Here's another story about a female teacher who is accused of sexually assaulting a student -- this time it's a girl who's the victim of the woman's advances.

"A popular French teacher at Streetsville Secondary School in Mississauga has been charged with the sexual exploitation and sexual assault of a student, police say.

Leslie Merlino, 36, was friends with the alleged victim before the incident, Peel Regional Police Constable Craig Platt said last night. She taught the 17-year-old girl in the previous school year and they had met outside the school and corresponded on-line, Constable Platt said.

Investigators contend that some of the on-line messages were sexually explicit. And this month, they say, the girl and her family approached police to complain that Ms. Merlino had acted inappropriately."

It took almost half way through the article before her gender was mentioned. As you can imagine, the excuses have already begun:

"Her attorney, Stephen Turano, said his client was innocent and it would have been "physically impossible" for her to have done what the boy said she did."

"I would find it hard to believe that these things could have happened because the bathroom had paper-thin walls and was a very tight space"

It's a pity these stories are so easy to find. Yet another female teacher is accused of having sexual relations with a student. At least one woman has identified a massive double standard exists:

“She really needs to be punished,” said parent Latonia Carroll. “Really, if a man did it, (he’d) get punished. If a woman does it, she should get punished.”

Former Beatle Paul McCartney has been accused of domectic violence by his estranged wife. The soon-to-be-ex claims Sir Paul stabbed her in the leg, was insensitive to her disability(ies) and called her an "ungrateful bitch."
Surely this has nothing to do with ensuring she gets custody and a fat monetary settlement, right?
Surely she has witnesses and/or doctor/hospital records from this horrible stabbing, right?

The Toronto Star published an article about Elaine Campione, asking why she, the accused murderer of her two children, was the trusted parent.

"Elaine Campione has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Yet she was the parent who was trusted, who had full and exacting custody of the children, who fought bitterly against easing access restrictions imposed on her estranged and allegedly abusive husband, who was reportedly terrified that she would lose those babies to their father.

Despite all the alarm bells — and they'd been clanging — despite Elaine Campione's palpable mental instability, her hospitalization, the purported warnings that she might do harm to those children, she was mistress of the manger.

In her care, those beautiful little girls were killed. Nobody protected them."

The National Post reports...

"TORONTO - Police have charged a young woman with allegedly hiding the dead body of her infant in a freezer for several years before it was dumped into the Humber River.

Ivana Levkovic, a 24-year-old Toronto resident, is also accused of a similar crime after the decomposing body of another baby was found in a vacated apartment in Mississauga earlier this year.

[...]

Her lawyer, Michael Moon, told a local newspaper that his client was "emotionally distraught" by the whole ordeal."

Golly. Poor woman -- the emotional distress of the whole ordeal must be awful for her.

More from the Sugar and Spice archives...

"The court heard one of the girls instigated the attack because she didn't like the way the boy looked at her.

It's alleged the boy tried to leave but Dignan stopped him and brought him back to the group so they could taunt him about his disability.

The group allegedly forced the boy to eat his own faeces and broken glass while one of the girls is accused of threatening him with a metal bar."

Story here.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The new law has angered many men, who argue that there is no definitive evidence that violence is more likely to take place in an international marriage arranged over the Internet than in a domestic one. Unwilling or unable to find a spouse in the United States, some worry that the law could make it more difficult to find a wife abroad.

“We should have the right to correspond with, date and marry the person of our choosing,” said David Root, who has been involved with many women from the former Soviet Union in the past decade but has not married any of them. “The government shouldn’t interfere in this.”'

Four girls and one boy locked a disabled boy in a backyard shed and set it on fire.

Oddly, the CBC doesn't see it fit to report the sexes of the prepetrators, but the Globe and Mail does.

Think they would've reported the sexes more prominently if disabled person set on fire were a girl and the perpetrators were boys?

You'd think it was something from a one-hour nighttime cop/lawyer drama series, but no, it's for real-- read it here. Excerpt:

'TWO women armed with a knuckleduster* invaded a house because of a baby-sitting dispute, a court heard yesterday.

Rachael Anne Jones, 35, and Shelby Wilson, 28, had both been drinking when they made a late-night visit to "sort out" a transport issue, Darwin Magistrates Court was told.

The court heard one woman grabbed a knife from the kitchen during the rural Darwin home invasion on December 6 last year.
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"I don't want the ladies to think it's a lay-down misere they're going to get a home detention order," he said. "There must come a point single mothers must go to jail when they have kids when they commit serious crimes."

The magistrate adjourned their sentences to November 6.'

Well, I guess time will tell if he's serious about that.

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* For those not familiar with the term, a "knuckleduster" is also called "brass knuckles".

Our boys are falling behind in education at an alarming rate, we know that already. One area where this is starting to show up is the shortage of Math Teachers.

How so? Because Maths is traditionally a male area. By failing our boys the education system is actually shooting itself in the foot. We are not producing educated boys so we are not producing Maths Teachers. It is that simple. Yes of course women also teach maths, but educated women have so many choices these days Maths is seldom one of them.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph has managed to do an editorial about the shortage of Maths Teachers without once mentioning that it is boys who are falling behind. Rather it ends with a call for a new program to be put in place to encourage (girls) to take up mathss.

No boys crisis at the Telegraph. Copy of the editorial and commentary here.

In this year's presidential proclamation on domestic violence, George W. Bush said, "Domestic violence has no place in our society, and we have a moral obligation to help prevent it. The terrible tragedies that result from it destroy lives and insult the dignity of women, men, and children."

The inclusion of "men" in the proclamation is significant. Never before has anyone at this level acknowledged what researchers have known for three decades – that domestic violence victimizes men as well as women and children. Domestic violence is not a gender issue. It's a human issue.

Our effort last year to get the VAWA reauthorization bill to require service providers to stop refusing to help men resulted in explicit language in the bill, stating, "Nothing in this title shall be construed to prohibit male victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking from receiving benefits and services under this title." It's likely that this is what brought the issue to the president's attention.

This story is another example of just how absurd family law can actually get. Excerpt:

'A Saskatoon father who is battling with a Prince Albert couple for custody of his five-month-old son got a shock this week in the form of a letter demanding that he pay them child support.

"Shame on them," Rick Fredrickson said in an interview, after learning the couple who left a Saskatoon hospital with his newborn son this spring -- while he desperately sought help asserting his paternity and right to custody -- now wants access to his financial records in order to calculate how much he should pay them for the child's care.

...

"If his son's mother was the one asking for child support, he would pay it immediately, Fredrickson said."'

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund sends 22% of their donations to girl's education. Not a penny to boys. Expenditures here.

Their expenditures total $1.9 billion, so that works out to $4.2 million for girl's education. A very noble and worthwhile cause, but what about boys?

"Of an estimated 700 million primary-school-age children in the world today, roughly 120 million are not in school. Nearly three quarters of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. They are mostly children of ethnic minorities from remote regions, working children, children living in conditions of emergency and conflict, children affected by HIV/AIDS, and children with disabilities. And they are mostly – 53 per cent – girls."

You'd think they might be able to scrape up a few bucks for the other 47% of human beings they're supposed to serve.

This will come as no surprise to MRAs. What is significant about this piece is the readers' comments. They are unabashed and unflinching in saying why they think "the M word" is no longer in vogue. Enjoy!