Killer Dads (18 page)

Domestic-violence expert Richard Gelles believes the steady stream of child-abuse deaths isn't enough to pique the public's, or politicians', interest, except for an occasional super tragedy, and that the very numbers may work to the disadvantage of the attention the issue can draw. “‘Josef Stalin said that one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic,” noted Gelles in a phone interview with me.
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“That's how it is with domestic violence. The public reacts to a single dramatic tragedy but can't sustain an interest in the overall problem—unless it's presented as an ‘epidemic.'”

Perhaps we tend to accept a certain level of family violence because we're convinced that society is largely powerless to protect children within their own homes—or that it's not society's place to interfere, even though Michael Petit of Every Child Matters is convinced that in the most extreme abuse cases, the “only thing standing between a child and death at the hands of a parent is the government.” Part of American culture, Gelles believes,
is the strong belief that parents have a right to raise their children without government interference. One of the reasons the United States (along with Somalia and the South Sudan) hasn't ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a United Nations' human-rights treaty, is because conservative political factions argue that it conflicts with our constitution, which “keeps government at more than arm's length from how parents raise children,” Gelles adds. Women abused by husbands have used civil-rights laws to win greater protection from courts and police, notes Gelles. “But children don't have anywhere near the same level of civil rights,” he added.

Ironically, the same political factions that would block increased government supervision of or help for families are the same ones that would boost the number of children in the nation by restricting abortion. Like the langurs, maybe we're driven to bring as much life as possible into the world, but once it's here, we defer to a system that can be very hard on young life.

A respect for and interest in protecting children is nearly a non-issue in American political debate, even as the “personhood” of a fetus gains increasing recognition. “The rights of the unborn child are taking precedence over care of actual children,” notes sociology professor Neil Websdale. Petit emphasizes that the “parental role is a stewardship role, not an ownership role,” but it's a distinction not everyone recognizes. There is a sense in “some American communities, where religion might play a part, that parents own their children,” he observed.

Why are child-abuse fatalities and murder so high in the United States? Reasons offered by experts range from lack of supportive social services, to poverty, to easy accessibility of guns, to an American culture of violence.

The United States has one of the highest rates of relative child poverty in the developed world, according to UNICEF calculations. Of the 35 wealthy countries examined by the agency, only Romania had a relative child poverty rate higher than the United States.
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UNICEF based the rankings on an equation to gauge relative poverty established by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Under this definition, a child is deemed to be living in relative poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and composition, is less than 50 percent of the median disposable household income in a particular nation.
By this standard, the United States has a relative child poverty rate of 23.1, compared with 4.7 in Iceland, the best rate of 35 “economically advanced” countries examined by UNICEF.
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And just when families are suffering in the United States, budgets for support services are being cut by localities strapped for cash. “We haven't seen a big cut in national expenditures on social services—yet—though that could change,” warned Petit. “We are seeing sharp reductions in services in cash-strapped states.” As families “struggle and stress levels rise, child maltreatment becomes more of a risk,” Jane Burstain of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a think tank in Austin, Texas, testified before Congress.
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“To cut programs that support struggling families in tough economic times is the very definition of penny wise and pound foolish and is a choice our children will pay for with their lives.”

If child deaths aren't enough to stir our empathy and action, the costs of abuse have tremendous implications for society. The total lifetime toll of child maltreatment is estimated to be $124 billion each year, based on total costs linked to criminal justice, healthcare, child welfare, special-education expenses, and productivity losses, according to a 2008 study conducted for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
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”Child maltreatment is a serious and prevalent public health problem in the United States, responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality,” noted the study. Abuse ramifications aren't confined to a single child; the violence has an inevitable impact throughout society, with the kid who suffers today more likely to become the child abuser or the criminal of tomorrow. Child maltreatment has been shown to have lifelong adverse health, social, and economic consequences for survivors, including behavioral problems, increased delinquency risk and adult criminality, violent behavior, boosted risk of chronic diseases, and lasting impacts or disability from physical injury. Early abuse “gets under our skin,” noted the CDC report, citing findings that maltreatment can affect brain development and learning, blood pressure, and the immune system.
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The earlier the battle against abuse begins, the better, not only for the victim, but for a society that will be forced to deal with the fallout, notes the agency report, adding, “scientific evidence now shows that it's better and more efficient to ‘get it right from the start' by preventing maltreatment rather than trying to fix the many problems that result from early trauma later in life.”

JOSH ACTED LIKE A CULT LEADER; NOT THAT HE HAD ANY TRUE FOLLOWERS, BUT HE THOUGHT EVERYONE SHOULD BELIEVE IN HIS REALITY.

