Today is Thanksgiving–a day for giving thanks, eating food, and bonding with family. But after the incredibly contentious and divisive 2016 election, a lot of people are worried they may get into fights with their family members over their presidential preferences. Worried you’ll get sucked in? Check out a roundup of some of the  best tweets about avoiding politics this Thanksgiving, and good luck!

Me: Don’t talk about politics at Thanksgiving
Inner Me: *scream I’m With Her & flip the table* pic.twitter.com/ZgfNs3Gror

— Tyler Philolius (@tylerphilolius) November 22, 2016

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post For All the People Who Don’t Want to Talk Politics With Their Relatives on Thanksgiving appeared first on Law Street.

When the police arrived at the Tromp family home, they were confused. The front door was unlocked, phones and credit cards still there, keys left in the ignition of the family’s cars, business papers strewn around, and a family nowhere to be seen. The case that left Australian police bewildered may now be one step closer to an explanation, as the father released a statement on Tuesday.

Police sergeant Mark Knight called it the most bizarre case that he’d seen in 30 years. “This is a really unusual case,” Knight said. “We know the family was obviously traumatized by something. We didn’t know what it was.”

On Monday, August 29, Mark and Jacoba Tromp left their farm in Silvan–a small town in Victoria, Australia–with their three adult children Riana, Mitchell, and Ella. They took one of the family cars on a road trip and ended up 825 kilometers away from Silvan in Bathurst, New South Wales. It was supposed to be a technology free trip, and although the son Mitchell brought his cell phone, he threw it out the window a half an hour into the drive.

The next day Mitchell left his family in a suburb of Bathurst and took the train back to Melbourne, where he talked to the police. He told them that his family had become increasingly paranoid and started to fear for their lives.

The two sisters Ella and Riana stayed with their parents until later on Tuesday. The family reached the Jenolan Caves where the two girls split from their parents. They reportedly stole a car near the Jenolan Caves and drove back south to Goulburn where they reported their parents missing. Keith Whittaker, a Goulburn resident, later found Riana in the backseat of his truck and called the police for help.

“I turned around and saw two legs stretched across the back between my seat and the floor. She was lying on the floor,” Whittaker told the Goulburn Post. “I got an extreme shock. I pulled over in a rest area. About 20 minutes later the young woman sat up and was staring straight ahead. I asked her who she was and if she was all right? She did not know her name and had no idea where she was.”

What’s going on with Mark Tromp and his family? pic.twitter.com/8LQSeMdxvV

— Amplify (@thisisamplify) September 6, 2016

Ella kept driving south until she reached their home.

On Wednesday night, a couple in Wangaratta claimed that someone who looked like Mark Tromp, the dad, was “stalking” them while they played Pokémon Go in their car.

“I could barely see his headlights because he was that close to my car,” the young man told The Age. He said the man then got out of his car and briefly stood still, staring at the middle of the road before disappearing into the woods.

On Thursday, September 1, mother Jacoba Tromp was found wandering around in Yass, a town outside Canberra. She was taken to a nearby hospital and was later transferred to the same facility as Riana in Goulburn, where she received psychiatric care.

On Saturday Mark Tromp was finally found walking the streets close to Warangatta airport. Then on Tuesday he released a statement apologizing for his behavior. In the statement he said:

In recent days my family has been through a difficult period. We will soon be reunited together, I hope that we will begin to make sense of our ordeal and return to a normal life […] More than anything, my family and I need time to recover and receive appropriate assistance, including mental health services.

While there has not been any official explanation for what happened or what caused an entire family to have what appears to have been a mental breakdown, speculation has ranged from drugs and environmental poisoning to a serious threat to their lives.

News.com.au argues that this may be a case of a phenomenon called folie à deux or folie à plusieurs–madness of two or madness of many. This syndrome can be shared by two or more people in a close relationship such as a married couple or family members. The affected fall into a spiral in which they reinforce each other’s delusions, which increases in cases of social isolation. All family members worked at their berry farm seven days a week.

Mark is now staying with his brother. The youngest daughter Ella has been charged with car theft and has a court date in April 2017.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Bizarre Tromp Family Road Trip Comes to an End appeared first on Law Street.

