性別避風港: 容易被忽視的女性犯罪
One winter day in 1961, in Newark Valley, New York, the young couple Tim and Waneta Hoyt experienced a horrible tragedy. Their first child, Eric, who was not yet three months old, suddenly died. The precise causes of infant mortality are sometimes mysterious, and doctors could find no obvious explanation for Eric’s death—he had simply stopped breathing. The following year, Waneta gave birth to another boy, James. But he, too, abruptly died. It was only after the couple lost a third infant, Julie, in 1968, that Tim and Waneta turned to Alfred Steinschneider, a medical researcher in Syracuse who specialized in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or S.I.D.S.
1961年的某個冬日，對於紐約州紐華克的年輕夫婦蒂姆·霍伊特和華內塔·霍伊特來說，是悲痛的一天。他們的大兒子——未滿三個月大的埃裏克猝死。一直以來對於嬰兒死亡原因的確切診斷都是一個難題，這次也未能例外。醫生無法斷定埃裏克的死因——他就只是簡單地停止了呼吸而已。第二年，華內塔生下了他們的第二個孩子詹姆斯。不幸的是，第二個孩子也突然死亡。1968年，當這對夫婦的第三個孩子朱莉，因爲不明原因猝死之後。這對悲痛的夫婦找到了錫拉丘茲的阿爾弗雷德·斯坦因施耐德博士，他專門研究嬰兒猝死綜合症( Sudden Infant Death Syndrome )，簡稱S.I.D.S。
After examining the case history, Dr. Steinschneider concluded that S.I.D.S. could be genetic, which would explain the deaths of multiple infants in the same family. Waneta gave birth to two more children, Molly and Noah, both of whom died while under Steinschneider’s care. In 1972, Steinschneider published a landmark paper in the journal Pediatrics, in which he argued that S.I.D.S. could be hereditary, and was related to sleep apnea. The paper was a great success, and sales of sleep monitors—which Steinschneider recommended—took off. For twenty years, the Hoyts, who were described in the paper simply as “the ‘H’ family,” served as a sad exemplar in medical literature.
斯坦因施耐德博士經過實例分析認爲，SIDS是可以遺傳的，這也可以解釋爲什麼在同一個家庭中會有多個嬰孩猝死。華內特後來又生下了兩個孩子——茉莉和諾亞，儘管博士悉心照料，但是這兩個孩子依然沒能逃脫死亡魔咒。1972年，斯坦因施耐德博士在《兒科學》雜誌發表了一篇里程碑式的論文。他在論文中寫到SIDS是一種遺傳性疾病，和嬰兒睡眠窒息有關。論文引起了強烈反響，而斯坦因施耐德博士所推薦的睡眠監視器的銷量也大幅上漲。二十年以來，霍伊特一家（也就是論文中所提到的“H”一家）的遭遇，也成爲了醫學界的悲劇範本。
However, in the early nineties, a district attorney in upstate New York, who had been tipped off by a suspicious forensic pathologist, took a closer look at Steinschneider’s paper and opened an investigation. As Richard Firstman and Jamie Talan recount in their book, “The Death of Innocents,” under questioning by police in 1994, Waneta Hoyt confessed that her children had died not from S.I.D.S. but, rather, because she had smothered them. She later recanted this confession. But, in 1995, she was convicted of killing all five children and sentenced to seventy-five years in prison.
然而，在九十年代的早些時候，紐約州北部偏僻地區的一名地方律師在一個頗富質疑精神的法庭病理學者的指導下，重新閱讀了斯坦因施耐德博士的論文，並展開了一系列調查。理查德·福斯特曼和傑米·塔蘭兩人將調查結果寫進《無辜者之死》一書中。1994年，在警察的審訊中，華內塔·霍伊特承認她的孩子並非死於SIDS，而是她親手悶死的。然而隨後，她又推翻了自己的口供。1995年，華內塔因爲殺害自己的五個孩子被定罪，並判處七十五年徒刑。
On the surface, this case might seem unrelated to the story of Amy Bishop, which I recount in a piece in the current issue of the magazine (“A Loaded Gun”). One theme of the Bishop saga is the dangerously formidable power of parental love, which seems a far cry from Waneta Hoyt, who dispatched her own children, one by one. But the two cases share a common, troubling thread: neighbors, police officers, and even the medical establishment may be more likely to overlook glaringly suspicious behavior when the perpetrator of that behavior is a woman.
