Continued from previous
So, I'm not in any way defending the heinousness of killing a child - a handicapped one at that.
However, there are a couple of things that puzzle me somewhat. This mother is said to have bought a bottle of wine and driven around for 8 hours. She made a bottle of wine last eight whole hours, AND got drunk on it? Or did everybody forget to say that she made more pit stops for more wine in those 8 hours?
Also... there have been worse cases of people being tortured and murdered horribly, in maximum pain. Their murderers seem to get away with pleading "temporary insanity", thus escaping a life term in prison. They might spend a lot of time in an asylum, but they manage not to go to prison. Why is that? How come the juries in those cases dont think the murderer should spend the rest of his natural life in prison? Was it just the jury's collective horror at a little girl being killed by her own mother that brought about such a quick verdict? Why does the murder of adults not give rise to the same sort of horror? They would have suffered too. Horribly, in some cases. (Just the thought of it makes my heart grow cold.)
There are murderers who have killed for no reason other than a whim. Joanne Hill might have been driven by a combination of factors - mental, physical, emotional - to killing her daughter... in my eyes she would have been more deserving of at least an objective attempt at trying to understand her state of mind, than someone who killed a stranger out of lust or greed or some other dark reason. I dont think I'm being particularly coherent here, but I cant seem to collect my thoughts to make a more convincing point. I'm not even sure what I feel about Joanne Hill - she killed a helpless 4-year-old disabled child, her own daughter. And yet... I cant help wondering what drove her to it. I dont believe it was something as trivial as embarrassment. It might have been ONE of the factors, but I cant bring myself to believe that it was the main one.
Oh, I dont know. I suppose it's just that justice seems to have been TOO swiftly rendered in this case, whereas it's taken its own time in other cases of rape, torture and/or murder that to me seemed more open-and-shut than this one.
4 comments:
I think it might be because the parent is supposed to be the protector and provider for the child.
My take is that Joanne Hill's sin is no worse or better than Niketa Mehta's. You have what appears to be an imperfect child, you find it difficult to handle, you look for the shortest way to end it. So what if one was a foetus and the other a child? Both had beating hearts.
I'm not justifying Hill's murder of her child, but I can quite imagine her desperation. My two 'normal' kids often send me into murderous moods... so who am I to talk?
And yes, I don't believe in this my-child-is-my-best-friend line of parenting. If I turned friend, what would my children do for a mother?
Could not bear to read the link from your previous post. Seriously. It's painful, horribly painful that there are such people out there. That is one sick mother. Ok, so no murderer deserves anything less than severe punishment. Ot has to serve a a deterrent for others. Instead of wondering about this mother, perhaps we should dwell more on the others who ought to have been punished harder?
Not that I am indifferent to a mother's frustrations in ANY scenario, but this is sick and abnormal. No excuse. Especially not in a country where there are so many facilities and so much understanding. If this had happened in India, which it does n't often whatever our faults maybe, everything would be different. Get what i am saying?
Apparently she had a history of mental illness, depression and heavy drinking. She had severe post natal depression. And she had asked for the child to be adopted-though the father refused. That was the clearest signal she could not cope. While not condoning the murder, something should have beend one before it reached this stage.
You might find this article interesting: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4837804.ece
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