There is a mixture of excitement and dread that permeates the air around the holidays. Excitement because, for most, we get a few badly-needed days off, we can expect at least a few gifts, and we get to talk to those friends and family who we haven’t seen in months. Of course, the dread comes in because we have to scrape together enough funds to return the favor of those gifts, and we have to talk to those friends and family who we haven’t seen in months.

Different generations have different fears about what they’ll run into on the long, wintry visit home. For high school and college students, it’s the questions from older relatives like, “Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend/horde of cats?” For professionals, it’s the questions from younger and older relatives like, “Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend/horde of cats?”

And for many, we are not looking forward to having the inevitable discussions about politics with the set-in-their-ways relatives whose views differ so completely from ours.

While we’d like life to be like the Thanksgiving SNL skit where all disputes are solved by playing a little Adele, sadly the the melancholy tones of “Hello” will not stop your aunt or your grandfather or your young cousin who doesn’t know any better from questioning your political views, or even your way of life.

To help you out, here is a list of issues that might come up, and how you can keep from pulling your hair out. Deep breaths, you can get through this. Though, breaking out into song may be necessary.

Islamophobia

A hot-button topic on the campaign trail and in the news is, of course, the Syrian refugee crisis and its connection to ISIS. These might be subjects you would like to avoid with your grandmother who says vaguely racist things on a daily basis, but what if they come up?

First and foremost, remain calm. This goes for any touchy conversation. It is probably the easiest to get angry with our own family members, but nobody ever changed their opinions after being yelled at to stop their racist bullshit.

Facts are your friend, in this case, so point out the facts. There are millions of U.S. residents who identify as Muslim, but there isn’t an exact number because census data doesn’t record religious affiliations. Do you know why? Because U.S. citizens are supposed to be free from religious persecution. “Supposed to be” being the key phrase, here. Furthermore, ISIS wants the western world to be afraid of Muslims, and it wants people to misunderstand Islam so the Muslim population will subscribe to ISIS’ extremist views. Luckily, despite misconceptions perpetrated by conservatives and the media, the millions of Muslims who live, work and protect America are not extremists.

Sexism

It is a truth universally acknowledged that men and women deal with societal expectations based on gender. The stereotypical “having it all” for girls means finding a husband, landing a great job, and having a few children. For guys, it means making enough money to easily and happily support their spouse and 2.5 children. Maybe throw in a golden retriever for bonus points.

But the reality is that not everyone wants what society expects. While your parents and grandparents may have fit into that model, an exceeding number of young professionals do not. Maybe you’re a woman who does not want marriage or children, but has instead decided to focus on her career. Maybe you’re a man who has decided to be a stay-at-home dad while your common-law wife works a 9-to-5. Whatever your life choices, the best thing you can do when you receive passive aggressive comments about them is not to apologize.

You don’t need to make excuses or explain your way of life. When someone says, “your biological clock is ticking” or “you’d better settle down with a man before all the good ones are taken!” call out those comments for what they are: judgmental and outdated. Nobody needs to conform to sexist gender roles to feel fulfilled. Do what makes you happy and don’t say sorry. *Cues happy dancing*

Homophobia

Don’t forget to pack your rainbow flag before heading home so you can wave it in the faces of all your homophobic relatives! It is sure to be both entertaining and effective.

In all seriousness, most peoples’ homophobia stems from religious beliefs. So, if anyone complains about the historical decision to legalize same-sex marriage, you can ask them for a reason LGBT people should not be allowed to marry–outside of religious excuses. If they cannot give any legitimate reasons (and let’s face it, there really aren’t any), just remind them that we are a nation of many religions, and not everyone agrees with Christian ideals. Then wave aforementioned rainbow flag.

“Those damn millennials!”

If you are one of the thousands of 20-somethings who suffer from student loan debt, you’ve heard yourself referred to as an “ungrateful millennial” more than once this year. The generations that came before worked their way through college, after all, so why are we complaining about paying back that money? Why do we all want free handouts?

