Sickening.

(Warning: This is not a happy blog entry & deals with a very sad crime involving a child. I have so many emotions going through my head right now that I have to get them out somehow if I ever hope to be able to fall asleep tonight. Thus, this entry...)

Back in college, I volunteered as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) to help ensure that the needs of abused children were being brought to the attention of the court as the various proceedings took place. The volume of training for this included some heart-wrenching information & statistics that to this day, I cannot fathom. All of those feelings of shock, profound sorrow for the abused innocent children and utter rage for those who would heap such abuses upon them all has come back to me each time I read an update on a local news story that involves ten-year-old Zahra Baker.

Zahra, who looks as sweet as can be, had bone cancer & as a result of this, she ended up with a prosthetic leg and hearing aids in both ears. Her biological mother lives in Australia & hasn't seen her since relinquishing custody when Zahra was a baby, due to post-natal depression. Her father & step-mother, meanwhile, live here in NC. The step-mother seems to be straight from Hell--to the point that multiple neighbors and family members have said in various articles that they told her to not beat Zahra, but she wouldn't listen to them. (At one point, the step-mother beat the poor child so hard that her own hand became injured.) Because the step-mom kept them moving around so much, Child Protective Services was not able to investigate...nor did anyone physically remove her from the situation.

In these moves, it apparently allowed for her step-mom (and possibly her dad) to kill her & no one would be missing her or notice she was gone. Her prosthetic leg had been found a week or two ago, her mattress was located in a landfill not too long ago and her remains were found today. Initially, they tried to stage it as a kidnapping--the step-mom wrote a ransom note trying to make it appear like someone had meant to go to her husband's boss's house, rather than theirs. (It was a ridiculous plot and only went downhill from there.) Instead, Zahra had apparently been long dead & no one can confirm having seen her for the last few months.

The abuse heaped upon this poor girl, who had already endured so much with just her health issues alone, is almost too much for my brain & heart to handle. What makes it all the worse is that this beautiful little human being went missing and no one besides her parents even noticed--for months! I understand logistically, given their frequent moves & no family close by, how this could be--but it still just doesn't make sense. Maybe it's not that it makes sense so much as it is that I wish that were not the case. I wish she had been noticed, not just when she went missing, but when she was alive & living under the same roof as a monster. I can only pray that she went quickly & did not suffer anymore than she already did in her far-too-few years.

I don't really know that I typically have strong feelings about the death penalty, but if I don't normally, I definitely do now. And even that does not feel like it's sufficient punishment for these two "parents". I know that Zahra's earthly troubles are over & that she is finally at peace--I just wish she'd known great happiness and peace in this life too. Meanwhile, I hope that justice is dealt swiftly & severely to those who were involved in this senseless murder. I just don't get it. I don't get how anyone can abuse another--let alone murder them--and particularly a child! It just makes me sick.

Anyway, I apologize for the depressing rant, but I needed to purge myself of some of these thoughts & feelings. Just reading the latest news article, announcing the discovery of her remains, has put me in such an upset state that I know I will have a hard time falling asleep & that my dreams will be horror-filled. Yet, I know that I'm fortunate, because for me it's just one night--for poor Zahra, it was every day and every night.

Bless her little heart; may she rest in peace!