THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 11, 1994 TAG: 9411100169
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Last week when the announcement came that Susan Smith had confessed to killing her two young sons, I, like many people, was not surprised.
In 15 years of working in human services I had developed the kind of skepticism that comes from listening to too many stories told to explain away the 3-year-old's repeatedly broken collar bone, the buckle marks on the terrified 7-year-old's back or the cigarette burns on the infant's foot.
At the end of those 15 years, I came to the frightening realization that there was little left about physical and emotional abuse of young children that could still shock me.
I also came to the realization that the amount and severity of that abuse was increasing at an unbelievably fast pace and that the excuses for the abuse were becoming more and more trivial.
In the 1970s, when I entered the field, most of the abuse came about as a result of discipline gone awry or because the abusing parent was under tremendous physical, emotional or economic stress.
There was hope for many of those families, hope that teaching the techniques of appropriate discipline or stress management might help. Few of those parents really wanted to harm their children. Most were willing to accept professional assistance. A significant number were able to stop, or at least lessen, the physical and verbal attacks on their youngsters.
But a few years back those of us working in the system began to see a new breed of abusers, those for whom we could offer little help.
They were the ones who brought children into the world, were intrigued with them for a few weeks or months, then ignored or abused them and wished them away.
And when the children didn't go away, many turned to the system to relieve them of their burden. Permanently.
On an all-too-regular basis I was confronted by parents, usually mothers, demanding that someone take the offending child or children off their hands immediately.
To a generation raised to believe that all wants must be instantly satisfied, that whatever went wrong was someone else's fault and that the system (whatever that means) must solve all problems, the answer to rearing a difficult child was obvious.
Get rid of it by transferring parental responsibility to a public or private agency. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that's not easy to do. Dealing with parents who raised ``throw-away children'' was never pleasant but at least those who called for help had enough humanity left to try to assure that their children were fed, clothed and sheltered.
Not so Susan Smith.
By her own admission, and for reasons that reportedly take self-involvement to a new low, she started her car on a roll into a deep body of water, then stood by as her two beautiful babies went to their deaths.
Already her attorney is hinting at an insanity plea.
Please excuse me if I have trouble with that idea. The woman I saw shedding crocodile tears over her supposedly stolen little boys was sane enough to lie and sane enough to give heart-wrenching interviews on breakfast TV.
My guess is that teams of dueling mental health practitioners will argue her sanity or lack thereof ad nauseam, claiming everything from premenstrual syndrome and postpartum depression to poor self-esteem and/or long repressed memories of childhood abuse suffered at the hands of relatives or family friends.
None of which changes the fact that the woman who started that car on its deadly roll into the water by her own account apparently knew the consequences of what she was doing at the time that she did it.
Nor does it change the fact that for more than a week she lied to the authorities, thus triggering an investigation that cost tax payers millions of dollars and had thousands of people searching for the children and looking suspiciously at anyone who faintly resembled the drawing of the non-existent African-American man who supposedly took her car and her children.
Susan Smith should pay dearly for what she did. Not only because it was one of the most heinous crimes of the century, but because others who consider getting rid of youngsters who are in their way need to get a clear message that children are to be loved and cherished, not thrown away. ILLUSTRATION: AP photo
Susan Smith, the woman I saw shedding crocodile tears over her
supposedly stolen little boys, was sane enough to lie and sane
enough to give heart-wrenching interviews on breakfast TV.
by CNB