INQUIRY WILL TELL US WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW
The cry for a national inquiry into murdered and missing women is once more capturing the media industry’s focus. Of course the emotional component seeks to deafen the reasoning component.
Let me offer another perspective on this whole picture of violence, murder and mayhem as it is being assigned to women. Everyone of us has a beginning. We are conceived , born and face the onslaught of life’s demands. Whether we are born into privilege or poverty is really not the issue, we take on an identity.
Our natural identity is the product of those who either loved us or failed to love us. In the early years of our development as children , we are like receptacles into which people drop negative statements. Those negative statements accumulate at an alarming degree if those assigned to our care and development are too busy struggling with their own deprived development. Simply put, there are three crucial building blocks to the successful growth and development of our children. They are: 1. Belonging to a loving family. 2. Are valued for who they are, not what they can do. 3. They have significance in the world around them. Without these three building blocks we have a very shaky sense of identity.
Justice Francis Murphy rightfully put it into perspective. He said “children have neither power nor property. Voices other than their own must speak for them. If those voices are silent then children who have been abused may lean their foreheads against window panes and taste the bitter empowerment of violated childhoods.”
Somewhere in their bitter emptiness of a violated childhood many of these missing , and murdered women have been deprived of the essential childhood ingredients ,necessary to assuming their identity as human beings with worth and empowerment.
Unless we believe a healthy family is no longer relevant in our society as an incubator for love , nurture and encouragement of our children, then truly the numbers of victims will increase alarmingly.
If homes are not safe places for children, then it is only a matter of time before we will have a flawed, abused , and plundered graduates of homes and families who have no idea at all how to provide for the essential needs of children. Should we be surprised then when these children graduate into adolescence with all its challenges, ill equipped to know themselves, have a belief system , and feel worthy and valued, Instead they are fearful, even terrified, angry , alienated , isolated victims of the abdication of all that contributes to giving children, more than a fighting chance in our society. These men and woman become disconnected from the relationships of life that give them purpose, safety and value. They see themselves as trash, and become ripe for victimization.
There is no more terrifying plight than for a human being to feel they are totally alone. You don’t need to paint a target on their backs for the sharpshooters of exploiters, and deviants to grab them , use and abuse them and even kill them. And it has all started in the home such as it might be.
The statistics are pretty clear. By far the largest percentage of perpetrators of abuse, violence and murder of women and men are family members and close relatives. People well known to the victim.A recent RCMP study has confirmed this. We already know what is happening. We know where this mayhem is occurring, right in the domains of where people exist and try to survive. It is a world of abnormal and chaotic rearing, and it is turning out graduates onto the streets and alleys of our nations, ready to be picked off in one way or another.
There are more inquiries , commissions and study’s than Elvis impersonators. Getting things done by these inquiries or commissions is like the elephant mating process. It is done at a high level, accomplished with a great deal of roaring and screaming, and takes two years to produce results, which usually fall to the ground with a thud. Just ask Ted Hughes ,what became of his recommendations for the family services system.
A much more deliberate effort seems alarmingly necessary to address the failure of homes and families, which by their dysfunctionality and ignorance are unleashing a population of men and women whose needs and deficiencies will never be addressed by yet another program or inquiry.
Parents are the executive committee working to provide children with love, affection and training they need to be able to stand on their own two feet, to relate to the world and eventually relate to God.
The chances of pulling their bodies out of a river are markedly less.
Circumspection 