[/caption]Carol Forsloff - It’s hard to grow up loving someone and then find that person becomes a killer, something that can hurt for many years and impact whole families.
“Everyone has a story,” she says, and it is this that keeps her secure and able to function past the sensation that the killing caused years ago and that encompassed her entire family.
Her brother killed his wife and children. The newspaper story uncovered and reported the details. Family members were approached for their responses, as they tried to go on with their lives. They were asked repeatedly how they felt about having a killer in the family.
“I said as little as possible, “ she told a journalist one afternoon. “I answered, ‘how do you think I feel,” to those who inquired about it. Of course, it was a tragedy, something I won’t forget. But I loved my brother and still do. Loving a family member means sorting out what the person does from the relationship that exists long before. It means hating what happened but not the person. It might be something other people can consider when thinking about their feelings when someone they love commits a crime.”
The media asks questions of crime victims’ families and family members are asked what signs they might have seen that their violent family member exhibited that hinted of potential problems. But often the families are grieving, as they express the kind of loss that takes place when someone is killed, and it is their loved one who has been accused or found guilty of the crime.
Some families deny the guilt altogether. Other families are torn by the stress. Some go on with their lives, not forgetting, but also not letting those memories of the worst impact what they do in the future.
For some, like Susan Smith, the mother from South Carolinia who killed her children by driving a car with them into a lake, the aberrance within the family is said by some to have been a motivating factor in her behavior. Her father committed suicide in Susan’s childhood, and her stepfather was said to have sexually molested her to the point Susan had to have counseling, while the family rejected her pleas.
Scott Peterson, 36, received the sentence of death in March 2005 when he was convicted of murdering his wife Laci and unborn son, Conner. He is now appealing his conviction and is supported by his family in that appeal. Furthermore he has frequent visits from family and friends, plays basketball and has recreation with other inmates five hours daily in his prison home, San Quentin, He is perceived as killing his wife and the subject of the death of the son is seen differently than if he had directly killed a child, according to sources that have followed up the case.
Samuel Robinson, a lieutenant with the California Department of Corrections, is quoted as saying that Peterson has a fairly full life with friends and family visits and keeps a picture of his wife, Laci, prominent in his cell, as those supporters protest his innocence, in spite of a trial conviction. "He has a significant amount of money in his account from people all over the world," Robinson told People magazine.
While the media presented a negative profile of Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother, those who knew her before her death in 2000 from breast cancer tell the story of a woman in anguish over having a son who committed such terrible crimes. Joyce "Rocky" Flint was 64 when she died. With a Masters degree in counseling, Flint had worked as a mental health counselor in the treatment of AIDS patients as well as a case manager in a retirement facility. She was employed as a counselor the year Jeffrey, her son, was arrested, charged and convicted of killing 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee, after mutilating and cannibalizing them. The Los Angeles Times reported on Flint’s death and quoted Julio Mastro as saying, "She was enthusiastic, and she was compassionate, and she turned her own tragedy into being able to have a great deal of empathy for people with HIV," Julio Mastro was then executive director of the Living Room, an HIV community center. Dahmer himself had told his attorneys she was a great mother. But the accent by some of the media was on Dahmer’s being alone at age 18 when his parents both left the home, intimating the mother's culpability in creating the personality of Dahmer who could commit such terrible crimes.
Casey Anthony is to be released on Sunday, with the plans under wraps today. She was accused of murdering her child, Caylee and found not guilty of the crime. Her family was described during the trial as dysfunctional. That family faces an unknown future, with some who may move on like the woman whose brother killed his family. But some may use what happened to motivate them to do good in the world and some may deny any problems at all, but the memories like others will last.
The woman whose husband killed his family had this to say at the end, the value of which may be far greater than just getting past an event. “Everyone has a story. I remember that. That can be a severe illness, the loss of a loved one, the ruin of one’s reputation, or the pain from something terrible happening, that affects the person or a member of the family. When we think we’re the only one who has had to suffer, we turn the corner and learn of the tragedy of someone else.”
Then she reminded me of the great poem “Desiderata,” and an excerpt that says this:
"Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here. "
