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["Molly Dragiewicz" <>]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2007/04/virginia_tech_women.html

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                Mass Murderers and Women: What We're Still Not Getting About 
Virginia Tech 
                Evidence shows that many mass murderers begin and end their 
rampages with violence against women. With over 30 dead in Virginia, can we 
finally begin to take the issue seriously? 

                James Ridgeway 
                April 20 , 2007 

                Of all the lessons contained in the horror at Virginia Tech, 
the one least likely to be learned has to do with the deadly danger posed by 
the dismissive way we still view violence against women.

                The first person killed by Cho Seung-Ho, a freshman named 
Emily Hilscher, was initially rumored to be Cho's current or former 
girlfriend – the subject of his obsession or jealous rage. It now appears 
that she never had a relationship with Cho, but the rumors were spread 
quickly, especially by blogs and by the international tabloid press. The UK's 
Daily Mail headlined the "Massacre Gunman's Deadly Infatuation with Emily," 
while Australia's Daily Telegraph published a photo of a smiling Hilscher 
with the line "THIS is the face of the girl who may have sparked the worst 
school shooting in US history." (The page is still up.) Some accounts stooped 
to suggesting, with zero evidence, that the victim had jilted Cho, cheated on 
him, or led him on. 

                More significantly, local police and university 
administrators appear to have initially bought this motive, and acted 
accordingly. In the two hours between the murders of Hilscher and her dorm 
neighbor Ryan Clark, and Cho's mass killings at another university building, 
they chose not to cancel classes or lock down the campus. (They did choose to 
do so, however, in August 2006, when a man shot a security guard and a 
sheriff's deputy and escaped from a hospital two miles away.) Virginia Tech 
President Charles Steger said authorities believed the first shooting was a 
"domestic dispute" and thought the gunman had fled the campus, so "We had no 
reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur." The assumption, 
apparently, is that men who kill their cheating girlfriends are criminals, 
but they are not crazy, not psychopaths, and not a danger to anyone other 
than the woman in question. (Or, as one reader commented at Feministe 
sarcastically, "Like killing your girlfriend is no big deal.")

                In fact, these attitudes ignore past evidence of both 
"domestic disputes" and a more generalized misogyny as motives in mass 
killings. Multiple murders in homes and workplaces often begin with a man 
killing his wife or girlfriend. Mark Barton, who in 1999 shot nine people in 
an Atlanta office building, began the day by bludgeoning to death his 
children and his wife; six years earlier he had been a suspect in the death 
of his first wife and her mother, who were also beaten to death. In another 
high-profile case, the December 1989 mass shooting at Montreal's Ecole 
Polytechnique, Marc Lepine was after women, whom he hated, and had a list of 
feminists he wanted to kill. He murdered four men and 14 women, and wounded 
10 more women. In September 2006, Duane Roger Morrison walked into Platte 
Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., and took six female students hostage, 
killing one. And last October, Charles Carl Roberts IV took over an Amish 
schoolhouse, let the boys go, and killed five girls. 

                One warning sign in such cases is a history of stalking and 
harassment of women. At Virginia Tech, in September 2005, poet Nikki Giovanni 
had Cho removed from her class at Virginia Tech after female students 
complained that he was using his cell phone to take pictures of their legs 
underneath the desks; some refused to come to class while Cho was there. In 
November and December of that year, two female students reported receiving 
threatening messages from Cho, and one said he was stalking her. But charges 
were never filed, and police and university officials didn't seem especially 
worried about the women. Yet, as Arlen Specter pointed out in comments on the 
VT shooting made during the Gonzalez hearings Thursday, Cho had been accused 
of a "crime against the state as well as against the students," and the local 
DA could have taken up the case. 

                According to the Stalking Resource Center, one million women 
are stalked in the U.S. every year. In two-thirds of the cases where a female 
victim asks for a police protective order, that order is violated. Earlier 
this month, Rebecca Griego, a researcher at the University of Washington, was 
murdered in her office by her ex-boyfriend after she had reported his threats 
to the university police and Seattle police, changed her phone number, moved 
out of her apartment, distributed photos and descriptions of her stalker, and 
sought an order for protection. 

                One third of female murder victims are killed by an intimate 
partner (as opposed to about 3 percent of male victims). Of these, 76 percent 
had been stalked by the partner in the year prior to their murder. Murder 
ranks second (after accidents) as the leading cause of death among young 
women. And if the Supreme Court and abortion opponents really want to protect 
the lives of fetuses, they might consider this: Murder is the number one 
cause of death of pregnant women in the United States. 

                At least there is some recognition of such statistics in 
legislation called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 
sponsored by Senators Kennedy and Gordon Smith. If passed (unlike earlier 
versions, which were blocked by House Republican leadership), this law would 
finally classify as hate crimes certain violent, criminal acts that are 
motivated by the victim's gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or 
disability.

                "Whatever helped bring on the Virginia Tech shootings, it 
certainly wasn't guns." That's the point gun advocates are scrambling to 
make; if anything, they argue, the shootings prove that we need more gun 
access. And President Bush fell in behind them after visiting the memorial 
service at Virginia (a state that is historically Republican turf, lost in 
the last two years to a Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, and a Democratic 
senator, James Webb). Bush didn't get into the gun control issue, saying it 
wasn't the time or place, but an aide made his position clear to reporters 
afterward. And Senator John McCain, whose imploding campaign has been seeking 
to recast him as a Bush lookalike, offered, "We have to look at what happened 
here, but it doesn't change my views on the second amendment except to make 
sure that these kinds of weapons don't fall into the hands of bad people." 

                Having been committed to a mental health facility for being a 
danger to himself and others presented no obstacle for Cho Seung-Hui, who 
bought one gun at a Blacksburg pawnshop and another—a Glock 9—at a Roanoke 
gun store. Here's a bare-bones list of state gun rules.

                - No limits on assault weapons 
                - State and federal criminal background checks
                - No restrictions on concealed weapons-even snub nosed 
handguns
                - Gun owners are held responsible for leaving weapons around 
children, but no safety lock requirements exist. 
                - Cities can't hold gun makers liable for gun violence. 
                - Can't give kids under 18 handguns or assault weapons, but 
kids can possess rifles and shotguns. 
                - Can't sell handguns to kids under 18, but any kid over 12 
can buy shotguns, older rifles, and assault weapons, all without parental 
consent.
                - You don't need a license to buy a handgun. 
                - There are no requirements that gun buyers register. The 
cops have no idea how many guns there are in the state. 

                Lax gun laws like these combined with precious little 
awareness of the role violence against women plays in psychopathic behavior 
have led to tragic results. Will they again?

                James Ridgeway is the Washington Correspondent for Mother 
Jones. 

                

                Molly Dragiewicz

                Assistant Professor

                Faculty of Criminology, Justice, and Policy Studies

                University of Ontario Institute of Technology