Delegate Frank M. Conaway Jr.: "Things happen between man and woman and the rearing of children"

Things like smashing your wife's face through a window.

Now we get why the Maryland House Judiciary Committee soundly defeated it. They have a batterer among them.

From the City Paper:

By Van Smith | Posted 10/25/2006

State delegate candidate Frank Melvin Conaway Jr., who with 5,889 votes was the top vote-getter in the 40th District Democratic primary in September, doesn't want this story published. His father, Baltimore City Clerk of the Circuit Court Frank M. Conaway Sr., doesn't either. In separate interviews, both used the same, emphatic words: "You don't have to write the story."

Conaway Jr.'s longtime wife, Latesa Elaine Thomas, 44, has had a Baltimore County domestic-violence protective order against her husband for more than three years. The order, dated Aug. 25, 2003, states that Conaway Jr. "threatened to kill" Thomas, placing her "in fear of imminent serious bodily harm," and that "one year ago [he] pushed her face through back door window." Thomas also convinced the court that Conaway Jr., 43, was a threat to himself and others as a diagnosed sufferer of bipolar disorder who had stopped taking his prescribed medications, so the court ordered police escorts to deliver Conaway Jr. to two emergency hospital evaluations in the summer of 2003. Thomas is in the process of divorcing Conaway Jr.

"We knew this day would come," Conaway Jr. says. It's an unseasonably warm early-October afternoon, and he's standing at the foot of the Battle Monument, in the middle of Calvert Street between the two circuit courthouses. "Somebody's going to ask that question," he remarks, "and it's none of your business." At the time, City Paper did not know what had happened to prompt the protection order.