Hello all,
I currently have the dubious honor of living in Cleveland, OH. Recently, and in the somewhat recent past, we have had several national headline Criminal incident you may have heard of. Anthony Sowell, the serial killer who raped and killed many women. Ariel Castro, who Kidnapped, abused, and raped on a regular basis 3 children for the better part of 10 years. Another man who killed/raped 3 women whos name i dont even remember since its gotten to be a pretty regular occurance up here.
Now, what brings me here today is a somewhat recent trend I have seen pop up with other similar tragic incidents...Things that happen after the guy is caught. In ariel Castros case, the man has been transformed by taking him from his life of a shut-in child rapist who visited hell on these girls every single day, to being a shut-in, protected from general population, generally living his live out in the same way hes lived for 10 years, with the exception of the child rape. His sentence was life plus 1000 years. He didnt really have a trial other then to present his plea bargin.
The question of 'is life enough' begs to be answered, but since im trying to make this thread about the after effects, I will leave that for other people.
Anyway, just as in Anthony Sowells case, the states solution to helping 'repair the damage' Ariel Castro has done to his community involves picking his one run down crappy home in the block of crappy run down houses, and demolishing it. Then they announce that the healing can begin...because hell, lets give cushy jail time to the rapist, its really the HOUSE he did all the rapes in that needs to be given a death sentence.
I have to ask what exactly this accomplishes for the community. The same community that was blind to the possibility that this old man had 3 children held captive in his home for a decade. I cant help but wonder how impossible it was that there was never a single scream heard, a single window broken from a girl trying to escape...that was ignored by this same community that needs to heal.
So whats next? Do we have a community gathering so everyone can see the knife or gun melted down that was used to kill someone? I can see some psycological aspect for the girls recovery to have the place that these events took place destroyed but would you want to return to that place for an instant even just to see it burned to the ground? Why make such a huge bullshit deal in the media that the house needed to be punished?
As you can imagine the local radio has had alot to talk about this case, and I regularly hear this strange response when discussing if we should have gone futher with his punishment "He could have killed the girls". To this I have to refrain from shouting at the radio... Consider that a single rape of a grown woman leaves tramatic mental scars for the rest of her life. How exactly has this man not completely murdered these girls ever having a normal life? A normal childhood? A life free of nightmares reliving these events until the day they die? Why is the justice system blind to the after affects of crimes?
A less serious example would be if you got your car stolen. Even if the police recover your vehicle, why exactly is the victim then required to pay towing/impound costs and fees to recover his/her stolen merchandise, damaged or not? It's not like they left the car parked in the middle of the interstate and just walked off.
So whos falling for this? Whos going to believe that the root of all evil in that community was bubbling out of this house like an indian burial ground, and now everythings going to be alright.