Donna has worked in child protection for 25 years. Intellectually, she understands how people become conditioned to be abusers. Her heart still doesn’t get it.
During the past week I have found myself watching more TV than usual. I’m not anti TV. I love good stories and good acting. The TV I watched this week, however, disturbed me.
First of all, I watched a movie called The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas“, the story of how a the child of a Nazi officer befriends a child in a concentration camp. The idea that groups of people, like the Nazis, can support each other in acts cruelty has always frightened me. I understand how the mentality develops; I understand how people can be conditioned to see others as so much less. My head understands that. It’s my heart that can’t quite get it.
I don’t have any difficulty with the idea that evil people exist. It’s when they find each other that I get scared. I have read a lot about serial killers , but I have never been able to read anything about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. The thought of them gives me nightmares. The second TV show I watched brought them to mind. Oprah Winfrey interviewed a young woman whose parents abused her and her three brothers. They starved and beat them. Even more horrific, they made the young girl live in a small dog cage in a cold and dark basement until she was rescued at age seven.
I am not naive. I have worked in child protection for more than 25 years. I have seen and heard a lot of really sad stories. Her story frightened me, and it saddened me deeply. If I were to try and explain this, my first thoughts would be that she had a mentally ill parent. But what about the other parent? How did two people who thought it was ok to torture a child in that way find each other ? I began to question why.
Believe me, there is no reason that could ever justify torturing another human, much less a child. When I googled the information, there was one article that discussed her parents’ trial. It talked about the girl being diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder. It said that as a very young child , her parents said she had a foul odor. The odor interfered with them holding her. This interfered with their attachment to her.
Attachment or the lack of it are significant issue in child behavior and parenting. It was discovered when they took her to the doctor that she had a small piece of blanket pushed up into her nostril. It had stayed there for enough time that it had rotted, causing the smell. When it was removed the odor was eliminated.
In no way does this explanation make what they did to her ok. Nor does it explain the abuse of her siblings by the parents. It seems to me that this is a defense lawyer’s attempt to rationalize the irrational. The judge in the case gave the parents one year in jail and 10 years probation.
No sentence is enough when you have robbed your children of their childhood, but this seems far too lenient.
I wonder if one parent wanted to say “this is not right” or if any of the soldiers wanted to say “these are my neighbors”. I wonder about the power of the bystander, the person who did not come up with the idea but who becomes part of the abuse, and who by a simple word or action could prevent someone else’s suffering. I am afraid when the bystanders fail, and horrified when they become the tormentors.
Photo Credits
“The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” courtesy of Miramax Films
“Chelsea Rogers, forced to live in a dog cage. ”
[…] when the bystanders fail, and horrified when they become the tormentors.”— From the article “The Boy Behind the Wire. The Girl in the Cage” by Donna […]