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"There are a lot of reasons why women cheat now, and the simplest is that they can," says Diane Shader Smith, the author of Undressing Infidelity: Why More Women Are Unfaithful. "Nowadays women have jobs. And if they're home, there are gardeners, there are pool men. They have opportunities and they feel empowered." They also feel sexual. And while your prowess with a Dyson is commendable, it's hardly titillating.
Jerry opted to stay in the marriage. According to studies conducted by Frank Pittman, a psychiatrist and the author of Private Lies, more than a third of marriages in which infidelity occurs end up surviving. "It doesn't make you stop loving her," Jerry says. But it could inspire you to install spyware on your computer and go to marriage counseling--two measures Jerry took. "In Georgia she'd get half my salary, and she'd probably get custody of the child," he says. "I would probably lose my house, and I lose my son--and I didn't do a damn thing to cause it."
A therapist might beg to differ. He might tell the cuckolded husband that he did do something to cause it. That Superdad/Superexecutive/Superhomemaker role you're cultivating? That takes time. "I think for many families there's still the expectation that women who are pursuing careers are also going to be attending to the traditional roles of being the nurturer and the mother and the attentive wife," says Dr. Brian S. Canfield, president of the American Counseling Association. "Contrast that with [what] women [encounter] in the workplace--male colleagues who are dealing with them on a very adult level--and it's only natural that she's going to be attracted to them." In other words, the pinot she shares with Peter from consulting over lunch is getting her hotter than the coffee you hand her before she drops the kids off at preschool is.
Man calls 911 on estranged wife
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Photo by Framingham Police
Nancy Gird
By Norman Miller/Daily News staff
GHS
Tue Jan 29, 2008, 01:02 AM EST
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FRAMINGHAM -
A Mendon woman was arrested early Sunday when police arrived at a Grant Street home just in time to see her chasing her soon-to-be ex-husband around a car.
Nancy Gird, 37, was screaming at her husband. She told the officers to "take me away," after they arrived at 120 Grant St. at 12:30 a.m., police spokesman Lt. Paul Shastany said.
Police went there after a call from someone in the home about a family problem. When Officer William Vargas arrived, he saw Gird, of 53B Northbridge St., chasing her husband.
"The officer got out of his cruiser and she said 'Take me away,' " said Shastany. "The officer asked what was going on, and she said, 'Arrest me. Take me away.' "
The man, whom police did not identify, said he called police because of Gird's uncontrollable behavior.
While he tried to explain what happened to the police, Gird continued yelling at him, saying "I hate you."
Vargas tried to separate the two, and ordered Gird to stay near his cruiser while he spoke to her husband.
But, after a few seconds, she rushed by the officer and went after her husband again. Vargas handcuffed Gird and put her in his cruiser, then spoke to her husband.
The husband said he and Gird were separated and he lived with his parents. On Friday, Gird served him with divorce papers, but they went out together to a party Saturday night and had a good time.
After the party, the pair went their own way without any argument, he told police, Shastany said.
But a few minutes later, Gird came to the door and the husband's mother let her in.
"He said Nancy came to his room, yelling, waking him up and knocking things down," said Shastany. "He asked her to leave, and she refused, so he called police."
Gird was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
"She said, the only reason she was being arrested was because the officer was a man and he was siding with another man," the lieutenant said.
Gird pleaded not guilty at her Framingham District Court arraignment and was released without bail. She is due back in court on Feb. 25 for a pretrial conference.
Girl 'home alone for six weeks'
Welshpool court
The girl said she missed her mother, the court was told
A woman abandoned her 14-year-old daughter for six weeks with just £100 and a fridge full of food while she travelled abroad, a court has heard.
The woman, who cannot be identified, was visiting her boyfriend in 2007.
She told Welshpool magistrates she had arranged for a neighbour and her ex-husband to look after her daughter.
The woman denies wilfully causing her daughter to be neglected and abandoned. The case was adjourned until 8 February.
The court heard the woman had stocked her fridge and freezer with pizza, oven chips and microwave meals before she went abroad between April and June.
Of her £100 allowance, £60 was spent almost immediately on school dinners for the period her mother was away.
She spent most of the remaining £40 on clothes and CDs, magistrates were told.
I should never have done it - she should have gone to her father's (home)
The girl's mother
Social services were alerted to the girl's situation after only two days and arranged for her father, also the woman's ex-husband, to look after her for the remainder of her mother's holiday.
He said he was unaware his daughter had been left home alone.
Shaun Spencer, prosecuting, said the mother was interviewed by police three days after her return and she "apportioned blame for the situation on everybody else apart from herself".
"She accepted no responsibility. She stated that she left the country for six weeks, stating that it was cheaper to do that than go for four weeks.
"She confirmed that she didn't want her daughter to stay with her father because she was concerned about his drinking.
"It is noteworthy that later during the interview she went back on this and said she had, in her mind, made arrangements for the father to look after her daughter for three of the six weeks.
"She went on to state that for the other three weeks her neighbour was to look after her daughter."
"Maintenance"
The teenager's father and neighbour both denied knowledge of such arrangements during their evidence in court.
Referring to the teenager's interview with specially trained police officers, Mr Spencer said the girl felt she should not have been left alone by her mother.
"She also confessed that she missed her mother," he told the court.
