He wouldn't call her "Daddy".

Well, I thought yesterday's news item was pretty twisted, but this takes the biscuit: a four-year-old boy wouldn't call his lesbian mother's lover "Daddy" and paid with his life.

Besides a speechless horror at the whole thing - he sustained a fractured skull, brain damage, broken legs, collarbone, hands and pelvis; he was 4 years old - several thoughts occur:

What was wrong with the woman that a) she needed to be called Daddy, b) that she could not just be angered by a 4 year old's refusal to do so but to the extent that c) she beat him to death?

We already know that mothers & step-fathers are more likely to commit child abuse than fathers, where does this one fit?

I guess we could possibly understand the mother's failure to act in his defense and her subsequent lying to a doctor to defend her partner ("he slipped in the bath") in terms of "battered wives syndrome", but there is no mention of domestic violence between the two women, both of whom have been found guilty of the boy's murder.

What will the gender feminists have to say?

It seems sacreligiously trivial to note that even a 4-year-old boy knows a woman can't be a Daddy. Unto death.

Update: The judge, at least, came out with a father-friendly comment: "She could have called the child's father for help but she failed to do so. She did nothing to protect her own child."