“Exploiter, Murderer, Epic Collector of Images of Children Suffering”
Nov 19th, 2008 by admin
Then there’s this guy.
His name is Roger Sweet and he is 60. He worked for the Ford Motor Company in Detroit for 30 years, just an everyday guy, probably went out for lunch and beer with coworkers, contributed to United Way, who knows. In all likelihood there was nothing remarkable about him.
There was a fire at his house about a year ago and his wife, Lizzie Mae Collier-Sweet, 49, (above)went missing. When police investigated, they found more than half a million images of child porn on his computer in the wreckage of his burned home. Among the images police found were more than 1,000 images of Sweet assaulting a mentally disabled 16-year-old teenage girl.
Sweet and his wife were divorcing; police found a packed bag in her car. The cause of the fire was ruled to have been arson and Sweet’s wife has not been found. She never picked up her last paycheck, she never used any of her credit cards after the fire, and her upper dentures were found in the rubble of the home. These facts caused police to re-open a long-closed case: the death of Sweet’s first wife, Marlene, in 1990, at the age of 38. Sweet had reported that Marlene Sweet was an alcoholic who had fallen and bumped her head and her death was ruled accidental. After the fire, the case was reopened and Sweet was finally charged with her murder. Marlene Sweet’s son testified that he had seen Roger Sweet abuse his mother for years, slam her against walls, threaten her with rifles. Marlene Sweet’s brother had moved in with her twice to protect her from Roger Sweet. Lizzie-Mae Collier Sweet’s sister reported that Sweet also abused her sister, at one point throwing her down the stairs.
Sweet pled guilty to the murder of his first wife and will be sentenced next week. He has already been sentenced to 10 to 17 years in prison for sexually assaulting the 16-year-old girl and 21 years, 10 months for making pornography out of his assaults.
I hope they charge him with the murder of his first wife.
But who knows, maybe they won’t. Maybe, as with his first wife, they’ll just let it go, drop the ball, despite all the eye witnesses to his abuse.
This is the way the world is for women and girls. They are raped by the neighbor (the 16-year-old was the daughter of a neighbor of Sweet), they are brutally beaten, threatened with rifles, thrown down stairs, their rapes and assaults are turned into pornography and circulated amongst their rapists’ fellow rapists and batterers. Meanwhile, their rapists, batterers, murderers — the men they live with or next door to — get up in the morning, eat breakfast, go about their daily routines. What’s another rape, another assault, another attack, another murdered wife, anyway?
Heart
Do pardon my bitterness: but let’s all now send money to the UN to help Condoleeza Rice battle rape in Africa.
I appreciated Rice mentioning rapes/assaults by UN “peacekeepers.” (Oxymoron alert, hello, how bizarre to describe “peacekeeper” rapes, but there are a lot of them, not to mention “peacekeeper” trafficking, brothels for “peacekeepers,” and so on. I’m sure there are probably “peacekeeper” murders, too.)
Anyway, I think we need all the help we can get, throughout the world, wherever women are being murdered, violated, raped, and by whomever.
As an aside, I don’t think individuals send money to the UN? Other than via our income taxes. I think nations support the UN. And I think UNIFEM does good work and am glad for the work the UN does to fight violence against women.
Mmm, my abusive grandfather lives outside of Detroit, MI. He worked for one of the auto companies for his whole career. “Normal” guy, went to work, did his job, had kids, owned a home, enjoyed fishing, etc. Oh yeah, and also enjoys raping kids. My dream/fantasy is that when he dies, my aunts and uncles will find the pornographic pictures he took of me, and will finally have to admit that I’M NOT LYING. Sigh. Sadly, what will probably happen is that my grandmother will find them and destroy them.
{{{ buggle }}}
So true. Dead men are more important than living women. My mother was like that, too. (Like your grandmother, I mean.)
We do financially support UN projects. But maybe I was thinking of the Amnesty International project for women.
And of course I support whatever Ms. Rice will do. Correction: be allowed to do.
Aside: What?! Is Secretary of State the women’s portfolio?
Hugs and, courage, dear buggle. Let’s hear more from you please.
Oh, Buggle, I am so sorry. I read your blog, and I admire that you are working in this way (and probably many others ways your readers don’t know of) to shine some light and pave the way to equity in a world which both “ordinary guys” and “great men” have made a living hell for women and children. My love and appreciation to you!
My old neighborhood, back in the days WAY before NAFTA, was full of men with work histories like Sweet’s. They had pensioned factory jobs that could provide a decent working-class living for their families, but sometimes their picket fences kept in domestic prisoners. With jobs scarcer and often non-benefitted and with porn everywhere, no doubt things have only worsened.
Oh Buggle, you and me both sister. I would love to find out who owns/has those photo’s of my abuse. I used to feel horribly ashamed and embarrassed when I realized what all that was about. Now I just want those effers to be seen for what they are even if it would mean having my “shame” exposed. There is nothing worse than not being believed by your own family. Well maybe there is, whatever I don’t want to discover what that worse thing could be.
