Kylee Montiero was practically three months pregnant when she was brutally murdered earlier this month in Rehoboth.
Her boyfriend Sean Groom, father of Kylee’s unborn child, was arrested this week and charged with homicide after he confessed to the killing and her physique was discovered buried on the property the place he was dwelling, based on police.
The media is rightly taking note of the story, however Beacon Hill shouldn’t be. Why?
Why is Maura Healey, our feminine governor, not calling a press convention and standing with our feminine Lawyer Normal, Andrea Campbell, to decry this vicious assault on a pregnant girl?
Healey and Campbell had been solely too completely satisfied to make use of girls’s bodily autonomy as a serious theme of their political campaigns. They stated girls ought to vote for them as a result of they might defend girls’s bodily autonomy. Good. Abortion rights are vital. However home violence is a profoundly extra vital bodily autonomy problem for girls. Put bluntly, useless girls don’t want abortions.
Kylee Montiero’s bodily autonomy couldn’t have been extra viciously violated, however neither Healey nor Campbell stated a phrase. The 2 highest-ranking regulation enforcement officers in Massachusetts, who declare to care about girls’s our bodies and lives, by no means say something in regards to the tens of hundreds of girls that suffer abuse yearly, or the lads who abuse them, a lot much less do they criticize the methods that fail to carry males accountable.
Against this, the courts have been sounding the alarm for a very long time.
In a latest case, the Supreme Judicial Court docket revealed stunning statistics exhibiting that home violence is essentially the most prevalent violent crime in each district court docket in Massachusetts. 70% of instances contain home abuse and virtually all are dismissed or finish with no critical punishment.
Abusive males know they may stroll away scot-free in the event that they hurt girls, so in fact they hold doing it. No surprise Groom thought nothing of killing his pregnant girlfriend. He advised cops he didn’t need her round. He stated he was nervous in regards to the monetary burden of a kid. Why ought to he take duty for impregnating her when she might simply get an abortion? How dare she impose fatherhood obligations on him.
This sense of entitlement is frequent amongst abusers, although it isn’t completely their fault. Males know that individuals like Maura Healey and Andrea Campbell don’t care about violence in opposition to girls. They see all of the useless our bodies and so they know that no person’s speaking in regards to the problem. 22 Massachusetts girls had been killed by home abuse in 2024 – a 15% enhance over the 12 months earlier than, and the numbers are on observe to be even worse in 2025. However not one authorities official has spoken out.
There’s something that we the folks can do. A invoice has been filed with the legislature that will amend our hate crime regulation to incorporate girls. Each different state in New England protects girls, however Massachusetts doesn’t. Our state covers each conceivable class, however not girls. Even transgender is protected, so if a lady was a person, and she or he is killed, it’s a hate crime, but when she has at all times been a lady, it isn’t. Even when I beat you mindless whereas screaming “I’m punching you within the face since you are feminine,” it’s not a hate crime. By refusing to incorporate girls, our authorities has declared as official state coverage that it’s completely authorized to focus on girls for violence.
Including girls to the hate crime regulation will ship a unique message, and clarify to the residents of Massachusetts that harming a lady as a result of she is feminine shouldn’t be solely against the law in opposition to her, however can also be against the law in opposition to girls as a category, our neighborhood as an entire, and democracy itself. Hate crimes are designed to acknowledge that all of us have pores and skin within the recreation when somebody is harm due to who they’re in society.
We will all assist change the regulation by calling Healey’s and Campbell’s places of work, protesting on the State Home, refusing to vote for anybody until they prioritize fixing the hate crime regulation, emailing our state senators and representatives, speaking in regards to the problem on social media, telling our mates and neighbors, and so forth.
If this horrendous disrespect for girls bothers you, please do what you possibly can. If it doesn’t, get skilled assist and depart Massachusetts till you’re all tuned up.
Nancy Lane/Boston Herald
Gov. Maura Healey (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald, File)
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