Children Who Kill, and Those Who Don't

Twelve years ago today, a small town in Colorado became temporarily notorious. Mention it's name out of context and many won't be able to place where Littleton is, let alone why it is infamous to begin with. But, on April 20th, 1999, no one could think of anywhere else after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold glided onto the Columbine campus armed with semi-automatic guns and several home-made bombs that were strategically placed in the building. After just a few short hours, with both boys dead from self-inflicted wounds, they had succeeded in killing thirteen innocent people, and injuring twenty one others.

After this tragic incident, accusations were flying everywhere, everyone searching for something or someone to blame, and most people getting it wrong. From the goth culture to heavy metal music, from video games to psychotropic meds, the media hit each and every viable possibility and shoved it down the general public's throat, simultaneously demonizing the shooters and society as a whole. The one point of focus that probably carried the most merit faded into the background: school bullying. Social outcasts who were ridiculed every day, humiliated and hassled, labeled with homophobic slurs, they eventually reached their breaking points, as many in their positions do.

In reading the book Children Who Kill by Carol Anne Davis, I've come across many similar stories of seemingly sadistic cold-blooded murderers who, in a moment of rage or in simple remorseless apathy have killed innocent people. Some stories are unnerving, others, stomach-churning, but they all had similarities too prominent to ignore: child abuse, neglect, instability, social ostracization, and psychological illness. And much like the Columbine shooters, the media turned to other factors such as games, TV shows, movies, and just hanging with bad crowds as probable causes of the violence. In nearly every story, a blind eye was turned to the long term ill-effects that come with years of pain, suffering, and devastation these children experienced, typically inflicted by the very people who were meant to protect them.

Now over the past months of blogging, my own personal history has gradually been revealed as my blogs have taken a more intimate tone, and many of you are aware of several instances of abuse, various types from various perpetrators, school bullying, and my own resulting mood disorders. What has tapped into my being and struck a chord with me while reading about these kids is how easily I could have become one of them. With very similar backgrounds and long repertoires of emotionally and psychologically altering circumstances, what is that defining factor that sets one apart? What makes some of us killers and others productive members of society?

In Viktor Frankl's autobiography, Man's Search for Meaning, he discusses his own experiences with the continuing battle between Saints and Swine while serving time in a concentration camp during WW2. A prominent point Frankl made repeatedly in his book was the issue of freedom of choice. He argued that although events take place in our lives and we cannot always control what happens to us, what is in our control is how we respond to these events: we become saints, or we become swine. In his example, saints were defined as individuals who cared for fellow prisoners and looked out for one another, and the swine were individuals who adopted a more "every man for himself" approach to surviving the camps. In our lives, this can be more or less the individuals who go on to lead generally successful lives, have families and meaningful relationships, maintain employment and housing, and individuals who fall into more self-destructive and criminal behaviors and end up harming themselves or others.

I frequently utilized Frankl's theory in working with severely emotionally disturbed teens. Sadly, like the kids in Davis' book, most of them had seen the worst of life in the few years they had lived. Many survived neglect at the hands of their drug-abusing mothers, many suffered beneath the iron fist of alcoholic fathers who used them as punching bags. Some had been forced into early sexual awareness by perverted family members. All of these matters were events in their lives they couldn't control, so in a misguided effort to regain that control, they began engaging in their own destructive behaviors: truancy, theft, drug use, promiscuity, self-mutilation, even suicide attempts. In trying to redirect that sense of control into more productive actions, many of such teens can be molded into functioning healthy individuals, in spite of their dark pasts.

Unfortunately, for many of these kids who went on to commit these heinous crimes, intervention was too little too late, if it came at all. For some, any intervention may have proved useless, as the damage had been done and psychopathology had set in, rendering them sociopaths. However, for the most part, it seems that rehabilitation is more than possible, if we can find the missing link that sets us on the right path. Granted, many of the child killers were male and in the midst or on the brink of puberty. With the increased level of testosterone and the effect it has on aggression, it could be argued that hormones play a part. Other factors could be time and type of interventions, variations in abuse and abusers, genetics, etc. In short, I have no idea what makes some people killers and what makes some successful survivors. I don't know why I took the path I did and narrowly avoided becoming a statistic. I had the background, I had the resulting depression, I was a self-mutilator, I had deep-seated anger, a seething hatred for the people who hurt me and resentment and distrust of people in general. My intervention was therapy and medication, and eventually the depression, anger, and hate dissipated and I became a therapist to help others. Some are just not as lucky, I suppose.

Eric and Dylan were two of the unfortunates. Though not much has been written on their home life, I would imagine they were not stable situations with overly concerned and involved parents, as anyone could have seen this train wreck coming had they only paid attention. After Columbine, they were destroyed by the media as crazed psychotic killers who master-minded elaborate plans of attacks, plans which, if read with an impartial eye, come off more as the childish, nonsensical grandiose ideas of manic kids than highly intellectual criminals. Few even addressed what was probably a dark, lonely adolescence for two severely depressed young men. The same happened to Seung-Hu Cho of Virginia Tech, a long-disturbed child also destroyed by the media when "violent" short stories he had written were sensationalized as red flags. In reality, they were poorly written blips about angry high school students cursing their principal.

Criminals are not born, they're made. While some of us can be saved, many many more fall through the cracks, and soon make headlines. So before we allow the media to strip these poor kids of their humanity, let us not forget that at one point, these "cold-hearted murderers" were once someone's baby, and more than likely, that baby was not given much love.

