Cut off husband's penis, woman draws conditional sentence (Canada)
http://www.fathers.ca/kim_tran.htm
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Cut off husband's penis, woman draws conditional sentence
NATIONAL NEWS, Canadian Press
March 17, 2005
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (CP) - A 38-year-old mother of six who told police she had no choice but to cut off her husband's penis when he refused to end an affair with a younger woman was given a two-year conditional sentence Monday.
Kim Tran won't be going to jail but can spend her time in the community as long as she doesn't violate the conditions of her sentence. These include attending counselling with her children, taking English as a Second Language classes and participating in life skills classes as
directed by her bail supervisor.
She pleaded guilty last month in B.C. Supreme Court to aggravated assault. Court was told that when Vi Hoc Phung, 42, returned home to his wife of 18 years about 3 a.m. July 1, 1997, Tran pleaded with him to leave the other woman. Phung ignored his wife's crying and pleading. He sat and drank beer, telling her to leave him alone so he could sleep. After he went to sleep, Tran took a meat cleaver from the kitchen, pulled down his pants and cut off his penis, flush to the pubic bone. "I begged him but he didn't listen," Tran told a Cantonese-speaking police officer.
She cut off his penis "because I loved him so much," she said. Tran said her action would end her husband's affairs and keep him dependent on her. Under normal circumstances, said Justice Patrick Dohm, he would have sent Tran to prison because her act will have long-lasting physical and psychological effects on Phung, from whom she is now separated. Plastic surgeons managed to reconstruct a three-centimetre penis for Phung but he can't have normal sex and may have urinary problems later in life. But because Tran now is the sole support of her six children, aged four to 16, the circumstances are far from normal, Dohm said.
"These children are entirely dependent on their mother," he said. "It would be expected that the six kids would end up in foster homes, probably divided and with lasting effect." Phung said through an interpreter he wasn‚t upset that his wife won't be serving any jail time. "He doesn't mind, because the children need to be taken care of," said a woman who translated for him.
Men‚s groups reacted angrily to the sentence. "If we look at the example of a woman losing a breast because some butcher hacked it off in a mad confrontation or conflict, what would the
sentence in those cases be?" said Guy Thisdelle, spokesman for a coalition of Lower Mainland men's groups. "I think we'd find, historically, those types of incidents invoked jail terms," he said.
"I'm quite astonished that somebody who has done such a deed would be allowed back to have contact with the children, to continue raising her children," said Dr. Gerry Arthur-Wong, who runs a Vancouver-area group for abused men. But a representative of Women Against Violence Against Women, said the sentence was just. "A lot of women get abandoned with children," said Fatima Jaffer. "It would mean poverty for her if he left" her for another woman. Jaffer denied that there was a double standard in the sentencing of domestic-violence cases.
"For the most part - 90 per cent of the time - men don't get jail," she said. "At the most they get a peace bond asking them to stay away from women." The conditional sentencing option for non-dangerous offenders was brought in by the federal government last year to alleviate prison
overcrowding. Offenders are eligible if they do not pose a danger to the community and if the jail term imposed is two years or less. If they their conditions, they must serve the remainder of their sentence in custody.