這不禁使我聯想起我在之前的文章《裝滿子彈的槍》中所提到的艾米·畢曉普的案件。畢曉普故事的其中一個主題是：來自父母的關愛有時是十分危險的；而在本案中，華內塔殘忍地接連殺害自己的五個孩子——從表面上看起來，這兩起事件毫無聯繫。然而這兩起案件有一個共同點，那就是無論是鄰居，警察，甚至醫學工作者，都非常容易忽視那些原本是非常明顯的可疑行爲——而這僅僅是因爲犯罪者是女性。
In the aftermath of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, last December, there has been much public discussion about the necessity of greater vigilance regarding mental-health issues—about our ability to recognize red flags early and get potentially dangerous individuals into treatment. It’s a reassuring notion, and less divisive, certainly, than calls for greater gun control or for censoring video games. But, as the Bishop story makes clear, this kind of early-warning system is often difficult to institute in practice. Amy Bishop shot her own brother, after all. She punched a woman at a pancake restaurant. She stood accused of mailing a bomb to one of her supervisors at Harvard. Red flags don’t get much brighter than that. Yet, nobody stepped in. Why not?
去年十二月，桑迪·霍克小學的屠殺之後，人們開始對心理健康提高警惕——要及時發現個體的潛在危險行爲並且促使他們接受治療。這比起要求更大範圍的槍支管制和更爲嚴格的遊戲分級審查顯然要可靠的多。然而畢曉普案件的發生卻告訴我們，這種預警機制其實很難實施。艾米·畢曉普曾經射殺自己的親生弟弟，她在一家煎餅店裏對另一個女人拳打腳踢，她甚至曾經被指控給她在哈佛大學的一名導師郵寄炸彈——難道這一切還不足以構成“潛在危險行爲”嗎？然而事實卻是沒有任何人試圖阻止畢曉普或者給予心理治療。這是爲什麼呢？
One answer, which I explore in the piece, is the role that collective denial can play, not just in families but in communities and local institutions, like police departments. But another answer may lie in Bishop’s gender. In a 1998 article about gender bias in the criminal-justice system, Larissa MacFarquhar, reviewing two books about female killers, observes, “The message that emerges from this collection of tales is clear enough: be a woman, act like a woman, and you may blithely strew your neighborhood with bloody axes and severed heads, since the chances are that you will get away with murder.”
其中一個原因，無疑是“集體否認”的作用，不僅僅是家庭方面，包括社區、地方機關都不認爲畢曉普會犯罪。但是另一個問題也許在於畢曉普的性別。1998年拉麗莎·麥克法夸爾（Larissa MacFarquhar）在閱讀了兩本關於女性犯罪者的著作之後提出了刑事司法體系中的性別歧視問題，她指出“這一系列的故事清楚地告訴我們，只要你是個充滿了女人味的女人，你就可以輕鬆愉快地割破鄰居的喉管，並且有很大的機率免於謀殺指控。”
In her article, MacFarquhar relates gruesome tales of so-called Black Widows (women who murder their husbands or lovers) and Angels of Death (women who kill those placed in their professional care). These women often skirt suspicion and kill prolifically because it doesn’t occur to the cops until much, much too late that a female could be capable of such a thing. In retrospect, the crimes seem gallingly obvious: Genene Jones, an Angel of Death who worked as a pediatric nurse in Texas, is believed to have murdered as many as forty-six children before authorities caught up with her, in 1983. But as the murders are actually being committed, investigators prove far too ready to attribute the mounting body count to accidents, medical error, or a male perpetrator.
