|
|
Pop quiz: anyone know more about this painting? It isn't just visually powerful.
Stacey Anvarinia, the North Dakota women who pled guilty to child neglect for allegedly breastfeeding her infant daughter while intoxicated, has been arrested again. According to the Grand Forks Herald, within hours of Anvarinia's sentencing to 18 months imprisonment, all but six months suspended and with an option to serve part of the six months in substance abuse treatment, she was arrested for slashing the tires on a truck parked in the lot of her apartment building. No word on to whom the truck belonged but I do wonder whether perhaps it was to Delbert Harrison, the man Anvarinia said had beaten her when she called the police for help the night of her arrest for child neglect. Regardless, the police found her "hiding in a closet and appearing intoxicated." (Yes, once again it appears police did not feel it necessary to do a blood alcohol test.) She also had cuts on wrists severe enough for police to bring her to the hospital before bringing her to jail. Well, she got a hospital visit this time rather than the "go directly to jail" card dealt by police after she was kneed in the head last February.
Let's review:
-Woman calls police for help because she is being beaten by her boyfriend as she tries to leave her apartment.
-Police arrive, describe her as "extremely intoxicated" but do not question her ability to care for her six week old daughter until she "began breastfeeding her infant in front of us."
-Woman is never given a blood alcohol test.
-Woman is charged with felony child neglect and the man she identifies as having beaten her is never arrested or charged. In fact, the state lists him as a witness in the case against her.
-Woman loses custody of her child for six months, is then sentenced to a minimum of another six months away from her child, leaves the courthouse after sentencing and slashes someone's tires as well as, possibly, her own wrists.
A North Forks Herald article concerning Anvarinia's sentencing hearing last week reported that the officer on the scene in February testified:
Anvarinia’s demeanor, a strong smell of alcohol on her and the alcohol containers throughout the apartment suggested to him that she was intoxicated.
and
he saw Anvarinia shake the baby girl, hold her without supporting her head and, at one point, hold her upside down by one leg
However, none of this is in the original incident report by the same officer. If a six week old infant were being held upside down by one leg and shaken, would you wait until the mother put the child to the breast to arrest her for child neglect? Would the breastfeeding and nothing else be in the arrest report?
If we are to assume that Anvarinia indeed has an alcohol problem, it was some solace that, though she lost custody of her daughter for at least a year and her abuser walked away with no charges, her sentence included substance abuse treatment. Well, not anymore. In today's report:
Stacey Anvarinia, 26, had been allowed to spend at least part of her sentence at a substance abuse treatment facility, but Judge Sonja Clapp of the State District Court rescinded that option today.
The judge has sent a battered mother who allegedly has an alcohol problem straight to jail and, as punishment for allegedly getting drunk again, won't let her go to alcohol treatment.
Mothers can learn a lot of very disturbing lessons from the Anvarinia case. If you are being beaten while trying to escape an abusive boyfriend, calling the police may result in losing custody of your child. And your abuser won't be charged with any crime. If you plead guilty to charges for which the state appears to have very little evidence in exchange for a lighter sentence and substance abuse treatment, you better not abuse substances before you get treatment because the judge will change your sentence to deny you the treatment you need. So the punishment for being abused is losing your child and the punishment for being an alcoholic is not getting alcohol treatment. Please, someone tell me who this protects?
As promised, here is an update on Stacey Anvarinia, the North Dakota women who pled guilty to child neglect for allegedly breastfeeding her six-week-old daughter while drunk. For more on what appears to be a startling lack of evidence, see my post here. My suspicion that Anvarinia pled guilty as part of a deal for a lighter sentence and return of her baby seems to have been spot on.
According to the Grand Forks Herald, rather than the maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, Anvarinia was sentenced today to six months which she can serve in a substance abuse treatment facility. No news story published before today has mentioned whether Anvarinia had custody of her infant daughter since the arrest. In my previous blog post, I wondered whether she might have waived her right to trial in order to get her child returned to her. The Grand Forks Herald reports that at Anvarinia's sentencing she said:
"I’m very sorry for what I did, and I know it was wrong,” 26-year-old Stacey Anvarinia told the judge. “And I would like to continue working toward getting my daughter back.
