Two weeks ago, I wrote “about convicted felon Teressa Turner-Schaefer, who spent a mere 11 months in jail for killing her husband after an argument. Now Turner-Schaefer gets to collect $400,000 in life insurance for killing her husband.” This husband-killer was treated indulgently based on gender bias. Other commentators also criticized the slap on the wrist that she received.
(I noted that the average sentence for an unprovoked killing of a husband is only 6 or 7 years, whereas the killing of a wife leads to a more reasonable average sentence of 17 years).
Weirdly enough, although many other web sites linked to my blog post, it has entirely disappeared from the Google search results, while obscure, seldom-read blogs that reprinted my post without attribution are still listed by Google. (It still shows up in the Yahoo search results).
My blog post was first omitted from Google’s regular search results based on the fact that it was similar to other posts (because those posts quoted it in its entirety, some without attribution), even though those posts were by non-lawyers, while I have practiced law and have extensively studied the role of gender bias in the legal system. Later, my post disappeared entirely from all of Google’s search results.
By contrast, obscure blog posts I have written about Indonesia and tobacco regulation show up on Google. How Google’s search engines work is a mystery to me.
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Not so amazing that your blog disappeared. You will find that most of the negative comments in this case have been deleted from the internet completely. I should know, my son was the “husband” in this case and my comments won’t even post.
I hope that Tracy Schaefer will take into account that under the law of most states (and Virginia, too, I think), a history of domestic violence (like the felony committed by Teressa Turner-Schaefer) is a factor that weighs against child custody.
I worry about the safety of the children. An impulsive, violent person can just as easily kill a child as a spouse.
That is relevant to any court proceedings involving custody or visitation of the children.
Given the blind spot that some gender-biased judges have about domestic violence against male victims, you may need to remind judges that, in both law and fact, Teressa Turner-Schaefer perpetrated domestic violence of the most extreme kind by killing her husband.
Women who commit violence against their husbands often go on to commit violence against other relatives. Lorena Bobbitt attacked her own mother, for example, after she escaped punishment for cutting off her husband’s appendage.