American Media: Feeding the Fear

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from 9/11, nothing quite sells like fear. The fear that this horrible tragedy generated led us into a fabricated war with Iraq, the sacrifice of our personal rights and freedoms with the Patriot Act, the isolating hatred of an otherwise peaceful religious group, and consumption; buying useless products we didn’t need, we bought our way into a false sense of security.

And how does one spread fear the fastest? Through the media, of course! With lightning quick precision and the invention of the internet and internet-access cell phones, we can receive up to the minute news stories at home, work, and even on the toilet for you potty-texters and chatters. The media has been the best device any politician or corporation with an agenda could possibly ask for.

It’s obvious what agendas corporations push: making money, selling products, achieving some self-serving means. And, nothing sells quite like fear. When the world was on the brink of Y2K, people flew into an all-encompassing panic, rushing to the local stores, buying in gross, preparing for Armageddon. After 9/11, the sales of guns, security systems, even pepper spray increased significantly, and products like biohazard suits, gas masks, gloves and boots were flying off the shelves. Even today, we have been frightened and guilted into consumption for a “greener” world. Horrific images of global warming have been burned into our retinas: melting ice caps, surging oceans, dead polar bears, a future of fire and brimstone. These images have pushed Americans into an entirely new expensive market of hybrid cars, biodegradable products, organic clothing, and efficient (albeit poisonous) lighting.

Never mind the fact that technical companies had the Y2K bug under control, or that we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on security products and anti-terrorism gadgets to defend ourselves against terrorists with simple box cutters. Never mind the fact that, despite popular beliefs, only roughly 50% of scientists believe there’s a link between pollution and global warming (all the planets in the solar system are increasing in temperature, and I didn’t see ET up there with a Hummer). Don’t get me wrong, pollution is a serious matter, but is it fair to sell these outrageously priced products on environmental hysteria? Remember, if there’s something to be scared of, there’s money to be made.

Likewise, political groups have their agendas, and nothing could illustrate this better than the last eight years of Bush’s administration. With Americans still aching, devastated and angry over the 9/11 attacks, we were vulnerable and emotional. Rational thinking had flown out the window and Bush took full advantage. Throughout the day of 9/11, the news media aired repeated showings of middle easterners and Muslims celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Centers: dancing in the streets, throwing candies to children, firing guns in celebration. But it was only one video, of one town. This was not the world-wide reaction Muslims had to our tragedy. Unfortunately we never saw the Muslims who held memorials, lit candles, and cried for the victims of our country. Of course we wouldn’t. When America is about to go to war with religious extremists, we certainly wouldn’t want to see anyone from that religion showing compassion or kindness, or any signs of peace.

Supported by the building hatred toward Muslims, false reports of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq riled Americans enough to fully support a full-scale attack on the harmless country, a country Bush had truly planned to invade before he took office. When support of the war began to wane, scare tactics such as new threats of attack, new weaponry, and a lovely color-coded chart were introduced. Playing the American people like a fiddle, once we started to settle down and feel a bit safer in our homes and country, the color code rose to yellow or orange, though intelligence never supported the claims of risk. An official who worked for the Homeland Security Department recently admitted he was pressured to raise the color code when no risks were being reported. Fear of terrorists equaled support for the war. Focus on the war allowed Bush to work on gaining control of oil and natural gas lines without much notice.

Sensationalism, misinformation, and complete fabrications have overtaken our media sources, from television, newspapers, and computer screens, it’s hard to find a report that hasn’t been exaggerated or made up. The problem with this is the obvious abuse of power and trust the media is exercising. With limited sources of information and most if not all controlled by some force (conservatism, liberalism, corporate America), the American people have no choice in what they’re shown, and most media outlets have little choice in what they show. Under the Bush administration, the freedom of the press gave way to government restrictions on war coverage, with news sources falsely reporting successes and a nationwide ban on images of dead soldiers returning home. Likewise, the American people have placed an immeasurable amount of trust in news outlets, expecting the cold hard truth, nothing more, nothing less. Many blindly take information presented to them as pure fact, and why shouldn’t they? It’s the news, not reality television! Their job is to present information, not provide entertainment! It’s not about ratings…right?

While we would like to think news shows are independently run and just there as a source of information, these shows run on ratings and compete with one another. Studies have shown that the more dramatic stories seem, the more people watch. And let’s be real here, we like drama. We like excitement; we’re more likely to watch a story on a shoot-out than a local church fundraiser. Unfortunately, the more drama we like to see, the more fearful we become. Even though we want to see that shoot-out, we suddenly have the image of lurking evil embedded in our minds. Because we’re too bored to see that church fundraiser story, we’re more likely to forget there are still a lot of good people helping one another in this world.

Why can’t the media act more responsibly toward the public that relies on them so much for truth? Like any other business they are slaves to money, ratings, and the need to survive as a corporation. Since we can’t rely on the news and can’t expect an independent news source with a conscience to surface any time soon, it is our responsibility to receive the news responsibly. It is our job to question: What are they trying to make me afraid of? Why? And who will gain what if I allow myself to be manipulated with fear?

Recognizing that sensationalism and lies are an automatic part of the media and being more objective with the stories they present, we will be able to regain control of our perceptions of this world and our own existence within it. Feelings of fear and insecurity will not completely disappear, but why should we let politicians and corporations decide for us when to be afraid?