Giving evidence her mother said the girl could cook and had moved back in with her after she returned to Britain.
When asked why she left only £100 for her daughter, she said: "I said to her 'If you want any more money, you go and see your father because he doesn't pay any maintenance'."
Mr Spencer asked her: "Do you accept you opened up your daughter to potential dangers?"
She replied: "Yes, I think I did when I look back on it.
"I should never have done it - she should have gone to her father's (home)."
She added: "I'm not very good with rules and regulations."
Until last week, Big Man was serving a four-year sentence for cocaine possession. A few days ago, he was looking forward to leaving prison and reuniting with his wife, until he got the news: Instead of going home, he'd be living under a bridge, a parole commission officer told him. That's because 23 years ago, when he was 19 years old, Big Man was charged with sexual assault on a minor. (He claims the victim was his girlfriend and that it was consensual.)
"When they told me I was coming down here, my legs was shaking," he says. "Me and my wife drove around all day trying to find the place. She was saying, 'Maybe you should go back to jail; I don't want you living under no bridge.'"
In the restraining order filed on December 7th, Shellye stated that "Dale is currently harassing me by blackmail, coercion, and extortion for money. He is contacting friends and loved ones. Telling them about my life. Both fact and fiction, as a means of getting money from me.".
The restraining order also included emails from Dale Stark to Shellye Stark sent four days before the shooting.
In one of the e-mails, Dale wrote, 'You forget I have the e-mails and phone numbers of the guys you saw in Juneau. I don't want to forward these to Brian or to anyone else." The e-mail went on to say, "I've also saved hundreds of emails, you forget I was the one booking many of your appointments."
These e-mails also indicate that Shellye agreed to pay her husband $750 a month in child support.
Waiting for Good Joe
Do coffee shops discriminate against women?
By Tim Harford
Posted Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007, at 6:58 AM ET
I'm a real cappuccino lover myself, but many of my female colleagues don't seem to go for the stuff. I'd never thought too much about it until recently. I suppose I carelessly assumed that men and women have different tastes, probably as a result of different social influences. Now I know better: My female colleagues don't go to coffee shops because they're shabbily treated when they get there.
That's the conclusion of American economist Caitlin Knowles Myers. She, with her students as research assistants, staked out eight coffee shops (PDF) in the Boston area and watched how long it took men and women to be served. Her conclusion: Men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than do women. (There is also evidence that blacks wait longer than whites, the young wait longer than the old, and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But these effects are statistically not as persuasive.)
Perhaps, says the skeptic, this is because women order froufrou drinks? Up to a point. The researchers found that men are more likely to order simpler drinks. Yet comparing fancy-drink-ordering men with fancy-drink-ordering women, the longer wait for women remained.
It is also hard to attribute the following finding to a female preference for wet-skinny-soy-macchiato with low-carb marshmallows: The delays facing women were larger when the coffee shop staff was all-male and almost vanished when the servers were all-female.
It is not clear whether women were held up by male staff because the men viewed them with contempt or because the male staff members were flirting furiously. The "contempt" explanation seems more likely, as the extra time that women have to wait seems to increase when the coffee shop is busy. Who would take extra time out to flirt just when the lines are longer?
This is an intriguing piece of research because coffee shops appear to be a competitive business, and one thing we economists think we know about discrimination is that competition should tend to erode it.
The idea comes from an article published 50 years ago by economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker. The reasoning is simple enough: A business that deliberately offers shoddy service or uncompetitive prices to some customers, or that turns down smart minority applicants in favor of less-qualified white male applicants, is throwing money away. If it is a government bureaucracy or a powerful monopolist, that's a loathsome but sustainable choice. But racist or sexist businesses with many competitors are likely to be shut down by the bankruptcy courts long before the human rights lawyers get to them.
Becker's theory is powerful, and there is evidence to back it up. Economists Sandra Black and Elizabeth Brainerd found that the surge in international trade, which has increased competitive pressures in many markets, has reduced the ability of firms to discriminate against women.
But what Becker cannot say is how reliable the competition mechanism is at crushing discrimination, nor how quick. (In fairness to him, economics in general has a real blind spot when it comes to the question "when?") The research on coffee shops is an interesting curiosity: Coffee retailing seems to be fiercely competitive. How can discrimination continue?
One answer, perhaps, is that a rival coffee shop would have to be very close indeed to justify a trip aimed at avoiding a 20-second wait. Even coffee retailing isn't that competitive.
But an alternative explanation is that the market is still working on the problem. Over time, we've moved from gentlemen's clubs to male-dominated pubs to coffee shops, which are far more female-friendly. Perhaps it is just a matter of time before some entrepreneur decides to set up a big chain of coffee shops with "no men allowed" on the door.
Mother charged with assault of 13-year-old
A Wisconsin woman, a former teacher, is charged with sexual assault after allegedly having an affair with her daughter's 13-year-old former boyfriend.
Thirty-nine year old Anne Knopf of Prescott, Wisconsin was charged with Sexual Assault of a Child Under 16 in Pierce County District Court Monday.
The charge is the result of a four-month investigation into the relationship between Knowpf and the boy. The boy's parents became aware of the relationship and notified police in mid May.
She has been released on $25,000 bond. Knopf has been ordered to refrain from contacting the victim. She retained custody of her two children.