So Anvarinia does not currently have her daughter and does not appear to know when she will regain custody of her. She was arrested in this case on February 13, 2009. As of today's sentencing then, she has been without her daughter for nearly six months and can now, it appears, look forward to at least another six months without her.
The brief news released today makes no mention of Delbert Harrison, the man Anvarinia says was beating her when she called police for help. As of last week, he had not been arrested or charged. Anvarinia's sentence for calling for help is a year without custody of her daughter, six months of which will be in some sort of detention.
Even if Anvarinia was intoxicated when police arrived – something for which there is apparently no evidence other then the police shock at her breastfeeding in their presence – is the loss of custody for a year (or more) and detention for six months an appropriate sentence? If you were a breastfeeding mother in need of help, how willing would you be to call the police? You might find yourself nursing an infant one minute, and regaining custody of a toddler a year later.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: According to the New York Times:
Clapp sentenced Anvarinia to 18 months in jail with all but six months suspended and said Anvarinia could get credit for chemical dependency treatment.
So Anvarinia's sentence is more severe than I reported above. Many thanks to Cate Nelson for the heads-up on this.
Watching the television show Weeds last night, I admit my interest in whether Nancy was breastfeeding her new baby bordered on obsessive. In the last episode, I caught what looked like Nancy applying lanolin to her nipples. But still, two episodes into a new baby on the show and she still hadn't made any direct mention of how this child was being fed. It bugged me.
But from early on in last night's episode, there were references to breast milk – mostly references to pumping and where the bottles of breast milk could be found, but I was satisfied. Honestly, at this point I could case less whether Andy is a good father or if she marries Esteban. I managed to get through the circumcision scene in the previous episode only because the rabbi's response to the question, "How do you practice to do this [circumcision]?" was "on goyim." Sorry. I'm Jewish. It was funny. If you are offended by the term "goyim," my apologies. Footnote here: I didn't circumcise my sons and think the practice is barbaric so I was working pretty hard at finding humor in the scene.
Back to last night's episode: Suck 'N Spit. I should have seen it coming in the title. Nancy is out to dinner with Andy (her brother-in-law for those of you who don't know the show) and becomes painfully engorged. You can literally see it. Watching her discomfort, her squirming and gently pressing her breasts – well, if you've been there, you know. She gives up on waiting till she gets back home and heads for the ladies room where she pulls what looks like a battery operated breast pump from her purse, leans over the sink, and starts to pump. But the pump kicks out – seems the batteries die. At this point I am on the edge of my seat. I know she has to empty those breasts.
It probably seems marginally disturbed to be so drawn in by a plot line about engorged breasts. I just don't see my life on television very often. Having spent nearly nine years lactating, the fill-full-empty-fill-full-empty arc of breast milk production is so familiar that I can read it in the way a woman moves, sits, breathes. Being aware of how much milk I had, how near full I was, how soon I needed to empty, was part of my every day for a significant chunk of my adult life.
When Nancy leans over the bathroom sink having tossed her dead breast pump, I thought she was going to hand express. She obviously wasn't walking out of that ladies room without relieving the pressure. Then she hollers for Andy and I squealed so loud my kids jumped. I immediately knew what she was going to do.
I never asked my kids' father to suck breast milk from my breasts – something of which I reminded him as we watched Nancy beg Andy to "suck 'n spit." But I totally would have. And he damn well better have done it.
This morning I searched the Internet for a clip of the scene to post here. Until one goes up, you are just going to have to trust me that Andy relieving Nancy's engorged breasts was not at all sexual. People with experience breastfeeding are probably going to wonder, perhaps aloud, why she didn't just hand express. As someone who could never get a drop out that way, I get the need for suction. And Andy's character on Weeds kind of annoys me much of the time so I loved that he pretty much just got to business doing what needed to be done.