文中麥克法夸爾提到了令人毛骨悚然的“黑寡婦”（殺害丈夫或戀人的女性）和“白衣死神”的故事。在這些故事中女性犯罪者往往製造多起命案，在事發很久以後纔會被警察注意，原因是警察總是認爲女人是做不到這種事情的。然而當我們回頭再看這些案件，其實有些證據的指向已經十分明顯了。比如在“白衣死神”案中的珍妮·瓊斯（Genene Jones），她是德克薩斯州的一名兒科護士，曾先後殺害她護理過的46名嬰孩。在她1983年被控謀殺之前，調查者曾將這些事件歸咎於意外、醫療事故、以及其他男性嫌疑犯。
The detection of crime, as MacFarquhar notes, is “one of the most stubborn redoubts of male chauvinism.” Women have fought to undo the patriarchal notions of gentle femininity that in the past have excluded them from suffrage, employment, and combat roles in the military. But in the criminal-justice system, they may still be construed as lacking in the moral and physical agency that is necessary to carry out a violent crime.
正如麥克法夸爾所說，該案的犯罪調查員是“最頑固的大男子主義者”。一直以來，人們總是認爲女性具有陰柔嬌弱的性格特點。所以在選舉、就業、參軍等各個方面將女性排除在外，而在刑事司法體系的角度，人們還是據此認爲女性不具有犯罪所需的精神力和行動力，而將女性從嫌犯名單中剔除。
Consider the case of Karla Homolka, a young Ontario woman. In 1991, she married an accountant, Paul Bernardo. They were an attractive, apparently happy couple, but, in 1993, Canadian authorities began to suspect Bernardo in a string of unsolved rapes. Investigators also linked Bernardo to the recent rape and murder of two local schoolgirls. When Homolka was questioned by police, she informed them that her husband was indeed responsible for the crimes, and that he had beaten her savagely and forced her to become an accomplice. Homolka made a sympathetic witness—a middle-class white woman who worked at a veterinary clinic and had been battered by her domineering spouse. She had also suffered a recent tragedy: in 1991, her fifteen-year old sister, Tammy, had died after she passed out from drinking too much champagne at a Christmas party and choked on her own vomit.
我們再來看看卡拉·霍穆爾卡（Karla Homolka）一案。1991年，這個年輕的安大略女子嫁給了一名會計保羅·博納多，他們的婚姻生活非常甜蜜。可是1993年，加拿大當地警方開始懷疑博納多涉嫌一系列強姦未遂事件。調查人員還認爲博納多與當時發生的兩起強姦並謀殺學齡女孩的案件有關。卡拉接受審訊時聲稱，她的丈夫正是這一系列案件的主謀，他暴力迫使卡拉加入犯罪行動，使自己成爲共犯。就這樣，卡拉·霍穆爾卡，一箇中產階級的白人女獸醫，被自己專橫的丈夫暴力以對的悲慘遭遇贏得了輿論同情。這個女子還有着悲慘的過去，1991年她15歲的妹妹塔米，由於在聖誕聚會中喝下了過量香檳被自己的嘔吐物窒息而離世。
Because Homolka had known about her husband’s crimes and played some role in them, prosecutors could not offer her full immunity. But they struck a plea bargain in which she agreed to testify against Bernardo in exchange for a light sentence. In assessing her culpability, Canadian investigators were reportedly influenced by a paper, written by Roy Hazelwood, an F.B.I. profiler, called “Compliant Victims of the Sexual Sadist.” It was only after Homolka’s deal was in place that she provided a fuller confession, explaining that she had not merely been a witness to Bernardo’s crimes but an active participant as well. Home videos that showed Homolka’s role in the sexual assaults to be anything but forced surfaced not long afterward. And it ultimately emerged that Tammy’s death was not an accident: Homolka had drugged her sister with an animal tranquilizer that she had stolen from work, then she and Bernardo had raped her.
