In commenting recently on the Alvaro Castillo case I said that one problem with domestic abuse is that our society, and especially the law and law enforcement, treats a household as sacrosanct under the mistaken assumption that Constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure trump the rights of subservient residents in a household. By ‘subservient residents’ I mean for the most part women and children who live in the control of the head of the household.

If the Garrido case isn’t proof of my contention I would like to know what you would accept as proof.

CNN reports:

• “Police acknowledged Friday that someone called 911 in 2006 to report that children appeared to be living in tents in a neighbor's backyard. Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf told reporters a deputy visited the Garrido home after the call, but did not go in the backyard.”

This is clearly not a case in which law enforcement genuinely had no cause to insist on inspecting all parts of the man’s property. It is yet another pathetic example of the way law enforcement respects a man’s rights to do as he pleases on his own property, even when there is evidence that what pleases him is illegal.

Or what about Garrido’s abduction and rape of Katie Hall in 1976? She stood there naked, pleading with a cop to rescue her. That was over 30 years ago. We haven’t learned anything in all that time.

I still believe that the reason Michael King was so brazen in his abduction of Denise Lee boils down to the same thing. In the past, King apparently was accused of holding young women against their will and in at least one case of threatening to kill a young woman. TruTV’s Ashleigh Banfield said that didn’t “sound like an indictable offense.” Huh?

I suspect King killed before and got away with it, even when the police were alerted.

This isn’t a Constitutional crisis or a time to enact new laws. It’s just time for people to insist that the cops arrest the dominant, physically stronger person in any situation involving domestic violence.