As a mother, I find myself completely incapable of understanding why a woman with children would ever, ever date a man with a criminally violent past. How often is it, after all, that we read about some case of child abuse in which the perpetrator is the mother’s boyfriend or new husband, a man who turns out to have been a piece of crap long before they started dating?

Take the case of David J. Smith, a convicted felon and sex offender, who’s now facing criminal charges in the past 15 years after trying to rape his girlfriend’s teenage daughter.

What’s he been up to now? Why, more of the same.

Police found David J. Smith, a convicted felon and sex offender, with half his jaw blown off by a shotgun at 3 a.m. Wednesday – an attempted suicide after he went on a frenzy inside his home.

Police say he tried shooting his live-in girlfriend with the gun and attempted raping her teen-age daughter before he turned the gun on himself, placing it just under his chin and firing off part of his chin and jaw. [...]

The incident started when his girlfriend, who is 32, walked in on Smith in her children’s room. All three kids – a 16-year-old girl, a 9-year-old boy, and a 7-year-old girl – share the room.

The 16-year-old told police that Smith, who was apparently drunk, had started touching her, but stopped when her mother came inside.

He went downstairs to get the shotgun, and his girlfriend followed him, police said. He pointed the gun at her face and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire, the woman told police.

As other family members fled the house, Smith took the 16-year-old into the second-floor bathroom, beat her, then took her to the basement where he tried raping her, she told police.

When he wasn’t physically able to rape her, he threatened to kill her, but she escaped as he went to load the shotgun, police said.

This wasn’t Smith’s first offense. Oh, no. He’d been arrested ten times previously and been in prison four times for convictions, in 1994, 1999, 2002, and 2005, and was most recently released on November 2006 following a second-degree assault conviction. One of his prior offenses involved stabbing a relative in the eye and neck. Two of the ten previous arrests were due to failure to register as a sex offender.

Meanwhile, the girlfriend admitted to authorities that Smith had been through drug rehabilitation and still used crack cocaine.

Frankly, I think the woman ought to be facing some charges herself, not the least of which ought to be criminal endangerment of her children.

On a positive note, Smith will no doubt be very popular in prison now that he’s missing part of his chin and jaw, this providing his fellow inmates with easier access.