由於霍穆爾卡目擊了自己丈夫的暴行並參與了犯罪，檢察人員無法認定她無罪，但是檢察人員保證，只要卡拉願意出庭擔任她丈夫的污點證人，就可以減輕量刑。據稱加拿大司法機關在量刑時參考了FBI分析員羅伊·哈茲伍德的一篇題爲《性虐待中順從的受害者》的報告。然而，一切塵埃落定之後，卡拉公開承認了自己的全部罪行。她並不僅僅是丈夫暴力脅迫的順從受害者，而是整場犯罪的積極參與者。後來的家庭錄像清楚地反映出了卡拉在性暴力中的角色，甚至還清楚地表明，塔米的死並非意外——卡拉從診所竊得獸用鎮定劑，向自己的妹妹下毒，隨後她和她的丈夫，一起強姦了塔米。
To be sure, women are less apt to commit crimes—especially violent crimes—than men are; that has long been an accepted criminological fact. In recent decades, the “gender gap” in crime has narrowed somewhat, however, and there are a number of theories that might account for that change. Some believe that women are committing more crimes than they have in the past, but others argue that women are simply being investigated and arrested more often, as cops gradually come to terms with the concept of a female criminal.
一直以來，犯罪學傳統觀點都認爲，在犯罪，尤其是暴力犯罪的傾向性方面，女性確實弱於男性。最近的十幾年來，這個犯罪的性別鴻溝似乎變窄了，爲數不少的理論和事實從某種程度上證明了這一點。一些人認爲現在的女性犯罪數量高於往年，但是另有一些人認爲實際的犯罪數量並沒有增多，只是警察重新認識了女性犯罪，所以有更多的犯罪事實被發現了而已。Still, when you look at penalty statistics, it seems undeniable that our justice system remains warped by some measure of gender bias. In 1987, the year the Massachusetts State Police ruled that the death of Seth Bishop was an accident, twenty-two per cent of people arrested for “serious crimes” in the United States were women. But women were only ten per cent of those convicted of such crimes—and only five per cent of those imprisoned. A recent law-review article described the persistence of certain “chivalric norms,” which might explain the disproportionately low number of women who receive the death penalty in this country. (Only twelve women have been executed in the United States since 1976, as opposed to thirteen hundred and eight men.)
事實上，查閱刑事犯罪數據時不難發現，性別差異依然存在。1987年，當馬塞諸塞州警方認定賽斯·畢曉普死於意外的那一年，因爲嚴重犯罪行爲被逮捕的嫌犯有22%爲女性，然而只有其中的10%被定罪，服刑的女性更是隻佔有5%。最近的某篇法律報道認爲，這個國家中女性犯罪者被處以死刑的概率過低的原因，或許是某種對於騎士精神的貫徹。（1976年以來，美國共有1308男性被處以死刑，而女性僅爲12人）。
If a bias in favor of women is statistically obvious in the prosecution of crimes, there is likely a similar bias in the investigation of wrongdoing. This claim is harder to substantiate, of course—there is no way to accurately quantify the number of potential crimes and suspects that law enforcement opts not to pursue. But one useful counterfactual exercise would be to consider the events surrounding the death of Seth Bishop, on December 6, 1986, and wonder how things might have played out had the perpetrator been his brother rather than his sister. Would the police have accepted the notion that the shooting was an accident due to incompetence with a gun? If a young man had fled the scene of a shooting, brandished a shotgun in an effort to commandeer a vehicle, then ended up in an armed standoff with two police officers, would the cops have been so quick to release him without charges? Would officials have believed the explanation, which the Bishop parents still maintain, that this behavior was simply the product of “shock”? MacFarquhar points out that one feminist critique of gender bias in the treatment of violence is that it can “infantilize” women: “In supposing that a woman can’t be truly responsible for her violent acts, we are treating her as if she was a child.”
