A Tale Of Two Couples

The headline across the top of the front page of the Bismarck Tribune this morning reads “Legislator arrested again for domestic assault.” It was above the story about Bismarck Representative David Weiler being charged with assaulting his wife for the second time in less than a year.

The headline right underneath it reads “Husband is charged with murder.” The subhead under it says “Multiple blunt force injuries allegedly caused woman’s death.” It was above a story about a Sterling man charged in his wife’s death during an apparent argument.

The juxtaposition of those two stories is a startling way for newspaper readers to begin the weekend, as dark a start this morning as the sky outside clouded in a dense fog. It’s hard to see very far, either literally or metaphorically, when the day starts like this. It’s hard to want to. It’s one of those mornings when the instinct is just to go back to bed for a couple of hours, and get up and start over, and hope against hope things might be different when you look outside or open the paper.

There’s a woman dead in a trailer court in south Bismarck. An unemployed woman with a small child, running a little day care out of her trailer house, beaten to death, allegedly, by her unemployed husband.

Just across town, less than a mile away, in an upscale neighborhood, there’s a woman who’s still alive, but who says her husband beat her for the second time in a year. No trailer house background here, she’s a socialite, and a staff person in the state’s governor’s office, and the man accused of beating her is a once-respected businessman and state legislator.

Two more different couples you won’t find in a town like ours. But today, linked forever on the pages of a newspaper. Front page stories, jumped to page 9, under the headlines “Husband charged” and “Legislator arrested.” But for the death, the headlines and stories could have been interchanged and readers might not have even noticed. Both men had been reported in similar incidents last year. One, the legislator, was convicted when his wife pressed charges. He was slapped on the wrist and put on probation. The other was not convicted, because his wife dropped charges, an all-too-common outcome of domestic assaults.

One woman is dead this morning. The other, as she happens to drive past a funeral home while running her Saturday morning errands, might be saying “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

The unemployed man whose wife is dead is behind bars today. The state legislator is free on bond. He claims innocence, and under our system, we must judge him so until he is convicted. To be sure, there are calls for his political head. Even his fellow legislator from District 30, Bob Stenehjem, the Senate Majority Leader, says “It’s probably in the best interests of everyone involved for Dave to resign.”

I’m troubled, though, by the comments of Governor Hoeven, the employer of Mrs.Weiler, who says, according to the Associated Press, that Rep. Weiler should resign if he is convicted of a second assault charge. It’s like saying you get one free wife beating in North Dakota before you really get punished. Better, Governor, to have not said anything.

I don’t agree with the Governor that Rep. Weiler should resign if he is convicted a second time. I think he should have resigned after being convicted ONCE. Perhaps if Governor Hoeven and Senator Stenehjem had called for Rep. Weiler’s resignation last year, perhaps if he had been forced to resign instead of simply being put on probation, perhaps if he had been REALLY punished for what he did, he might have learned from his mistake. And there might not have been a headline in the paper this morning that said “Legislator arrested again for domestic assault.”

AGAIN.

There are some things you just don’t do, no matter who you are. Beating your wife is one of them. Not once. Not twice. Not ever. Because, sometimes, when you do that, you end up with that awful other headline above your story: “Husband is charged with murder.”