Rene Denfeld: The Talking Bone

Well, to wrap this up, you know, in Talking Bone, you've got, you know, an African American man who's in prison and facing the death penalty.

You have missing women.

I'm curious about, from your own work, what type of crime needs to be a focus moving forward? And I know there's all different types.

So you know, the Lindsey Clancy case popped up for me where I just thought, man, we need to know more about postpartum depression in this country.

Clearly we need to know more.

And you know, there, there are these cases like Nancy Guthrie with the vulnerability of elderly people and elderly women, especially if they're living on their own in sort of an isolated area.

Is there anything that pops up for you that you've seen sort of over and over again that you think could really use more attention?

What immediately comes to mind for me is violence against women and children, and because this is something I see constantly.

Violence against women and children is so overlooked and downplayed and just not taken seriously, and for instance, we'll start with, like, domestic violence.

I have worked so many cases involving domestic violence.

Men that are accused of domestic violence often just get a slap on the wrist.

Hmm.

They're sent, for instance, to anger management The problem is not anger.

Usually it's entitlement and power-

Mm-hmm

... and-

Yeah, control

... it's control.

It's not, these guys usually don't have temper problems with their bosses.

They're perfectly congenial outside the home.

They just have, um, they have sexism and misogyny and, and control problems.

So, you know, a lot of times then these cases will escalate-

Mm-hmm

... because the men are not being held accountable.

There's no meaningful interventions and, you know, a lot of times if we look at a case where a man has killed his spouse, there's a long history of domestic violence where nobody really took it seriously.

Well, to wrap this up, you know, in Talking Bone, you've got, you know, an African American man who's in prison and facing the death penalty.

You have missing women.

I'm curious about, from your own work, what type of crime needs to be a focus moving forward? And I know there's all different types.

So you know, the Lindsey Clancy case popped up for me where I just thought, man, we need to know more about postpartum depression in this country.

Clearly we need to know more.

And you know, there, there are these cases like Nancy Guthrie with the vulnerability of elderly people and elderly women, especially if they're living on their own in sort of an isolated area.

Is there anything that pops up for you that you've seen sort of over and over again that you think could really use more attention?

What immediately comes to mind for me is violence against women and children, and because this is something I see constantly.

Violence against women and children is so overlooked and downplayed and just not taken seriously, and for instance, we'll start with, like, domestic violence.

I have worked so many cases involving domestic violence.

Men that are accused of domestic violence often just get a slap on the wrist.

Hmm.

They're sent, for instance, to anger management The problem is not anger.

Usually it's entitlement and power-

Mm-hmm

... and-

Yeah, control

... it's control.

It's not, these guys usually don't have temper problems with their bosses.

They're perfectly congenial outside the home.

They just have, um, they have sexism and misogyny and, and control problems.

So, you know, a lot of times then these cases will escalate-

Mm-hmm

... because the men are not being held accountable.

There's no meaningful interventions and, you know, a lot of times if we look at a case where a man has killed his spouse, there's a long history of domestic violence where nobody really took it seriously.