Precious

I recently consulted on a case of involuntary manslaughter.  The victim was a 19 month-old boy who had been inappropriately swaddled (by his stepfather) in a crib and placed face down on an adult sized pillow amid a flashlight and several other inappropriate and dangerous items. The child was dead when his mother finally went to check on him at 9:30 the morning after a particularly wild party where she and his father heard him crying in an unusual and distressed manner at some point over the din, but neglected to attend to him.  The official cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation.   The father had wrapped him so tightly in the blanket that he likely exhausted himself attempting to wiggle around, and then choked when he vomited later in the night (he’d been diagnosed with gastroenteritis and was vomiting regularly).Lividity (the bruise-like purple color a body turns on the side where the blood settles) and blanching (areas of paleness amid the purple because of skin pressed against a surface) made the crime scene photos chilling.  A 19 month-old isn’t supposed to look like some sickly, purple and white-striped, limp doll. For most of an afternoon, the prosecutor and my team discussed possibilities for charging either parent, particularly the stepfather who was the hands-on actor.  There were arguments for mercy toward both parties, particularly given the fact that both (especially the mother) were sentenced already to a lifetime of mourning this child and the dreadful judgment that led to his death.  But there was also evidence that the stepfather was both jealous and contemptuous of the child- and he had beaten him and left marks on at least one occasion previously.  Prosecuting him was appropriate.  The mother was a tougher call; she was guilty of horrendous judgment and some sick combination of laziness and stupidity, but didn’t seem to merit a charge.  And without a doubt, she was being punished already.  We also needed her cooperation.It’s a sticky balance sometimes.  Often the hardest part of being a child abuse prosecutor is working with (and withholding judgment of) the “non-offending” parent, that is, the one who didn’t actively harm the child, but who might have contributed to the environment that gave rise to his being harmed or killed.  Usually, although not always, that’s the mother.  She is often a victim herself, usually of the same perpetrator.  Understanding what’s known as the “Cycle of Violence” and other dynamics that play out in domestic violence situations helps to make sense of a person’s seemingly irrational or unwise choices. It’s not easy, for a hundred reasons, to leave a situation with a violent and abusive man.  Many ADA’s I’ve worked with though, particularly ones who are mothers themselves, draw a line at a mother’s failure to protect her own children.  Whether this is good public policy or mindless vengeance, whether it is justice or cruelty, is debatable and almost always case-specific.  The decision shouldn’t be an easy one either way.I was reminded of this dilemma watching Precious, the brilliantly acted but controversial film by Lee Daniels (and based on the novel by Sapphire)  released in 2009.  I found the movie riveting and recognized some of the dynamics experienced within the family Gabourey Sidibe’s character endured.  The pathology depicted in the film, from brutal incest and rape to the almost demonic assault on Precious’ spirit, verbal and physical, from her mother (played with genius by Mo’Nique), is not mythological.  It exists, and in nearly 15 years of doing this work I have seen it more often then I can shake on certain nights.  Some of the criticism of the movie was directed at its pure level of pain, anger, violence and despair.  It was likened to a porn flick in terms of its sheer scope of sickness, and discarded as simply over-the-top.  Perhaps, but the idea that what Precious experienced just couldn’t or wouldn’t happen in real life is naïve and frankly dangerous.   What’s more understandable was the reaction from detractors who found the movie to be a well-crafted but galling racial slur, designed to titillate white audiences with predictable and myth-cementing images of an inner-city black family.   “Black pathology,” to quote one reviewer, “sells.”   It’s a fair assessment, whatever the intentions of the filmmakers.It’s also grossly misleading.  The very same pathology, from the incest and sexual violence to the endless welfare dependence and cycle of poverty, has eaten entire areas of the US where non-white faces are rare or non-existent.   There is, I believe, an arguable connection between grinding poverty and physical abuse or neglect of children- whether in the city, the country, or anywhere in between.  There is no such link that I’ve ever experienced between poverty and sexual abuse, which plays out with equal malevolence in mansions and shacks.  There is absolutely no connection between any racial group and the pathology that destroys families and rips apart the children within them.  I personally believe Sapphire and Daniels were simply trying to tell a painful but powerful story.  But I can understand the revulsion that arises when it is only the African-American experience that is portrayed with such hopelessness.  The white majority, emerging Hispanic majority and every other group does its share of damage just as effectively.It is crucial to remember this when one is a prosecutor considering charging a neglectful or otherwise feckless mother in a case where a man did the most damage.  It’s simply one of the most difficult decisions we make, and if we’re colored by images of a racial, ethnic or socio-economic group as we do so, we’ve lost our sense of justice and we are deeply failed (and dangerous) professionals.  And, as offensive as the behavior of a failed mother can seem to us, we must remember the battle she has waged as well.  The genius of the character Mo’Nique plays in Precious is that, in the end, she earns a shred of compassion despite how miserably she’s reacted to the real demon in the story, the man we see so little of.The baby in the pictures I beheld was white, as were both of his parents, themselves uneducated and lower class.  Having been raised in a town where lower-class whites were the primary source of crime, abuse and bullying, I felt a quick urge to judge them with a lot more rigidity than I might hold for another demographic.   It wasn’t my case, but even as a consultant it was an urge that was best checked quickly. The landscape of a family destroyed by abuse and violence is as foggy, uncertain and unpredictable as any battlefield.  Understanding that as one walks into the midst of it in order to assign blame, issue subpoenas, and swing the hammer of the law is something we aren’t taught in law school.  But it’s a lesson we need to learn quickly.

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