(Copyright 2007 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
Alpha Women, Beta Men
Wives are increasingly outearning their husbands, but their new financial muscle is causing havoc in the home.
By Ralph Gardner Jr.
After dropping off their children at their East Side private school one morning, Betsy and another mother shared a secret. "It was one of those things where you circle around each other," Betsy remembers. "I assumed they had a pretty conventional marriage."
By that she means, as with most of the other families at the school, the other woman's husband was a chest-beating breadwinner who set off for Wall Street each morning in his Town Car to bring home the six- or seven-figure bacon. Or, alternatively, both husband and wife slaved away at medium-to-high-powered jobs, neglecting their children, to pay for the August rental in the Hamptons and their $25,000-per-kid tuition bills.
The embarrassing truth the other mother confided to Betsy was that she was her family's sole support. She worked in advertising while her spouse, an "artist"--predominantly in his own imagination, since he had not a single gallery show nor even a commission to show for his talent--puttered around the house. "She kind of indicated they were living on her money, and I was surprised," Betsy says.
And perhaps a little relieved. Betsy thought she was the only mother in their grade supporting a stay-at-home husband--especially one who refused to polish the surfaces. "It's like one of those things," she says, "where you realize you're married to people who drink."
Well into feminism's second generation, there are finally a significant number of women reaching parity with the men in their fields--not to mention surpassing them--and winning the salary, bonuses, and perks that signify their arrival. (The Town Cars idling in front of their children's schools these days at morning drop-off are almost as likely to be Mom's as Dad's.) In 2001, for example, wives earned more than their spouses in almost a third of married households where the wife worked. Yet this proud professional achievement often seems to have unhappy consequences at home.
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Alias to Kill Bill, the culture has for some time been awash in fantasies of powerful women. Fetching as these female superheroes may be--and however potent at the box office and in the Nielsens--are these really the same chicks the average, or even above-average, guy wants to curl up next to in bed in real life? Perhaps not. As the wives grow more powerful and confident, their husbands often seem to diminish in direct proportion to their success.
Indeed, there's little evidence to show that as women acquire financial muscle, relations between the sexes have evolved successfully to accommodate the new balance of power. Neither the newly liberated alpha women nor their shell-shocked beta spouses seem comfortable with the role reversal.
For women, the shift in economic power gives them new choices, not least among them the ability to reappraise their partner. And husbands, for their part, may find to their chagrin that being financially dependent isn't exactly a turn-on. According to psychologists (and divorce lawyers) who see couples struggling with such changes, many relationships follow the same pattern. First, the wife starts to lose respect for her husband, then he begins to feel emasculated, and then sex dwindles to a full stop.
Anna, a public-relations executive, saw her relationship with her Web-designer husband collapse as she became more and more successful and he floundered. In the last year of their marriage, she earned $270,000 while he brought in $16,000.
"He never spent money that wasn't his in an extravagant way," she says while taking therapeutic sips of a Sea Breeze at Tribeca Grill on a recent evening. "But by not helping, he was freeloading."
She felt unable to confront him. "We were really dysfunctional," she admits. "We acted as if we were a two-income family. He was in denial, and I was sort of protecting him. He'd pay for groceries. He was running up credit-card debt to make it appear he had more money."
While they may have been able to avoid the truth while she was off at work during the day, it came back to haunt them at night. "Sexuality is based on respect and admiration and desire," says Anna. "If you've lost respect for somebody, it's very hard to have it work. And our relationship initially had been very sexual, at the expense of other things.
"Sex was not a problem for him," she goes on. "It was a problem for me. When someone seems like a child, it's not that attractive. In the end, it felt like I had three children."
"The minute it becomes parental, it becomes asexual," agrees Betsy. "A friend of mine who works and makes money and whose husband doesn't told me one day that he was taking $100-an-hour tennis lessons," she recalls. "She said to him, 'You are not in the $100-an-hour category.' She had to spell it out for him. It was totally parental."
There are, of course, happy exceptions: couples evolved enough to feel perfectly comfortable acknowledging that the wife is more driven to be the breadwinner, so it makes sense for everyone if he's giving junior his first feeding while she's off covering the presidential campaign.
"Kurt has never been someone who defines himself by his job," says Jami Floyd, a correspondent with ABC's 20/20, of her stay-at-home husband, Kurt Flehinger. "Nor does he care much what people think about him. He's not a Master of the Universe type. I am much more testosteronic. I'm much more driven, much more traditionally male."
But in many cases the role reversal is the work of market forces as much as force of personality; the husband's career is expected to take precedence, and initially it does, but it's overtaken by his wife's. Neither of them saw it coming--nor do they welcome it.
"Maybe the guy's industry changed and he lost his job," says Ken Neumann, a psychologist and divorce mediator who has seen his share of depressed dads lately. "Or the wife steps into the right place--something she couldn't fully have anticipated. The question is, how secure does the guy feel? When the woman earns more, we can't assume in our culture it's a nonevent. We're a long way off from a world where it doesn't affect the relationship."
"I think women earning more than men can be devastating to relationships unless the guy is doing something the wife regards as having cachet, such as academia," says Betsy, even though she still speaks fondly of her ex-husband and sends him the occasional check.
