More Violence against Women...This time right next door
Please excuse the huge lapse in entries folks, I've been on a self-imposed-hiatus from writing and I shant burden you with the specifics, but suffice to say that Ive had a couple of major life changes and I havnt a shred of spare time as of late
Its all good tho because struggle truly does builds strength and as such I should be bursting at the seams.
I had to take some time out today to express my feelings about the recent murders that occurred right here in Cheshire, Connecticut, a stones throw from my home in Fairfield County.
Although I didnt know any of the victims personally, I have found myself deeply affected by this crime. In fact, I feel as if I am carrying a giant hole in my heart since learning of the details of the murders of Jennifer Hawke Petit and her two daughters Hayley and Michaela, as well the near fatal assault on Dr.william Petit, the lone survivor of this senseless crime. AlThough he lived through the unimaginable ordeal, he now must live with just the memories of his entire family, and haunting thoughts of their last hours, I am sure.
I was born in New York city but moved to the suburbs of Connecticut at the ripe age of eight. My folks chose the quaint little town of Westport, and though quite close geographically and economically to the City, in every other way the city might as well have been a million miles away. There was little to no diversity. The people were for the most part white, educated middle and upper middle class and the infintesimal crime rate made the danger of N.Y City remote and unfathomable to us as children and even young adults.
There was wealth but not crazy wealth-and most of it was "new money", as opposed to the old money of Greenwich, New Canaan and the string of sleepy old hamlets peppering the shoreline of Long Island Sound and the inland environs. I've returned to this same area about 8 years ago, but before that, requiring a safe & quiet township situated in the middle of the state for career reasons, I settled just a few towns west of Cheshire.
Cheshire was then and always had been a charming, somewhat bucolic, safe smallish town. Yet from this day forth, to any and all who live anywhere in and outside of this state, it will be known as the place where this" horrific "tragedy" occurred. But although clearly tragic, filing this away in our memories as a tragedy is not accurate, for a tragedy to me implies a fateful event of some kind, placing it in the realm of oh so many things that merely "occur".
Doing so oversimplifies the enormity of evil that it took to carry out the barbaric acts that placed it on the map. Not to mention that it ultimately dehumanizes this family by thinking of them and relagating them as victims,.
On July 23 two local career criminals out on EARLY release parole, apparently conspired and executed with forethought and malice, a series of crimes which began with the sighting and stalking of an attractive Blonde Mrs Hawke-Petit and her 11 year old daughter, Michaela
as they shopped for groceries at thier local Stop and Shop.
Cant you imagine them...I do. In fact I cannot seem to stop thinking about them. And anguishing- over the sequence of events that brought them happenstance into the path of Evil.
They were shopping for that night's family dinner apparently; A vegetarian pasta dish with salad and vinaigrette dressing, Michaela or kk as family called her, had become the de facto family chef, with a reputed talent for cooking. How could have either of them known this would be the last meal that she ever would prepare for them, it breaks my heart. Walking through the familiar security of a public place in a familiar area of their small town, how could either of them known they were being watched? Watched as they shopped, and then followed as they drove back to their home, just a mile and a half from the market.
Fifteen hours later, both mother and daughter were dead, as well as the Petit's older daughter, 17 year old Hayley. Dr. Petit, the only survivor, would be near death himself from severe blood loss, and a traumatic brain injury inflicted upon him by the murderer/rapists weilding a baseball bat.
In my opinion there is clearly an unbridled hatred at the core of these crimes that showed itself on many levels; First there is an obvious bitterness and anger towards females in general as is evidenced from the sexual assaults. The two criminals chosen rape victims also tells us a lot. The younger of the two murderer-rapists, 28 yrs old komisarjevsky, chooses a veritable child as the object of his sexual lust and control fantasys Although only 11 years old, Michaela, according to her dad, had just undergone a big growth spurt that left her her quite tall for her age and in fact was probably mistaken for an older girl of 14 or so. Enter, emotionally stunted predator Joshua Komisarjevsky. Her appearance as a very young tween made her perfect fair game for him, yet she was still a child and thus posed no threat to his ego as an adult woman would. We've all heard enough times that rape is not about sex, but about power and control. This is painfully true. These two career criminals with stints in and out of prison for most of their adult lives were not likely getting much healthy attention or respect from women in general much less love or intimacy particularly from women they perceived as privileged; or as they likely saw it " out of "their league".
