I have been reading every story about Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, the Camden County, N.J., couple who were accused of starving four of their 12 children. The four boys told officials they lived on pancake batter and peanut butter and were so hungry they gnawed wallboard and insulation to fill their stomachs.
Sure, I admit to some morbid curiosity. I ask myself, "Why pancake batter?" But, mostly, I want to understand.
I can see in the way the stories are written that the media are trying to understand, too. There is the anti-boy theory, in which the story points out that the two adopted girls were well-fed. There is the anti-adopted child theory, which makes reference to the Jacksons' five adult children, also well-fed.
There is the money theory: The Jacksons were apparently paid $30,000 a year for having adopted six children and for serving as foster parents to a seventh girl.
Then there are the references to home schooling and born-again Christianity. Perhaps we think those choices might offer a clue to how parents could starve one-third of their children. Or to how the other eight kids could fail to object. Or to why it took so long for poor Bruce Jackson, at age 19 and weighing less than 50 pounds, to strike out and reveal his suffering to a neighbor by rummaging through the neighbor's garbage for food.
Truly, none of it makes sense. As I read through the stories, though, the tragic cliche that set me off was a neighbor commenting on how well-behaved the children were. Isn't that what neighbors always say⢠Didn't somebody say that about "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz⢠He was such a nice, quiet man Ö
I am coming to hate such comments. They are a poor excuse for failing to notice. Why not just say, "I never bothered to pay any attention"⢠That seems closer to the truth.
We need to notice each other. We need to notice when children are not acting like children. Because sometimes when children are well-behaved, they are so because they are living in terror. They are so because they are hiding horrible family secrets. We need to wake up and not sit by complacently thinking that if children are seen and not heard, so much the better.
This is why I thank God for Mr. Pete. For those of you who have not been reading the stories obsessively, as I have, Mr. Pete is Peter DiMattia, a Jackson neighbor who has variously told newspaper reporters that the blinds were always drawn on the house, even during nice weather, that the four children in question never ran and played but were always seen doing chores, and that they cut the lawn with garden shears.
DiMattia recalled lending the boys his lawn mower and asking them if everything was all right. "Yeah, Mr. Pete. Everything is fine," he said they told him.
I find Mr. Pete to be a ray of hope in this horrific tale. He noticed. He asked. Now, he is telling reporters that there were signs of these boys' torment that other people apparently allowed the Jacksons to explain away by saying the boys had been born crack babies or suffered from eating disorders. Bruce was 19 years old, attended church every week and is about the same size as my 6-year-old daughter. Did his fellow church members bother to raise questions⢠Mr. Pete is my hero.
The Familyville Parenthood Panel, a group of about 20 parents who contribute to this column, almost uniformly disagrees with me that good behavior in children could be a sign that something might be wrong. Clearly, I put the question too simplistically when I asked them. Of course, not all well-behaved children are scared silent. It's a matter of degree.
"In the absence of anything sinister going on, 'well-behaved' means well-behaved, not frightened," wrote Alison Fujito of McCandless. "Yes, children are children, but they are capable of behaving well in public."
Carrie May, of Union, Ky., allowed that "well-behaved" can be a danger sign, depending on how it is defined.
"The only 'well-behaved' I would think of as a danger sign would be the afraid to talk, cowering in the presence of adults 'well-behaved,'" May wrote. "The age of the children would also affect whether I thought exceptionally good behavior was the sign of a problem."
If she were worried about a child, May said, she would look for health signs such as "having the time to play, be silly, laugh, dance."
To me, this does not square with the "children should be seen and not heard" mentality of generations ago.
Another parent, Sue MacDonald of Cincinnati, said she distinguishes between well-behaved and well-mannered.
"I want my kids to have manners because they know that it's the right way to treat other people, and because it's what I've modeled to them," MacDonald wrote. "I don't want them to do so because they're cowering in fear, or waiting to be whooped on or starved or burned or scalded."
Her comment raises the point that we are reading way too many of these stories in the newspapers -- a scalding, a beating, whatever the form of abuse.
As for me, I'm going to keep my eyes open. I'm going to notice my neighbors and ask friendly questions. We can't have too many Mr. Petes.