It's not as if these women ever expected their husbands to support them completely--at least a lot of them didn't. It's just that it never occurred to them that they might be the ones doing all the heavy lifting. And as hip and open-minded as they like to think they are, they were, after all, raised on the same fairy tale as the rest of us--the one where Prince Charming comes to the rescue of Sleeping Beauty.
"I didn't really give a damn where the money came from," says Betsy, an attorney. "That's not the gift I expected a husband to give me. I wanted a romantic figure." That was until she found him taking money from her wallet and leaving an IOU. "I just didn't want to be giving him spending money."
At first, her spouse, a composer, satisfied that fantasy. "It was about his artistic vision," she says. To this day, despite the fact that he's refused to make any of the compromises necessary to get ahead--and blamed Betsy for contributing to his failure by being too controlling--she continues to believe in his talent. "I think Tom's smarter than I am," she says. "He really gets excited by ideas."
'It's not a matter of how good you are," says Anna, still trying to fathom why she's successful and her former husband is not. "It's a matter of how you get work in this town. It's about connections and attitude and how you market yourself, and it's about confidence."
Among the reasons these women were originally attracted to their husbands--sex appeal, sense of humor, charisma--earning power may not have been high on the list. But that could be because it was a given. Unfortunately, the other qualities start to fade over time if the husband isn't adding something tangible to the equation.
"It was the artist thing I thought I was getting," says Anna, who met her husband when she hired him to design her company's Website. "Sexy was part of it. There was a huge physical thing. I'm not the kind of person to be attracted to a lawyer--maybe next time I will be.
"If he'd really been a starving artist, I'd have been fine with that," she adds. "But he wasn't a starving artist in the end. He wasn't driven to do his art."
Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope
With Being Cast as Predators
September 6, 2007;
These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.
Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. "Being male," he explains, "I am guilty until proven innocent."
In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won't allow himself to be alone with a child -- even in an elevator.
Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they've now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children's hands in public.
Frank McEnulty, a builder in Long Beach, Calif., was once a Boy Scout scoutmaster. "Today, I wouldn't do that job for anything," he says. "All it takes is for one kid to get ticked off at you for something and tell his parents you were acting weird on the campout."
It's true that men are far more likely than women to be sexual predators. But our society, while declining to profile by race or nationality when it comes to crime and terrorism, has become nonchalant about profiling men. Child advocates are advising parents never to hire male babysitters. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers.
Child-welfare groups say these precautions minimize risks. But men's rights activists argue that our societal focus on "bad guys" has led to an overconfidence in women. (Children who die of physical abuse are more often victims of female perpetrators, usually mothers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.)
Though groups that cater to the young are working harder to identify predators, they also ask that risks be kept in perspective. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America does criminal background checks on each of its 250,000 volunteers, and has social workers assess them. Since 1990, the group says, it has had fewer than 10 abuse allegations per year. More than 98% of the alleged abusers were male.
"If we wanted to make sure we never had a problem, one approach would be to just become Big Sisters -- to say we won't serve boys," says Mack Koonce, the group's chief operating officer. But, of course, that would deny hundreds of thousands of boys contact with male mentors.
The Boy Scouts of America now has elaborate rules to prevent both abuse and false accusations. There are 1.2 million Scout leaders, and the organization kicks out about 175 of them a year over abuse allegations or for violating policies.
These policies can be intricate. For instance, four adult leaders are needed for each outing. If a sick child must go home, two adults drive him and two stay with the others, so no adult is ever alone with a Scout. "It's protection for the adults, as well as the children," says a Scouts spokesman.
The result of all this hyper-carefulness, however, is that men often feel like untouchables. In Cochranville, Pa., Ray Simpson, a bus driver, says that he used to have 30 kids stop at his house on Halloween. But after his divorce, with people knowing he was a man living alone, he had zero visitors. "I felt like crying at the end of the evening," he says.
At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed "suspicious."
In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son's day-care center called him in to reprimand him for "inappropriately touching the children." "I was shocked," he says. "Whatever did she mean?" She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man's lap.
"Good parenting and good education demand that we let children take risks," says Mr. Frederick, a career coach. "We install playground equipment, putting them at risk of falls and broken bones. Why? We want them to challenge themselves and develop muscles and confidence.
"Likewise, while we don't want sexual predators to harm our kids, we do want our kids to develop healthy relationships with adults, both men and women. Instilling a fear of men is a profound disservice to everyone."
Marriage & Divorce
The Five Mistakes Married Women Make
By Stacey L. Bradford |Stacey L. Bradford Archive |Published: August 17, 2005
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Updated on January 4, 2007.
ANNE BORDEN, MOTHER OF two, wasn't particularly concerned in 1999 when her husband suggested she become the family's sole breadwinner. As a corporate executive, she earned a salary of $200,000-plus -- more than enough for the Seattle-based family to live on comfortably.
There was more money: Her husband of four years had just cashed in several million dollars worth of Microsoft stock options. That windfall would go into savings, they decided, and the family would live off of Borden's paychecks.
Soon thereafter, a red flag appeared: Borden discovered that her husband had deposited the options proceeds into four bank accounts, only one of which shared her name. When she questioned him about it, he said he would change the single accounts to joint ones when he had the chance. He never did.
