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This has not been a good week for women

In what seems to be the most horrific week of crimes against women that I can recall, I almost didn't check the news today. Something just kept telling me that it was only going to get worse.
It all started with a report of a woman's body found laying in the road, dead after being tied to the rear of a vehicle and dragged for an unknown distance. Even before the complete report came out on it, something about the photo found near her body lead me to believe that this was a crime committed by someone the victim knew, rather than by a stranger.
Sadly, it turns out that I was right, Luz Maria Franco-Fierros, 49, was identified through fingerprints and turned out to be the mother of three, and the victim of her live in boyfriends rage.
From CNN.com -Investigators say Franco-Fierros had been dragged behind a vehicle for more than a mile, leaving a bloody trail. Preliminary autopsy results said she suffered fatal head injuries and strangled as she was dragged.

Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, 36, was being held without bail on a charge of first-degree murder.

Friends told the Rocky Mountain News that the woman lived with Rubi-Nava, even though he had a wife and children in Mexico. Cesar Gustavo Flores, 20, a roommate, said the couple sometimes argued violently.


The news continued to get worse with the mother who was found dead, her baby cut from her womb, and her three young children missing. The kids were last seen with a woman who is in custody, although no charges have yet been files against her in the slaying of 23-year-old Jimella Tunstall.

Tunstall's children — ages 7, 2 and 1 — were last seen Monday with the woman now detained, authorities said Friday, clinging to hope that the youngsters still would be found alive.


The children have not yet been found, and as horrifying as the first reports of this crime were, they seem to only get worse:
Ace Hart, a deputy St. Clair County coroner, said the woman in custody summoned police to the Frank Holten park on Sept. 15, saying she had gone into labor. The dead baby, taken to a hospital, showed no signs of trauma, and an autopsy the next day failed to pinpoint a cause of death, he said.

The woman would not let doctors at the hospital examine her and offered conflicting reasons for why she went into labor, alternately saying she had consensual sex and was raped, Hart said.

Authorities say the woman in custody acknowledged to her boyfriend during the baby's funeral Thursday that the child wasn't his, and that she killed the mother. The boyfriend told police, who arrested his girlfriend hours later, investigators said.


I thought I had read as much as I could stand, including the now solved case of the mother who's neck was slashed during the kidnapping of her newborn, when I read the next story.

One of the bravest things a woman can ever do is leave her abusive husband. I say that because in most cases, the abuse has ripped the woman's self esteem into pieces. The majority of abusive worthless pieces of trash (also called abusive men) have taken control over every aspect of the woman's life, gaining complete control over the woman, making leaving seem almost impossible in a victims eyes. Add in the "fear factor" and it can be next to impossible to work up the courage to leave.
So, when a woman gains the strength to leave- it's worth commending her on. Sadly, the abusive assholes don't always see it this way, and react in even more horrific ways. This is the case I had to read this morning:
Bonnie Woodring, 48, moved into the shelter after that attack. In court records, she said her husband "keeps tabs on where I am 24/7" and had threatened her 13-year-old son from a previous relationship.

On Monday night, her husband, armed with a shotgun, pushed past a staff worker who was leaving the shelter for the night, then shot his wife in the kitchen, investigators said.

Bonnie Woodring and her son were the shelter's only occupants. The boy heard the shooting from another room, but was not hurt.

And the lowlife scum bucket who committed this cowardly act?
John "Woody" Raymond Woodring, 35, was believed to have fled in a stolen car from this town of about 2,500 people in the Great Smoky Mountains in the far western corner of North Carolina, near the Tennessee state line.

Woodring, a graduate student and teaching assistant at Western Carolina University, was considered armed and dangerous, authorities said. He was charged with first-degree murder, in addition to domestic violence charges alleging he violated a protective order and tried to strangle his wife at her home Sept. 14. SOURCE

Of course, before this no good piece of crap killed his wife, he made a plea for her to return to him. On their website. Which is now in the barely there state. Although, you can still see the "message for Bonnie" link. Reports say that he's attempted this sort of begging before-- only in the form of a paid ad in a newspaper ten years ago for his now ex wife.

As if all of this isn't quite bad enough- I had to go and read the news today. I didn't mean to, and really regretted doing so once I read the headline to this one.

Man stabs toddler, wife in La. traffic
The 2-year-old girl was in a car with her parents when her father started stabbing his wife with a kitchen knife along Interstate 110 near the Governor's Mansion, said Cpl. L'Jean McKneely, a Baton Rouge Police spokesman.

When the 26-year-old woman got out and ran for help from an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's deputy in squad car just ahead of them, her husband stabbed his daughter, McKneely said.

"He kept stabbing her until the knife was stuck in her head," witness Gloria Spears told WAFB-TV.

After leaving the knife lodged in the child's head, he placed the toddler outside of the car, and attempted to leave. That seems to be when he hit his wife with his car, flying her 20 to 40 feet, before running the car into a series of utility poles. This complete asswipe is currently in the hospital, as he then flipped the car unto another vehicle.
All three were taken to Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center. The child was in "extremely critical" condition, with a cut "along her midsection and a kitchen knife lodged in her head," McKneely said.

Her mother, who was thrown 20 to 40 feet by the impact of the car, also had numerous stab wounds, he said. She was expected to live. The man was being treated for minor injuries, McKneely said.

He said police will not release the man's name until he is released from the hospital and booked into jail; the woman's and child's names were withheld because they are victims, he said.Story


As I said before, I can not recall another time when stories of heinous behavior against women filled the news in such a rapid manner. These are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, and our friends that this is happening too. Where is human decency? When did we lose so much of ourselves that this has become acceptable behavior in the eyes of so many?

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