It had been less than two days since I learned that my son had a blue sweatshirt with a red bird. Since I realized that it must have been he who was going into the woods the night of the party. My wife and I had discussed what we would do to keep him safe.
I have always been fascinated by the bond between parent and child. I’m sure you have gleaned this already. It is in us. It is why we are here. To fornicate, to make babies, and then to die protecting them. In that respect, we are animals. And yet, we also have morality, and that is what distinguishes us from animals. I don’t care what anyone says about animals. They do not have morals. Any animal behavior that mimics morality is nothing more than a coincidence. They are driven by the need to survive and this need, this raw instinct, sometimes causes them to act in a “moral” way. When they protect a vulnerable member of their tribe. When they band together in a herd to keep a lion from picking them off, one at a time. When they accept members from another tribe or herd into their own. All of that is about self-preservation. Something is gained by the herd. There are just as many behaviors that are immoral. Male pigs who kill their own offspring so the mothers will stop lactating and become fertile again. Old rhinos who are shunned by the herd because they are of no use being alive. Female dogs who literally eat their defective newborn pups. On and on I could go.
I see it at the prison, where the forces of socialization are stripped away. I see it with the Axis II disorders, people who lack empathy. Sociopaths. We are not far from the animals. The very thing that distinguishes us is fragile. But it is real.
I have been observing my wife and have come to the conclusion that she has not ruled out the possibility that our son raped Jenny Kramer. It has been difficult to accept this because I know he is innocent and am disturbed by her ambivalence. It is not that she does not love him. If I investigated, I know what I would uncover. She cannot explain his presence in the woods or the shaving or the bleach. I admit these are difficult hurdles to overcome. And so she has gone down a less strenuous mental path, the path of justification. Perhaps he was high on drugs. Perhaps it was a “date rape” gone wrong. Perhaps one of his friends followed him and was also involved, and maybe it was the friend who was so violent. Surely our son could not have done what they are saying. But the girl doesn’t remember, does she? The “facts” of the rape are still just speculation. Anyone could poke holes in the story they had created.
She had spoken of the now infamous date rapes down in the southern part of the state. We both remembered when that teenage boy was on trial. We both remembered hearing the evidence at the trial, how the victims were persecuted, their stories broken down and torn apart. He had known them all from school. They had gone places with him willingly. He went to jail anyway, but there was always doubt. His loving parents had spent a fortune defending him. There was no question we would do the same for our son.
When the teenage rapist came up for parole years later, we watched the hearing on cable. He presented as such a nice man, repentant, remorseful. Rehabilitated. Then his victims spoke. For the first time, they told their stories without the interruption of clever defense attorneys. Julie and I were shocked at what we heard. They were horrible stories of violence, rape, sodomy, verbal obscenities, and strangulation. The press had not relayed the facts truthfully those many years before. It had all been spun to create an interesting he said–she said controversy. Parole was denied. The nice young man was transformed. He became belligerent. My wife said she could suddenly see the “crazy” in his eyes. I was disappointed in myself that I had not detected his Axis II condition. I would see that today, having worked at Somers these past few years.
My point is this: Julie had brought this up because she wanted to make sure I would protect our son the way that this family had protected theirs. She wanted to make sure I would do that even if we came to believe he had raped my patient. Even if he turned out to be a sociopath. She was reassured by my conviction. And I was disturbed by her assumptions.
I used to wonder about that family. I used to wonder if they knew he was guilty and didn’t care. Or if they clung to every piece of conflicting evidence, convinced themselves the victims were just regretful sluts, so they could believe in his innocence and justify their actions. I admit as well, to acknowledging to myself, in a somewhat whimsical manner, that I would be extremely adept at justifications, given my deep arsenal of psychological knowledge. I did not have to answer those questions or put my theory about myself to the test. I did not share my wife’s ambivalence toward our son.