How Can We Know the Level of Potential Violence?

The horrible murder of a beautiful young lady in Kansas, just two weeks after her high school graduation, is sad and shocking. She’d simply gone to Target in daylight hours.

My heart sank when I learned that she was not missing, but murdered.

Now I read that the accused murderer was adopted.

Carol Hall told The Emporia Gazette for Friday’s editions that the couple adopted Edwin Hall when he was 7 and knew he had problems associated with his early childhood.

I don’t even know where to go with that statement. Problems? I wish she’d been more specific, but she’s probably nearly as heartbroken as the slain girl’s parents right now.

Carol Hall told the paper the boy did something when he was 15 that made the couple feel he was a danger to the family, which included three biological daughters. She did not provide details but said the couple felt they would have to give up on him.

“That was the last time he was in our home,” Carol Hall told the newspaper. The Halls hoped then that someone would be able “to get him the help that he needed,” she said.
Hall was confined in four facilities from 1996 until 1999, according to the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority.

I know that if we looked at all the statistics for murder this year, the murderers who were ‘adopted as older children’ would be a very tiny percentage. This case is just jumping out at me at the moment knowing so many parents of older adopted children who are struggling to find available help for their severely troubled and disturbed children.

The lack of help is not really anyone’s fault, there’s not one place to singularly point a finger.

A local D.A. recently told me of a juvenile who was charged with 14 felonies in one night that was not sent to a juvenile detention facility. There wasn’t room there as it is a regional confinement center.

I’m not even railing against crime, but rather at a society that doesn’t have enough help for truly disturbed individuals. In a Utopian society I’m not even positive that they could be helped, but then that’d be a contradiction in terms since in Utopia, neither crime nor problems would exist.

This same accused killer also pleaded no contest as a 15-year-old to threatening his sister at knifepoint, according to court records.

I have had to call the police over violent teenagers, only once did they take one away from us in handcuffs and that was when he threatened to “f%^& up this family.” I told the deputies that they needed to spend the night here to keep us safe, they chose to transport him to a Youth Detention Center instead. He has only lived with us for two weeks since then, he’s at an Outdoor Therapeutic Program now, up and down, but overall improving.

I don’t believe that this son is pathological, but what if I’m wrong? What about my truly bipolar son who’s now in jail? How can one know? How can one help them find the kind of help that they need if it may not even exist?

What if this recent alleged murderer had received better treatment? What if there was none better than what he did receive?

I’m only posing these taxing questions that are on my mind. These are the kind of thoughts I also explore with our family’s psychologist, our local officer with the Department of Juvenile Justice, with social workers and other adoptive parents. I want answers but I just can’t seem to get my questions answered to my level of satisfaction what with all the unknowns and the variables.

I grieve with both Kansas families tonight.

Picture Credit

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.