性别避风港: 容易被忽视的女性犯罪

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年的某个冬日，对于纽约州纽华克的年轻夫妇蒂姆·霍伊特和华内塔·霍伊特来说，是悲痛的一天。他们的大儿子——未满三个月大的埃里克猝死。一直以来对于婴儿死亡原因的确切诊断都是一个难题，这次也未能例外。医生无法断定埃里克的死因——他就只是简单地停止了呼吸而已。第二年，华内塔生下了他们的第二个孩子詹姆斯。不幸的是，第二个孩子也突然死亡。1968年，当这对夫妇的第三个孩子朱莉，因为不明原因猝死之后。这对悲痛的夫妇找到了锡拉丘兹的阿尔弗雷德·斯坦因施耐德博士，他专门研究婴儿猝死综合症( Sudden Infant Death Syndrome )，简称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.
斯坦因施耐德博士经过实例分析认为，SIDS是可以遗传的，这也可以解释为什么在同一个家庭中会有多个婴孩猝死。华内特后来又生下了两个孩子——茉莉和诺亚，尽管博士悉心照料，但是这两个孩子依然没能逃脱死亡魔咒。1972年，斯坦因施耐德博士在《儿科学》杂志发表了一篇里程碑式的论文。他在论文中写到SIDS是一种遗传性疾病，和婴儿睡眠窒息有关。论文引起了强烈反响，而斯坦因施耐德博士所推荐的睡眠监视器的销量也大幅上涨。二十年以来，霍伊特一家（也就是论文中所提到的“H”一家）的遭遇，也成为了医学界的悲剧范本。

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，在九十年代的早些时候，纽约州北部偏僻地区的一名地方律师在一个颇富质疑精神的法庭病理学者的指导下，重新阅读了斯坦因施耐德博士的论文，并展开了一系列调查。理查德·福斯特曼和杰米·塔兰两人将调查结果写进《无辜者之死》一书中。1994年，在警察的审讯中，华内塔·霍伊特承认她的孩子并非死于SIDS，而是她亲手闷死的。然而随后，她又推翻了自己的口供。1995年，华内塔因为杀害自己的五个孩子被定罪，并判处七十五年徒刑。

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.
这不禁使我联想起我在之前的文章《装满子弹的枪》中所提到的艾米·毕晓普的案件。毕晓普故事的其中一个主题是：来自父母的关爱有时是十分危险的；而在本案中，华内塔残忍地接连杀害自己的五个孩子——从表面上看起来，这两起事件毫无联系。然而这两起案件有一个共同点，那就是无论是邻居，警察，甚至医学工作者，都非常容易忽视那些原本是非常明显的可疑行为——而这仅仅是因为犯罪者是女性。

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·霍克小学的屠杀之后，人们开始对心理健康提高警惕——要及时发现个体的潜在危险行为并且促使他们接受治疗。这比起要求更大范围的枪支管制和更为严格的游戏分级审查显然要可靠的多。然而毕晓普案件的发生却告诉我们，这种预警机制其实很难实施。艾米·毕晓普曾经射杀自己的亲生弟弟，她在一家煎饼店里对另一个女人拳打脚踢，她甚至曾经被指控给她在哈佛大学的一名导师邮寄炸弹——难道这一切还不足以构成“潜在危险行为”吗？然而事实却是没有任何人试图阻止毕晓普或者给予心理治疗。这是为什么呢？

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.”
其中一个原因，无疑是“集体否认”的作用，不仅仅是家庭方面，包括社区、地方机关都不认为毕晓普会犯罪。但是另一个问题也许在于毕晓普的性别。1998年拉丽莎·麦克法夸尔（Larissa MacFarquhar）在阅读了两本关于女性犯罪者的著作之后提出了刑事司法体系中的性别歧视问题，她指出“这一系列的故事清楚地告诉我们，只要你是个充满了女人味的女人，你就可以轻松愉快地割破邻居的喉管，并且有很大的几率免于谋杀指控。”

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.
文中麦克法夸尔提到了令人毛骨悚然的“黑寡妇”（杀害丈夫或恋人的女性）和“白衣死神”的故事。在这些故事中女性犯罪者往往制造多起命案，在事发很久以后才会被警察注意，原因是警察总是认为女人是做不到这种事情的。然而当我们回头再看这些案件，其实有些证据的指向已经十分明显了。比如在“白衣死神”案中的珍妮·琼斯（Genene Jones），她是德克萨斯州的一名儿科护士，曾先后杀害她护理过的46名婴孩。在她1983年被控谋杀之前，调查者曾将这些事件归咎于意外、医疗事故、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.
正如麦克法夸尔所说，该案的犯罪调查员是“最顽固的大男子主义者”。一直以来，人们总是认为女性具有阴柔娇弱的性格特点。所以在选举、就业、参军等各个方面将女性排除在外，而在刑事司法体系的角度，人们还是据此认为女性不具有犯罪所需的精神力和行动力，而将女性从嫌犯名单中剔除。

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.
我们再来看看卡拉·霍穆尔卡（Karla Homolka）一案。1991年，这个年轻的安大略女子嫁给了一名会计保罗·博纳多，他们的婚姻生活非常甜蜜。可是1993年，加拿大当地警方开始怀疑博纳多涉嫌一系列强奸未遂事件。调查人员还认为博纳多与当时发生的两起强奸并谋杀学龄女孩的案件有关。卡拉接受审讯时声称，她的丈夫正是这一系列案件的主谋，他暴力迫使卡拉加入犯罪行动，使自己成为共犯。就这样，卡拉·霍穆尔卡，一个中产阶级的白人女兽医，被自己专横的丈夫暴力以对的悲惨遭遇赢得了舆论同情。这个女子还有着悲惨的过去，1991年她15岁的妹妹塔米，由于在圣诞聚会中喝下了过量香槟被自己的呕吐物窒息而离世。

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.
由于霍穆尔卡目击了自己丈夫的暴行并参与了犯罪，检察人员无法认定她无罪，但是检察人员保证，只要卡拉愿意出庭担任她丈夫的污点证人，就可以减轻量刑。据称加拿大司法机关在量刑时参考了FBI分析员罗伊·哈兹伍德的一篇题为《性虐待中顺从的受害者》的报告。然而，一切尘埃落定之后，卡拉公开承认了自己的全部罪行。她并不仅仅是丈夫暴力胁迫的顺从受害者，而是整场犯罪的积极参与者。后来的家庭录像清楚地反映出了卡拉在性暴力中的角色，甚至还清楚地表明，塔米的死并非意外——卡拉从诊所窃得兽用镇定剂，向自己的妹妹下毒，随后她和她的丈夫，一起强奸了塔米。

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.
一直以来，犯罪学传统观点都认为，在犯罪，尤其是暴力犯罪的倾向性方面，女性确实弱于男性。最近的十几年来，这个犯罪的性别鸿沟似乎变窄了，为数不少的理论和事实从某种程度上证明了这一点。一些人认为现在的女性犯罪数量高于往年，但是另有一些人认为实际的犯罪数量并没有增多，只是警察重新认识了女性犯罪，所以有更多的犯罪事实被发现了而已。