Manstream media’s cover-up of the latest murder-suicide father’s revenge incident is shameful but it isn’t fooling all of us. All of the public discussion around the murder of 2 year old Brad Lees, is centred on defending the character of his killer, Jason Lees. Lees, who threw his screaming baby son to his death off the Story Bridge in Brisbane on Monday, was, according to every single news piece I have seen, a “well-respected” official, card-carrying Good Guy. Because heaven forbid any man be seen to ever do anything wrong, ever. The high school where he used to teach will be making a “tribute” to him, even. Because, as the newspapers keep telling us, this is a tragedy born out of a Good Guy’s “despair”. The headlines all refer to the “happy dad” or the “best dad a kid could want” who “jumped off a bridge”. They don’t refer to a “baby-killer”.
You would think that throwing a screaming, terrified baby off a bridge might negate all the Good Guy creds that he had thus far clocked up with the community. Clearly, he was not a Good Guy. But the pro-establishment media lackeys are tip-toeing around this issue despite the fact that police are treating this as murder, or murder-suicide to be more accurate, but I don’t like that term; it obscures the fact that someone was murdered and cleverly gets the reader to focus only on the suicide of the murderer, instead. Where are the pro-life extremists when this shit happens? It’s outrageous that children’s “right to life” does not extend beyond the gestation period. Children’s status in society is strongly reflected in the erasure of Brad from the narrative of his murder.
We will recall, when reading of this atrocity, the way Arthur Freeman murdered his little girl, Darcey, in 2009. Freeman did this out of revenge, to punish Darcey’s mother for leaving him.
There is an abundance of academic literature now available on the way the family courts prioritise entitled male abuser’s feelings over the right of women and children to escape abuse and tyranny, and to live free of violence; in fact just to live.
We have ample documentation of men’s selfishness and disregard for the human rights of former partners and children in the context of divorce and separation.
Men kill their own children as an effective way of hurting their former partners, for life.
Fathers’ Revenge Syndrome is real, and family court magistrates, as well as all the psychologists and lawyers who assist abusers to gain access to children and former partners, extending the paradigm of domestic violence and abuse, need to wake the fuck up.
4pm Update: This man is all but being hailed as a hero for fucksake! And shame on the Anglican Church Grammar School for their public defense of a child killer.
Some blogs and news articles are full of commentary by people vouching for his great character. People genuinely can not seem to get their heads around the fact that he killed a child, based on his fine reputation within his community/s. Let’s see if we can keep two thoughts in our heads at once here.
Seemingly nice men who contribute well in their community context can still be violent, abusive arseholes in their personal relationships.
Chances are he was an abuser and that’s why his wife left him and the child. Maybe she thought she was keeping the child safe by leaving him with the abuser, given the propensity for left husbands to use the excuse of not seeing their kids as a motive for more violence. Maybe it was an act of appeasement to leave the child with him. Maybe she knew it was either her or the child – that there was no way they could both live.
Based on my vast experience with DV, I am of the opinion that perpetrators are brilliant actors, and will go to great lengths to cultivate a charming public persona, one that is very different to the person experienced by those he lives with.
I started a blog a few years ago cataloguing crimes by fathers, which tend to be underreported. Here’s my most recent list of U.S. dads who have killed their kids in situations involving custody/visitation:
http://dastardlydads.blogspot.com/2012/02/it-didnt-start-with-josh-powell-dads.html
The blog also includes a lot of other UK, Canadian, and Australian cases.
And here’s the post I did on this case:
http://dastardlydads.blogspot.com/2012/02/dad-murders-2-year-old-son-by-throwing.html
Hi silverside, thanks for commenting. Your catalogue of this issue is a valuable one. As I wrote this post I was thinking a list needs to be compiled and kept up to date because it’s happening all the time and well, even feminists forget, and then specific acts of violent male atrocities just blend in with the white noise that is male violence generally. Do you mind if I link to your blog?
The fathers rights crowd always harp on about how these depressed dads wanted to spend more time with their kids, but little Brad appears to have been in the sole custody of the father at the time of the murder. Of course they will argue that it’s his partner’s fault – how could a woman leave a child blah blah blah. Anything but focus on the intent of the perp. It’s my experience that perps are often very good at passing as model citizens.
The fact that the media are so sympathetic towards this class of perp must surely not be helping things.
Feel free to link to my blog.
Yes, the FRs are totally bogus on this Daddy was overcome with grief thing. The reason these dudes are able to kill these kids is because the courts have provided access, not because they denied it.
Thanks for telling it how it is, Linda.
Yes, highly unusual, considering he actually had custody. Therefore, the killing of the child was designed as punishment to the wife who ‘dared’ leave him. Primarily all of these cases (where he doesn’t have custody) are for the same reason I think, to punish the ex-wife/gf. It used to be that they would kill her (then himself), or her and the children (then himself). However, as a much more effective and cruel abuser strategy, the woman is now not-murdered in order that she should suffer for the rest of her life, that her children were murdered.
I noticed too, in a recent DV case, they were giving the murderer the same treatment in the press “poor dude, he was such a GREAT guy, there must have been something to make him snap”. Major *puke*. This is becoming a new trend in the media for DV homicides, the murderer is not only being excused, but given a heroic obit.
I too was absolutely appalled at the way the media reported this case. I skimmed the first article I read when the story first broke, and I was actually under the impression that it was an accidental fall, because most of it was all “He was a much loved teacher and will be missed by his students” blah blah etc.
Then I read the article properly, and I’m like WAIT he is fucking murderer! And all to get back at his ex. That poor woman. I notice that NONE of the media coverage expressed any sympathy for her.
Fuck child-killing,entitled, abusive men. Fuck the male-run media.
