Posted by panch from pool0008.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.8) on Wednesday, July 17, 2002 at 10:41PM :
She was snatched from in front of her home, playing with a friend. A car made a quick U turn, the man asked for help finding his lost puppy...she was gone, kicking and screaming while her friend watched. Fifty miles away and a few hours later her body was found, strangled and raped.
People will mourn, they will watch another execution...two murders will be brought into this family's life, and there wil never be any closure...not for them, not for this society.
We are creating a madhouse...and we get used to it because it changes day by day, not all at once...and we're busy...we have bills to pay...have to send our kids to school, and hope they don't get snatched from our arms before we get them registered.
When they catch the guy...if you get the chance...read his own life story. I'm not asking you to be merciful...he wasn't...this government isn't...why should you be. If you read, you'll more than likely find that everything was done to him as a child, short of murder...that's how come he lived to murder that girl. maybe killing our children ourselves will spare them the pain of being murdered by strangers.
I recall working with with social workers in the child welfare system. They did what most parents do...ignore a kid's obvious harmful setting, ignore the cries for attention or help...ignore and ignore until the kid learns how to really get our attention...either by screaming and whining...or later by killing another kid...a kid like he was once...
The system wont take the simple steps, the inexpensive ones...not till you really threaten it. It will spend the most on you after you've already committed the outrage that finally gets their attention. At first, when the kids are living in povery, in the backseats of cars, or on the streets...the system has very little to offer them.
I remember a case worker and I, both stunned at the same instant, realizing what had just passed between us...I had a camp for delinquent kids...there were so many I had to set a criteria...a kid would have to have three formal charges against him or her to be eligible...she caught herself saying, "oh damn...if he only had one more..."
There it was in all its absurdity...kill me, rape me, steal from me...and I'll get you into camp, I'll get you counselling, a bicycle...I'll get you the attention of a psychologist, a couple of lawyers, several cops, some priests...a judge or two...we'll spend thousands and thousands on you...but only after we leave you to become a career criminal, a bona fide threat to us all...to yourself. Maybe you'll spawn some children of your own before we put you away...and there will be others then to take your place, others you can treat to the same abuse that no one spared you from....or stepped in to stop.
What paltry satisfaction it must be to know that we have more police...more laws...more judges, harsher sentences, a gallows in every town. To listen to the bereaved families you'd think they believed executing the killer would bring back their loved one somehow...or ease the pain. It doesn't...it can't. Where they had one murder to deal with, they now have two...have the satisfaction of knowing that just as one deranged killer killed to "get his"...they just did the same...and neither of them nor anyone got any satisfaction or peace by it.
We are doing this to ourselves. How many children live blighted and harmful lives...how little it would cost us really, both in money and increases in crime and crassness and paranoia in our communities to step while we could make a difference for all of us...especially for our own children and grandchildren who can be snatched away from us even in a posh yard. Will we just bolt our children into our homes? Is this an enviable lifestyle?
We worry about such inconsequential things, such silly things...we fiddle while our children burn.
-- panch
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