i'm trying to find hope here, an opportunity for some healing....but i've got nothin'.

for a while there, i was mostly avoiding the news. i'm still currently almost totally avoiding the primary election coverage, because it only breeds frustration. but for a while, i was avoiding it all - even most of the stories posted on my fav feminist blogs.
but recently, i've been sucked back in.
first, there was that story out of South Africa, about the "rape me" games children were playing on the playgrounds.

and now, there's this.
out of Maryland.
(out of Silver Spring, MD, actually, which is where I lived when I was in DC for the summer a couple years ago.)

Backstory:
A man with severe mental health issues drowned his three children in a bathtub.

This man, Mark Castillo, should have had a restraining order against him.
but he didn't.
his wife, Ann Castillo, tried to get one. she even had a hearing.
she was denied a restraining order, despite her husband's repeated threats to her and the children.
why?
because, according to this judge, she was still "having sex" with him.
read this, and tell me if it sounds like consensual sex to you:

After the hearing, Judge Joseph A. Dugan Jr. declined to issue a permanent order. Dugan noted that Amy Castillo said she had continued to have sex with her husband, including twice on the day he allegedly talked about killing the children. Amy Castillo testified that she had sex with her husband because she was frightened of him and was worried that if she didn't, he would "assume something was wrong" and suspect that she was trying to get a restraining order against him.

huh.
that's funny.
that sure sounds like rape to me.
apparently, it doesn't sound like anything out of the realm of typical marriage to Judge Joseph Dugan:

"I am not satisfied," Dugan said, "that indeed there is clear and convincing evidence of abuse in this case."

so Dugan didn't issue the restraining order.
no restraining order because Ann Castillo was "having sex with" (read: being repeatedly raped by) her husband.
and so Mark Castillo drowned each of his three children, Anthony, 6, Austin, 4, and Athena, 3.





it's these stories that make my heart break, over and over.
and over.
and over again.


it's these stories that make my belly ache. and my jaw clench. and my head pound.



and yet.
it's these stories that never, ever surprise me.