Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, February 16, 2015

Why George Zimmerman Keeps Getting Away With It

Law enforcement just dropped assault charges against George Zimmerman, who allegedly threw a wine bottle at his girlfriend two weeks ago. According to the Associated Press, Zimmerman’s girlfriendrecanted her statement, continuing a cycle of accusations against Zimmerman followed by recantations that are typical of domestic violence cases.

After Zimmerman was found not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, several women whom he was involved with spoke outabout his abusive behavior. In a 2013 encounter that was caught on tape, Zimmerman threatened his ex-wife with a handgun. But Shellie Zimmerman refused to press charges. Two months later, girlfriend Samantha Scheibe told authorities that Zimmerman held a shotgun to her head during a dispute. At the time, he owned five guns — including an AR-15 assault rifle — and 100 rounds of ammunition. But when Scheibe asked prosecutors to drop the charges against Zimmerman, he was able to get his firearms back.
While the decision to drop charges means a court will, once again, never decide whether Zimmerman is guilty of domestic abuse, the patterns of Zimmerman and his accusers fall in line with the typical behavior of domestic violence victims. Whether they feel intimidated by their abusers or pressured by loved ones, many victims of domestic violence choose not to press charges. Perpetrators, meanwhile, often move from one victim to the next. A 2000 study found that 41 percentof abusers re-abuse their victim within a 30-month follow-up period, and another study found that almost half of people who had been arrested for violating a restraining order had two or more victims within six years. They also try to justify or minimize the extent of their behavior, as Zimmerman has done when he accused his girlfriend of going crazy and breaking a table in the apartment, in what experts call “minimization, denial and blaming.”
Every year, 4,774,000 women are physically harmed by a domestic partner in the United States.
Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author: CARIMAH TOWNES

No comments:

Post a Comment