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A murder trial takes place in Florida, USA - Ashley Benefield was found guilty of manslaughter by the jury after killing the father of two children, that is lethal domestic violence. She used six shots.
Link to source.
“Ashley Benefield, 33, had been charged with second-degree murder, but the panel convicted her of the lesser crime in the killing of Doug Benefield on Sept. 27, 2020.After pushing for marriage with Doug Benefield, a father and widow, Ashley and Doug welcomed a baby girl. For Doug, this was his second daughter.
After the verdict was announced, the judge revoked Benefield's $100,000 bond and remanded her to the custody of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office. A date has not been set for her sentencing” (Stellah, CBS News, 2024).
But straight after the baby girl was born, Ashley flipped and started to alienate the little girl from her father and her sister, that is, to achieve sole power and control over the child. When the father sought contact with his child, Ashley claimed that she was being stalked. Ashley used this [unvalidated] claim to apply for a restraining order. A judge submitted to her demand. Ashely finalized her relational conflict by firing all six bullets of her 45 caliber gun into the body of the man who already was a father and a widow, and who had accepted to father a child with her. Then she ran to the neighbors house, crying.
How should this be interpreted?
On the one hand, feminist organizations intuitively blame any kind of domestic violence on men in general and father's in particular according to a concept they call Men's violence against women. It is also typical that court personnel intuitively see women as victims and if there's children involved, they apply the presumption of motherhood (at least we know who the mother is, from latin Mater Certa Semper est) - discriminating against children's father relations. These people also generalize from the cases to the general population, which from a methodological point of view likely provide a false outcome.
On the other hand, there is the science, where the general picture is used to explain what happens in a specific event or case.
Ashley's behavior is reminiscent of many cases of women's relational/custodial conflicts. A good example is the case against former actress Amber Heard who was psychological and physically abusive to her husband, and when he so to speak had it - divorced himself from her, her answer was to apply for a restraining order against him. The judge submitted.
Ashley's case is also reminiscent of many other cases where women's violence has somehow strangely been claimed to be about self-defense.
In 2005, a mother was sentenced to 10 months in prison for abducting a child from his/hers father (Dagens nyheter, 2005).
In 2012, a mother was sentenced to 6 months in prison for abducting a child from hers/his father (Dagens nyheter, 2012; Elfvfing, Sundsvalls tidning, 2012; Eklund, Sundsvalls tidning, 2012; Sundsvalls tidning, 2012; Östberg, Sundsvalls tidning, 2012).
In 2010, a custody case unfolded in Sweden where a mother prevented the child from seeing the father. the Judge - Sikström - awarded her sole custody (Österberg, 2012).
In 2009 - 2013, a similar custody case unfolded in Sweden where a mother prevented the child from seeing the father. The judge - Hessel - awarded her sole custody (Österberg, 2014).
In 2014, a mother in Sweden was given sole custody, after which she decided to leave the country with the child (Haddäng/ Eriksson, 2014).
In all three cases, higher-level court personnel reprimanded their lower-level colleagues and awarded the custody of the children to the father. The mother's relational- and custodial conflict could thus be stopped.
In 2021:
- a mother was sentenced to 18 months in prison for abducting the child from the father (Svt, 2021).
- a mother in Åland, Finland, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the child's father (HBL, 2021).
In 2022:
- a mother murdered her child at an “institution for women with mental challenges” [Sic], run by the social service in Helsingfors (HBL, 2022).
- a mother abducted a child from the father in Finland to Russia. The child has not yet been found or reunited with the father (HBL; 2022).
- in Finland, Helsingfors Police department said that Finnish women's relational aggressiveness is a big issue.
In 2023:
- a mother abducted a child, a little girl, from her father in Sweden to Spain. The girl has not yet been found or reunited with her father (Dagens Vimmerby, 2023).
- At a conference called Finnish-Swedish Children's Rights Days (Finlands-svenska Barnrättsdagarna) Finland's child commissary, Elina Pekkarinen, said that psychological violence at home and lethal violence against small children has increased in Finland. Maj Estlander, the host, interjected by saying that 40 % of the Finnish school children had reported they had been victims of psychological violence at home. Psychological violence is congruent to relational aggressiveness, i .e. a female phenomenon.
