In Matters of Evil, the Need to be Bilingual

What's more important--the desires of a person who has declared war on his family, or the cognitive development and safety of a child?

We seem to get this wrong every time.

Think carefully. A child holds the future in his mind. The healthier his experiences, the more wholesome the future world will be. A person who chooses to treat his children's lifeblood and caretaker with hostility has already dug a gulch under his children's feet that promises to cave in their world. Why, in the name of everything and anything, should he have any right--or opportunity--to pursue his sick agenda?

We can pretty much know that everything such a person does or says is designed to further his evil purposes. He whines about supervised visits not being private enough? Should we follow the flowchart to a) let him conduct them at his house then, or b) realize it's too bad he caused this consequence?

Josh Powell simply could not have carried out his plot to murder his children if the visit had taken place in public. Not that one, anyway. Why make it easy for him?

In order to prove to the world that he was not a murderer, he took the lives of his innocent sons. In order to prove that he should have custody of them, he blew them up. If anyone was still believing him, they shouldn't be able to now.

Although, people who insist on being blind to the truth have the capacity to invent numerous ways to continue being stupid. There is probably someone somewhere who will say that he just felt so bad at not regaining custody that he couldn't help himself.

But the rest of us need to get better at reading the subtext. Otherwise, evil keeps winning. Violence continues. Tiny children not protected from its poison grow up to perpetrate it to the next generation. If they live that long. We need to do a lot better at handling this in our society. Thousands--even millions--of children are in a similar situation. Fortunately, most such situations do not end quite so spectacularly. Many, in fact, are never resolved, but the emotional, spiritual, and mental devastation that go along with exposure to a disturbed parent wreak havoc in children, and the poison of abuse continues to spread.

We can't go on just believing what people say. We have to listen to what they do. We have to see, for example, that a dead woman in a canal is a murder. But that's another story.

Those of us who have taken a crash course and become fluent in abuser-speak never believed a word Josh Powell said.

What he said: he was a good father who would never harm his children--or anyone--and should have custody. The truth is in the news.

What he said: he had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance--she happened to run off (without her purse and keys) with some other man at the same moment he took his sons on a midnight camping trip to the middle of nowhere in subzero temperatures. The truth: Mommy was in the trunk, and he had two big fans aimed at a wet spot on the living room carpet.

What he said: Susan, his wife, was a promiscuous flirt. The truth: he and his father were both out of control sexually and viewed women and children as possessions, not people.

What he said: he would publish her journals in order to prove her character. The truth: in so saying, he proved his character and his crime. He would have no right to publish her journals if she were still alive. He, alone, knew for certain that she wasn't.

And Sunday was not just a bad day for poor Josh. It takes time to amass ten gallons of gasoline and lay out a foolproof plan. He gave away their toys several days ahead of time. Then there are all the goodbye emails (complete with attempts at beyond-the-grave-control). This was completely premeditated. (Why he requested privacy.)

If Theodore Hesburgh was right that "The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother," the converse holds true that turning abuse on their mother is among the worst things he can do to his children.

But evil never wins in the end. Josh didn't take the children with him. In order to keep his wife's parents from raising his children, he transferred custody permanently to his wife, where, in the words of their grandfather, they are finally "safe" from him. I trust heaven has enough good in it to heal them from the horror of their last moments.

And that he is still burning.