Destroying Trust

The human mind can pass through emotional stages that extend from the sublime to the truly profane. And when the two most urgent and sensitive emotions that the human mind can cope with come into play against one another, tragedy is certain to befall those incapable of exerting discipline upon themselves for the sake of those whom they claim to love.

It's difficult enough to digest the information that a man, through angry frustration, a bruising sense of vicious entitlement, or whatever the cause leading to a psychotic outbreak in emotional dysfunction, will kill someone. Take someone's life. Become a murderer. The most heinous human act; to take a life.

And yet, it is a common enough occurrence in any society that a woman will be killed by her boyfriend, her male companion, her husband. Any rational person might ask themselves, how it is possible for people who once felt love for one another to allow themselves to become so morally degraded and emotionally frail as to violently attack the other.

But it is done, frequently, and usually the victim is a woman. Generally speaking, a woman desperate to escape the confines of a man's grasp of her as his personal property. Unwilling to allow her to leave, anxious to maintain a relationship that is no longer viable, angry that the woman insists she must go and find her freedom.

Usually freedom from an overbearing, demanding, jealously possessive man. Not that uxorious husbands don't also lose their marriage or common-law companions, when women for their own reasons, decide that the relationship is beyond saving, at least for them. Irrespective of who is responsible for the severing of the bond, when it is time to leave, each should accept it.

So it's shocking to read of one incident after another where a man, infuriated by a set of circumstances he can no longer control, decides to seek revenge, and nothing will satisfy him other than the death of the woman he once loved. Much worse, infinitely worse, when children are involved.

And in this particular case, there were two children, an eight-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. Whose parents were separated, and both of whom were attempting to secure custody of the children. Parents do love their children for the most part, whether mother or father. Bitter quarrels result from disagreements revolving around the disposition of the children.

In the recent newspaper story there was the revelation of a man, the father of the two children, violently struggling with his wife. The mother of the children in desperate straits, begged her little girl to run out to alert a neighbour, to "Go tell the police". But the child did nothing, and soon her mother was no longer moving, and her father proclaimed her dead.

Then he took up his children, dressed them for church, and went with them, after having wrapped their mother's corpse in a rug. After church, the father gave both his children many gifts dear to the hearts of small children. He told his children he would not be seeing them for a long time, but he wanted them to remember that he loved them, very much.

He must have thought he did love his children. In his delusional state he must have also thought that what he was about to do, and directly in their presence, would have no lasting impact on the children he loved. Nor would the fact that he planned to deprive them of their mother have any effect on their short- or long-term future.

And then he called 911 to report what he had done, and was taken into custody to stand trial. During the trial, which took place two years after the dread event, the little girl, now ten, testified: "They were, like, fighting, kicking, hitting and, like, punching", she elaborated. "Mommy said, 'Go to the neighbours and say help us and call the police', but I didn't want to because I was a little shy."

Along with the many gifts the little girl's father gave her before calling the authorities, was two Hannah Montana dolls, two High School Musical DVDs and CDs as well as a Hannah Montana shirt, pants and jackets. Her brother was given a Thomas the Tank engine toy and a shirt. She, at least, will recall this in her later years.

She will also likely never forget another thing her father gifted to her which she described when she was asked why she thought she would get into trouble and so had hesitated to tell the investigating detective the truth of what she had witnessed: "Since I didn't stop my parents fighting and it was a little bit my fault", the child explained.