A plea bargain in the making will give Marie Pizem only a few years in jail and she won't be charged with murdering her daughter. A legal and family expert accuses the State Prosecution of treating violent mothers with kid gloves.
The case at hand, publicized last summer, involves Ronny Ron and his daughter-in-law-turned-lover, mother of the victim, 4-year-old Rose. An investigation began when the girl was reported missing, leading to the arrests of Ron and Marie on suspicion of conspiring to kill her. The body was found in a suitcase in a nearby river, with the actual murder, it is alleged, having been committed by Ron.
Dr. Yoav Mazeh, a lawyer, researcher and lecturer on family law, told Arutz-7’s Hebrew news magazine on Tuesday that the plea bargain in the making – under which Ron would be sentenced to life in prison and Marie would receive 4-6 years in jail – is “indicative of a broader State Prosecution trend not to be strict with mothers who harm their children.”
“We are witness to a chilling phenomenon of late,” Mazeh said, “in which parents kill or harm their children. Instead of enlisting together as a society to fight this with full force, the Prosecution employs a very problematic approach when it comes to women. When the father is the one who hurts the children, the Prosecution does what it is supposed to do and takes a proactive approach to mete out punishment. But when it’s the mother, the Prosecution takes a very soft approach and does not fully enforce the letter of the law.”
“In addition to this case of Marie Pizem,” Mazeh said, “there was a case last year involving a woman named Olga Borisov who drowned her 4-year-old son, and there too the Prosecution reached a plea bargain with her.” Borisov was accused and convicted only of manslaughter, not murder, because she had been in a depressed state when she drowned her son.
Mazeh explained that the Prosecution’s position is based on a “mistaken gender-based conception that the mother is weak, that she is a victim. In many cases this is simply not true. By consistently taking this wrong approach, the Prosecution is forsaking its mission and sending a message to mothers that it is understandable if they harm their children.”
“When a father complains that a mother is abusing her children," Mazeh said, "the police do nothing and the Prosecution closes the case. The result is that the children are the ones who are hurt... Law enforcement has social messages for all those who are considering doing a similar act. There must be a clear declaration that mothers must not harm their children.”