Which doesn't justify her slaughtering her entire family, needless to say, but the fact that four kids apparently were involved in this means it wasn't just a normal teenage spat. Something *bad* was happening in that family, something so bad, so horrible, that otherwise-normal kids were willing to get involved in what on the surface appears to be sheer craziness. Something that makes what happened to Sylvia Likens look almost normal by comparison.
You won't hear about this from the press, of course. The part of the country where this happened thinks Christopathic behavior is normal and are absolutely horrified that someone might actually object to being treated like a receptacle for semen rather than as an actual living breathing human being. And we don't really have a "national press" anymore, anybody reporting on this story from the area actually lives there and is part of that culture of sickness and hatred of women. But I've lived in that area, and this story has all the hallmarks -- homeschooling (used to isolate their girls from members of the opposite sex or any normal interactions with adults who might report child abuse to the authorities), rabid church-going and involvement in community activities (used to reduce the possibility of being accused of child abuse -- after all, such a "pillar of the community" could hardly be one of those evil venal child abusers!), the interference with the girl's love life after they apparently gave up on home-schooling her (micro-controlling their children's social life is common amongst child abusers, after all, they don't want their children reporting the abuse to people who might actually believe them)... this story has alarm bells ringing all the way if you listen. Not that it matters. Not that it ever matters. Women who kill their abusers almost always get sent to jail for murder, which is just another sort of abuse but to be expected in a patriarchial society. And since in this case the girl and her friends killed people other than her abusers, it won't surprise me to find the State of Texas seeking the death penalty for her. Which makes the State of Texas the biggest child abuser of all, but why doesn't that surprise me?
-- Badtux the Alarm-bell-hearin' Penguin
then again, we are talking about texas.
ReplyDeleteAs a Texan, I wish I could argue with you. But I'm afraid you pretty well nailed this one.
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