion. That meant forever. Very few people went before coucil. It only had to happen a few times. Learning by example.

    Lying and stealing…we didn’t have door keys until my junior year. You could set things down and come back to them hours later. I never had but one thing taken, a record album.

    Today you have to nail down anything and cheating is a way of life beginning in elementary school or before. It is not seen as a behavior of shame. When I was a kid, cheating was seen as a horrible thing. It reflected poorly on you, your parents, your extended family. It was shameful. You grew up in a society thinking that. Somehow that idea of shame dissipated. It isn’t shameful to cheat. It is an accepted practice in most schools today by most students. (not all but most)

    I mentioned earlier, social things like drinking and partying weren’t part of the honor system. Those could get you into trouble but it wasn’t treated the same. There was no drinking or alcohol allowed on campus. If you lied to a college official, that was an honor violation.

    Before behavior can be cleaned up, I am not so sure that honor doesn’t have to be reinstated. I don’t know how to do that. The line on honor has changed so much since I was a kid I don’t think it can be brought back. It has to start in families and in society in general. It just isn’t there.

    So Kelly, the only part I disagree with is a different standard for athletes. I would make your rules for everyone. Make it part of student fees. Make the checks routine.

    There is some sort of restriction on how far the university can reach as to drinking rules. They need to use the laws that are in existence. Change the laws if necessary.

    And then there are thing things over which the universities have no control….or do they? How can things be safer? Why was Morgan Harrington prevented from getting back in to the concert venue? Where was security?

  25. Censored bybvbl

    Moon-howler, I remember the honor code as well. You could leave a fur coat or purse hanging on a coatrack outside of class and find it undisturbed when you returned. Summer school was a different story since students from all over the state – and outside it – were also in attendence and many of their schools had no such codes. Then you took your valuables into the classroom with you.

    I had a friend/co-worker who attended Radford, was caught at a Tech frat party where there was drinking, and was suspended for a year. Of course, this was in the olden days when women couldn’t wear shorts on campus and had curfews. We needed to be protected from the males who couldn’t control themselves – which brings us back to the sick SOB George Huguely.

    I can remember only one fellow student whom I suspected was a victim of abuse when I was younger. She was a very pretty young lady who was in my art class. She married a guy from Stanford, moved to California, and then returned to Virginia for a summer session. She came to class with her gorgeous hair chopped off, bruises all over her arms and legs, very modest attire for the 60s,and a much more guarded demeanor. Her husband would meet her immediately after class and wisk her off without giving her a chance to interact with classmates.

    I think information about abuse and a good support system is the best, but not infallible, solution. A relative of mine was the victim of an abusive harrasser. We as a family sent her across country to a good job where she could be free of him. An ex-coworker told him which city she had moved to and he tracked her down, called her about 50-80 times a day, and finally drove across country to get her. One child later, she is finally free of him only because another woman managed to put him behind bars for 30 years for rape.

  26. TWINAD

    Agreed, Emma. I am very blessed to have had things work out the way they did.

    Moonhowler, the emotional and verbal abuse is how it all started for me. I never had any fear of physical violence until maybe the last 5 years or so of the relationship…by then I had already been with him for 12 years and he had already broken me down to a shell of what I had once been. It was at that time that he started his business that he needed me to help him with and that put me in complete isolation since I already didn’t have any friends and now I didn’t have any co-workers either. After I left he was diagnosed as bi polar.

  27. Definitely emotional and psychological abuse should not be underrated. It can leave its victims ‘dead in the shell’ so to speak. That is one step up from being dead, I suppose.

    Thanks, Twinad, for reminding us how deadly emotional abuse can be. And there can be degrees of abuse.

    I have my own guilt for feeling like I allowed someone to be emotionally abused. I should have intervened.

  28. marinm

    First is criminal records checks for students, next drug testing for public housing recipients and next forced sterilization for women on public assistance with multiple kids.

    The slippery slope gets slicker.

  29. Rick Bentley

    kelly3406, you do realize those kids at Duke were falsely accused and then persecuted coast-to-coast over a false story, right? Which was inflamed by local politics? You do understand that the woman made the story up?

