20 years ago, Kristine Cushing obtained a .38 special and used it to murder her daughters, aged 4 and 8, as they slept. Her husband was a USMC fighter pilot who was on duty overseas at the time, and according to the NY Times she presented the facade of a model mother. Shocked neighbors wondered how it could have happened, and in court Kristine Cushing blamed a bad reaction to prozac.

It being the 1990s, when women could do no wrong, Cushing’s legal gambit worked, and she was sentenced to a mere four years in a mental institution.

In the meanwhile, her husband divorced her and married Trisha Conlon, with whom he had two sons. Eventually, the two divorced, and then, for whatever reason, John Cushing decided to get back together with the woman who killed his first two children.

It took Ms. Conlon a few years to discover that Mr. Cushing had rekindled his relationship with his ex wife, and when she did she immediately filed for a change to the parenting plan. At the hearing, the court commissioner, Leonid Ponomarchuk, ruled that any change would be unwarranted, as there had not been problems for the past several years.

Naturally, Ms. Conlon is upset by the fact that her sons are staying with a child killer much of the time, but there is nothing she can do about it for the time being.

What I’d like to know is whether the commissioner would have made the same judgment had Kristine Cushing been a man with a statutory rape charge on his record. Probably not; there are laws in place that all but guarantee that men who are marked as sexual predators are subject to restrictions around minors. However, it appears that a woman with a history of murdering helpless children is deemed no threat, because she has allegedly been “cured” of her mental problems.

Although we don’t know all the details of this case, it appears to reflect the stark double standard where child custody is concerned. All it takes for a man to be forced to have “supervised” visitation with his own children, where he must be watched over by state workers (and pay for it) is a mere accusation. It doesn’t even take a conviction or finding of guilt. Yet here we have a woman who admits to having murdered her own children being allowed open access to another woman’s children.