When are You not Entitled to A Love Life?

The answer to this is quite simple: when your love life endangers children's lives. Protecting children is a much higher priority than getting laid, getting your ego stroked, or having romantic companionship. This applies to your own children, your grandchildren, and any children in your care, even those for an afternoon. If there are ANY children in your life that can be affected by some personality disordered person you like to hang around with for any reason, you have no right to cozy up to him or her.

Michelle Rowling, the beautiful woman on the left, just got stabbed to death by that nasty piece of crap on the right. If you read some of the stories the media has put out, you will immediately be outraged at the domestic abuse that ended in this mother-of-two's death. But, if you read more in-depth reports, you will find that Michelle Rowling had her throat slit by this man in a prior incident and testified on his behalf. Then she got beaten up by him and again testified in his behalf. Finally, after hearing her was planning to kill her AND her family when he gets out of jail, she FBs this:

Five days later, Michelle is found dead in her apartment; her supposedly ex-boyfriend has been charged with the crime. Fortunately, the children were not home at the time and so at least they weren't murdered as well. Interestingly, I have read nothing of a break-in or any phone call to the police (Michelle actually FB'd that calling the police would be worthless because she would be dead before they got there), so one wonders if she opened the door yet again to this man.

I know some people will simply say that women in abusive relationships don't get enough help and that they often don't press charges or testify against their abusers out of fear or emotional ties. But, here is the thing which I keep harping on. While it is true that we all are fallible human beings and we sometimes make dumb choices and dumb mistakes, I urge women, and men, but especially women who are on the receiving end of the most violent abuse (as well as their children), to put their children or future children first. No one becomes a parent by accident. You have to participate in sex, in unprotected or careless sex, you have to chose not to have an abortion or choose not to give your child up for adoption. If you are going to bang away with some questionable character, make damned sure you don't bring his kid into the world and put that child in danger. If you already have a child with a decent man, don't bang away with some new questionable character and put THAT child's life in danger. To put it simply, don't bang some questionable character and put your own life in danger leaving your children without a mother.

I am about to become a grandmother and I will be living right next door to my new granddaughter. Guess who is not coming through my door? Some questionable character that I want to snuggle up with so I can get my rocks off. For that matter, I have been divorced for ten years and I am sticking to a promise I made to myself to not inflict some less-than-quality character into my children and grandchildren's lives. I chose to have children and from that moment on, I have had to put them first. I am not saying that I should never have a romantic relationship but that I must consider how that relationship affects my children. If I bring a creep into my life, I would surely hope my children would have the sense to take my grandchildren out of mine.

We won't die if we don't have sex or love every moment of our lives. Sometimes we have to wait for the right person or the right time because, if we really love and care for our children, we won't choose an adult over them and we won't have our own wants be more important than the safety and happiness of our own children or any other children we have in our lives.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

December 31, 2013

Drug Courier or Businesswoman: Why was Claudia Membreno Gomez Murdered?

The story is basically this: Claudia and her husband, parents to four children, ran a private package service between Alexandria, Virginia and their country of birth, Honduras. One of the parents would be with the children while the other drove or flew between the countries every month to bring American goods to families back home in Honduras and return with Honduran goods - specialty food items and lovingly made presents to those family members who had left and were working in the US. Claudia had been on her run to Honduras when she was shot to death in her home in front of the four children.

Read here for the complete article. 

Now, as usual, the media leaves out so much information that readers are likely to make their own assumptions as to what occurred. The first thought that popped up in my mind was how could enough money be made transporting gifts to even cover the airfare? So, the thought of drugs popped into my head quite quickly. Claudia had been receiving threatening phone calls from some gang attempting to extort money from her. She had not reported the calls to the police.

An explanation about the nonreporting of these threats to the authorities was that the police in Honduras are not responsive to such issues, so she didn't inform them. I could understand there might be truth in this considering the high level of crime in Honduras; I have been there and can say it is not the safest country in the world at the moment.

But, still, I was questioning the lucrativeness of this package business; it didn't make sense to me that the Gomezes would find profitable the taking of overstuffed suitcases back and forth to Honduras if there wasn't something more. Could they be drug runners? But, then, something further on in the story caught my eye; Claudia is a devout Jehovah's Witness and being involved in crime is extremely unlikely for someone who is a baptized Witness. So I did some more exploring on the Internet for an answer to this package business.

Turns out, Claudia is what is called a viajera (and her husband is a viajero), the Spanish word for traveler. However, Claudia's role is more than traveling back and forth between countries doing a private UPS job. Being a successful viajera involved also being a private Western Union. Due to concerns about sending money home to Honduras via Western Union for a number of reasons (theft in Honduras, lack of documentation to pick up money, etc), many prefer to use a trusted private service, someone who carries the money down on their person. This is not illegal, so Claudia was committing no crime in doing so.  But, it was likely, she was transporting large sums of money on her to distribute upon arrival, possibly as high as $20,000, a percentage of which she gets for her service. Now it makes sense that the Gomezes were running a private package service; it is a good moneymaker.

But a damned dangerous one. Many viajeras and viajeras have armed guards with them because of the danger of robbery. Claudia, it seems, was known to some gang who wished to get a cut of her earnings; hence, the threats of extortion a la the old protection racket run by the mob.

I wish the news reporters had done some research before they printed their story. I wonder how many people will think the Gomezes were criminals as opposed to, perhaps, being foolish in their choice to operate a business which is awfully dangerous for parents of four children. Now, there are four children without one.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

December 9, 2013