I am certain that there was among these two a deep abiding sentiment of "the haves and the have-nots".with the two with them lifetime criminals hopelessly relegated to the latter in their minds. Envy, resentment, hatred, even fear, fear of women and the power they can have over such small and insecure men- these are the hallmarks that litter the minds of rapists.
I have read that this Joshua Komisarjevsky had been depressed over the fact that his teenage girlfriend, had recently moved out of the area with her parents, a move certainly interpreted as abandonment or rejection.
So here is this already emotionally retarded young career-criminal on the loose, looking to get even with women, certainly to exert some power over them, especially ones that are young, pretty ----and he knows under ordinary circumstances, would reject him.
Bear in mind, that komisarjevsky was raised in a blue collar family that lived amongst a somewhat affluent town- Cheshire;He was the only adopted son of an electrician, his fathers lineage was much more lofty with familial roots in Russia that boasted professonal dancers and directors-artsians among the family. Joshua komisarjevsky's immediate clan however was decidely working class, sometimes referred to by residents as "townies" Details are not available to explain how or why his parents had apparently fallen upon harder times in recent years- their colonial farmhouse, now comparatively neglected and unkempt.
You will have to pardon me for this detour into the lives and minds of these horrible men that committed these crimes. I don't care what misfortunes they or any predators for that matter have befallen them as some type of excuse for there behavior. I too rage at them. But I also need to have at least a basic understanding of how they are created-but more importantly how they operate-. There is an M.O for the sociopath. The more I learn about crime of this sort, the more textbook these guys become and thus the more likely I am to spot them, it is somethjing that I once read so aptly decribed as the banality of evil.
And you would be amazed and horrified to know just how many psychopaths exist around us-and among us. More often than not, the bogeyman is not grotesque in appearance, nor stupid.
In fact they are often unusually intelligent and highly manipulative-which is why they are so often able to blend in- on the surface- . They even can emulate what they know is expected of them-including the possession of a conscience, something they recognize as an innate and expected- human quality tho they lack it they may carefully craft the appearance of one- such is the crocodile tears that komisarjevsky shed at one of his sentencing hearings, thinly veiled attempts to illicit sympathy from his parents, the judge and possibly the victims of his latest robberies.
While all of this knowledge regarding the criminal mind doesn't ease the pain over the lives lost to these monsters, it does help in demystifying them and in doing this we rob their power and reduce them to the confines of their DSM parameters, with evolving sub notes, precisely where they belong. (dsm is the diagnostic statistical manual, the bible of the psychiatric field.)
When this kind of horrible brutality happens, I used to to try to figure out what could have possibly happened in the perpetrators lives/minds to have led them to behave in such inhuman cruel fashion. What issues could have caused such low self esteem and a prevailing sense of social rejection. Within this my own experience with violent crime, and my subsequent involvement with advocacy, I have learned that there are simply evil people who do evil things, and most of them fall under the DSM guidelines for one of the handful of personality disorders, with Anti social PD and narcissistic PD leading the pack. By recognizing the telltale symptoms of such and sharing this important information, we are all much better equipped to spot them and keep them at bay.
The irony regarding the two criminals obvious resentment of affluence and what they saw as privileged lives is that The Petit family could not have been a better example of kindness, generosity of self and spirit, and social and spiritual conscientiousness--And all of this they very nearly wiped out in an effort to obliterate evidence of the sexual assaults that had been the central motivation within the entire carnage.
I honestly believe that the 'robbery' was incidental as well as the $15,000 withdrawal that Jennifer Petit made under duress from her bank that fateful morning. I can only surmise that Mrs. Petit may have tried to buy more time in a desperate attempt to pay off the criminals as an exchange or purchase for her family's life-a family that was being held hostage for the last 6 hours, beaten and sexually assaulted.
I am sickened to think of what they experienced and yet it happened, they endured it and therefore, I make the conscious decision to not turn away. And part of this for me has always been a keen sense of the fear and pain that these victims experienced. I owe this to these victims not to bury my head in the sand when something like this happens, telling myself ' I cannot think about this, its too awful and its too hard.'
We must consider it well and we must remember it, for only with true empathy for the victims of violent crimes experience can we then do our collective best to insure that it doesn't happen again. Feeling this loss is the least we must do If we are to think of ourselves as evolved, enlightened or compassionate people. And I admit, The hard part is not getting lost there, amid all of the pain and the despair.
