On August 11, Branch announced she had split from her husband of three years, Patrick Carney, drummer for The Black Keys. In a tweet, she accused him of cheating.
Then, the following day, Branch was arrested for domestic assault after slapping Carney.
At 2am on the morning of August 11, within an hour of Branch posting her now-deleted tweet and hours before she confirmed the split in her official statement, police were called to her and Carney’s home in Nashville for a possible domestic disturbance.
According to court documents, Branch admitted to slapping Carney in the face “one or two times”.
She was taken into custody with a $1000 bail. According to TMZ, she was released early because she is breastfeeding their six-month-old.
[ed: Women should be aware that this is quite a common scenario. Gone are the days when DV laws were used to protect women from male violence. Now they are increasingly weaponised against women by men who want to keep angry women in their place and have no actual fears for their safety.]
Source: Michelle Branch and Patrick Carney’s divorce, explained.
Carney is pathetic trash. He had his breastfeeding wife imprisoned after a slap due to his infidelity. Pathetic.
It is not ok for anyone to slap anyone, gone are the days when a woman slapping a man across the face was seen as perfectly ok, and thats a good thing. That said, I dont see how an isolated slap deserves imprisonment – and would say the same if a man slapped a woman across the face in a case where there was no history of abuse or dv.
Its not OK but arresting a mother and separating her from a breastfed baby is not a proportionate response. There is a significant difference between a man hitting a woman and a woman hitting a man and it is related to the disparity in physical strength and other power imbalances in the typical heterosexual relationship. This woman is now at risk of losing care of her child in our family court system in which there is no presumption that mothers and infants should not be separated.