2024. A mother used a knife to murder her daughter and to injure the son (Nyheter24, 2024)
Research on intimate partner violence conducted using established models such as the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; Straus, 1979; Straus et al. 1996) shows the following distribution:
- Physical violence - women account for slightly more than half of occurrences and injuries.
- Lethal violence - equally unlikely (0.0000005) to affect children, men or women (Liem och Koenraadt, 2008). Psychological violence (relationship aggression) - typically female.
- Psychological violence (relational aggressiveness) includes parental alienation.
(Archer,2000, 2004; Bates, Graham-Kevan och Archer , 2014; Bates och Graham-Kevan, 2016; Bates, 2018; Bates, Kaye, Pennington och Hamlin, 2019; Bergkvist, 2002; Crick och Grotpeter, 1995; Hyde, 2005; Thornton et al. 2012).
Listen to Dr Elizabeth Bates: Intimate Partner Violence (34 minuter).
Crying. Most people associate women's crying with pain or being a victim, but in reality tears contain pheromones which switch off sexuality in men in favor of compassion (Gelstein et al. 2011).
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| Ashley Benefield crying in court, From Court TV |
Parental alienation. Distancing a child from the other parent is known as parental alienation (Bernet, 2008, 2023; Bernet et al. 2010; Kruk, 2015; Rand, 1997, a ;b, 2011; Warshak, 2014, 2015; Sikström, 2024), and has negative consequences. That's because children who grow up with both parents or with the father have better emotional and social adjustment as well as cognitive development, including visuospatial perception, compared to children who grow up with a single mother (Baker et al. 2020; Farran och Formby, 2011; LaFlamme et al. 2012; Olsson, 2022; Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004).
Mothers' behavior to distance themselves from the children's fathers is consistent with stonewalling, which is part of women's relational aggressiveness (Crick och Grotpeter, 1995, Hyde, 2005).
It includes creating a geographical distance between the child/children and the father, like moving closer or to their own mother, or peregrination - just moving around to different locations. Adding to the model are the men who are expected to play the heroes, and there are many men who are happy to do so. And people who aim to manipulate others tend to be good at identifying people who expect to be manipulated (Konnikova, 2015).
The presumption of motherhood (at least we know who the mother is, from latin Mater Certa Semper Est), has been demonstrated to be a typical application among court personnel in Sweden and the USA (Biringen och Harman, 2018; Elfver-lindström, 1999; Schiratzki, 2008; Österberg, 2004). Around the world, this type of campaign against men is therefore common.
An interesting example of peregrination happened during the 1970s, when a mother abducted her two children from their father and started to move around the country for several years. The abduction started on the west coast of Canada and ended on the east coast. That mother's rationale for her action, which was never validated, was the claim that the father had ties to the mafia and that 'they' therefore had to flee. The mother played the victim card to trick another man - Stanley - to help her out. The children, alienated from their father in the process, searched and found an explanatory model that confirmed their life situation (Österberg, 2004).
The case of Ashley Benefield is reminiscent of the case of Amber Heard, who also claimed that she was traumatized by the relationship with her husband. After going through a thorough psychological investigation, the conclusion was Ms Heard suffered from Borderline and Histrionic personality disorder that was present before the couple met, that is, caused by Complex childhood trauma. Ms Heard worried that her husband would leave her, i.e., neuroticism, which typical for women and manifested through aggressiveness and jealousy (Jiang, Dong och Wang, 2022; Ode et al. 2009; Weisberg et al. 2011). Borderline Personality is associated with women's relational conflict, manifested by a contradiction: fear of abandonment, yet paradoxically acting in ways that ensure they'll be abandoned (Ruffalo, 2024; Zalewski et al. 2014). Histrionic Personality disorder is:
- “characterized by a pattern of seeking extreme attention and using seductive or provocative behavior to gain attention. Individuals with this disorder often lack self-direction, are easily influenced by others, and have a strong desire for immediate gratification” (ScienceDirect, 2024).
- “characterized by a pattern of long-term (rather than episodic) self-dramatization in which individuals draw attention to themselves, crave activity and excitement, overreact to minor events, experience angry outbursts, and are prone to manipulative suicide threats and gestures” (APA).
