I did have a surreal creative moment while taking a bath this morning: There is a lot that is said by / about victims and their families ( and rightly so!), but very little is said about the experiences of the families of the perpetrators.
- How do you come to terms with the fact that your husband/father/son killed someone /raped someone?
- How do you reconcile the love you feel/felt for them with their actions?
- How do you go out each day and face your neighbours, friends, employers and employees, when it has emerged that your son is a killer?
Laura at Harassedmom touched on the issue recently, talking about the Brett Kebble murder trial. In her post, she questions why the wife/girlfriend of Michael Schutlz, the man who was paid to kill Kebble, is standing by him.
"It bothers me that this women condones this behaviour by standing by him. I know I am judging her but honestly I can not possible think of how she justifies this in her mind."
My feelings were messy at the time, because I would not make the choice the wife was making, but I also felt that I could not judge the wife for her choices. But now, I understand Schultz's wife a bit. I still don't agree with her choices, but I have a better understanding of the multiple identities of people who do terrible things like murder.
Anyhoo, I'm hoping that another writer could explore the idea further, see if it can fly. I still have a lot of work to get through, and as I mentioned before, sometimes I feel like I've opened an ideas factory.
1 comment:
What a lot to unpick from this post. I think people find it easier to not think about the family of the one who did wrong. It is comforting, simpler, and (it can't happen to me!) mentally better to believe that they were part of it, should have seen it coming, they would have done different, they deserve it - victim blaming of another kind. Not only because people like to put things in sound bites of wrong / right, good / evil - but also to say, "I can never happen to me." Which is how the US ended up with some drug laws where a person can get charged even if they had no idea somebody was using in their own home. They were not doing the drugs, but "they must have known." Because if THEY didn't know...would that mean we might not know our own child was using? Never...it can't happen to me.
Hugs!
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