{"id":13171,"date":"2011-04-06T13:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T18:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=13171"},"modified":"2011-04-06T13:00:04","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T18:00:04","slug":"say-it-ain%e2%80%99t-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2011\/04\/say-it-ain%e2%80%99t-so\/","title":{"rendered":"Say It Ain\u2019t So"},"content":{"rendered":"

We like to think that child abusers and child killers are monsters who are easily identifiable and, even more importantly, different from the rest of us \u201cnormal\u201d people.\u00a0 A recent news story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel<\/em> <\/a>reminds us that the reality is more complicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The alleged crime is sadly familiar: a young man was arrested in connection with the death of his girlfriend\u2019s two-year-old son, Karmari J. Curtis, whom the suspect was babysitting.\u00a0 The boyfriend brought the toddler\u2019s body to the emergency room and claimed that the child had drowned accidentally while in the bath.\u00a0 Since the lifeless child was reportedly dry and completely dressed, medical personnel and the police doubted the story, and the medical examiner\u2019s report on the cause of death is currently sealed pending charges.\u00a0 At the time of the toddler\u2019s death, the suspect, Corey Benson, was out on bail awaiting trial on charges of physical abuse of a child and child neglect.\u00a0 The previous charges stem from an incident in October when Benson admitted to playing tackle football with the same child and doing elbow and leg drops to him afterwards.\u00a0 The toddler suffered life-threatening injuries, including a lacerated liver, as the result of that incident.\u00a0 Benson was under a court order to have no contact with the boy after the October charges.<\/p>\n

Everything about this tragic incident is ghastly, but here I want to focus on one particularly chilling aspect of this situation: the suspect, Corey Benson, is a young man of great potential who seemed to have beaten the odds against him.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

One of six children, at the age of\u00a0two he lost his father in a drug-related incident.\u00a0 He was raised in a tough Milwaukee neighborhood by a single mother.\u00a0 Although he was in and out of foster care, Benson excelled in school and was the valedictorian of his high school class.\u00a0 He won a scholarship to Purdue University and graduated from there with an accounting degree.\u00a0 He overcame the odds; he seemed to have such a bright future and now\u00a0. . . this.<\/p>\n

Research shows that people who were abused or neglected as children are at significantly higher risk of later becoming child abusers themselves, although contrary to popular belief the majority of abused children do not<\/em> later become abusers.\u00a0 Adults who were abused as children are also at significantly higher risk of experiencing other difficulties in life such as addiction, relationship problems, and depression.\u00a0 Yet here, too, there are many formerly abused people who go on to live happy and productive lives.\u00a0 Much research has attempted to identify why some formerly abused adults have happy life outcomes, while others lead tragic and unhappy lives rife with problems.\u00a0 We hope that if we can discover the factors that save some abused children from an unhappy fate, we can reproduce those factors for other children and save them, too.<\/p>\n

Essentially, child-saving factors can be either internal or external.\u00a0 Internal factors are individual characteristics of the abused child, like intelligence, that make him more resilient and better able to seek out and get necessary help or affection. External factors are opportunities for the child to have essential developmental needs met by persons other than the maltreating parents.\u00a0 School, counseling, and mentoring programs are examples of efforts that are thought to give maltreated kids some of the love and support that they have not been able to receive at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know what happened to Corey Benson when he was growing up, but the fact that he was in and out of foster care suggests there were serious abuse or neglect issues in his family.\u00a0 He clearly has some characteristics that would improve his chances of breaking the cycle of maltreatment, such as intelligence and a reportedly strong work ethic.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know what kind of services he received, or why they could not somehow have prevented the current tragedy. \u00a0Benson has not been convicted of either the beating or the killing, and he is innocent until proven guilty.\u00a0 The evidence against him, though, is troubling.\u00a0 Benson\u2019s admissions in the police record about the October incident at the very least show a troubling lack of understanding about how to take care of a child, what with descriptions of tackle football and acting on \u201caggression and adrenaline\u201d that built up as the suspect played with the toddler.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although our society has made some progress in identifying ways to help maltreated children live healthy and productive lives, the death of little Karmari reminds us that there is a lot we do not know about how and when to intervene.\u00a0 We have the continual hope that if we get to maltreated children earlier we can save even more of them from harm.\u00a0 But sometimes we can\u2019t save them, and we do not yet fully know why not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We like to think that child abusers and child killers are monsters who are easily identifiable and, even more importantly, different from the rest of us \u201cnormal\u201d people.\u00a0 A recent news story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reminds us that the reality is more complicated.\u00a0 The alleged crime is sadly familiar: a young man was arrested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-law","category-milwaukee","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}