Maximus, I thought the story showed that the mother AND a male each criminally assaulted that poor little child. If that male had children of his own too, would they perhaps be at risk?

Here are some sobering stats – please don’t shoot the messenger.

“Sexual abuse rates are lowest in homes with two biological parents. Rates are highest for broken homes with at least one nonbiological parent in the household, while single-parent households fall in the middle. This is also true for physical abuse and delinquency rates.” Ryan Spohn, assistant professor of sociology.
Kansas State University

The relationship between family structure and crime is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. Source: E. Kamarck, William Galston, Putting Children First, Progressive Policy Inst. 1990.

Kids who live with both biological parents at age 14 are significantly more likely to graduate from high school than those kids who live with a single parent, a parent and step-parent, or neither parent. Source: G.D. Sandefur (et al.), "The Effects of Parental Marital Status...", Social Forces, September 1992.

Children from mother-only families have less of an ability to delay gratification and poorer impulse control (that is, control over anger and sexual gratification.) These children also have a weaker sense of conscience or sense of right and wrong." Source: E.M. Hetherington and B. Martin, "Family Interaction" in H.C. Quay and J.S. Werry (eds.), Psychopathological Disorders of Childhood. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979).

Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality. Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, Survey on Child Health, Washington, DC, 1993.
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992.

72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers. 60% of America's rapists grew up the same way. Source: D. Cornell (et al.), Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 5. 1987. And N. Davidson, "Life Without Father," Policy Review. 1990.

Cotter, how do you do?

In answer to your question - I haven't the first idea, nor would I even hazard a guess. Unless you actually have intimate knowledge of the people, how could anybody know the answer to that?

And yes, TWO people were involved, a mother and a defacto husband. That's explicit in the article. So two questions -

1 - Why did the headline only specify the man? It is clear from the article that the woman instigated violence over the issue the night before the man became violent in support. He was not the initial instigator of violence concerning the issue.

2 - In your post you refer to the woman as the "mother" - correct title - and do not refer to her as a female. But then you refer to the man as "a male"? His correct title is defacto husband. Why do you make this distinction of treatment for one and not the other? A little bias creeping in? Have a think about it. It was probably unintentional, but it does gives clues to some peolple's ways of thinking and subconscious values.

Let us all hope the poor child can find someone out there who'll love her and be kind to her. But I fear her pain has just begun. Shocking.

"He hurted me in the shower: toddler " it leaves enough to the imagination to fill in the gaps.

What was an adult doing in a shower that could hurt a toddler?

Journo's are not above or should I say low enough to leave essential details out to implie other things happen.

there ought to be a law agianst this. (just kidding)

G'day Maximus,

I take your point re media - I notice the attention grabbing / newspaper selling headlines are often misleading.

What I have noticed about these posts, is the apparent difficulty to understand that people are not statistics, and statistics do not apply to all the people - for example my sister has successfully raised (after extreme violence against her by the natural father) two children, who both completed high school and graduated from university. The children had no long term effects from the violence and abuse they had seen and experienced because she made it her business to learn how to recover well, and everything she could about how to raise children from separated families. She always disliked the term 'single parent, as if that was her aim when she had the children during a marriage.

She went through a dreadful time in court, but never stopped the children seeing their father. They needed some counselling and she arranged it for them.

I went to court with her. All I can say is that what I saw there was disgraceful - I saw lawyers and judges who were abusive and certainly not just. She survived because she had good family.

She can't be the only female who respects and loves men but can see where the system fails men, women and most importantly, children.

You are quite right Cotter, statistics do tend to straight-jacket people. They can serve as general guide but they can also be misleading, misinterpreted and narrowly defined.

People are able to defy the statistics, go against the odds and prove them wrong when applied to themsleves. For the individual therefore, they prove nothing - for the general population or society, however, they give portent to emerging change or trend.

Families are in question, symptoms of neglect and abuse have arisen. The McInnes article offers little toward treatment, it has merely given a particular bias of judgement toward certain statistics.