Viewing women as vengeful and men as victims

HERE are the facts as presented in one criminal court case a few weeks ago. A 33-year-old man indulges in serious binge drinking, leading on this occasion to sudden, unprovoked assaults on three women (one of a sexual nature, one in which he threatened to kill). Their only defender lies asleep, drunkenly oblivious to it all. There is a flight from justice to another continent, followed by a court case wherein the man's defence is based on his being abused as a child. He nonetheless gets a custodial sentence.

Now who do you take to be the baddies in all this? The violent, binge drinker a male? The drunk who slept through it all a male? The cousin a male - who allegedly buggered the defendant every morning, Monday to Friday, when the latter was only nine years old? The judge - a male - who sent the defendant to jail? That old scapegrace society - still dominated by males? Nope. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. It's obvious. Women ... blasted women. The only reason this man, Garda David Kerins, is in jail, wrote Kevin Myers twice in 10 days, is because of "a vindictive and politically correct feminism which reduces the world into stereo-types of male aggression and female victims

(It is) a frivolous and wholly unnecessary proof that our courts care about women, especially American women".

Well, of course. Those silly American women totally over-reacted to a powerful, 6 ft 5 in, 20-stone, drunken man, clearly out of his mind, rampaging through their house and bedrooms, gin bottle in one hand, glass water heater (eventually smashed against a wall) in the other, threatening to kill one woman, purposefully smearing his own blood on another, tearing off their night clothes, forcing them to barricade themselves in a room.

DOUBLY, trebly silly of them to want to bring charges, considering it took only 12 gardai or so to restrain him finally. Just vengeful, mouthy little feminists, your honour. American, too. Should have sent THEM to jail if you'd been paying attention. What the women failed to understand, you see, is that none of this was the man's fault.

"It was a random, purposeless insane deed," writes Kevin, "of the kind that Dr Brian McCaffrey told the trial court was a common enough reaction to the sort of abuse David had suffered when he was nine." As a result of this history, the court was told - and accepted - that this man was like a time bomb, capable of being triggered by alcohol or other stimuli.

In other words, here is one dangerous man. It also noted that the defendant had been offered advice but had spurned or ignored all attempts made to get help or treatment. Still, it is Kevin's passionately held view that not alone should David Kerins not be in jail today but that no charges should have been brought - nor would have been "had the victims of his madness been Irish and male".

Interestingly, however, although there was another male in the house at the time, the defendant did not assault him. Kevin also suggests that a woman who had been buggered repeatedly in childhood would have got away scot-free for doing what this man did. Well, it seems to me that we're rather short of examples. There are well-aired cases of women who for years internalised their grief and physical pain at being abused by a husband or father and who eventually launched an onslaught on the perpetrator or even killed him.

Examples of where they launched drunken sexual or physical assaults on comparative strangers and used childhood abuse as a defence are thin on the ground. In any event, even those ghastly feminists of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) and Women's Aid have come out publicly on several occasions against any man or woman taking the law into their own hands. And, anyway, who are these vengeful, politically-correct females so often at the butt of Kevin's eloquence?

ARE they the same people who run the DRCC -the first organisation to campaign for help for sexual offenders and 10 per cent of whose clients are male survivors of abuse? Or is it the stalwarts of Women's Aid, without whom there would be no refuge from "domestic" male brutality for women and children? And who, while we're at it, are these "victim classes" to which Kevin refers and which he clearly scorns? Could they be these same women and children - and if so, could he analyse for himself in what way the man he so passionately defends as a "victim" is superior to them?

It is internationally accepted that no more than 3 to 7 per cent of all sexual crimes against women and children ever get processed to the point of conviction. Think about it. As for myself, your honour, I'm thinking of lashing off a couple of thank-you notes; one to the American women for pursuing the case and another to yourself for removing this man from harm's way for oh, all of eight months or so (the rest of the six-year total to be suspended if he behaves himself).

Again, amid all the bluster about vengeful females, we note that the heaviest single sentence handed down - three years - was for damage to property. If there was a men's movement to which Kevin belonged, I'd also be writing to ask why a man such as David Kerins should be shielded from responsibility for his actions.

Why would Irish males NOT report a brutal, unprovoked assault to the authorities and why should this be something to boast about? The corollary to this macho, we-can-handle-it-ourselves attitude, is already evident in the disastrous under-reporting of male-on-male rape. How many maddened, walking time bombs threaten our security as a result? It is 10 years since David Kerins disclosed his childhood abuse to his family but he still spurned offers of treatment even though as a young garda, trained in the handling of rapists as well as rape and abuse victims, he had a privileged insight into such programmes.

None of this is to minimise his horrific experiences at the hands of his cousin. Prison is surely not the place for damaged people like him. But the prisons are full of men and women who have been savagely used and abused since childhood. Where are their champions? If the man Kevin Myers champions this week is indeed a victim, then he has many co-sufferers. Are "vindictive, politically-correct feminists" to blame for all this too?