feminist blogs

This is a reprint of a post I wrote about Dean Tong when Darren Mack made the news due to murdering his wife and shooting the judge that heard his case. Tong is now in jail, charged with wife beating and trying to evade prosecution. The original link is here.

-----

My readers may recall that I have already posted about Dean Tong's comments excusing what Darren Mack had done. Mack had hired Tong as his forensic consultant. Now, Tong has an editorial published in the Reno Review Journal. He's engaging in more damage control, a la Glenn Sacks and Wendy McElroy, but he falls flat on his face.

Note how Tong blames "the system" for Mack, who he said "was cracking".

What happened to Darren Mack between then and June 12, when, according to police, he stabbed Charla Mack to death and shot Family Court Judge Chuck Weller with a high-powered rifle? Hindsight is 20/20, but my opinion is that this "family man turned hit man" was cracking under the strain of trying to hold onto his business, his assets and his daughter while navigating a misguided Family Court system that only poured gasoline on an already incendiary situation.

Tong also sought to place blame on Charla Mack, whom Mack had stabbed to death.

He claimed his wife and her very aggressive and competent attorney were drumming up a story to gain the upper hand in their demands for custody and assets. To wit: If she was so scared of him, why did she drive to his townhome the morning of June 12 without an adult witness by her side?

That's right. Blame a dead woman for her own murder.

I'm not surprised that Dean Tong would create excuses for what Darren Mack had done. Lots of father's rights activists are taking the "the system is to blame!" approach. Let them. It makes them look like they are making excuses for Mack's murder, shooting, and flight, which is exactly what they are doing. Tong had written that Mack "was cracking", as if his contentious divorce was to blame for him stabbing his wife to death and shooting Judge Weller.

Tong represents men who claim they have been falsely accused of abuse. That's how he makes his money. He has no training to do what he does. He is trained as an Emergency Medical Technician. As I had written in my earlier post about Tong, the test that Tong uses is the penile plethysmograph test, which is unreliable in ascertaining child sexual abuse. This test measures male sexual arousal. This test has many problems, including that it is not admitted in court under Daubert, which means that the test is scientifically unreliable. The test is "subject to fakery and voluntary control by test subjects..."

Here is one of Tong's recommendations in his op-ed for divorces to supposedly prevent contention:

Joint custody should be the preferred option. Even though the rule of law is "the child's best interests," too often it is interpreted as, "the father should get the shaft and the mom should get everything."

Tong neglected to point out that Charla and Darren Mack had joint custody. It obviously did not inspire them to get along for the sake of their children. Joint custody did not prevent Darren Mack from "cracking". It's so nice of him to write the inflammatory statement "the father should get the shaft and the mom should get everything." That makes him look petty and vindictive - not the way you want to look when talking about a man who had stabbed his wife to death, shot the judge who was hearing his case, and then fled to Mexico.

Dean Tong is a favorite amongst father' rights activists and "false allegations" supporters. He, like most of the fathers' rights activists who have written about the Mack case, continues to blame "the system" for a murder and a shooting. What Dean Tong is doing is damage control. Fathers' rights activists have made their opinions clear on message boards where they have supported Mack shooting Judge Weller. They also blame "the system" for Mack's downfall. Fathers' rights activists do not represent good men. Good, decent men who are going through divorce should not look to those groups or the individuals in them for help.