Agh - Yet another case

Agh - Yet another case of child murder in the news.

Lufkin, TX-area perfect mom Dee Laney apparently bludgeoned two of her three kids to death, and tried to kill a third.

I know I'm not the only one who gets incredibly depressed by these sorts of stories. It's not just the murders, although the horror of such crimes is numbing after a while. I'm a parent; I have two kids, and neither is anywhere close to perfect, and while I've never, even in my worst moments, even considered hurting them even as a perverse "what if", I understand how the stress of daily life can make kids nearly unbearable; this unemployed stretch has taxed my patience with them.

But the coverage will be almost as bad.

Watch for three things, here:

• The inevitable comparisons to the Susan Smith and Andrea Yates cases.
• Among the comparisons; watch for advocates for women and the mentally ill to demand that Ms. Laney receive anything from leniency to no charges whatsoever.
• As in the Smith and Yates cases, watch those same advocates eventually, inevitably, try to put the fathers on trial - which would be fine, if there were any evidence. But for some people, anything is evidence enough.
• Watch for the nation's Ellen Andersons to start capitalizing on a "wave of child murders" to support demands for funding, laws and so on - despite the fact that child murder is, thankfully, becoming more rare.

Oh, yeah - and watch for copycat cases any time here.

Posted by Mitch at May 12, 2003 07:48 AM