As a people, let us please use this brutal set of crimes as the final watershed for drastic change in how our Connecticut courts deal with crime and justice. As a state, we have an abysmal reputation and well earned, for barely processing our criminals. And those who have committed violent crimes are no exception to this processing mill where plea deals are mostly automatic and dropped charges and lowered charges, are the norm. Any One can read up on Connecticut's court statistics for its percentage of plea deal resolutions on criminal cases-the average has been 96 -97 percent. 97 percent for years.
And then there is our states version of a criminal "freebie" in effect, something called accelerated rehabilitation program" or simply AR. This is a program that was supposedly designed as an alternative resolution method for compliant first time offenders--And like every break that is given to criminals , defense attorneys are hovering and ready to draw the moral, ethical and legal line just a little bit farther out. And they have taken our courts hostage as a result. Truth and accountability used to be watchwords of our justice system and certainly a necessary component of any plea deal offered to a defendant.
Nowadays plea deals are handed out willy nilly and a defendant must merely" not contest" that the state has enough evidence to convict him of a far less serious crime or crimes than he/she actually committed- in order to be guranteed a greatly reduced senetence and corresponding criminal record thank you very much/ Te concept of restitution has also fallen by the wayside in Cponnecticuts criminal courts.--- That is restitution to the crime victim, the concept of restitution is alive and well insofar as the state collecting more thaits fair share in fines, court fees, bail bonds and the like.
Once an innate part of any plea Offer extended to a criminal our government once held the notion of restitution to ONES victims an essential part of any deal given to a defendent esp that involved lesser sentences and/or charges-Or again, there was NO DEAL-Take your chance with a trial and that prosecutor will be seeking the maximum sentence for your crimes.
The general trend here would seem to be a judicial system that has no use for lofty notions like accountability -or....justice. Not suprisingly, this sentiment has taken and continues to take, a cruel and umimaginable toll upon its citizens this in the form of lives stolen, bodies broken and many others whose daily lives involve fear and terrorism. Also veterans of this war are the countless "survivors"- victims and victims family and friends forced to rely on a callous and lackluster system, as arrogant as it is inept, with no discernible interest in change or responsible reform. In fact there would seem to be a very strong prescence within the legislature and the offices beside and atop the courthouses, fiercely bent on protecting the status quo....
.
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18674887&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18674887&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
Its all good tho because struggle truly does builds strength and as such I should be bursting at the seams.
I had to take some time out today to express my feelings about the recent murders that occurred right here in Cheshire, Connecticut, a stones throw from my home in Fairfield County.
Although I didnt know any of the victims personally, I have found myself deeply affected by this crime. In fact, I feel as if I am carrying a giant hole in my heart since learning of the details of the murders of Jennifer Hawke Petit and her two daughters Hayley and Michaela, as well the near fatal assault on Dr.william Petit, the lone survivor of this senseless crime. AlThough he lived through the unimaginable ordeal, he now must live with just the memories of his entire family, and haunting thoughts of their last hours, I am sure.
I was born in New York city but moved to the suburbs of Connecticut at the ripe age of eight. My folks chose the quaint little town of Westport, and though quite close geographically and economically to the City, in every other way the city might as well have been a million miles away. There was little to no diversity. The people were for the most part white, educated middle and upper middle class and the infintesimal crime rate made the danger of N.Y City remote and unfathomable to us as children and even young adults.
There was wealth but not crazy wealth-and most of it was "new money", as opposed to the old money of Greenwich, New Canaan and the string of sleepy old hamlets peppering the shoreline of Long Island Sound and the inland environs. I've returned to this same area about 8 years ago, but before that, requiring a safe & quiet township situated in the middle of the state for career reasons, I settled just a few towns west of Cheshire.
Cheshire was then and always had been a charming, somewhat bucolic, safe smallish town. Yet from this day forth, to any and all who live anywhere in and outside of this state, it will be known as the place where this" horrific "tragedy" occurred. But although clearly tragic, filing this away in our memories as a tragedy is not accurate, for a tragedy to me implies a fateful event of some kind, placing it in the realm of oh so many things that merely "occur".
Doing so oversimplifies the enormity of evil that it took to carry out the barbaric acts that placed it on the map. Not to mention that it ultimately dehumanizes this family by thinking of them and relagating them as victims,.
