When will young women in Minnesota learn to stay away from abusive men?

[question everything]

Now another young woman, who feared her abusive boy friend yet went to meet him for... I don't know - is missing and presumed dead.

They know they are abusive, they are afraid of them, they go to meet them "one last time" and then they are gone.

They have families, fathers, brothers. I wish someone could tell them to be brave and to run the other way.

Sad

[BainsBane]

1. When will men stop abusing women?

Why is it the victim's fault?

[question everything]

2. Hard facts

You have the right to cross the street at a crosswalk. But if someone chooses not to stop and run over you and kill you, what value are these rights? And if men continue to abuse you and you are dead, what do these rights do for you?

Yes, I have written on these pages several times, that young boys, starting at elementary school, should be taught that girls and women should not be used as a punching bag to hit and kill when they say NO, or when they are just mad at the world. The responses would usually be - what about women abusers? There are, of course, but the majority of partners who get abused and killed are women.

[BainsBane]

3. basic decency

don't blame the victim. It's ugly. If someone is known to be an abuser, he needs to be locked up. Yet you blame the person he kills because who else but a woman could be responsible for her own murder.

[question everything]

5. And how would the abuser be locked up, unless someone complains?

They do not complain. Not to the authorities. They confide in their friends, in family members even. But why go to visit with them "one last time?"

I don't "blame" the victim. I want to stop them, to grab their arms and shout - don't go there!

Please don't try to sit and pass judgement. Imagine a real woman whom you know, who is telling you that she is afraid of her boy friend. Wouldn't you tell her not to go and meet with him one last time? And when she disappears, and only her jacket with 17 stab wound is found - leading the police to conclude that she is dead - wouldn't you cry and say "I wish she'd listened to me?"

I would.

[BainsBane]

4. particuarly astounding that your response to murder and criminal battery

is educating young boys. These are animals who deserve to be locked up. Any other response is offensive.

[question everything]

6. These animals start as young boys

At some point, whether from home, or friends, or movies, they decide that if they their boss yell at them, they should punch their wives or girlfriends.

I am not an educator, nor a social worker but we have to at least try to teach them that the girls and the women in their lives are not theirs to unleash their anger.

[Bosso 63]

7. sociopaths can be very charming.

Some of them can distort your reality like a black hole distorts time and space, and by the time you notice whats going on, its to late.
Monsters are real, and they look just like everyone else.

[dflprincess]

8. Sadly abuse is a problem everywhere, not just in Minnesota

All children need to be raised to know that it is not okay to abuse and that they have the right to not be abused.

Until then, we need to provide the services that help anyone (and while it's usually a woman who is the victim, especially of murder, it can happen to boys and men as well) get out of these relationships and to take the crime seriously enough that lock the abusers up.