August 10, 2003
Abuse, neglect, and its effects
Several severe child-related incidents have popped up in the news recently.
It's completely mind-boggling that a presumably intelligent man - a faculty member at UC-Irvine - could use the defense "I didn't realize he was there" when his baby died from extreme heat in the back of his sealed car.
It's a sad day when a simple bludgeoning of a baby seems merciful when compared to the discovery of a bruised, burned 13-month-old in South Carolina or the obscene, systematic torture of a 6-year old child in Colorado that has to be one of the purest evils exposed in recent memory. Both were described by police involved as the worst cases of child abuse they had ever seen.
The mother who inflicted that torture was convicted, but justice doesn't always work as cleanly as we'd like. In a form of indirect child abuse, a man who had been arrested over 30 times duct-taped and shot 6 people in the head in front of a 3-year-old, killing 4 of them.
Make no mistake - we here at stupefaction.net strongly believe that people are responsible for their actions regardless of their personal history. Still, even though there's not a direct cause/effect relationship, we wouldn't be surprised to discover that abuse and/or neglect was in the past of the kids who videotaped themselves using stun-guns on homeless people given the amorality and lack of respect for human life in general they exhibited. When combined with peer-pressure and a mob mentality, those same traits can lead to a gang of teenagers beating a fellow party-goer to death (among other things). However, it's likely that greed was the primary motivator behind a Madison, WI triple-murder that the accused student allegedly committed to get out from under some gambling debts.
Referring to a murder-suicide in which a 7-year-old was orphaned, the words of Sheriff Bob Hertz puts a point on it - "The problem with people nowadays is conflict resolution... I certainly hope that somebody would come up with an answer to this."
Posted by stupefied
09:55 AM