In 2002, the couple separated. It was only then that Borden (who asked that we not use her real name for privacy concerns) took a good look at the finances and realized she had very little money of her own. Turns out she didn't even have a claim on the proceeds from the stock options. According to the divorce settlement, 80% of the stock options were considered her husband's individual assets rather than joint property because he had received the grant from Microsoft one month before their wedding.
The couple's divorce was finalized in 2004. Borden left her job in October 2002. Now, she worries about her relatively small retirement account and lack of other savings. "Had I known that money wasn't community property, I would have never let him stay home with the kids and live entirely off of my income," she says. Borden blames herself for not understanding the family finances and letting her ex-husband call the financial shots.
The number of stay-at-home moms has increased by 26% over the past decade, according to 2005 U.S. Census data. While you might welcome the chance to stay home with your kids, the longer you're out of the work force, the harder it can be to jump back in. Women often face lowball wages or lower job titles when they try to return to work after a long hiatus.
When Borden separated from her husband, she decided her priority was to get custody of her two children. So she hired the best child custody lawyer she could find. Looking back, she says she now regrets her decision to focus on just one issue and wishes she had found a lawyer who had also looked out for her financial well-being. While she succeeded in getting custody of the kids, she is now struggling on the meager child-support payments her lawyer negotiated for her.
Police: Woman arrested for tossing rocks
Sarah McLellan
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 27, 2007 04:09 PM
A Mesa woman was arrested Saturday after she threw rocks at her boyfriend because he did not defend her in an argument with neighbors, according to police.
Jessica Sandoval, 26, was watching her son outside when another child asked Sandoval to have him stop name-calling, according to police records.
Sandoval went to the child's apartment and got into an argument with the parents and the children.
Davidson Howe, Sandoval's boyfriend, went to the apartment to calm down Sandoval and told the neighbors that she was drunk and to ignore her, according to police.
Sandoval was upset that Howe did not take her side in the argument and threw rocks at him as he held their 9-month-old baby, according to witnesses.
Howe was struck by the rocks, but no one was injured. Sandoval admitted to drinking 10 beers and a few shots of alcohol that day, police said.
Halt to 'female' Camel cigarettes sought
By JOCELYN NOVECK AP National Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Dozens of women's and public health organizations on Wednesday called on R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. to remove from the market its Camel No. 9 cigarettes, a brand they say is cynically aimed at getting young, fashion-conscious women and girls to start smoking.
At the same time, a Congressional group said it had been rebuffed by major women's and fashion magazines in their effort to get the magazines to stop publishing ads for the Camels and other cigarettes.
Camel No. 9 hit stores early this year. It immediately drew fire for its stylish packaging -- shiny, sleek black boxes bordered with fuschia and teal -- and ads that included florals, hints of lace and the slogan "Light and Luscious."
The latest ad campaign says "Now available in stiletto" -- a longer, thinner cigarette.
"This product is nothing more than a veiled attempt to sell more cigarettes to girls and young women, putting them at grave risk for disease and a premature death," said the letter to R.J. Reynolds chairman Susan Ivey. "Remove Camel No. 9 today." The letter was signed by Cheryl Healton of the American Legacy Foundation, a group set up after the 1998 settlement between the states and the tobacco industry.
Also Wednesday, a group of more than 40 U.S. Congress members, led by Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., expressed disappointment that 11 women's magazines were still running the tobacco ads. Vogue's publisher responded to a protest letter from the members, saying Congress should create legal guidelines, and that "any other pressure or coercion ... is at odds with the basic fabric of our country's legal system."
Glamour also wrote back, saying it appreciated the health concerns, but "the Camel ads in question do comply with the Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement." W magazine wrote that it would like to discuss this issue further, without mentioning what it would do about the ads.
"It's just flat out hypocritical to run stories about becoming more beautiful and healthy while promoting a dangerous product responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people a year," Capps wrote in a statement.
A spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, asked for reaction Wednesday, repeated the company's contention that the brand "is marketed to adult smokers of competing brands."
"About half the audience is actually male," said David Howard. "The colors and the packaging simply accentuate the style and the premium nature of the brand." He said the company was very happy with sales, saying the brand had achieved a .5 market share in six months. "Clearly," he said, "adult smokers are trying it and like it."
Nifong Complains About State Bar's Handling of Ethics Case
Posted: Aug. 14 9:15 p.m.
Updated: Today at 10:08 a.m.
RALEIGH, N.C. -- When former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong mailed in his law license last week, he also included a note bemoaning "the fundamental unfairness" of the North Carolina State Bar's handling of his ethics case.
Nifong was disbarred for his handling of rape charges against three Duke University men's lacrosse players. State prosecutors later dismissed the charges and declared the players innocent.
The State Bar in June found that Nifong violated several ethics rules in his handling of the case, including withholding evidence from defense attorneys and making inflammatory comments to media.
Nifong resigned as district attorney last month when a judge was about to conduct a hearing into removing the disbarred prosecutor from office.
In the Aug. 7 letter, Nifong complained about a revision the State Bar issued to its written ruling, which had omitted one of the counts included in an oral ruling.
Robert Mosteller, a Duke law professor, noticed the missing count.
"Am I just missing this reference, is there an explanation, or just an apparent oversight?" he wrote in an e-mail to the State Bar.
The count was added in an amended order by F. Lane Williamson, a Charlotte lawyer who headed the disciplinary panel.
