After the break-up, what about the lake house?

IT was a perfect party — vodka lemonade on a dock overlooking a lake, dozens of close friends, a cool misty night in the country a couple of hours north of New York.

Inside, the house spoke of a passionate interest in style, and of a committed relationship. Silhouettes of the couple who owned the house hung on a wall in the master bedroom; the couple’s nickname — Benford — was spelled out in large letters leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

But the couple, Benjamin Dixon, 31, and Bradford Shellhammer, 33, who had planned the evening as a commitment ceremony, had broken up three months earlier. Still, with airplane tickets purchased by some of the guests, a catering deposit paid and a house they haven’t been able to sell, they figured it made sense to go ahead and have a party anyway.

Their tale of lost love has a familiar arc — love sparks, then blooms; lives intertwine; moments are lost and misunderstandings creep in; eventually the two begin to live as strangers — and an epilogue that has become increasingly familiar as well, as unwanted houses become prisons rather than cocoons.

Rather than being a glossy testament to their taste and their partnership, their house in Stanfordville, in Dutchess County, is now a dead weight that entangles them and makes it impossible to move on. Having bought it and an apartment in Manhattan at the height of the real estate boom (and having made an agreement with a third partner in their lake house property not to sell it until December 2009), they are left with joint custody of two large mortgages. They are also left with two carefully decorated homes filled with one-of-a-kind accessories found on eBay and quirky furnishings by high-end designers like the Dutch collective Droog that are reminders of what came before and, Mr. Dixon said, “big reminders of what was supposed to be.”

See After the break-up, what about the lake house?
New York Times

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Ending prisoner rape in Michigan

LINDA MCFARLANE writes:

The Michigan Department of Corrections (DOC) last week settled a class action lawsuit brought by over 500 female prisoners who were sexually abused in the state’s prisons. With the $100-million settlement agreement, hopefully the DOC will also begin to take the proactive steps needed to prevent and address the sexual violence that continues to plague its facilities.

This decision came after more than ten years of litigation, during which the courts repeatedly ruled against the state.

Although the prevalence of sexual abuse in Michigan prisons is well documented, leading officials have insisted that this type of violence is not a serious problem. In 2008, DOC Director Patricia Caruso opposed national standards being developed to address sexual abuse behind bars, stating that they would require that a “disproportionate amount of resources be dedicated to an issue that affects less than 1% of the DOC prison population.”

This claim is in blatant defiance of the facts. A 2007 national survey by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, which surveyed inmates at three Michigan prisons, found that the proportion of prisoners experiencing sexual victimization in the past year alone ranged from 4.6% to 7.9%.

Rape and other forms of sexual violence cause long-term harm to survivors and their communities. Prisoner rape survivors suffer physical injury, contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and experience severe psychological trauma. The vast majority of inmates ultimately return home, bringing their experiences and medical and psychiatric conditions with them.