by Justice 12:09pm Sat May 4 '02 (Modified on 11:01am Mon May 6 '02) article#763
Alice Whyte testified that her husband beat her, shot her dog in front of her and had forced her to have sex with him while he was having sex with a man. Yet she has been jailed for 18 years. No woman should ever be imprisoned. Free her now!
18 years' jail for arsenic lunches
By WAYNE HOWELL, Supreme Court reporter
04may02
THE wickedness of a woman who poisoned her husband with arsenic over 15 months knew no bounds, a Supreme Court judge said yesterday.
Justice Bill Gillard said Lorraine Alice Whyte's heartlessness had turned her husband's life into a living hell.
She regularly laced husband Leonard Moss's work lunches with doses of arsenic from about September, 1982, until the 38-year-old's excruciating death in January 1984, the
judge said.
Whyte, now 53, sobbed in the dock of the Supreme Court in Bendigo as she was sentenced to a minimum term of 18 years' jail.
Saying her culpability in her callous crime was of the highest order, Justice Gillard set a maximum term of 22 years.
Whyte, of the Loddon Valley Highway, Bendigo, was found guilty by a jury of murder.
The judge yesterday lambasted Melbourne's Austin Hospital for misplacing a report on Mr Moss in August 1983 which revealed high levels of arsenic in his body.
He said the report only surfaced in January, 1984, too late to save Mr Moss.
"This gross negligence played into your hands," the judge told the sobbing prisoner.
"It allowed your callous, heartless actions to go unchecked and undetected."
The judge said Mr Moss's frequent bouts of painful illnesses, which included symptoms such as sweating, his face turning blue, his tongue hanging out, confusion, rashes and painful cramps, had doctors stumped.
"The doctors were mystified but you knew. You were torturing him to death," Justice Gillard said.
The judge rejected Whyte's claims that her husband beat her, shot her dog in front of her and had forced her to have sex with him while he was having sex with a man.
He noted that Whyte had refused to be cross-examined on any of these claims and that her three children denied them.
The judge said Mr Moss had been a good father and a friendly colleague at his meatworks job.
Justice Gillard said even if Whyte's claims of abuse were true they happened long before she started poisoning Mr Moss.
The judge also noted that she continued to "bombard" her husband with arsenic even after he became helpless and wheelchair-bound.
"Your wickedness showed no bounds," Justice Gillard said.
He said that at the end of Mr Moss's life his wife appeared to be caring for him full-time.
"You were nursing him but you were not nursing him to health, but to certain death," Justice Gillard said. "You had no compassion. You were heartless, you were hell-bent
on killing him."
The judge said that in the end Whyte had been feeding her husband every week more than 20 times the amount of arsenic that occurs naturally in humans.
He said she did not even stop when a couple of Mr Moss's work mates became violently ill after eating some of his arsenic-laced lunches.
He said one of these colleagues had been forced out of work for months after being poisoned.
Justice Gillard noted it was almost 18 years since Whyte committed her crime and that she had suffered rejection by her children.
He said however there was little evidence of remorse as she had maintained her innocence even after confessing her crime to one of her daughters two years ago.
He said she only made the confession because she thought she could no longer be prosecuted. "How wrong you were," Justice Gillard told her.
news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,425...
what?
by joe 1:43pm Sat May 4 '02 (Modified on 7:17am Sun May 5 '02) comment#764
No woman should ever be imprisoned. what? women are equally able of committing horrendous crimes. stop posting corporate news here. if we want to read the murduch press, we know where to get it.
women's crimes are often the result of sustained abuse
by aint i a woman 6:26pm Sat May 4 '02 comment#766
most women in australian gaols are victims, not criminals. most of them have been sexually abused as children (most often by male care-givers - the worst possible betrayal of trust), many are victims of domestic rape. many have seen their children abused, their pets killed, their relatives threatened. many have drug problems as a result and are in gaol by virtue of these drug problems.
when a woman retaliates under these conditions it is not a 'henious crime' or an act of aggression, but a last desperate attempt to get their lives back. yes, they ought to be counselled, the might have to got to gaol. but lack of remorse is an indication of the detachment that one is forced to have towards one's own life (and hence the lives of others)as a result of ongoing physical and psychological abuse.
you can only imagine what it is like to have sufferred sustained oppression unless it has happened to you. this is less likely if you are a man. privelege is invisble to those who have it.
husband was a meatworker
by australian feminists for animal rights 6:39pm Sat May 4 '02 comment#767
meatworkers, men who work in factory farms, in abbatoirs and hunters all have a recognised increased tendency to abusing their wives and children than the general male population (1/4 of which have been abusers at some time).
killing animals and dealing with their corpses predisposes one to becoming detached from ones feelings of compassion towards other beings. this is well documented.
http://crosswinds.net/~afar/index.html TRUE NEWS.
by VICTOR. 6:43pm Sat May 4 '02 comment#768
BATTERED WOMEN. Battered woman should not take it, just grab a butchers knife, and slit their fucking throats. I know the case of a 94-year-old woman who was assaulted by her son and this matter only became known with the addendum being the reasons for the will. An accountant who held a copy of the will embezzled about $800,000.00 from the estate.
Some matters have a steamrolling effect. Apart of the problem comes from mothers who mollycoddles their sons. When they get married the woman say, "We will change them. In fact, like hell. Marry me and make my life hell. The Australian male has very little class. Judges are usually come from persons who could not make it in private practise and one of them is known as an ass-bandit in Sydney.
