Excellent article on domestic abuse in, of all places, Greenwich Time

Cop friends have told me that responding to domestic "disputes" is one of the more dreaded duties, and I think that's true nationwide, as well: often there's alcohol involved, and violence can explode, from one party or the other, or even both, and some of the scenes are absolutely heart-breaking. Today's GT article captures some of that, in a non-hysterical, factual, way, and even includes a case of female-on-male violence, because this is not a crime restricted to boozy men in wife-beater Tees going after their women. Neither, the article points out, is it something limited to  our lower-income neighborhoods in Byram. In fact, as the article makes clear and my cop friends will attest, some of the worst cases occur in the back country.

This subject is very much not a left wing, tree-hugger issue, and the Greenwich Time doesn't cast it that way. Nice job.

One aside: I told my daughters, probably too often, when they were beginning to date, that they should never, ever give a boy a "second chance" if he struck them. Someone willing to exceed the boundaries of decency like that was revealing a character flaw so deep, and so irredeemable, that they should never trust him again, regardless of whatever excuse he gave, or what he promised.

Years on, one of my kids said she'd remembered what I'd preached and walked from a relationship after just such an incident, when he slapped her. The "boy" was picked up by one of my daughter's friends, and he proceeded to beat that friend, very badly. Since my girls rarely took my advice back then (wisely, I''' admit), I'm glad that lecture stuck.