"Mr. Williamson's e-mail assertion that the addition of a new conclusion of law based on the request of a Duke University law professor is merely a 'clerical correction' is preposterous beyond belief, and is further evidence of the fundamental unfairness with which this entire procedure has been conducted," Nifong wrote.
Nifong's letter contradicts statements his lawyer made during the disciplinary hearing. Attorney David Freedman told the panel that Nifong "believes this has been a fair and full hearing of the facts, that he believes disbarment is the appropriate punishment in this case."
Nifong also noted in his letter that his middle name was misspelled on his law license and that a puppy had chewed on part of the document. "Consequently, it has never been framed or displayed," he wrote.
Comedian's hearing begins ... and ends
WAYNE HIEBERT FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Former comic actor Tony Rosato leaves Kingston Superior Court on May 18, 2007 after an effort to move up his trial date on criminal harassment charges. He has been kept in maximum-security detention.
Dale Anne Freed
Staff Reporter
KINGSTON -- A shackled and handcuffed Tony Rosato arrived at Kingston court this morning for the first day of the jailed TV actor's criminal harassment case.
As Rosato emerged from a police car this morning he told waiting reporters, "I'd be better if I were out of here and free."
"I feel alright. I just wish these charges - that they take a look at (them) and the investigation would be deeper," he said. "I'm innocent of these charges and I'm very concerned about the time I spent without bail."
Rosato, 53, a veteran of Second City, SCTV and Saturday Night Live has been languishing behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee for more than two years.
Brodsky said Rosato was arrested after repeatedly complaining to police that, in a scenario reminiscent of the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the actor's wife and their infant daughter had gone missing and been replaced by imposters.
Rosato is charged with criminally harassing his wife Leah. It's alleged that his "reckless" behaviour at the time caused Leah, who has a daughter almost 3 years old with Rosato, to fear for her safety or that of anyone close to her.
Rosato has pleaded not guilty.
Jurisdiction is expected to be the subject of heated debate on the first day of his trial, which will be heard by a judge alone and is expected to last a month.
Rosato's lawyer, Daniel Brodsky, told Justice Gordon Thomson of the Superior Court that Rosato's case should be tried in Toronto where the offence took place and not in Kingston.
In fact, Tony Rosato stood and said to the judge," I just want to understand the charges, your honour."
Rosato said, "If we're administering a charge, I was married at City Hall in Toronto and not in Kingston."
Rosato and his wife were married at Toronto City Hall and lived together at a Broadview Ave. apartment. His wife Leah, 30, fled their apartment with their baby daughter on Jan. 17, 2005 for her hometown of Kingston.
Rosato had gone to police first in Toronto to file a missing person's report and then in Kingston. Kingston police originally charged him with public mischief for bothering them. That charge was later withdrawn.
Brodsky says that's the only information he knows in this case that relates to Kingston.
Leah has requested to testify by remote video link.
The day was cut short shortly after lunch when Brodsky said assistant Crown attorney Priscilla Christie had failed to provide him with a number of transcripts from earlier court appearances, without which he claimed he could not properly defend his client.
Thomson called the absent transcripts an "inordinate delay," and demanded to have them on hand first thing Wednesday.
For Young Earners in Big City, a Gap in Women's Favor
Kitra Cahana/The New York Times
Melissa J. Manfro, center, theorizes that young female lawyers outearn male peers because they begin earlier, to prepare for starting families.
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: August 3, 2007
Young women in New York and several of the nation's other largest cities who work full time have forged ahead of men in wages, according to an analysis of recent census data.
The shift has occurred in New York since 2000 and even earlier in Los Angeles, Dallas and a few other cities.
Economists consider it striking because the wage gap between men and women nationally has narrowed more slowly and has even widened in recent years among one part of that group: college-educated women in their 20s. But in New York, young college-educated women's wages as a percentage of men's rose slightly between 2000 and 2005.
The analysis was prepared by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, who first reported his findings in Gotham Gazette, published online by the Citizens Union Foundation. It shows that women of all educational levels from 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men's wages, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent. Nationwide, that group of women made much less: 89 percent of the average full-time pay for men.
Just why young women at all educational levels in New York and other big cities have fared better than their peers elsewhere is a matter of some debate. But a major reason, experts say, is that women have been graduating from college in larger numbers than men, and that many of those women seem to be gravitating toward major urban areas.
In 2005, 53 percent of women in their 20s working in New York were college graduates, compared with only 38 percent of men of that age. And many of those women are not marrying right after college, leaving them freer to focus on building careers, experts said.
"Citified college-women are more likely to be nonmarried and childless, compared with their suburban sisters, so they can and do devote themselves to their careers," said Andrew Hacker, a Queens College sociologist and the author of "Mismatch: The Growing Gulf Between Men and Women."
Kelly Kraft, 25, is one of those women. A native of Indiana, she came to New York after graduating from the University of Dayton, got a job in publishing and now works for an advertising agency. "I just felt New York had a lot more exciting opportunities in different industries than Indianapolis," she said.
"In women's-studies courses you always heard that men were making more money, and it was a disadvantage being a woman," Ms. Kraft said. "It's great that it's starting to turn around."