On July 23 two local career criminals out on EARLY release parole, apparently conspired and executed with forethought and malice, a series of crimes which began with the sighting and stalking of an attractive Blonde Mrs Hawke-Petit and her 11 year old daughter, Michaela
as they shopped for groceries at thier local Stop and Shop.
Cant you imagine them...I do. In fact I cannot seem to stop thinking about them. And anguishing- over the sequence of events that brought them happenstance into the path of Evil.
They were shopping for that night's family dinner apparently; A vegetarian pasta dish with salad and vinaigrette dressing, Michaela or kk as family called her, had become the de facto family chef, with a reputed talent for cooking. How could have either of them known this would be the last meal that she ever would prepare for them, it breaks my heart. Walking through the familiar security of a public place in a familiar area of their small town, how could either of them known they were being watched? Watched as they shopped, and then followed as they drove back to their home, just a mile and a half from the market.
Fifteen hours later, both mother and daughter were dead, as well as the Petit's older daughter, 17 year old Hayley. Dr. Petit, the only survivor, would be near death himself from severe blood loss, and a traumatic brain injury inflicted upon him by the murderer/rapists weilding a baseball bat.
In my opinion there is clearly an unbridled hatred at the core of these crimes that showed itself on many levels; First there is an obvious bitterness and anger towards females in general as is evidenced from the sexual assaults. The two criminals chosen rape victims also tells us a lot. The younger of the two murderer-rapists, 28 yrs old komisarjevsky, chooses a veritable child as the object of his sexual lust and control fantasys Although only 11 years old, Michaela, according to her dad, had just undergone a big growth spurt that left her her quite tall for her age and in fact was probably mistaken for an older girl of 14 or so. Enter, emotionally stunted predator Joshua Komisarjevsky. Her appearance as a very young tween made her perfect fair game for him, yet she was still a child and thus posed no threat to his ego as an adult woman would. We've all heard enough times that rape is not about sex, but about power and control. This is painfully true. These two career criminals with stints in and out of prison for most of their adult lives were not likely getting much healthy attention or respect from women in general much less love or intimacy particularly from women they perceived as privileged; or as they likely saw it " out of "their league".
I am certain that there was among these two a deep abiding sentiment of "the haves and the have-nots".with the two with them lifetime criminals hopelessly relegated to the latter in their minds. Envy, resentment, hatred, even fear, fear of women and the power they can have over such small and insecure men- these are the hallmarks that litter the minds of rapists.
I have read that this Joshua Komisarjevsky had been depressed over the fact that his teenage girlfriend, had recently moved out of the area with her parents, a move certainly interpreted as abandonment or rejection.
So here is this already emotionally retarded young career-criminal on the loose, looking to get even with women, certainly to exert some power over them, especially ones that are young, pretty ----and he knows under ordinary circumstances, would reject him.
Bear in mind, that komisarjevsky was raised in a blue collar family that lived amongst a somewhat affluent town- Cheshire;He was the only adopted son of an electrician, his fathers lineage was much more lofty with familial roots in Russia that boasted professonal dancers and directors-artsians among the family. Joshua komisarjevsky's immediate clan however was decidely working class, sometimes referred to by residents as "townies" Details are not available to explain how or why his parents had apparently fallen upon harder times in recent years- their colonial farmhouse, now comparatively neglected and unkempt.
You will have to pardon me for this detour into the lives and minds of these horrible men that committed these crimes. I don't care what misfortunes they or any predators for that matter have befallen them as some type of excuse for there behavior. I too rage at them. But I also need to have at least a basic understanding of how they are created-but more importantly how they operate-. There is an M.O for the sociopath. The more I learn about crime of this sort, the more textbook these guys become and thus the more likely I am to spot them, it is somethjing that I once read so aptly decribed as the banality of evil.
And you would be amazed and horrified to know just how many psychopaths exist around us-and among us. More often than not, the bogeyman is not grotesque in appearance, nor stupid.
In fact they are often unusually intelligent and highly manipulative-which is why they are so often able to blend in- on the surface- . They even can emulate what they know is expected of them-including the possession of a conscience, something they recognize as an innate and expected- human quality tho they lack it they may carefully craft the appearance of one- such is the crocodile tears that komisarjevsky shed at one of his sentencing hearings, thinly veiled attempts to illicit sympathy from his parents, the judge and possibly the victims of his latest robberies.
While all of this knowledge regarding the criminal mind doesn't ease the pain over the lives lost to these monsters, it does help in demystifying them and in doing this we rob their power and reduce them to the confines of their DSM parameters, with evolving sub notes, precisely where they belong. (dsm is the diagnostic statistical manual, the bible of the psychiatric field.)
