Lessons in tragedy

This story didn’t get much national attention, and I never talked about it on the air because it started and ended relatively quickly.  An 18-year-old woman from here in Kansas (about 30 minutes from where I live in Lawrence) disappeared on September 29th and was found dead on October 5th.  Her ex-boyfriend and two other men, all three in their late teens or very early twenties, are in custody and charged with her kidnapping and murder.  Now, please remember this if/as you read on:  I’m not blaming anybody but the perpetrators — I’m simply trying to glean whatever lessons can be gleaned from this tragedy in the hope of preventing a future tragedy.

Friends of the victim have told the local media that there was a long history of physical abuse in the victim’s relationship with the ex-boyfriend now charged in her death.  Sadly, you’ve heard me say time and time again that women need to get themselves and their children, if any, away from men at the first indications of violent tendencies because they typically repeat and escalate.  Those past cases, however, have involved women who were adults for the duration of their abusive relationships.  This case is different.  This girl’s relationship with her allegedly-abusive ex-boyfriend reportedly began when she was 15 or 16 years old, a minor.  For better or worse, many minors don’t watch the shows that I’m on or read my blogs and columns.  This case, therefore, underscores the need for parents and schools to educate teens, especially young women, about the deadly cycle of domestic violence and how not to get sucked into it.  As I often do, one of the things I noted when reading about the victim’s family was that her last name and her father’s last name appeared to be different.  That made me wonder whether there had been some family upheaval somewhere along the line that might possibly have deprived this girl of some potentially-lifesaving parental attention.  Then I read that she was raised primarily by grandparents, leading me to conclude that there probably had in fact been some problems in the family.  Maybe the grandparents did a great job, and maybe they harped on domestic violence all day long, but I still think it’s worth noting that when parents are not actively involved in the day-to-day parenting of their kids, not monitoring their minor children’s choices of friends and social activities, the kids’ chances of encountering trouble go up in my experience.  Maybe the girl’s school did a great job, too.  Maybe school counselors took her aside and spoke individually with her about the dangers of domestic violence, but I still think it’s worth noting that this is one aspect of teens’ social lives in which schools generally could do more to impart or supplement an important message that may be absent or ignored at home.  In this case, from the admittedly-incomplete, still-developing picture that I have, it appears that the girl’s friends did more than anyone else to encourage her to leave the relationship.  There may not have been anything that adults at her home or school could’ve done that would’ve convinced her to actually leave the relationship, but then again, there might have been.

Once again, I’m not blaming anyone other than the perpetrators — not the victim, not the parents, not the grandparents, not school personnel, not the friends, nobody — but I know that there’s a sad number of young women, minors, out there in abusive relationships at this very moment.  So, what do I want?  I want schools educating teenagers, especially young women, about the need to get away from physical abuse at its first manifestation.  I want parents actively involved enough in their teens’ lives to hopefully spot when their daughters are in potentially-abusive relationships.  I want friends who learn that friends are being abused to not only encourage the victims to get away from their abusers but to also make sure that responsible adults are aware of these situations.  I want parents who suspect (either from seeing or hearing it first-hand or by hearing it from others) that their daughters have been abused to do everything (legally) possible to keep their daughters away from the abusers and to get law enforcement involved, whether their daughters like it or not.  And as always, I want law enforcement and judges to come down hard and immediately on perpetrators, whether they’re minors or majors (slaps on the wrist equal slaps in girls’ and women’s faces — literally…and worse — and justice delayed is justice denied).  What I want most is not to be talking on a future show or writing in a future piece about another young woman who got caught up in a similar cycle of violence ending in another preventable (yet nonetheless heartbreaking) tragedy.

I’m both a psychologist and an attorney with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, a law degree, and an M.B.A. When I practice psychology, it’s usually as a forensic expert (competency, insanity defense, psychological damages, mental disabilities, child custody, etc.). I still treat patients, but only in special cases. I also sometimes consult with executives about human resource issues (mental fitness for duty, assessment of potential hires, etc.). When I practice law, it’s usually as expert counsel in cases involving psychological issues and experts. In some cases, I serve as a mediator or as a litigation consultant to the lawyers for one side. I also teach a course at the University of Kansas, but I’m best known as a regular guest expert on TV and radio.