Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Domestic killings shock Swiss - BBC News
Corinne Rey-Bellet was shot by her husband Gerold Stadler just days after the couple had agreed to separate.
Stadler also shot and killed Rey-Bellet's brother Alain, and seriously wounded her mother, before finally killing himself.
...
"There is a profile for a man who commits a crime like this," says Philip Jaffe, professor of psychology at Geneva University.
"He tends to be very ambitious, but isolated, very contained, and he can't cope with loss. So if his wife threatens to leave him, his response is violence."
All the recent cases, including that of Rey-Bellet and Stadler, involved families who presented an outward appearance of normal, calm, orderly family life.
"Here in Switzerland we are brought up to expect everything to go according to plan," he explains.
"Just like our trains run on time, we've come to expect our lives to run to plan, and when they don't, we go wild."
...
Mr Boess blames the Swiss army's policy of requiring Swiss men, who all have to do military service, to keep their guns and ammunition at home in case of an emergency call-up.
What that means is that nearly all Swiss men have a Sturmgewehr - an assault rifle - stored somewhere in their homes. ...
"It's very common to hear women tell how their husbands remind them they have a gun in moments of tension," says Brigitte Schnegg, professor of gender politics at Berne University.
"They'll say: 'If you don't do what I want, don't forget I've got my gun upstairs.'"
...
"Family problems are seen as a defeat for the man, it all has to do with male honour." ...
Corinne Rey-Bellet was shot by her husband Gerold Stadler just days after the couple had agreed to separate.
Stadler also shot and killed Rey-Bellet's brother Alain, and seriously wounded her mother, before finally killing himself.
...
"There is a profile for a man who commits a crime like this," says Philip Jaffe, professor of psychology at Geneva University.
"He tends to be very ambitious, but isolated, very contained, and he can't cope with loss. So if his wife threatens to leave him, his response is violence."
All the recent cases, including that of Rey-Bellet and Stadler, involved families who presented an outward appearance of normal, calm, orderly family life.
"Here in Switzerland we are brought up to expect everything to go according to plan," he explains.
"Just like our trains run on time, we've come to expect our lives to run to plan, and when they don't, we go wild."
...
Mr Boess blames the Swiss army's policy of requiring Swiss men, who all have to do military service, to keep their guns and ammunition at home in case of an emergency call-up.
What that means is that nearly all Swiss men have a Sturmgewehr - an assault rifle - stored somewhere in their homes. ...
"It's very common to hear women tell how their husbands remind them they have a gun in moments of tension," says Brigitte Schnegg, professor of gender politics at Berne University.
"They'll say: 'If you don't do what I want, don't forget I've got my gun upstairs.'"
...
"Family problems are seen as a defeat for the man, it all has to do with male honour." ...
Labels: anger, attachment
Monday, May 01, 2006
The Lifeline - Digital Journalist photo essay
[Background] We began to tell the story of the wounded at the Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. Once Saddam Hussein's personal hospital, it's now completely run by U.S. military medical personnel. At times it's packed with doctors and nurses rushing around tending to the incoming wounded. At other times you could not find a soul in the emergency room with the exception of someone manning the entry desk. The ER could go from zero to full speed in a matter of minutes when a call for incoming wounded came over the radio. It was an amazing thing to watch.
After several days in Baghdad we caught a flight to Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, ...Balad is the last stop for wounded U.S. patients before they continue on to a hospital in Germany and then on to the United States for recovery.
Balad had more turnover as it was a collection point for all of the wounded around Iraq. Almost every night a huge transport plane would ferry the injured on to Germany. It was a process that was so organized because, sadly, it was so routine.
...
Over the next few months we met with the same injured soldiers and Marines we saw in Iraq, but this time it was here in the States where we saw them begin to recover. They all looked so different than when I first saw them, bloody and battered. ...
[Background] We began to tell the story of the wounded at the Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. Once Saddam Hussein's personal hospital, it's now completely run by U.S. military medical personnel. At times it's packed with doctors and nurses rushing around tending to the incoming wounded. At other times you could not find a soul in the emergency room with the exception of someone manning the entry desk. The ER could go from zero to full speed in a matter of minutes when a call for incoming wounded came over the radio. It was an amazing thing to watch.
After several days in Baghdad we caught a flight to Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, ...Balad is the last stop for wounded U.S. patients before they continue on to a hospital in Germany and then on to the United States for recovery.
Balad had more turnover as it was a collection point for all of the wounded around Iraq. Almost every night a huge transport plane would ferry the injured on to Germany. It was a process that was so organized because, sadly, it was so routine.
...
Over the next few months we met with the same injured soldiers and Marines we saw in Iraq, but this time it was here in the States where we saw them begin to recover. They all looked so different than when I first saw them, bloody and battered. ...
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