There are also cases where the mother's own mother is instigating the conflict against the children and their father. Such a case is unfolding in Florida where four people have been sentenced to life in prison after killing the father of two boys. One of them was the mother's brother. In parallel to that, his and his sister's mother was arrested and put in custody, and is now awaiting trial (Österberg, 2024).
Ashley's finalized her relational conflict by firing all six shots of her 45 caliber gun into the father of her child. Her behavior was similar to another incident when four New York police officers fired 41 shots into Amadou Diallo - an innocent man (Cooper, 1999; Wikipedia). Common knowledge is that this kind of behavior has nothing to do with self defense. Even, like Ashley, the four police officers played the so-called victim card.
Why is this happening? How widespread is it and why is it allowed to continue?
Research on decision-making processes shows that our species sometimes suffers from “natural stupidity” - tending to believe information that is prototypical (Kahneman och Tversky, 1972), frequently repeated (Tversky och Kahneman, 1973) or simply readily available (1977). This can also be called dysrationalia - being unable to think rationally despite sufficient intelligence (this includes instrumental and epistemic rationality (Stanovich, 1993).
People in general tend to intuitively view women and men in different ways - women in the role of the mother and men as the ones who bring resources to the home and who are sacrificed for the family, including sent to die in wars. This includes (1) women's crying which is intuitively interpreted as a woman in distress and (2) the idea that if men are violent towards each other, they are also violent in the home.
This victim-outlook is used by followers of the feminist movement's call for Men's violence against women, which politicians with a survival instinct and personnel in the law enforcement agencies accept without any blink of the eye.
In order to overcome simulation bias/dysrationalia, one needs to apply:
- Epistemic vigilance - be suspicious about a message and why the message was sent (Sperber et al. 2010)
- Disjunctive reasoning - take all sources into account (at least many will do) and think in an exploratory manner (Stanovich, 2009).
- Numeracy - the ability to understand, reason with, and apply simple numerical concepts (Brooks and Pui, 2010), which is the foundation for instrumental and epistemic rational think
The implication. Men's overt violence is typically men-on-men, whereas women are the typical perpetrator of domestic violence, including relational aggressiveness, and in some cases crying.
Women's domestic violence is typically explained by mental challenges, such as high levels of neuroticism and Borderline Personality Disorder (Jiang, Dong och Wang, 2022; Zalewski et al. 2014). These women tend to express relational aggressiveness (Crick och Grotpeter, 1995, Hyde, 2005). Therefore, the custody dispute is also a female conflict.
Another possible instigator of Ashley's relational/custodial conflict is her own mother. That's because the case bears many similarities with the other case in Florida where Donna Adelson awaits trial on the suspicion of instigating the murder of her former son-in-law. She pushed the daughter to move with the kids from their home and closer to her place. That would have led to a significant distancing between the children and their father, which science demonstrate will hamper their emotional and social adjustment as well as cognitive development.
It's also noteworthy that episodic memory is constructive in a social manner.
“Since the future is not an exact repetition of the past, simulation of future episodes requires a system that can draw on the past in a manner that flexibly extracts and recombines elements of previous experiences” (p. 774, Schacter and Addis, 2007).That means that, like Amber Heard and other conflicting women, Ashley Benefield likely created her story post hoc to defend her actions. This was famously the practice of the father of rhetoric - Cicero - who after he had executed his opponents chanted: Vixere - they have lived! Thereafter, he created a story to rationalize his dirty deed (Beards, 2015).
Conclusion. A murder trial takes place in Florida, USA - Ashley Benefield was found guilty of manslaughter by the jury after killing the father of two children, that is lethal domestic violence. She used six shots. Prior to that, she had instigated a custodial conflict with the father of the child, that is, alienating the child from the father. Not all women are domestically violent, but domestic violence is typically a female characteristic. The explanation for women's domestic violence is typically mental issues, i.e., high level of neuroticism, and/or Borderline Personality Disorder, which may manifest as peregrination. The likely explanation is Complex childhood trauma, that is growing up with a controlling mother.The instigator of the conflict is not necessarily the mother. Several cases in Sweden show that personnel at social services play a significant role to trigger the mothers custodial conflict. Another possible instigator is the mothers own mother. Another possible instigator is the mothers own mother. Its also noteworthy that episodic memory is constructive in a social manner. That means that likely created her story to defend her actions.
See videos from the trial on Court TV.
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