Heart, Muah! (that’s a cyber kiss btw) Your postings bring such healing to me, thank you!
Hazel.
Buggle, thank you for your courage and strength in speaking your own truth here.
Deep respect,
Heart
Aw, y’all are so sweet ;-). And this made me laugh out loud!
“Let’s hear more from you please.”
Hee hee
I write a lot of blog posts in my head, but am too lazy to actually type them out.
Mary Sunshine- at least when he dies, he’ll be dead. And that will be fantastic, no matter what. Sorry about your mom, I have such mixed feelings about my grandmother, because I suspect she was abused by him too. But I still think she’s evil for cleaning up his messes (sometimes literally).
“I would love to find out who owns/has those photo’s of my abuse. ”
I know, I try not to think of that because it just makes my head explode and I cease to function.
Y’all inspired me to write a blog post
buggle maybe your grandmother tried to speak out, and was silenced just as you were by disbelief, name-calling, blaming; maybe threats to her for her person, and maybe threats to her for her grandchildren “you tell and I’ll kill buggle”. I think we don’t really know what our mothers and grandmothers lived through. It was totally their fault in those days and any murmur of what was going on would have brought a community sanctioned increase in the abuse. Women sometimes helped each other, quietly, clean up the blood, silently keep their friendships, never saying but knowing, but that is as far as it could go.
Last night I watched Antonia’s Line, as I have several times over the years. When I need it. It doesn’t change anything, because if you remember, there’s a subtext there of magic, fantasy, the impossible.
But there’s also hope that we can survive, by not becoming them, by acknowledging our sisterhood, nurturing each other, and doing what we can. Acknowledging there is no perfect woman who can defeat it in one heroic move like Wonder Woman (who is built on the male superhero ethic). We are heroes in our surviving.
Even Antonia could not defeat it. But she modeled resolve, determination, and survival.
Heart, Muah! (that’s a cyber kiss btw) Your postings bring such healing to me, thank you!
xxxxoooo
Thanks, Hazel, for saying this!
This made me so sick and angry I just had to walk away without commenting the first time I read it. I read the linked article, where it is claimed that this man “understands what he did was wrong.” Really? What is that supposed to mean?? He killed two women and brutalized a third. This is how he has lived his whole life. He had many opportunities to stop. Yet as long as he could get away with it, he continued. He has demonstrated by his actions that he has NO understanding that his behavior is wrong. And yet the courts still let the sentences run concurrently, meaning that there’s still a possibility he will be back among us before his life ends. I saw where his defense lawyer asserts, in his favor, that he worked for Ford for 30 years. Well, give that man a medal–he may have been a woman-killer, but at least he wasn’t unemployed. It boggles my mind.
In a recent murder case in my area, a man named Rafael Robb beat his wife to death with a piece of exercise equipment, three days before Christmas–and hours before she planned to move out. He was sentenced to five to ten years, for “voluntary manslaughter.” And the judge said he’d been considering a lighter sentence–before he learned that Robb had written his teenage daughter a letter threatening to withhold her Christmas present unless she sent him her report card and a recent photo. He murdered her mother, yet he still thinks he has a right to tell her what to do. And yet this man, too, supposedly feels remorse.
His lawyer claimed Robb was a “victim” of his wife’s depression. Normal when they married, after years of his controlling behavior, she had become a reclusive hoarder who was severely depressed. Man drives wife crazy, then kills her when she tries to leave him. But it was her own fault–because she was “crazy.” How often have we heard this scenario? And how can they still claim they’re “sorry” when they’re still blaming the victim?
Five years–that’s what a woman’s life is worth. What a great message to send this man’s daughter. I’m sorry this comment is such a bummer. I used to live in southeastern Michigan and I’ve seen a lot of faces like that man’s face. It’s so horrible to be confronted once again with the fact that I have to live with people like that, and never even know who they are until it’s too late. What’s even worse than the fact that these two woman-murderers did not ever believe their actions were wrong is the fact that our society does not give them clear messages that they are wrong–either before or after their horrific deeds.
Sis- absolutely, I have no idea what my grandmother has gone through in her 50-something years of marriage to him. All I know is how she covered up for him. She disowned my dad because he believes me. She was cruel and awful to my dad and my mom. I mean, she’s not a pleasant person, she’s quite mean overall. But I do acknowledge that I don’t know what it’s been like for her. Hence the confused feelings I have.
Yeah, buggle, women should never sell out girls and women like that. At a certain point, most people have to make a choice about what they will or will not do, and regardless of what was going on and how much duress there was, she made the wrong choice, and it’s blighted your life always. It’s terrible; I hate how women pay and pay with their lives and happiness for the evil that men do.