The Trial

With utmost respect to Kafka, I am co-opting his title because currently in the U.S. there is a trial going on about a young caucasion woman who was a party girl, got pregnant, claims the baby father died in car crash but no one ever met him, didnt report her 2.5 yr old daughter missing for 31 days, the trunk of her car smelled of human decomposition-the frantic calls by her mother to the police that something was wrong and lie after lie she told her family, the police and her lawyers. The child's body was finally found yards from the woman's home, packed in garbage bags, wrapped in a laundry bag with duct tape wrapped around her mouth and head, covering her nose and mouth. The stench of chlorform mingled with death in that car trunk. After 3 years of preparing for trial, investigating and finding witnesses for the prosecution and the defense-albeit in the US the burden of proof is on the State/prosecution to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt-it is not the burden of the defense, this woman now sits stone faced, except to dab her eyes when anyone speaks of her difficulties...the mention of the death of her child, she turns away or sits glaring. There is no contest here, although the tragedy is comparable to a Shakespearean play; claims of incest, abuse, rage, manipulation, murder, we listen as the State explains everything cooly, carefully collectively, reasonably, dissecting the woman's lies and tracking everything for the jury of her peers and then after about an hour, 70 minutes to be exact, the defense gets up and proceeds, in total desperation, to obsfucate, dramatize and rearrange the truth to avoid a conviction. Ah, but that is the job of her lawyers, to save her from a sentence of 1st degree murder and the death penalty. This is what we call a circumstantial case-all the evidence POINTS in one direction, the young mother, but the exact link of her fingerprints accomplished as the actual murderer, remains conjecture. In the U.S. there has been over the past decade a series of murders by women and young girls; and these are taking place while there exists until recently available abortion without much trouble an birth control, as well as condoms. High school girls birthing in their school toilets and leaving the fetuses there as if leaving a bowel movement, and then walking away. Women driving their cars into rivers with their children strapped inn the back seats, women drowning their children one by one, some cases blamed o post partum depression, some cases blamed on domestic violent abuse, some cases blamed on women who are sociopaths and put their need to have a man (who doesnt want her kids on the scene or on his head to father)before the responsibility to be mother. This case has deeply resonated here during trial prep, during the 6 week trial and this Sunday as closing arguements are being presented. Everyone watching brings their own private journey of understanding, experiences of violence, lies, sorrow, grief of being an abuser or the abused-what we do know clinically is that these two states are not mutually exclusive, they remain on the same spectrum and for some people, become a self perpetuating cycle...some people, not all. Yesterday my middle daughter was listening to some of the legal arguements and she asked me "Why would a mother do that to her child? Did you ever think about killing us?" My response to her was, "No, never. Not even your brother M who cried for hours and hours, who couldnt nurse or pass a bowel movement without help, I didnt shake or harm him. I walked away-but it was never from a desire to hurt any of you, it was in desperation after finding no one to help get your father to support our family." And indeed I left to attend college with the idea that an education would allow me to find a job, regain custody and the rest has been written here earlier. THe conventional reason that has been given about why this woman murdered her daughter was that the child began to be an inconvenience and interfer with her party life style. There are wet t-shirt photos, photos of her dancing sexually with other women and men, pics of her leering at the camera lens and finally in the early days of her daughter's disappearance she went out to have a tattoo placed on her should that reads "Bella Vita"-The Good Life...relieved of the burden of motherhood, she was free to return to being just another American slut with no responsbilities, no one to answer to, no religion to guide her...no law...only a life filled with excuses that gave her license to call herself a Victim, thereby relieving her of any conscience, unable to distinguish between her needs and the life she gave birth to. This is a microcosm of the conditions in the U.S.-life is disposable, everyone is there to be used or abused for one's own needs. We no longer have moral ground to point to any other country and wag our finger admonishing others for bad behaviour. We need to withdraw into ourselves and clean up our own houses, individually and as a country. Saddest is that other governments watch, see and know all of this, the level of disrespect is so profound for our moral hyprocrisy that agencies created to assist other nations, NATO, UN, trade agreements are all being manipulated and we do nothing, we are scorned and laughed at. Maybe this is what comes when you become old...hindsight or thinking more conservatively, but if that is the way of life, so goes the truth of our times.