The present case of Alessandra Gabriel's son I respectively suggest is a classic example. Unfortunately, decisions of the courts and what is termed the real world are miles apart.
yes, but...
by joe 8:00pm Sat May 4 '02 comment#769
that's all well and good, but sweeping statements like 'no woman belongs in jail' and 'the australian male has no class' silence many victims of violence and obscure the true causes of violence. i am an australian male who has experienced undeserved domestic violence at the hands of a (feminist identifying) woman. i am a vegetarian, if it makes a difference. i am also profeminist, and non violent.
this bullshit does not address the exponential rise in unprovoked female initiated violence that has come about in the last 30 years. unprovoked violence is unacceptable regardless of the gender of abuser.
which is not to deny the masses of women in jail without reason. this is just a bad example using faulty logic.
right...
by joe 8:05pm Sat May 4 '02 comment#770
"one of them is known as an ass-bandit"
sorry vic, didn't realise you were a homphobe. wouldn't have bothered to address your comment if i'd realised.
stats?
by inquirer 8:32am Sun May 5 '02 comment#776
where do you get you figures from joe???
For Joe.
by VICTOR. 9:11am Sun May 5 '02 comment#778
http://boston.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=6150&group= a few resources
by joe 1:17pm Sun May 5 '02 comment#783
unfortunately, female violence is one that the left has failed to address. if we don't the right will use it against us...
http://www.salon.com/feb97/news/news2970227.html http://www.abusedmen.com/brochure.html quote from above:
*According to the largest published survey of U.S. couples, two million men a year are severely assaulted by their female mates. That's a man kicked, bitten, hit with a fist or object, beaten up, and had a knife gun or other deadly weapon used or threatened to be used against them every 15.7 seconds! -National Family Violence Survey, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. A similar Canadian survey shows 270,000 male victims of severe domestic violence a year-University of Calgary, Dept. of Sociology.
Surveys also show that gay men also experience domestic violence at a rate similar to that of heterosexual couples.
(a9)2001, Stop Abuse For Everyone.
http://www.safe4all.org/ Stop Abuse For Everyone is a non-profit organization that provides advocacy, information, and support for men and women who are the victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. We set up and advocate for services for everyone, regardless of what type of person they are, with the vision of a world of powerful, supportive relationships, free of violence. SAFE concentrates on services for underserved groups, such as straight men, gay men, lesbian women, elderly victims, and so on, because few services exist for these groups.
another perspective :
http://www.wiretapmag.org/stories/Hobbs030900.html the point i'm trying to make is that violence is endemic at all levels of society. a lot of it is initiated by men, but the invisibility of violence against men, by men and women serves to obscures the causes and creation of cycles of violence.
women are assaulted by intimate partnersTEN times more than men
by inquirer 1:49pm Sun May 5 '02 comment#787
hmmm. another survey (over 4 yrs in the US) indicates a different picture.
"Average annual number of single-offender violent victimizations, 1987-91
Sex of victim
Victim-offender -------------------
relationship Female Male
Intimate 572,032 48,983
Other relative 117,201 75,587
Acquaintance 796,067 1,268,506
Stranger 71,114 1,182,307
Source: BJS, Violence Against Women: A National
Crime Victimization Survey Report, 1994
...In over 90% of the violence by intimates recorded
in the NCVS from 1987-91, the victim was female."
http://www.silcom.com/~paladin/madv/stats.html This indicates that women being assaluted by men they know or otherwise is over TEN TIMES that of women attacking men. The figures flip when it comes to street aggression or fights with acquaintainces.
IN Australia "The Women's Safety Survey, conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 1996 surveyed approximately 6,300 Australian women about their experience of actual or threatened physical and sexual violence.
2.6 million women (or 38% of the adult female population) had experienced one or more incidents of physical or sexual violence since the age of 15. 1.2 million had experienced sexual violence and 2.2 million experienced physical violence. For the majority of women (2.5 million women) the violence was perpetrated by a man. "
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dvirc/Statistics.htm Sure women retaliate, maybe they occasionally start it. but the fact is most men are bigger and stronger than most women. no prizes for guessing who's gonna win in this situation. i'm sorry if you had a bad time joe, but that doesn't justify belittling a very big social problem: male violence against women.
yeah, i know...
by joe 7:58pm Sun May 5 '02 comment#803
i'm not trying to belittle the problem. i'm saying that painting the problem as a solely male on female interaction oversimplifies the situation, silences lesbian, gay and straight male victims of violence and provides no facility for fixing the situation. violence is a cycle and must be addressed on all levels. violence against men must stop as well, otherwise the cycle continues.
VICTOR.
by NZ A COUNTRY OF GRUBBY QUEERS. 11:01am Mon May 6 '02 comment#813
Police watch on popular nudist beach.
02.05.2002
Police will begin patrolling a popular Bay of Plenty nudist beach after complaints about the behaviour of gay men in the sand dunes. A 42-year-old man will appear in the Tauranga District Court today charged with committing an indecent act in a public place after police visited Papamoa Beach on Tuesday.
About six other men were also seen "acting furtively" near a public walkway but would not face charges.
Detective Senior Sergeant Karl Wright St-Clair said the northwestern end of the beach was a well-known nudist area which police and locals did not have a problem with.
"But it's quite obvious these guys are not just going down there to sunbathe in the nude," he said. "I think what's happened now is that it's a bit of a cruising area for gays." Papamoa residents had made complaints in recent weeks that prompted police dressed in beach clothes to check the area.
Papamoa resident and co-owner of Tauranga's Chromazones Cruise Club for gay men, Grant Marx, said the area had been a popular "pick-up" beach for over 30 years.
"It used to be quite secluded. No-one really worried about it but now all the houses have been built around it and families have started to go down there, it's become a hot topic."
Mr Marx said around 15 to 20 gay men visited the beach on an average day but pointed out that numerous heterosexual couples had sex there also.
Extra police patrols were a good idea as long as gay men who were minding their own business or just talking to friends were not targeted, Mr Marx said.
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