On Children Whose Murders Don't Make The News

I think another reason these children are ignored is that people don't want to spend tax money helping protect these children.

http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/when-killing-children-doesnt-make-the-news-121226.htm

Dec 26, 2012 11:40 AM ET // by Benjamin Radford

The children of Sandy Hook are the highest-profile murder victims, but they are not the only ones. According to figures released by UNICEF, over the past decade more than 20,000 American children have been killed in their own homes by family members.

America has the worst record of child abuse in the industrialized world, and more children die each week in America than died in the school shooting on that day: Twenty children died on Dec. 14, and it, quite rightly, outraged the world. Twenty-seven children died the week before and the week after and nobody noticed. Americans and the news media pay little attention to children murdered every day across the country.

A small sample of children killed (or nearly killed) by parents making news in the weeks before and after the Sandy Hook killings: Camilia Terry of Cleveland was arrested for killing her three-year-old son Emilliano; she claimed he’d been kidnapped but after his body was found in a trash bag at a landfill, her story changed. Nicole Fitzgerald of Baltimore stabbed her two-year-old son to death. Jennifer Lynn Emerick of Huron, Michigan, suffocated her 23-month-old son. Jessica Elizabeth Rhodes of Pennsylvania beat and shook her 14-month-old son so badly it nearly killed him; he suffered brain bleeding and swelling, and eye hemorrhaging.

Kristine Davis of New Hampshire poisoned her seven-month-old son. Veronica Herrera of Boise, Idaho, killed her 2-year-old daughter and burned her body in a barrel in the back yard of her home. Lashay Patterson and her live-in boyfriend, both of Philadelphia, beat and burned her five-year-old son to death.

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When we briefly hear about a local parent who killed their child, it’s easy to think of it as a rare, horrific aberration instead of something that happens every single day in towns and cities across the country. If each of these child murders made the national news — an average of three or four every day — the public would react as they have in the wake of the recent massacre.

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Another reason the murders are treated different is that public tragedies like the Sandy Hook massacre can be related to, or used to support, specific social agendas, including addressing gun control, mental health issues and even bullying. But when the issue is parents killing their children, the causes are much murkier and harder to address.

Solutions may involve improving community service support for families, drug treatment programs, and domestic violence intervention — mundane social services that aren’t as headline-grabbing as gun bans.

The children killed every day in our communities are no more important than those who died in Sandy Hook, but they are no less important, either.


tags: child abuse