—Chuck Cox, father of Susan Cox Powell, who's missing and presumed killed by her husband

Scads of houses in the massive pancake expanse of the Salt Lake Valley race west toward the foothills of the snow-peaked Oquirrh Mountains in Utah like jet-powered cars on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Save for a scattered, nomadic Ute settlement or a fur trapper's camp, the vast, 500-square-mile valley was empty when Brigham Young and his 148-person advance team of Latter-Day Saints arrived in 1847 to found what would soon be a massive religious settlement. The pregnant wife of Brigham's brother Lorenzo felt heartsick upon seeing the lonely, empty land as the faithful emerged from Emigration Valley on their trek to escape persecution from the east. But that didn't dissuade Brigham. “It is enough. This is the right place,” he declared.
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He was transfixed. The Mormon leader had “seen the valley before in vision, and upon this occasion he saw the future glory of Zion and of Israel,” wrote an apostle. If the space was inhospitable, all the better, Brigham believed. It would dissuade settlement by the persecuting “Gentiles” the Mormons were fleeing. In line with their vision that Utah was the Promised Land, the Latter-Day Saints named the river that bisected the great valley after the Jordan River and set off a massive exodus of Mormons—nearly one million in a century—that would result in America's nearest example of a religious state. But even 165 years later, the jumbled developments, ribbons of highways, and hundreds of thousands of residents barely make a dent in an
overwhelming sense of limitlessness and stark-raving blue sky in the heart of the vast space of the western United States.

A woman could feel lonely here, even in the midst of family within a neighborhood of warm community barbeques, screeching, laughing, bike-riding packs of kids, and a supportive local Mormon ward. The summer of 2009, Susan Cox Powell, 27, looked and acted just like other moms in the sunny community of young families in West Valley City, a booming town of 130,000 southwest of Salt Lake City, in the fastest-growing area in the state. She was a pretty blonde, sociable with neighbors and co-workers, and a fun, devoted mom to her two little boys, two-year-old Braden and four-year-old Charlie.
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She went to work, biked with the kids, chatted with pals, made dinners, and weeded her garden just like moms down her street. But Susan lived a secret life behind the walls of her home. She feared for her life and for the welfare of her sons from her own husband, Josh, who had inexplicably and inexorably veered off the rails of normal behavior. Susan's once sweetly distracted spouse had become a prickly, threatening control freak who dictated how Susan should clean and organize their small, white ranch house; whom she could talk to and what she could say; and what groceries she was allowed to purchase. Susan was uprooted, hundreds of miles from the rest of her family, to find herself in a life so tightly controlled that it resembled existence in a small desert cult of four, ruled by a 32-year-old dictator, Josh.

The marriage hadn't turned out quite the way Susan had imagined. She had fallen hard eight years earlier for the charmingly loopy boy-man who ardently wooed Susan in Puyallup, Washington, where she lived with her parents and three sisters. Josh was slightly built, appeared far younger even then than his 24 years, with pouty lips and blue, puppy-dog eyes, spiky dark-brown hair, and a tiny mustache that looked like the type adolescents grow to look more manly. But to the 19-year-old Susan, Josh appeared as an attractive “older man”—mature and well on his way to a stable, successful life. He was aiming to finish up a business degree at the University of Washington, and he was already working as an on-call subcontractor hauling and installing furniture in various schools for a commercial industrial furniture company, a job he obtained through his dad, Steven Powell, who worked as a salesman for the operation. Even better in Susan's eyes
was that Josh wanted to settle down. He regularly attended services at a Mormon “branch” congregation in Tacoma, which was only open to singles to give them a chance to meet partners within their faith, and he appeared to be focused on finding a mate, marrying, and starting a family. “It seemed like he had everything going for him,” recalled Susan's dad, Charles “Chuck” Cox, a now-retired investigator with the Federal Aviation Administration, as he sat in the large, dark-shingled family home on a tucked-away street in Puyallup. Cox believes Josh was set on marrying a Mormon girl. Though Josh's mom was a devout Mormon, his dad, with whom he lived after his parents' divorce when he was 16, not so much. “Mormon wives tend to be more submissive,” said Cox. “Husbands and wives are partners, but the man is the head of the household, and Josh wanted a wife who recognized that.” In a short period of time, “Susan fell in love with Josh and wanted to be married,” said her mom, Judy. But her dad amended: “She was in love with the idea of marriage.” Nine years later, Susan would vanish and her sons would be murdered by her suicidal husband.

Figure 9.1. Young animal-lover Susan Cox relaxes outdoors, long before Josh Powell would become part of her life.
Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.

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