Nice dad kills son

ANOTHER nice dad kills his son. Why? (Supposedly) Because his marriage broke up. (Why are women leaving these gems?) I have 3 words for these guys: SUCK IT UP.

 

 

A LITTLE boy thrown to his death from a bridge had tried to comfort his dad after his mother left them.

Friends and neighbours said a marriage break-up probably caused the murder-suicide of Jason Lees, 40, and his toddler Brad.

A neighbour yesterday recounted the heartwrenching day when two-year-old Brad hugged his weeping dad on the back stairs of their Brisbane home.

Marlene Stephens, who lives next door, said she thought Mr Lees’ wife Danielle was no longer living with them when he made the fateful decision to kill his son and take his own life.

“She left him a while back and you could hear and see him crying on the back stairs,” she said.

“I remember the little boy came down and wrapped his arms around him – I’m always going to remember that image.”

Ms Stephens said Brad always gave her a wave.

“It was always so lovely to hear them laugh. He was a beautiful kid,” she said.

Mr Lees, a much-admired teacher at a top private school in Brisbane, rode his bike on to Story Bridge about 2.30am on Monday and jumped to his death with Brad.

His wife, a psychologist from the Gold Coast, could not be contacted yesterday.

The couple met after Mr Lees moved from Canada about 15 years ago.

Bill Lees told the Ottawa Sun he met his baby nephew when his brother and his family visited Canada in 2010 so Jason could referee an international rugby sevens match. “That was the last time I saw them,” he said.

Rugby friends say they used to see Danielle at matches quite often, but hadn’t seen her much in the past year.

“He loved his little son – he was the apple of his eye,” one friend said.

A parent said on Facebook that Mr Lees taught her son.

“Why can I only feel deep sadness for his pain instead of condemning him for what he has done to himself and Brad?” she wrote.

– with Kate Kyriacou and Rose Brennan

On marrying prisoners

So there was an article in Salon the other day that brought a lot of thoughts and questions to mind:

My husband, the convicted murderer  In a nutshell, this woman was a journalist, visited a prison, and fell in love with a convict. He was found guilty of murdering a gang member.

• I wondered if there had ever been a study looking at the influence of cultural indicators like: Beauty & the Beast; King Kong and Fay Wray; the Hunchback of Notre Dame & Ismeralda — well, you get it. I wonder if movies like these send girls (and boys) a message.
• I wondered if anyone has ever looked at men’s rate of visiting and marrying female prisoners. An acquaintance of mine works at a female prison and she says it tends to be family members visiting rather than boyfriends or husbands.
• I thought again of how women often lose their children while in jail while men don’t  (See: Prison shouldn’t be a bar to motherhood )
• This led me to think about the Fatherhood Initiative (you know – actually federal funding going to men only!) which gives federal funds to programs that unite prisoners with their children because kids need their dads (but apparently not their moms).
• Okay, so federal funding led me to think of the Violence Against Women Act, which MRAs usually say “discriminates” against men and is the only federal funding source going to women alone (not true). I usually compare funding for VAWA ($5.8 B over 5 years) with funding for prisons ($60 B over 5 years). That’s a huge discrepancy in supporting victims vs. supporting perpetrators. Certainly, we fund college educations for prisoners and not domestic violence or rape victims. What does that say about our society?
• I was also told (by a law student) that prisoners can marry mail-order-brides and give them citizenship while women fleeing domestic violence have a hard time getting asylum here.
• Okay, back to the article. I had once read that suicidal women get involved with guys like Scott Peterson – it’s a passive form of commiting suicide. Could that be true? 
• And lastly, the media tend to call many perpetrators of domestic violence homicides “nice guys” that “snapped” – can that have anything at all to do with this?