New York may also be more attractive to college-educated women, some experts said, because many jobs in the city pay higher salaries than similar ones elsewhere in the country. "New York is an achievement-based city, and achievement here is based on how well you use your brain, not what you do with your back," said Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
In 1970, all New York women in their 20s made $7,000 less than men, on average, adjusted for inflation. By 2000, they were about even. In 2005, according to an analysis of the latest census results they were making about $5,000 more: a median wage of $35,653, or 117 percent of the $30,560 reported by men in that age group.
Women in their 20s also make more than men in Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and a few other big cities. But only in Dallas do young women's wages surpass men's by a larger amount than in New York. In Dallas, women make 120 percent of what men do, although their median wage there, $25,467, was much lower than that of women in New York.
Nationally, women in their 20s made a median income of $25,467, compared with $28,523 for men.
Diana Rhoten, a program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York, said well-educated women were migrating to urban centers where there are diverse professional opportunities and less gender discrimination than in smaller cities and suburbs. There may also be nonworkplace factors at play, she said.
"Previously, female migration patterns were determined primarily by their husband's educational levels or employment needs, even if both were college-educated," she said. "Today, highly qualified women are moving for their own professional opportunities and personal interests. It's no longer an era of power couple migration to, but one of power couple formation in places like New York."
Dr. Beveridge, based his findings of young women's earning power on data from the census bureau's 2005 American Community Survey used to analyze people working at least 35 hours a week 40 or more weeks a year.
It is not clear whether this is the front edge of a trend in which women will gradually move ahead of men in all age groups. Typically, women have fallen further behind men in earnings as they get older. That is because some women stop working altogether, work only part time or encounter a glass ceiling in promotions and raises.
But as women enrolled in college and graduate school continue to outnumber men, gender wage gaps among older workers may narrow, too, experts said. Even among New Yorkers in their 30s, women now make as much as men.
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In New York, the pay gap between men and women varied by borough, profession, race and ethnicity, the analysis found.
Young women from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens make more than young men from those boroughs. Young women from Staten Island make the same as men. Among Manhattanites, the median wage for workers in their 20s was $46,859 for men and $45,840 for women.
The gender wage advantage for women in their 20s was widest among whites with some college education, blacks and Asians with advanced degrees and Hispanic women who were high school or college graduates.
Young men in the city still make more than young women in a number of jobs, including psychologist, registered nurse, high school teacher, bank teller and bartender. In high-paying Wall Street jobs, men heavily outnumber women, which is one reason that Martin Kohli, a regional economist with the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, described the women's wage gains as "a surprising finding."
But in jobs that were once defined as male preserves -- including police officer and private investigator -- where gender barriers are crumbling, young men and women in New York had the same median wages: a little more than $40,000. And women in their 20s now make more than men in a wide variety of other jobs: as doctors, personnel managers, architects, economists, lawyers, stock clerks, customer service representatives, editors and reporters.
Melissa J. Manfro, a 24-year-old lawyer who was raised in upstate New York, offered her own theory on why younger female lawyers are outearning their male peers: a desire to begin their careers earlier to prepare for starting families.
"It seems that women tend to take less time off between college and law school, and therefore become more senior, and, hence, make more money, at a younger age," she said. "I would, of course, like to think that means that women know what they want sooner than men. But it probably has more to do with the unfortunate fact that women need to keep in mind biological time constraints and feel a great deal of pressure to build an entire career before refocusing on marriage and children."
Though Dr. Beveridge's analysis showed women making strides, it also showed that men were in some ways moving backward. Among all men -- including those with college degrees -- real wages, adjusted for inflation, have declined since 1970. And among full-time workers with advanced degrees, wages for men increased only marginally even as they soared for women. Nationally, men's wages in general declined while women's remained the same.
Several experts also said that rising income for women might affect marriage rates if women expect their mates to have at least equivalent salaries and education.
"When New York college women say there are few eligible men around, they're right if they mean they'll only settle for someone with an education akin to their own," Professor Hacker said.
Like Rob, Jerry opted to stay in the marriage. According to studies conducted by Frank Pittman, a psychiatrist and the author of Private Lies, more than a third of marriages in which infidelity occurs end up surviving. "It doesn't make you stop loving her," Jerry says. But it could inspire you to install spyware on your computer and go to marriage counseling--two measures Jerry took. "In Georgia she'd get half my salary, and she'd probably get custody of the child," he says. "I would probably lose my house, and I lose my son--and I didn't do a damn thing to cause it."
Alimony provides a same-sex union test
An Orange County man appeals an order to pay spousal support to his ex-wife, who is in a domestic partnership.
By Maura Dolan, Times Staff Writer
July 22, 2007
Ron Garber knew his former wife was living with another woman -- and had taken her last name -- when he agreed to pay her $1,250 a month in alimony.
What he didn't know was that the two women had registered with the state as domestic partners under a law that was supposed to mirror marriage law, Garber said.
State marriage laws say that alimony ends when the former spouse remarries, and Garber reasons he should be off the hook, given that domestic partnership is akin to marriage. But an Orange County judge has decided that registered partnership is cohabitation, not marriage, and that Garber must pay.
"This is not about gay or lesbian," Garber said. "This is about the law being fair."
The case, which Garber intends to appeal, highlights gaps between the legal status of domestic partners and of married couples, an issue the California Supreme Court is considering as it ponders whether to legalize same-sex marriage.
