So the poi is her husband, big surprise
. Seems in the USA, men are constantly doing this to their wives. They don't want them anymore or they don't want the wife to leave and move on, they just throw them away like they are a piece of trash whether there are children or not. How often does this seem to be happening in Australia?
I think the above happens everywhere that there are men and women... However, one factor that I do see as being an Australian issue is that Asian wives very often have a pretty hard time of it here.
This is coming from observations I've made, having several friends who are Asian nationals married to Australian men (I also know some Aussie woman married to Asian men, and they have their own set of issues). Sometimes that relationship is based on nothing but love and mutual respect -- sadly, this is not always the case.
Asian wives have to put up with the general view that they are gold diggers, and the husbands are asked what's wrong with them that they couldn't choose an Australian bride. Many of the men I know with Asian wives have a really stinky attitude to women in general and it's plain that what they want is an 'ideal' passive wife who lives to serve them. To them their Asian wife is a sex doll that does housework and cooks. This is, in their eyes, the rightful place of women.
The wives are expected to be grateful - many come from poverty and this is thrown in thier faces all the time: "you'd have nothing if it wasn't for me". Women in this situation are NOT regarded as equals, at all, and are expected to be abjectly, eternally and subserviently grateful for having been 'saved' from relative poverty.
When an Asian woman can't or won't live up to this ideal, they are sometimes treated badly.
One Vietnamese woman I know met her husband in Vietnam and was promised a good life here. The husband was all charm and promises.. But when she got to his Queensland property, she was seen as a piece of gold digging trash by her parents in law, and was not allowed to live in the main house (they are a farming family). She had no friends, no life outisde the farm, no money of her own. She could only enter the main house to do the cleaning and cooking - all other times, she had to live in a shed outside, like the cattle and dogs. If husband wanted sex, he went to her shed.
The husband grew frustrated with her complaints about how he'd lied, his parents constant belittling and scorn, and her mistreatment in general. So he started hitting her, raping her, and withholding money so she couldn't run away. It didn't end well- she shot him in the leg with pellet gun, stole his car and ran to another state with nothing but the clothes on her back. Today she's better off, still in the country and has a good job. She's a lovely girl.. wouldn't cross her, though.
This is the worst story I've heard, but I've heard others almost as bad. There's still a huge amount of prejudice, and still a lot of people from both sides of the marriage taking advantage of one another. Racism and opportunism in this country is alive and well, no matter how PC we think we are these days.
To me, it's not a stretch that the Chardons though Novy was a threat. Perhaps she realised she was entitled to more of the family business than they were comfortable with, once she'd spoken to a divorce lawyer.. Asian women are, I think, quite often severely underestimated by disgusting yobs who marry them for the wrong reasons.
I stress: this is not always the case. And times have changed a lot. But not enough that I'll be surprised if Chardon and daughters are arrested for doing away with an 'uppity' Asian ex - who was seen as 'gold digging' by claiming her rightful share of the company as Chardon's partner and wife.
NOTE: I am not saying this was all or even in part Novy's situation. But it IS a problem here that -might- have contributed to Novy's sad fate in one way or another, as it has for a lot of other Asian women.