Anger, death, and blind
incompetence
By
John T. Smith, Editor in Chief
World Fathers Union News Page
I'm
angry.
I don't let that show often. It's counter-productive,
as our version of what Orwell called 'correct-speak'
would have it. It makes one lose perspective
and control, and it makes others turn a deaf
ear to one's most heartfelt rantings. No one
likes to hear another rant. Not even one's
friends, and certainly not those he would
make into partisans of his cause....
But it's been a very bad couple of weeks in
the news, and two recent stories of preventable
infanticides in Canada reflect only a part
of that.
In
Toronto, Ontario, two little girls were apparently
murdered by their mother as her solution
to a losing custody battle she'd been waging
with the father. The Children's Aid Society
of Simcoe, the responsible government organisation,
now stands accused of having botched the affair.
Yet within a week, certain apologists were
already squawking about the unfairness of
calls to fire the incompetent fools responsible.
There will be no justice for those two girls;
the best their father or grandparents can
hope for is a typical, lengthy government
report which won't be issued for years, and
certainly won't fix anything.
In the same week, another report
out of Newfoundland condemned that province's
child welfare and custody system for its
behaviour in a case back in 2003. Having granted
custody to a mother with a long history of
mental illness, the Newfoundland C.W. system
also ignored the fact the mother was charged
with murdering her husband in the United States.
Incredibly, she was allowed to keep custody
while she was out on bail awaiting extradition
to the U.S. on the murder charge. And she
still had custody when she walked into the
icy ocean waters near Conception Bay, Newfoundland,
carrying her 13-month-old son, Zachary, killing
both the child and herself.
These are only two of the reasons I am angry,
but either one of them is more than sufficient,
it seems to me. Any man who was not angered
by the official incompetence, stupidity, and
self-satisfied we-know-best attitude of either
of these so-called children's aid societies
would have to be insane.
For close to six months, my colleague John
F. has been putting stories from the world
press into a data-base on domestic violence
and infanticide. They are as numerous as they
are horrifying--the list below is only a very
small sampling:
The 'Baby Norton' murder in South Africa
wherein the father's former girlfriend hired
four hitmen to kill the child;
The Andrea Yates case in Texas in the
United States, wherein the 42-year-old Yates
drowned her five children one after another
in the bathtub;
The Robin Kraft case in Ohio, wherein
she sexually abused one of her children
and forced the others have sex with each
other;
The young mother in Washington, who sneaked
her newborn baby out of the hospital to
prevent doctors from performing life-saving
surgery upon it;
The pregnant welfare mother in Illinois
who left three of her ten children in her
SUV and then ignored it as it burned right
outside the store where she was shopping
(the ten-month-old baby burned to death
while her mother spent her welfare check
in K-Mart);
And possibly most horrific of all: the
Chytoria Graham case in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
wherein Graham, pregnant with her fifth
child, is reported to have used her 4-week-old
baby boy as a weapon to club her boyfriend,
fracturing the baby's skull.
From one gut-wrenching story to the next,
these cases are a soul-shattering depiction
of evil run rampant...and of the total failure
of child protection departments everywhere.
In the Illinois case, the state's DCFS had
cited the mother four times in the past on
negligence charges, and knew they were living
in squallor so fetid that the caseworkers
and other family members were made sick just
going into the house. And still it left the
children in her custody.
Can you imagine any child welfare department--in
any of these cases--acting as they did above
if the parent in question had been the father?
What will it take? What will it
take?? And how much will it take??
How many decades, how many thousands
of innocent children neglected, abused, or
murdered by their mothers will it take before
the government realise that just because a
parent is female does not guarantee she will
not kill or abuse them?
In the aftermath of such a brutal week, it was
some small and cold comfort to see Timothy Appleby's
article, Mothers
kill as often as fathers do, in the
Globe and Mail (CAN). I must say, however,
that it is very small, and very cold comfort
indeed. It's not helped me sleep any better
this last little while, nor has it stopped me
grinding my teeth.
But possibly your Member of Parliament needs
some comfort this week. I suggest you print
Mr Appleby's article, along with this editorial,
and mail them to him. After all, being angry
at him won't do any good, will it? It will just
give him a perfect excuse to not listen to you....
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