When this kind of horrible brutality happens, I used to to try to figure out what could have possibly happened in the perpetrators lives/minds to have led them to behave in such inhuman cruel fashion. What issues could have caused such low self esteem and a prevailing sense of social rejection. Within this my own experience with violent crime, and my subsequent involvement with advocacy, I have learned that there are simply evil people who do evil things, and most of them fall under the DSM guidelines for one of the handful of personality disorders, with Anti social PD and narcissistic PD leading the pack. By recognizing the telltale symptoms of such and sharing this important information, we are all much better equipped to spot them and keep them at bay.
The irony regarding the two criminals obvious resentment of affluence and what they saw as privileged lives is that The Petit family could not have been a better example of kindness, generosity of self and spirit, and social and spiritual conscientiousness--And all of this they very nearly wiped out in an effort to obliterate evidence of the sexual assaults that had been the central motivation within the entire carnage.
I honestly believe that the 'robbery' was incidental as well as the $15,000 withdrawal that Jennifer Petit made under duress from her bank that fateful morning. I can only surmise that Mrs. Petit may have tried to buy more time in a desperate attempt to pay off the criminals as an exchange or purchase for her family's life-a family that was being held hostage for the last 6 hours, beaten and sexually assaulted.
I am sickened to think of what they experienced and yet it happened, they endured it and therefore, I make the conscious decision to not turn away. And part of this for me has always been a keen sense of the fear and pain that these victims experienced. I owe this to these victims not to bury my head in the sand when something like this happens, telling myself ' I cannot think about this, its too awful and its too hard.'
We must consider it well and we must remember it, for only with true empathy for the victims of violent crimes experience can we then do our collective best to insure that it doesn't happen again. Feeling this loss is the least we must do If we are to think of ourselves as evolved, enlightened or compassionate people. And I admit, The hard part is not getting lost there, amid all of the pain and the despair.
As a people, let us please use this brutal set of crimes as the final watershed for drastic change in how our Connecticut courts deal with crime and justice. As a state, we have an abysmal reputation and well earned, for barely processing our criminals. And those who have committed violent crimes are no exception to this processing mill where plea deals are mostly automatic and dropped charges and lowered charges, are the norm. Any One can read up on Connecticut's court statistics for its percentage of plea deal resolutions on criminal cases-the average has been 96 -97 percent. 97 percent for years.
And then there is our states version of a criminal "freebie" in effect, something called accelerated rehabilitation program" or simply AR. This is a program that was supposedly designed as an alternative resolution method for compliant first time offenders--And like every break that is given to criminals , defense attorneys are hovering and ready to draw the moral, ethical and legal line just a little bit farther out. And they have taken our courts hostage as a result. Truth and accountability used to be watchwords of our justice system and certainly a necessary component of any plea deal offered to a defendant.
Nowadays plea deals are handed out willy nilly and a defendant must merely" not contest" that the state has enough evidence to convict him of a far less serious crime or crimes than he/she actually committed- in order to be guranteed a greatly reduced senetence and corresponding criminal record thank you very much/ Te concept of restitution has also fallen by the wayside in Cponnecticuts criminal courts.--- That is restitution to the crime victim, the concept of restitution is alive and well insofar as the state collecting more thaits fair share in fines, court fees, bail bonds and the like.
Once an innate part of any plea Offer extended to a criminal our government once held the notion of restitution to ONES victims an essential part of any deal given to a defendent esp that involved lesser sentences and/or charges-Or again, there was NO DEAL-Take your chance with a trial and that prosecutor will be seeking the maximum sentence for your crimes.
The general trend here would seem to be a judicial system that has no use for lofty notions like accountability -or....justice. Not suprisingly, this sentiment has taken and continues to take, a cruel and umimaginable toll upon its citizens this in the form of lives stolen, bodies broken and many others whose daily lives involve fear and terrorism. Also veterans of this war are the countless "survivors"- victims and victims family and friends forced to rely on a callous and lackluster system, as arrogant as it is inept, with no discernible interest in change or responsible reform. In fact there would seem to be a very strong prescence within the legislature and the offices beside and atop the courthouses, fiercely bent on protecting the status quo....
.
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18674887&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18674887&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
posted by Laurel O'Keefe at 3:25 PM
