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Updates and a bizarre new missing-persons case

By Dr. Brian Russell • on December 15, 2009

Tiger Woods updates:

1) A major sponsor, consulting firm Accenture, has dropped Tiger Woods as its spokesperson. Looks like the folks at Accenture have been reading my blog! Good!

2) Some in the media are speculating that Tiger Woods has “sex addiction.” That’s a crock, and even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t excuse anything. Wanting to do something so badly that you’re willing to hurt your family to do it may mean you’re a messed-up individual psychologically, but it still doesn’t mean you can’t resist doing the behavior. It just means you’re selfish enough to put your wants above your family’s needs. That’s why I think that infidelity is a legitimate factor to consider in custody cases. While infidelity may not be a factor in dividing property due to “no-fault” divorce laws in 49 states, as a child custody expert, I do think it’s reasonable to consider it as a factor in determining custody of divorcing couples’ children. I have to question the judgment and commitment of a parent who’s willing to put his/her children’s happy home in jeopardy to have an affair.

3) Multiple “mistresses” of Tiger Woods have given interviews in which they’ve claimed to be “sorry” for helping Woods hurt his family. No, they’re not. If helping a married man hurt his family really bothered these women, they wouldn’t have done it.

4) Representatives of Florida’s child protective services reportedly have visited the Woods home, apparently to determine whether an altercation between Woods and his wife posed any danger to their two small children (by the way, it looks like sleeping pills may have contributed to the conclusion of that altercation, in which Woods crashed his vehicle in the couple’s driveway). Fine, but as I recently wrote, I’ll bet there are literally thousands of homes in Florida where the suspected danger to children is considerably greater, yet the investigative response is considerably slower.

Chris Brown update:

The rapper is reportedly upset that some stores apparently aren’t carrying his latest CD. Good! I hope they’re not. It’s about time people started making some judgments in this culture, and it’d be a step in the right direction if no one wanted to buy things from guys who beat women.

(Now here’s a step in the wrong direction: The prostitute who was involved in the scandal that toppled former New York governor Eliot Spitzer has reportedly been hired by the New York Post as…guess…a sex advice columnist. I don’t recommend patterning your life after this woman’s in any way!)

In other news:

On Monday night’s Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell, we discussed a case in which a Utah mother went missing from her home after her husband claims to have taken their two toddlers on a midnight camping trip in freezing weather on a Sunday night, forgetting that it was a work night for both him and the wife. I’m not buying the husband’s story, several implausible elements strung together and illustrated with what look to me like crocodile tears. Even if his expressions of emotion are genuine, it’s still not clear to me what emotion it is, maybe grief but maybe also remorse or even fear (of being caught). I think that the four-year-old child may actually crack the case — as we saw in the “balloon boy” incident, it can be tough to get a kid to stick to a lie, so if the kid knows they went somewhere other than where the father says they went that night, I’ll bet skilled investigators can get it out of him.