Cycle of abuse can't absolve people from free-will decisions
/The Boston Herald
September 8, 1991
Most days I can read the news, even the most hideous, horrible news, and rationalize and think things like: "It's not for me to judge," and "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," and know deep within myself that people behave in certain ways because they were abused or deprived or maltreated and are therefore, many times, not totally responsible for their own aberrant behavior.
Most days I can do this because I believe that life is hard and some people don't stand a chance, and if they grow up to be murderers or rapists or drug dealers, it's because they were molded by murderers, rapists or drug dealers in their formative years.
But the fact that this kind of logic pushes free will right out the window has weighed on me recently, after talking to women who have been abused by their fathers and brothers; women who, though they initially didn't realize that what was happening to them wasn't normal, faced demons so that the behavior they endured wouldn't be repeated and endured by someone else; brave women; good, unselfish, caring, strong women.
This idea of free will and changed behavior and taking responsibility for one's own actions was driven home to me again this week, as I was flipping through Newsweek and came to a story about "a very special camp for kids without idyllic lives."
I assumed the children at this camp were victims of some insidious disease or latent gene or accident or unpreventable tragedy. But the kids without idyllic lives about whom Newsweek wrote are victims of what is a completely preventable tragedy: their own mothers' penchant for pleasure.
"Four-year-old Brian arrived at camp unable to speak a word. He wasn't toilet trained, and he was reluctant to move unless carried. Born addicted to crack, he had been sent to New York City at the age of 2 from the Virgin Islands to be cared for by his older sister. She kept him in a closet most of the time for a year and a half, until his mother arrived to collect him. In 1989, he came to Ramapo Anchorage Camp in Rhinebeck, N.Y., for a one-month program of skill building, nurturing and play."
It's such antiseptic, matter-of-fact writing. No judgments; only particulars: Once upon a time there was this little boy born to a crack mother and therefore addicted himself and nobody loved him and nobody took care of him so he spent his life in a closet.
Once upon a time there was this little kid named Michael whose mother abandoned him the day before camp started, who will go live with some foster family when camp is over.
Once upon a time there was this very special camp for kids for poor and homeless children who have been sexually abused and/or battered.
Where does it all stop? That's the question. If Brian grows up to abuse drugs and HIS children, whose fault will it be? His? His mother's? His grandmother's? Can a one-month summer camp, however well-intentioned, undo the damage that's being done in the months he isn't at camp?
The world doles out all kinds of problems. Children are born every day with severe disabilities through no fault of their parents. And then there are THESE children, born the way they are, or molded into who they are: frightened, dysfunctional human beings, scarred by parents who should never have had them, by women so selfish they think more of their own pleasures than they do of their vulnerable and dependent children.
"Next year," the camp's head counselor said, "Michael will have a really tough time. Maybe he can think back to camp, a place where he was loved and nurtured, and maybe he can remember that."
This is the way the story ends. There are no solutions, no reformations, no changing of what is, only a hope that Michael will remember the brief time in his life when he was loved.