You can remind whichever relative brings it up that, in 1979, the minimum wage was $2.90 and students could easily pay for a year of school (public schools were around the $3,000 price tag) by working a job over the summer. Today’s minimum wage is $7.25, and that $4.35 bump per hour doesn’t really cover the difference in tuition costs, which now leave students with an average of $30,000 in debt. And that’s just undergrad.

Show them the math, and then tell them about how much you have to pay back on your loans every month. That amount, plus rent, insurance bills, and various other expenses like car loans and gas money, don’t leave a lot of expendable income for young graduates trying to break into their respective industry. And that lack of money probably has something to do with many young people putting off other big ticket items in their lives: settling down, buying a house, having kids, etc.

Remember, the greatest tools in your arsenal are facts and a calm demeanor. Keep an open mind, and if all else fails, stop talking and stuff your face with sugar cookies.

Morgan McMurray

Morgan McMurray is an editor and gender equality blogger based in Seattle, Washington. A 2013 graduate of Iowa State University, she has a Bachelor of Arts in English, Journalism, and International Studies. She spends her free time writing, reading, teaching dance classes, and binge-watching Netflix. Contact Morgan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How to Deal With Family and Politics During the Holidays appeared first on Law Street.

On September 13 2014, 18-year-old University of Virginia student Hannah Graham went missing, and recently authorities arrested and charged 32-year-old Jesse L. Matthew Jr. in relation to the incident. His current charge is described as abduction with intent to defile in the case of Graham. (Intent to defile meaning he intended to sexually assault the victim.) Matthew is currently being held without bond and is scheduled for a hearing in early December. Unfortunately, after two weeks of searching, Graham has still not been found, but authorities are doing all they can to locate her.

This case is a tragedy and my heart goes out to Graham’s family and friends. One of the hardest things to understand in this case is recently surfaced reports alleging that Matthew has a history of sexual assault accusations, none of which ended in conviction. According to The Washington Post,

The alleged assaults occurred within an 11-month span from 2002 to 2003 as Jesse L. “LJ” Matthew Jr. moved from Liberty University in Lynchburg to Christopher Newport University in Newport News. Police investigated each report, but neither resulted in a criminal case, according to the Lynchburg prosecutor and a review of online court records in Newport News.

If the allegations of these cases from over a decade ago are true, and with minimal knowledge of the reasoning surrounding the dropped charges, it is hard not to wonder why Matthew got away with such crimes not once, but twice before harming another innocent young girl? These alleged incidents occurred while Matthew was a student attending university, and although legislation and public discourse surrounding campus sexual assault has been under the miscroscope in recent months, I cannot help but wonder how we can act to prevent this loophole?

This case is reminiscent of another sexual assault case with similar characteristics.  In 1996 Amie Zyla, an 8-year-old girl, was sexually molested and victimized by family friend Joshua Wade who was 14 years old at the time. Wade was adjudicated for a misdemeanor in juvenile court. Nine years later, Wade was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for a series of sexual molestation cases involving the abuse of young children. This case caused huge controversy, and was the driving force behind expansions in the definition of sexual assault.

These two cases indicate the importance of people’s histories and backgrounds. We all make mistakes, and sometimes it is wrong for our privacy to be intruded upon, but with something like sexual assault cases — regardless of whether there has been a conviction — something about this needs to be mentioned. It doesn’t take a lot of common sense to understand how hard it can be to convict a perpetrator of sexual assault. There is often a lack of witnesses on top of fear and upset from the victim; with a case dependent on DNA testing, the odds are very slim. Just because cases may not be tried in court — like Matthew’s two alleged college incidents — it does not mean that they didn’t happen and are not warning signs for things to come.

The media has spent its energy publicizing Matthew’s past. This runs a risk of setting off stricter registration laws for sexual offenders, which have proven to do more harm than good. By broadcasting the background of a perpetrator who was in society seemingly living normally until his arrest for the disappearance of a young girl, I question whether the media is supporting the need to find Graham and bring her home safely, or whether it is striking the ‘stranger danger’ rape myth back into society?

Hannah Kaye

Hannah Kaye is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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