Hinch pretty much nailed most of it, including the sickening meeja coverage:
http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/blog-with-derryn-hinch/no-sympathy-for-story-bridge-killer/20120221-1tl8p.html
Thanks for sharing, Davina. Surprisingly good article. In fact its the only decent media coverage I’ve seen so far. He even managed to mention the wife!
(and it’s a doubly surprising article for me because I believed Hinch had already died from his liver cirrhosis, lol).
its apparently so difficult to believe that these men are showing the world what their wives and probably their children already knew, when they do these things. but why is that so difficult?
its so tempting (FOR SOME REASON) to believe that these men acted out of character, than that this IS their character, and they acted in accordance with it. rather than admit that they’d been duped, or even that they had deliberately ignored all the signs of his true character that had probably come out over the years, they pretend that this final act was an abberation when in reality it was completely predictable, and in fact everyone who knew him collaborated in it by not giving a shit about how a man they knew was treating his own family, or how any many anywhere treats any women and any children. this is, in fact, a mass conspiracy. everyone knows what men do, and what men are. this is the worst kept secret ever.
Years ago, a DV group in Washington State developed a media guide, and even then it warned against the “such a nice guy” approoach to these stories. These reporters interview the Clueless Neighbors (who saw the killer mow the lawn a couple of times) and conclude that it’s all such a “tragedy” or “mystery” that such a “nice guy” would suddenly “snap” like that. Often, but not always, the woman’s close friends and relatives could tell a different story. Or even a local expert in DV. But more often than not, the Clueless Neighbor’s idiocy prevails. Or worse yet, they interview Killer Daddy’s (enabling) family and drinking buddies, not realizing–or caring–that these people are heavily invested in denial.
All the news articles quote the clueless neighbours, silverside.
Years ago I used to clean for a straight couple. The guy was everybody’s favourite neighbour, he grew vegetables and gave them to everyone in the street, he volunteered at the school, he went to fucking church every sunday. Behind closed doors he smacked his wife and kids around regularly; once he hit her in front of hospital staff and somehow managed to not be reported. She would be leaving for work in the morning and he’d say stuff like “I hope you fall under the train” – but the neighbours loved him.
I also notice that the local libfem blogs are strangely quiet on this story. Can’t talk about DV cos it might upset the nigel. It’s a sad day for feminism when Derryn Hinch appears more feminist than actual feminists.
Thanks for shining the light on this utter bullshit. Truer words were never spoken: “perpetrators are brilliant actors, and will go to great lengths to cultivate a charming public persona, one that is very different to the person experienced by those he lives with”
Proves for the umpteenth time that male supremacist propaganda is working because men are always the ‘victims’ in male supremacy world, despite fact their world is a mythical one not real. But malestream media has consistently for decades and decades justified/excused/minimalised male perpetrators’ accountability because – wait for it – women are always the ones who supposedly caused these desperate (sic) men to commit mosntrous acts and all too commonly – lethal acts of violence against women and children.
As one feminist rightly said ‘normal men commit monstrous acts against women and children on a regular basis.’ Not deviant men and most certainly not ‘distraught men.’
Correct – men who commit intimate male terrorism are commonly charming, manipulative and are viewed as ‘oh such nice, kind, respectable white men’ because these men do not normally commit violence against their male bosses; their male friends or even their male neighbours. Instead these men commit violence against female/ex female partners and her children behind closed doors. Not forgetting of course the common disclaimer fun fems make ‘my Nigel wouldn’t do it.
http://www.3aw.com.au/blogs/blog-with-derryn-hinch/no-sympathy-for-story-bridge-killer/20120221-1tl8p.html
Another decent story on this case.
Can someone please explain how a terrorist can kill himself and a child in the name of Islam and be condemned, but when a man kills his son and then takes his own life – the event is not only adopted by a Christian system and intrinsic school community as a reasonable act, but it is also accepted by a wider community?
How dare they? “…people keep talking about the middle ages as if they were in the middle ages…”
The horror of reading that a witness to this murder heard the blood curlding screams of the child before he was thrown from the bridge. Of course the two year old child knew that his father’s actions couldn’t be trusted and that he was in the hands of a psycho, yet the media persist in describing it as a fall. The actions of a caring desperate father. Fucken filthy selfish coward.
Thanks for covering this Linda.
I agree with you. It is an absolute disgrace! I cannot for the life of me understand how this has happened, Had the murderer not also jumped I bet the media and school would not be so “supporting”. I get it, sometimes good people go bad, and he is bad to the core!! I actually wrote an email to the principal of Churchie asking him to explain his actions. As teachers of children, and the schools vision is to “raise good men” I wondered how celebrating the life of a child killer is appropriate?
This story saddens me to the core and as a mother I cant get out of my mind what that darling child much have been thinking in the terrifying moments as he was thrown off the bridge from the arms of the man he adored and trusted. 22 stories, and I question the mode of death, wouldn’t a “good” guy want to cause no pain or fear as he is killing his child? He is as bad a guy as the Freeman coward who hurled little Darcey off the bridge….
I will never understand how an entire community is not up in arms about this,
I will never forget this little boy,
Very good point, Kye, about the chosen mode of death. He was clearly making a statement, and proving just how little the child actually meant to him in the first place.
I also wrote to the school. As a social worker involved in the child protection system I felt it was an ethical obligation to voice my professional opinion and concerns about an institution that specifically serves children, celebrating the life of a child killer. They never answered.
baby killing in america: A-OK unless the “baby” is an unwanted embryo occupying a woman’s uterus. THEN it’s a moral outrage
I love you. Hmmm, anything else need to be said? nah.
Thanks m Andrea! That means a lot to me.