In my first year of law school we studied the Kitty Genovese murder. In 1964 a young woman in Queens, New York, was stalked and stabbed, then stalked and stabbed, repeatedly, over almost an hour, outside her apartment complex, as her cries for help were heard but ignored by no less than 38 of her neighbors. It was a national outcry, a national soul-searching, back when we apparently believed more in our virtue than we do today.
Stories and studies about the murder, and the related so-called bystander effect, have proliferated in the interim 45 years. Let’s hope we’ve learned, at least a little, that there’s no harm in picking up a phone, even if it turns out to be redundant.
But what about how we react to the horrific news of men (and occasionally women) who kill their entire families – including their young children? The last month has seen a spate of such tragedies. James Harrison was a diesel mechanic who owned a bunch of guns. His wife apparently wanted to leave him, perhaps for another man, perhaps just to escape his control. They had five children, ages 7 to 16. James then shot four of his children in their beds, in his mobile home in Graham, Washington. The fifth he shot in the bathroom, after what appears to be a violent struggle. After looking for, and failing to find, his wife Angela, he pulled his truck over and shot himself.
Courtesy: AP/The News Tribune, Joe Barrentine
As an Indian-American raised to believe that our children should be treated as deities, not subordinates, I was even more shocked to read that a Yahoo software engineer from India, Devan Kalathat, killed his two children (along with three of his wife’s relatives). Like the Graham case, later reports showed a history of control issues, a lot of guns, a suicide, and, somewhat unusually, a wife who survived the massascre.
Courtesy: Indiawest.com
The two murder-suicides occurred just a week apart, bracketing a non-family massacre of 13 people at a community center in upstate New York. In the weeks since then, there have, of course, been more such tragedies. With our heavily wired world, I sometimes wonder if it’s just virtual Kitty Genovese, watching as the death tolls pile, doing nothing, wishing impotently that it would stop.
As a divorce attorney I represent plenty of frustrated men, some of them mistreated by their wives, some of them violent. Thankfully I’ve never had dealt with a murder during my representation of either a husband or a wife – but this is unquestionably my biggest fear. As a father of two young children, it’s hard for me to imagine what could drive a father – any father, under any circumstances – to take his own children’s lives.
There are lots of reasons why men do such things, and still more societal reasons why such familicides are possible in a society that can successfully eradicate smallpox and polio. Ubiquitous access to guns certainly doesn’t help, but it doesn’t tell the whole story; it shifts focus from the whys to the hows. And as a recent Australian tragedy shows (where a father threw his 4-year old daughter off a bridge while letting his two young sons live), murderers will often find a way. (Still, it’s a bit disheartening to see the Democratic party abandon any meaningful stance on gun control, apparently because the party thinks pushing the issue while they are in charge will erode their hard won gains.)
What I do know is that too often children are played as pawns in a larger battle between embittered exes, and/or simply as property to be won or lost in the divorce contest. Our contested legal process tends to severely disempower both spouses, and helps solidify anger and frustration into enduring bitterness. This is true even though our local Judges and Commissioners go out of their way, on a daily basis, to really listen to each side, long past when anything useful is likely to be revealed. While most bitter break-ups do not lead to murder, seeing children as property that can be won or lost, rather than as semi-autonomous individuals – may make it more possible for someone to focus on depriving children in the same way as a scorched earth policy in a military campaign.
Our system may be improving over time – having a Parenting Plan instead of a Custody Decree, for example, goes aways towards treating children as human beings rather than property. But the mental health challenges of a divorce remain undertreated by a system that remains more focused on blame and tidy results than seeking to find creative solutions to complex, evolving problems.
Of course, the Harrison and Kalathat cases hadn’t even progressed to the legal realm (and now they never will). But each remains indicative of the misguided sense of ownership we have over our children.
I hope that we divorce lawyers will always be sickened by tragedies such as these, no matter how prevalent they become. I also hope that more of our clients will overcome their desire to simply “win” custody fights and instead be open to more child-centric solutions that will allow the truest victims of divorce – the children – to thrive in each post-divorce household.
I hope that the interconnectedness of the twittering age will lead to more involvement in these messy situations, before they erupt, and less bystanders. In a world that lets you contact old high school friends in five minutes, it’s never been easier to pry, to get involved. While it’s true that the perpetrators of these family murders are heavily disturbed, and clearly desperate, they do not exist in a vacuum. For the most part, they have hobbies, friends, and email. You never know if saying or writing something uncomfortable to someone heading down this dark road might help them see other options, might help them see that the end they are contemplating is not the quasi-noble act that they may believe it is. The greater the sense of community, and the collective desire to prevent such harm, the fewer Kitty Genoveses we will have to mourn.
Yes, children are each unique human beings, not chattel. Things change, relationships end, sh*t inevitably happens,and sometimes you may even get the shaft. But regardless of how bitter your divorce is, and how much time your kids get to spend with you, they are always sacred, no matter what. Or at least they should be.
