Battle for justice can't always be simple or pretty

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

The discussion is philosophical, conducted over dinner and wine.

"Matthew Rosenberg has paid for his crime. Marilyn Abramofsky is wrong to keep attacking him. Rosenberg is not the same person he was 10 years ago. He's changed. Don't you believe people can change?" my friend asks.

Yes, I believe people can change, I say. It's quite possible that Matthew Rosenberg has grown up to be a fine young man. But I wouldn't invite him to my house for dinner, and I don't think he should be free. He took a life. He killed a child. He didn't kill him accidentally. He murdered him. If Kenny Claudio could come back from the dead, if the deed could be undone, then I'd say OK, the past is the past.

But dead is forever. Kenny Claudio will be 5 forever. No matter how sorry Rosenberg is, no matter how penitent, this can't change.

"So what you want is vengeance," my friend says. "You refuse to forgive Rosenberg even though he is not the person he was. You expect him to pay his whole life for one mistake."

Vengeance isn't the right word, I tell my friend.

Justice is. And murder is more than a mistake.

"Well, I think Marilyn Abramofsky is hateful," she continues. "Doesn't she realize that Rosenberg has suffered, too? He's said he's sorry. He's said that if he could, he would trade places with Kenny. She should just leave him alone. She should give him a chance to prove that he has changed."

Philosophically, my friend is right. He has served his time. He says he's changed. What's done IS done.

But it's not that simple. People see Marilyn Abramofsky, her face distorted with rage, and they listen to her scream about the system and threaten Rosenberg and they shake their heads and look away because her hate is ugly. No one wants to see this. People can handle sorrow, but not rage. They want a person who weeps quietly, who buries her grief because no one wants to know that one death can destroy so much of a person's soul.

She needs to get over what happened. She needs to get on with her life. That's what my friend believes. Her hate is just hurting her, she says.

It is hurting her. It's killing her. But that's because she lives with the memory of Kenny, a sweet little boy - he was only 5; he was still a baby - climbing on her lap to give her a kiss, running into the kitchen to show her a picture, calling from the bedroom for a kiss goodnight.

And overlaid on these soft, warm, wonderful memories are the horrible ones. Kenny being abused by Rosenberg. Kenny in the bathtub. Kenny being held underwater. Kenny struggling to breathe, struggling to live, choking on water, gasping, writhing, dying. Kenny in a child's coffin. Kenny in a grave.

This is what's ugly, not Marilyn Abramofsky. Murder is ugly. And what's even uglier is that our criminal-justice system doesn't seem to recognize this, couldn't recognize this, or it wouldn't think that an eight-year loss of freedom is just payment for an entire life.

Last week, Chaya Rosenberg, Matthew's mother, in her first public statement since her son was charged with murder, called Abramofsky's continuous verbal attacks on her son "shameful."

She said Abramofsky "has become a celebrity over this tragedy," that "Matthew's remorse is genuine and always has been." She asked the media to ignore Abramofsky, stop publicizing the case and give her son a chance.

She is a mother speaking up for a son. She is a mother begging for justice.

That's all Abramofsky's been doing. Speaking up for a child she loved, a child who cannot ever again speak for himself. Her style's abrasive. Her words are sharp. Her anger is ugly.

But not as ugly as all she is railing against.