A Hanging Offense

There are drug overdoses, medical mistakes, murders.

Then, there are suicides, and in comparison they seem…  no, not worse, but rather more…senseless, somehow.

Do we have something in common?

We are wired to protect our lives.  Our fight or flight response is definitely a part and parcel of our genetic makeup.  If we didn’t have that, our species would long have gone the way of the dodo.  So, to me, every single suicide is a slap in the face of evolution.

But when a child commits suicide, a 7-year old, to wit, how do you calculate that into the equation?

Certainly, Broward County officials have dropped the ball on Gabriel Myers’s case — failing the victim, the victim’s family, and even the school system, into which the boy had been integrated by ChildNet, the county’s private foster care organization, without the school system’s knowledge of the boy’s escalating patterns of deviant sexual behavior.

Having been sexually molested himself, upon having been removed from the custody of his drug-abusing mother, the boy had proven himself too intractable for his uncle and aunt to handle.  But, at least, they did recognize when they were outgunned.

The ChildNet, having ostensibly offered the best the modern psychiatric sciences can boast of, including psychotropic meds to a boy as young as Gabriel, has finally hit upon the bright idea to introduce the budding sexual predator into a regular school, where he was to learn to control his urges.

Considering the boy’s mental state went downhill fast (now including violence on top of continuing sexual acting-out), it stands to reason why earlier this week, Broward County’s Department of Children and Families head, Jack Moss, has used the blanket federal medical privacy laws to excuse his refusal to shed light on any and all sex abuse allegations.

There really isn’t much to say.  No explanations would cut this.  The boy had, obviously, been severly abused.  Unfortunately, we will never know if he stood a chance of leading a normal life with proper psychiatric and social supervision.

Unfortunately, too, it is one less human to add diversity to our communal gene pool.  But most unfortunately of all, it is one less little boy who will be watching kiddie yogurt ads and gulping up the latest offerings from the prolific Disney animation arm.

Should a child with such severe and deep-running mental issues have been allowed the independence that he was? Probably not. Are we taking our basic freedoms too far, in not protecting those with pronounced mental illnesses from themselves? I don’t know. But I can say that it is clear we need a sweeping review of modern socio-psychological welfare standards.