  30. Rick Bentley

    “what is it you think that the president should have done that he didn’t do? ”

    Isn’t it obvious? He should personally investigate each student’s behavior, level of alchohol abuse, and potential for rage. And, he should personally gain intimate knowledge regarding any sexual relationships between students on campus. If this is not possible, at a minimum he should do it for all student-athletes.

  31. Excellent point, Rick. The woman who lied should be doing jail time just for the damaged lives and the cost to the public.

  32. kelly3406

    Rick Bentley :
    kelly3406, you do realize those kids at Duke were falsely accused and then persecuted coast-to-coast over a false story, right? Which was inflamed by local politics? You do understand that the woman made the story up?

    Irrelevant to this conversation. The Duke Lacrosse team was poorly behaved, much like the UVa lacrosse team ( http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/features/lacrosse_incident/lacrossereport.html ). Members of the team had arrests and numerous alcohol violations. Their poor behavior lent credibility to the false rape allegations.

  33. kelly3406

    @Rick Bentley

    With someone’s name and city, anyone can find out how much a person paid for his home, if he has been arrested or convicted, whether he is delinquent on his taxes or not, etc. All I am saying is that the university should use public information (arrest records and convictions) to remove violent criminals from the student body. Given that there is only a wing or a floor separating young women and men in the dormitories, students are extremely vulnerable. I do not think it is unreasonable to use publicly available information to remove anyone with multiple arrests or convictions for violent offenses from a campus. As the leader of a university, the president would be responsible for implementing such a policy.

  34. I have no problem removing violent criminals from colleges campuses.

    I think the Duke Lacrosse team ended up being a witch hunt. I don’t think they were any more ill behaved than any other subset of university students. Forth Floor males in Dumbo Dorm probably are no better, no worse.

    I have no problem cleaning up some of this behavior, I just want the clean up applied equally. My entire life has been around campuses either actually or by family association,

    One of my main points during the immigration debate has been looking at the behavior of young males who are away from home and who have no one to answer to. Nuff said?

  35. Rick Bentley

    “the university should use public information (arrest records and convictions) to remove violent criminals from the student body”

    Interesting. Should their parents also monitor the public information? Churches? Social clubs?

    And how will the ACLU feel about this?

    And will it affect ethnic groups disproportionately? If so, Al Sharpton may lead marches against your proposal.

  36. Rick Bentley

    MH, Crystal Gail Mangum is in jail, though not over the false rape allegations – for arson and attempted murder – http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/02/18/2010-02-18_crystal_gail_mangum_stripper_in_duke_lacrosse_rape_case_charged_with_arson_and_a.html

    Guess the small college she went to couldn’t afford to get her to stop this sort of thing.

  37. kelly3406

    Rick Bentley :
    Interesting. Should their parents also monitor the public information? Churches? Social clubs?
    And how will the ACLU feel about this?
    And will it affect ethnic groups disproportionately? If so, Al Sharpton may lead marches against your proposal.

    I don’t care what churches and parents do. But if I am paying a university between $20K and $50K per year for my kid’s education, I expect it to maintain security for the students.

    If Al Sharpton led marches against this proposal, then I would be even more certain that it was the right thing to do.

  38. kelly3406

    @Moon-howler

    If you look at the statistics in the link (response #32), you will see that the Duke lacrosse team had a disproportionate number of incidents of poor behavior compared to the rest of the student body. So their behavior really was worse than the overall Duke student population.

  39. Rick Bentley

    LOL at the Sharpton remark. You know, that’s kind of how I see America’s current state. If we just do the opposite of what Al Sharpton wants each time, things might get generally better in a myriad of ways.

  40. Rick Bentley

    kelly3406, the Duke coach did get fired, and the Lacross team’s season cancelled. I’m not complaining about that or saying that it was wrong. There’s a code of conduct and it wasn’t being enforced effectively – lack of leadership.

  41. marinm

    Does anyone here really believe the government has an obligation to protect you and keep you safe?

    I got some land in AZ I’d like to sell you…..

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