But I suspect there is going to be a fair bit of Internet chatter about that scene. There are people who are going to write about it being disgusting or sexual or inapprorpiate. That he swallowed the breast milk instead of spitting it out will be an issue. And my response? Grow up! This was real. This was human. This was as it should be. Women who have babies lactate. Their breasts fill with milk. If the milk is not removed, their breasts will become engorged (too full) and the pressure will need to be relieved by removing some milk. If there is no hungry baby around to do it, the milk will need to be removed some other way. There it is. Thank you Weeds for putting it on television.
When I read the Associated Press story this past June about the guilty plea for "child abuse or neglect" by a North Dakota woman alleged to have breastfed her child while intoxicated, a few things leapt off the screen at me. I wondered why this mother had pled guilty. As a lawyer I know that people don't plead guilty because they are guilty. Guilty pleas are generally the result of a deal. The accused is waiving the right to a trial in exchange for an agreed upon sentence or in order to be charged with a lesser crime. Sometimes they plead guilty because they are frightened or inadequately represented or fear losing or being separated from their children. This woman pled guilty to the original charge so the "deal for a lesser charge" theory can be eliminated. Why then?
Also of significance to me was that the police were called to the mother's home in response to a "domestic disturbance" call. Often "domestic disturbance" means that the call was in response to domestic violence. Had the original call been made so police would protect the mother?
The next Associated Press article contained a few more clues and some disturbing admissions on the part of the police. This led me to take a look at the Grand Forts Police Incident Summary and States Attorneys Office charge statement. According to these official reports, Stacey Anvarinia stated:
[s]he was assaulted by her boyfriend identified as Harrison, Delbert.
She stated he kneed her in the chin and struck her face when she attempted to leave.
Officers observed red and swelling area on the bridge of her nose, a small scratch to her left cheek, and a red swollen area on her chin.
So Anvarinia had called the police because she had been the victim of a crime. She called for help.
Also according to the police reports, "she was extremely intoxicated." How did the police know this? Neither the police reports nor subsequent police comments to the press give any indication. No report says police smelled alcohol, saw alcohol, heard slurred speech, and the police did not administer a blood-alcohol test. What behavior did Anvarinia engage in that led to her arrest for child abuse or neglect? She "began breast feeding in front of us." Paramedics were called but they transported the baby to the hospital. Battered Stacey Anvarinia was taken to jail.
Reports of this story led to much debate about the safety of drinking alcohol while breastfeeding. That is certainly an important issue. However, for Stacey Anvarinia, I wonder whether we have any reason to believe she was intoxicated at all. As this case got more press, the Grand Forks police have gotten a little defensive on this point:
This case is more than just the breast-feeding. It was the totality of the circumstances," said Grand Forks Police Lt. Rahn Farder. "It is quite unusual for a mother to be breast-feeding her child as we are conducting an investigation, whether she was intoxicated or not.
Well, what truly is the totality of the circumstances? In defense of itself, the police cite her breastfeeding as … what? Evidence of her intoxication? Might having been recently beaten cause one to seem disoriented? Check the time she is alleged to have committed the "crime." 3:57 a.m. Had she slept at all that night? She had injuries to her face. Did she have a head injury? Despite protests that breastfeeding isn't the issue, the police still only point to her breastfeeding in front of them as being "unusual" in her behavior.
What then happened to Delbert Harrison, the man identified as having beaten Stacey Anvarinia? He was neither arrested nor charged with any crime. Why not?
According to a 2005 study in the American Journal of Public Health, homicide is the third leading cause of injury-related death for women who are pregnant or who have given birth in the previous year. A 2002 study in The British Medical Journal concluded that a woman's risk of domestic violence doubles during pregnancy and the year after birth. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported in 2005 that due to poor reporting, we really don't have accurate figures on how high the rate of homicide is for women during pregnancy and the post-partum period because few states report whether a homicide victim was pregnant or had recently given birth. Even given the admitted under-reporting, homicide was found to be the second leading cause of injury-related maternal death. Of those deaths, 57% were caused by gunfire.
Stacey Anvarinia could have been a homicide statistic. According to the police report, she was beaten while trying to leave. She reached out to the police to save her. Instead, they arrested her.
According to news reports, Anvarinia will be sentenced this Friday. Let's see how much jail time you get for breastfeeding in front of the police you ask to save your life.
|
|
Recent Comments