如果在案件起訴方面有如此明顯的對女性的偏袒，那麼我們有理由相信在案件調查的過程中也或多或少存在着這種不公。當然這種說法很難證實——因爲我們無法去計算有多少潛在犯罪沒有收到法律追究。但是1986年12月6日的賽斯·畢曉普之死也許能夠說明一點問題——如果當時被懷疑的是賽斯的哥哥，而不是她的姐姐艾米·畢曉普，事情究竟會怎樣？警察們是否仍然認爲這只是一個沒有資格使用槍支的小孩的一次走火？如果揮舞着槍支從槍殺的現場逃離，並試圖劫持一輛交通工具逃跑，最後被兩個全副武裝的警察截住的是個年輕男孩，那麼警察還會那麼快就放棄指控並將他釋放嗎？那些官員，包括畢曉普的父母，是否依舊堅持把這些行爲解釋爲“過於震驚而做出的”呢？麥克法夸爾之處這種性別主義的表現之一就是女性“嬰兒化”，“女性不需要對她們的暴力行爲承擔太多責任，我們一直在把她們當做孩子看待”。
Of course, Amy Bishop was not just a woman—she was also an academic, and a related question is whether warning signs were overlooked because some degree of eccentricity is accepted, even nurtured, in a university setting. “Academe is often home to oddballs,” an article about the case in the Chronicle of Higher Education conceded. “Choosing to spend your life in a library or a laboratory is, by definition, out of the ordinary.” There is a fine line between eccentricity and instability—a line that is sometimes indiscernible. And in our rush to pre?mpt future mass shootings, we don’t want to start involuntarily committing any university professor who is given to erratic behavior.
誠然，艾米·畢曉普不僅僅是一名女性——她還是一名學者。所以我們總是把那些危險的信號解讀爲學者的怪癖而不予重視。某篇高等教育編年史的文章中有這樣的句子：“學術是怪胎的搖籃。當你選擇把餘生獻給圖書館或者實驗室的時候，你的人生已經與常人不同。”然怪胎與瘋子只有一牆之隔，這個界限極易被忽視。當可怕的槍擊案件發生時，我們誰也不會下意識地把犯罪和某個大學教授的奇怪行爲聯繫起來。
But according to a lawsuit filed by the families of two of Bishop’s victims, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson, Vistasp Karbhari, the provost of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, was well aware of Bishop’s “dangerous instability,” yet did nothing to intervene. “Bishop had a history of severe, observable mental instability and violence dating back more than 20 years,” the suit alleges. According to court filings, the university had procedures in place to report potentially dangerous people on campus to the police and to get them into therapy—procedures of a sort that were instituted at universities across the country in the aftermath of shooting incidents at other educational institutions, like Virginia Tech.
畢曉普案的兩名受害者家屬說，亞拉巴馬大學漢茨維爾分校的督學卡布哈里已經對畢曉普的危險傾向有所覺察，卻沒有作爲。他們說“畢曉普的精神病史和暴力傾向可追溯至二十年前。”該案發生後，大學已經採取措施，將校園中一些潛在危險人員名單報送警方，並敦促他們接受治療。美國的其他學校，例如弗吉尼亞理工大學，也採取了類似措施。
In something of a bombshell development, the Huntsville Times reported earlier this month that Amy Bishop herself wrote an affidavit from prison in which she described watching Karbhari flee the administration building along with David Williams, who was president of the university at the time, and an armed escort—because they believed that she was coming to see them. This is a damning image: if Karbhari was so concerned about his own safety, how could he not warn Bishop’s students or her colleagues? But a university spokesperson has dismissed the claim, pointing out that in the same affidavit Bishop mentions that she “sees dead people.” (Bishop told me that she has heard “voices” and suffered from “hallucinations” since shortly after her brother’s death.)
