Has Shock Worn Off - Or Are Anger and Shock Related?

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Sometimes my thoughts on the crime news events go quiet; I can't express my feelings of all I read and hear. No words of distress over the events are enough because I feel nothing is left to say. Only the continual 'why' plagues me and the tears in my heart for victims is all I can feel. I worry that if shock and anger are similar, does that mean the killers and attackers have a real excuse for their crimes? What is the difference in us feeling anger with them for doing the crime and theirs when they committed the act? Is the answer so simple that explanation is, ‘but we don’t act on our anger and they did?’


These murders, suicides and attacks of family on family, friends on friends, spouse on spouse appears to be to much to comprehend. Still, I sometimes feel my shock with it all is missing and that is sad; yet at the same time, I do feel anger and frustration. From the more recent suicide of a young New Jersey college student, to the Lester Street slaughter of a family in TN back in 2008 and alleged death of Stacy Peterson at the hands of her cop husband in 2007, the killings are egregious and horrific. I felt anger, and cried silent tears when reading about them.

I keep wondering how anyone can become so pathologically narcissistic that a child's life is worth nothing more to them than the trash a local sanitation department collects on a weekly basis. People like the Susan Smiths’ of the world who gave the life of her two sons to God because she wanted more in her personal life: a man who didn't want children. And the like of the alleged killer, Casey Anthony, who allegedly duct-taped and threw her beautiful daughter in a trash bag; then dumped her body in a woody area that’s filled with filthy water for months at a time. It's incomprehensible that parents like Joseph and Sonya Smith could beat and torture a beautiful son because he was too noisy and wouldn't quietly participate in bible study - Spare the rod! I can't close my eyes and pray for the missing to be found without seeing the beautiful face of Jaliek Rainwalker and wonder if suspicions of his stepfather being a killer will ever be found as a truth. I can’t help but see the special face, shadowed by one of her hats, of Lindsey Baum and feel tears in my heart for her. Or without the beautiful smile of Kyron Horman floating before my eyes and wondering if his stepmother really is responsible for his being somewhere feeling lonely and scared without his father and biological mother. I wonder, is he dead too, like Caylee? Is Haleigh Cummings dead? I can't help my thought that both are now in God's home and in the loving arms of Angels.

I worry because I now wonder if its shock I feel when I read of a murder at the hands of a parent or spouse or if I’ve become immune to being shocked. I worry because when I read of a new intimate partner beating, the emotions I have only feel like anger for the victim and ‘at the perpetrator’ that the atrocious act happened. I do actually admire defense attorneys who can stand before a judge and jury and battle for the most vile of the accused. I know it’s their job; the accused have rights to a fair trial. Still, I don’t have to like what they say and do and usually I don’t like it. I admit I sometimes want to reach out and slap some defense attorney at times; slap them ‘for the victim.’ Because it appears, they are making the victim the bad person.

Sometimes I want to scream out at the justice system for placing a bond on some individuals. One example of the need to scream out is a recent horrific attack on a woman in Mississippi. Freda Wilkerson was so severely beaten that she underwent immediate surgery to repair the wounds and she’ll need more surgery in the future. The attacker, her boyfriend, had left her where she lay, bruised, bleeding and broken and he ran. He was eventually located and charged with aggravated domestic violence but only placed under a $10,000 bond. Outrage seeped into the victim’s heart, and mine also when reading of such a low bond. She said they had placed a small price on her life, fear gripped her and her children that Bobbie Stewart would bond out and come after them. She was right to feel that fear to me. Fortunately the DA agreed and had a higher bond of $50,000 placed on Stewart. I still feel that amount isn’t enough either. No amount is enough for a person who so horrifically beats another human being and leaves them mangled and scared for their life, without help. But if Freda vocalizing her anger helps the police understand victims’ fears and points of view in the future then expressing her anger will not have been for naught.

I wonder, are the anger and frustration I feel with all these beatings, drive by shootings where innocents die (and not the person intended), spouse murders, girlfriend-boyfriend murders, and other tragic criminal activities the same as feeling shock that such an event can still happen? Even if it is the same, I still can’t help but wonder ‘why?’... Why haven’t we, in this day and age of high technology, found a way to come together as one species - the human race - and show respect for each other?