Proponents of same-sex marriage typically argue that gay couples will not have the full rights of heterosexuals until they too can marry. The Orange County case, however, shows how heterosexuals can be the collateral damage of the lesser legal status of domestic partnership.
If spousal support does not end with domestic partnership, "heterosexual men are the ones whose ox is being gored more often than not," said San Francisco family law attorney Diana Richmond.
Lawyers in favor of same-sex marriage are watching the Orange County alimony case and say they will cite it to the state high court as an argument for uniting gay and heterosexual couples under one system: marriage.
Therese Stewart, San Francisco's chief deputy city attorney, said the alimony ruling and other gaps in the domestic partnership law "highlight the irrationality of having a separate, unequal scheme" for same-sex partners.
Domestic partnership law also may have failed to replicate marriage in disputes involving property taxes, health coverage and, when same-sex couples move outside California, even parentage, attorneys say.
In the Orange County case, lawyers on both sides have filed proposed written rulings that would say domestic partnership is "not the equivalent of marriage. It is the functional equivalent of cohabitation."
Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Naughton suggested that he shared that view in ruling from the bench for the former wife, both lawyers said. Court minutes show that he has written a legal decision, but it is not yet available.
Garber, 51, said he favors same-sex marriage and has no issues about his former wife's decision to register with another woman. He said that he agreed to pay alimony for five years to his wife of 18 years but that he would not have signed the agreement had she disclosed that she had become a domestic spouse a few months earlier.
State marriage laws say that spousal support ends when the person receiving it dies or remarries, unless otherwise specified in an agreement.
"If he had signed that agreement under the same factual scenario -- except marriage, not domestic partnership -- his agreement to pay spousal support would be null and void," said William M. Hulsy, Garber's lawyer.
Edwin Fahlen, who is representing Garber's former wife, Melinda Kirkwood, said the agreement was binding, regardless of whether his client was registered as a domestic partner or even married. Both sides agreed the pact could not be modified, and Garber waived his right to investigate the nature of the Kirkwoods' relationship, the lawyer said.
Melinda Kirkwood, 44, said the divorce was amicable until Garber's new wife became involved. Kirkwood referred other questions to her partner, Kristin Kirkwood.
Kristin Kirkwood said she was uncertain whether Garber knew of the domestic partnership before signing the spousal support agreement. But "he has known about our relationship since three months after she left," Kirkwood said.
Garber and his former wife owned and managed a real estate company and had two children, now 19 and 17.
"Basically, all he did was work," Kristin Kirkwood said. "It was her decision to leave. He begged her to come back."
She said Garber signed a spousal support agreement without bothering to verify that his former wife was a domestic partner because the agreement benefited him overall.
Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, a gay rights group, said the Orange County case, if upheld on the grounds that partnership is not marriage, will underscore that the law does not provide equal treatment for domestic partners.
"It is better treatment if she can have her domestic partner and alimony too," Pizer said.
A Court of Appeal last year upheld the state's ban on same-sex marriage, citing the state's domestic partners law and ruling that it was up to the Legislature to decide whether gays could wed.
The state attorney general's office has argued that same-sex marriage is not needed because gays already enjoy the rights of marriage under the domestic partners law.
In a sign that the state high court considers the issue highly relevant, the California Supreme Court recently asked lawyers on both sides to provide additional written arguments on the distinctions, if any, between marriage and domestic partnership.
Although the domestic partnership law was intended to extend the legal rights of married couples to same-sex partners, lower court judges are uncertain how to apply it because of conflicts with the marriage code, lawyers said.
Pizer cited the case of a man who thought he and his partner were registered, only to discover later he had no legal protection. The man and his partner had met with a lawyer and signed registration papers, which were notarized, Pizer said. But his partner, who had said he would mail the documents to the state, didn't, Pizer said.
When the couple split, the man learned that he and his former partner had not been registered and therefore he was not entitled to the law's protection. If the same factual case had involved a marriage that was not legalized because of a mistake or technicality, courts would view the couple as having been married anyway, Pizer said.
Another case moving through the courts will determine whether domestic partners may inherit property from their partners without facing higher taxes on it. So far, domestic partners, with the support of the attorney general's office, have been given the same rights as married couples. The case is now on appeal.
Pizer said the domestic partner law also has failed to help partners who work for employers who self-insure. Many provide benefits for spouses but not for domestic partners.
Family law attorney Richmond said domestic partnership does not protect the children of same-sex couples if they move out of state.
"A child born to registered domestic partners is treated in California as a child of a marriage, entitled to support and all the benefits provided by the state," Richmond said. "But if that couple, or one of them, or the child, moves to another state, that parentage might not be recognized at all. When I have clients in that situation, I urge them to go through adoption or do some judicial proceedings to declare there are two parents."
The state has argued, however, that even if same-sex couples were permitted to marry in California, their unions might not be recognized elsewhere.
State lawyers in Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown's office, who have been arguing that domestic partnership registration makes same-sex marriage unnecessary, declined to comment on the cases in which partnerships were given a lesser status than marriage.
Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a religious freedom legal group, contended that any gaps are "minimal." California has the broadest domestic partnership law in the country, said Staver, who is representing a group opposed to same-sex marriage.
As for the alimony case, Staver said the judge would have "no choice" but to award spousal support because "under the laws of California, she is not in marital relations."
"While on the surface it looks unfair, it is not unconstitutional," Staver said.
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