隨着案件進展，漢茨維爾時報本月早些時候披露了艾米·畢曉普的監獄口供，她說親眼看到了督學卡布哈里和校長大衛·威廉姆斯在武裝保護下逃離了行政樓。這就是一個可惡的事實了，如果卡布哈里如此關心自己的安危，那麼他爲什麼不警告畢曉普的學生和同事呢？但是學校的發言人隨後否認了這一說法，並指出畢曉普的口供中還說到她會“看到死去的人”。（作者注：畢曉普說她在弟弟死後的一段時間裏飽受幻覺的折磨，並且常常會聽到雜音。）
Bishop is also not exactly an objective source on the subject of Karbhari: her parents expressed confusion to me about her decision to shoot her fellow-professors, some of whom were friends of hers, when it was Karbhari whom she perceived as her greatest antagonist. I’m not suggesting that Bishop would lie in her affidavit simply to assist in a lawsuit against the provost, but there do seem to be grounds for assessing her story with a skeptical eye.
畢曉普並不是卡布哈里事件的唯一信息來源。畢曉普的父母也說，女兒一直視卡布哈里爲最大的敵人。所以她槍殺了自己的同事甚至朋友，卻沒有殺卡布哈里的行爲令人費解。我並不是否認畢曉普爲了構陷這位督學而僞造口供的可能性，但是我們可以帶着一種懷疑的目光看待她的故事。
Another person named in the lawsuit is Amy Bishop’s husband, Jim Anderson. If anyone was in a position to spot red flags, it would presumably be her spouse, with whom she often collaborated in her research, and who drove her to campus on the day that she shot her colleagues. According to the lawsuit, Anderson “had direct knowledge of his wife’s impairment, her history of violence, her anger and threats toward colleagues over the denial of tenure, and her acquisition and use of a firearm shortly before the massacre.”
另一個證詞來自畢曉普的丈夫，吉姆·安德森。整個案件中最能意識到畢曉普危險行爲的人莫過於他了。因爲他經常對畢曉普的研究給予協助，並且在案發當天也載着畢曉普到學校。案宗顯示，安德森“對她妻子的所有危險信號——包括她過去的暴力經歷，她在終生教授申請失敗後的憤怒和對同事的恐嚇，以及她在案件發生前使用火槍的情況——均知之甚詳”。
“He, too, knew of her dangerous propensities,” Allen Brinkley, an attorney representing the Davis and Johnson families, said in 2011. “He more than anybody.”
“他什麼都知道。”畢曉普案受害人的律師說。
Anderson’s role is one of the most unsettling features of the whole affair, because either he grasped that his wife was dangerous and did nothing or he, too, was oblivious to the warning signs. While it might be tempting, even comforting, to conclude that the family members of a killer would be the first to register tremors of danger, it may actually be the case that those closest to an unstable person have too much invested, emotionally, to take a dispassionate view. Perhaps the closer you are to someone the more blinded you become to what they are capable of. Even after Waneta Hoyt confessed to smothering all five of his children, her husband, Tim, continued to assert that she was innocent. He insisted that Waneta’s confession was coerced even as she was tried, convicted, and sent to prison, and close friends and neighbors of the family agreed—as did Waneta and Tim’s one surviving child, who was adopted.
安德森的存在是整個事件中唯一的變數。或許他注意到了妻子的行爲卻沒有制止，又或者他司空見慣以致沒有注意。兇手的家人能夠第一時間發現兇手的危險傾向並制止，這固然是令人欣慰的，然而事實上有時候正因爲是最親近的人，所以對那些危險信號視而不見。開篇提到的霍伊特案中，即使在華內塔承認自己殺害嬰兒的罪行之後，她的丈夫蒂姆，依然堅持認爲他的妻子是無罪的。即使是在華內塔在監獄服刑的期間，他的丈夫蒂姆，依然認定華內塔的認罪是出於強迫。她的摯友和家人同樣這樣認爲，他們還收養了華內塔和蒂姆唯一倖存孩子。
This raises a chilling question: If the killer’s own family and neighbors miss the red flags, what hope do the rest of us have?
這就帶來了一個令人心寒的問題：如果兇手的家人和朋友都無法注意到那些潛在的危險信號，那麼我們還能指望誰來阻止暴行呢？
譯者：Lizzzzz
