Keeping Our Children Safe

We are halfway through summer. For my husband and myself, this is a very special time during which we enjoy the company of our only son before he leaves for college. Our days as a family are a bit more carefree than usual, filled with grilling and pool time, evenings on the deck listening to frogs and crickets, prolonged morning coffees.

By no means is our son home all that much. But when he is here, we soak up as much of his company as we can. And he indulges our hovering.

Yes, it is a special summer. I reflect daily with pride on Taylor’s childhood and all his accomplishments. I rejoice as I watch him prepare for university life. And I still worry about the dangers ahead.

Oh, I surely worry too much! But isn’t that my right as an overprotective mother?

Actually, events of this past week heightened my sensitivity to the bad things that hover right next to the wonders in our world.  

July 5 found me searching for something on Wikipedia. As these things go, my search turned into exploration of unrelated topics. You know, going down rabbit trails and learning interesting facts.

It was in this manner that I learned about the death of 22-year-old Dominique Dunne in 1982 at the hands of an abusive boyfriend. This particular trail led me to a March 1983 Vanity Fair article written by Dominique’s father, author Dominick Dunne, that described from a parent’s perspective the precursors and aftermath of his daughter’s murder, and the pain of a trial that he believed did not result in justice. Indeed, the boyfriend who strangled young Dominique served only a two and a half year sentence.

Moments after I finished reading Mr. Dunne’s heart-wrenching account of an imperfect justice system, I received several Facebook posts announcing that the verdict from the Casey Anthony murder trial was to be broadcast in 10 minutes. Know that I had not watched the trial or kept up on the daily proceedings. To do so just seemed rather voyeuristic to me. However, my curiosity was piqued after having just read about the sad outcome of the Dunne trial, so I tuned in to hear the Anthony verdict. And we all know that outcome.

I then watched and listened as the nation worked itself into an emotional frenzy. I did not weigh in on Facebook and the numerous other forums that became sounding boards for people’s high-pitched disbelief and anger.

The reason for my silence? Well, the legal world is filled with nuances and complexities beyond my current understanding. Concepts like shadow of a doubt versus reasonable doubt. Legal notions of burdens of proof. The role of motive. The relationships among all these in a single trial, confounded by the human elements of subjectivity, emotions and error. I felt as though any response from me would be uninformed and inconsistent with the legal parameters of the case.

Did I and others want justice for 2-year-old Caylee Anthony? Of course. But what kind of justice did viewers seek? A review of the concept of justice, including types, may lead you to conclude, as I did, that all this is much more complicated than we realize.

The masses may have sought a reckoning for little Caylee – justice as retribution. But based on the decisions of the jury, reckoning is elsewhere. Right or wrong, the jury decided. Indeed, their verdict points to an aspect of justice that seems to have been lost in the post-trial hysteria. That being, justice as fairness. The commitment to our social contract that we all have equal rights under the law, even if we are not the most well-liked or well-behaved person in the room.

My hope is that the Anthony jury was sufficiently educated regarding the legal concepts surrounding their charge. Regardless, I have to accept their verdict – even if their decisions were laced with elements of human error. Because that is the justice system in which I was taught to believe. Justice meted out by imperfect humans doing the best they can with the facts as they heard them.   

Well, I guess I just broke my silence on the Anthony case.

The Dunne and Anthony cases remained on my mind all week and will now linger in the shadows of my special summer. They represent to me the deep-seeded desire to keep our children safe, even children we do not know. And they are additional evidence that this is not always possible.

Love was not enough to keep Dominique and Caylee safe. Love, alone, will not be enough to keep my Taylor safe.

Regular readers know that one theme of this column is that my husband and I have tried to arm our son with the values, judgment and street smarts to make his way safely in the world. But there are no guarantees. The world is more complex than our individual actions.

The world contains great good and great evil. But I have learned that the sunlit wonders of the best of days shine even brighter because we know the world contains pain and heartache.

I did not arrive at this conclusion alone, of course. In The Problem of Pain, author C.S. Lewis explains the role of suffering in a world created by a loving God. Other scholars have argued for centuries that without suffering there can be no happiness. My generation’s own Bob Dylan said “Behind every beautiful thing, there’s some kind of pain.”

No, love is not enough to ensure our children’s safety. However, we can turn to the thoughts of one of the great philosophers as we strive to deal with the beauty and the pain: "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love."

Thank you, Sophocles. Spoken like a true parent.