A Hard Week

The following will be triggering for some; please proceed with caution.

This has been a very hard week. On Tuesday I read a bout a little boy in Utah who was murdered by his mother and step father. Ethan Stacy, a darling little four year-old, was visiting his mother for the summer. He arrived in Utah on May 1st, and on May 11th they found his body. He was murdered on Mother’s day. I won’t go into all the details because they are truly horrific, but if you click on Ethan’s name up above, it will take you the news story.

I weep for this dear little boy and his father who loved him and didn’t want to send him to Utah. I weep for all the dear little children who are still being abused. Often, unless the child is hospitalized or killed, their plight is not revealed until they are old enough and strong enough to talk about it. I think I could kill both of the people who murdered Ethan and not blink an eye. At some level I know how scared he must have been. It is hard for a child who is being abused to understand why the people who are supposed to protect him would harm him. I couldn’t understand this as child, nor do I understand it now. If the people who are supposed to love us, hurt us, there is no where to turn for help – when we are little. I hope that when the day comes for these murderers to meet God they will somehow get to experience the fear that Ethan felt because then will understand the horror of what they did to him. When I say this, I don’t mean that I want them to feel their own fear; I want them to know and feel what Ethan felt – his experience.

The news is now reporting that the step father was diagnosed with multiple personality disorders. I’m not sure if that means he had several disorders or if the newspaper had a typo and they mean he had Dissociative Identity Disorder – or that he had DID and other personality disorders as well. If the defense tries to blame this murder on DID, I will be angry. As a person with DID, I recognize that I am responsible for everything that any of my alters do. My mind created these alters as a way of survive horrifying conditions when I was a child. They are all me and I accept responsibility for them. I wonder what the mother’s excuse will be for the murder of her child – she does not have DID.

My heart breaks for this little one and his father. I pray that his father can find peace somehow. He must miss this little guy so much. My mind prays for justice for Ethan. I pray that laws protecting children will be strengthened so that child killers don’t get off with a five or ten year sentence. I do hope the prosecution can seek the death penalty in this case – it won’t bring Ethan back – but it will assure that neither of these two people will ever hurt another child.