It doesn’t matter whether Angela Harrison, the woman whose abusive estranged husband brutally murdered their five children and killed himself, was “leaving her husband for another man.”
It doesn’t matter because cheating, or leaving, or asking for a divorce, or saying “I think we need some time apart,” doesn’t cause someone to murder. It doesn’t “ignite” anything, any more than what a woman is wearing “causes” a rapist to rape.
Nonetheless, let’s examine the most basic thing about narrative that dominates all the stories I’ve seen about this tragedy (that of a selfish, uncaring mother who left her happy home to go have fun with another man): Is it true?
By her account: No.
From this morning’s Seattle Times:
On Friday morning, she left for work at the Indian Country Store in Puyallup, where a male co-worker urged her to get away from her husband. She said she had told him previously about years of physical and verbal abuse she and the children had endured at her husband’s hands.
“For the longest time,” she said, “I’ve tried and tried and tried to leave.”
But the children always begged her to stay, she said, because they wanted to remain a family.
Friday night, she didn’t go home from work, but instead went to the Muckleshoot Casino with the male co-worker and after that to a convenience store. She had decided her marriage was over.
She then left the store with her co-worker, whom she described as a friend. She said reports she’d told her husband she was leaving him for another man were incorrect.
However, the reporters did manage to find one account that contradicted Angela Harrison’s.
However, Pierce County sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer told The Associated Press on Monday that investigators believe Angela Harrison, indeed, was leaving her husband for another man, based on interviews with relatives who spoke with James Harrison before he killed himself.
The man was a murderer. An admitted abuser, of both his children and his wife. A stalker. A psychopath. Someone she had every reason to get away from. Yet a report from him, told to his relatives and repeated second-hand, posthumously, by police, is taken more seriously by the cops (and, it would seem, the reporter) than the story told by the woman herself.
Even dead, he still gets to set the narrative.
@43,
Fair enough, I was just challenging the assumption most people make that parents who kill their own children must be mentally ill. There’s the implied belief that all parents must love their kids, therefore, to commit such a heinous act, they must be extra special crazy or something. Parents who don’t care about their children are the exception, but they unfortunately do exist.
@39
I didn’t, but apparently the mother did: “She said she had told him previously about years of physical and verbal abuse she and the children had endured at her husband’s hands.”
Sounds like just the kind of person a good mother abandons her kid with.
years of physical and verbal abuse she and the children had endured
1. They all endured — nobody died.
2. Even with Mom gone, Psycho Dad still had plenty of punching bags to beat up — who knew he would rather destroy his remaining toys?
She is absolutely not to blame. She may have been leaving her husband for another man. She may not have. If she was, yeah that sucks, people don’t deserve to be cheated on in a marriage, especially with kids. But stuff like that happens every day. You deal with it like a rational person, pick yourself up, and move on.
Nothing ever causes someone to kill someone else (except maybe that crazy scene at the end of the movie Se7en). But no wife, no matter what level of assumed promiscuity, will ever be to blame for giving cause to a mentally disturbed husband killing 5 innocent children. Never. Anyone who says otherwise has some serious impotency and jealousy issues.
p.s. – I’m a dude, not like it really matters.
@49 Why must this be? causality doesn’t imply culpability. Angela CLEARLY holds no moral cupability in this situation; this is true even though it IS very likely that the breakup, combined with her husband’s antisocial nature, precipitated his actions. the fact that he had a reason in his mind doesn’t absolve him in any way, and the Times isn’t trying to do so.
the fact is, if she had not gone to the casino that day, it’s possible that her family would still be alive. Even so, (allow me to repeat myself for clarity’s sake – I don’t want to get piled on) there’s NO WAY that a reasonable mind could conclude that this tragedy was her fault, because there’s no way she could have known that her batshit crazy husband would do what he did.
Not sure what I was most disturbed by in the story–the blame placed on the mother for “igniting” the murders or the blame placed on the children by the mother. If you read her statements she basically shifts responsibility onto the kids for why this happened. Everyone is fucked. Like Erica, I am totally over men’s crazed sexual jealousy and the ways in which it affects our society.
Katehed….
What a bunch of bullshit, “I am totally over men’s crazed sexual jealousy”.
people, the overwhelming majority of people, go bat-shit when they discover infidelity.
I am not arguing this guy was a total loon and there is no excuse for killing…
However, show me the woman or man who is gonna be all calm, cool and collected, when they discover their spouse in unfaithful. Discovering something like this is pure trauma.
Don’t believe me? Try it some time.
Thanks ECB – you are right on.
— the fact is, if she had not gone to the casino that day, it’s possible that her family would still be alive.–
Or she could’ve been added to the body count, which seems a likelier outcome to me.
Way to report, ECB!
@59, a point I concede. The guy very likely would have gone nuts at some point regardless of the actions of anyone external to him, barring some time spent in serious counseling (even then…). My point, however, is that noting the environment in which he went off the deep end isn’t the same as blaming the people who were around when it happened.
the language involved is imprecise, which is why I think there’s so much emotional turmoil surrounding this thing. there are two ways to think about it, the first of which is the current tack taken by the Seattle Times:
If the guy can be said to have made a decision (and therefore be fully responsible for his actions, then it almost by definition has to have been in reaction to something else – his relationship falling apart. While it formally leaves the question of the mother’s guilt unanswered, you’d have to believe that she knew beforehand that by trying to quit the abusive relationship, her husband would go after the family; no one but the trolls have even posited this possibility.
If his murderous rampage was really out of the blue (voices came to him and told him to kill his kids), then he was really and truly insane, and he actually bears LESS responsibility, since he was…insane. Again, the mother bears no responsibility.
I guess there’s also the possibility that he is just completely evil and decided one day for no reason but the sheer pleasure to shoot up his family. That’s the stuff of horror movies, and sadly, every once in a while, reality.
#60–Report? This isn’t reporting. This is commentary and/or analysis.
Reporting would be if Erica managed to talk to Angela Harrison or anyone else involved for that matter.
What bothers me is the sense I get from Erica’s two posts on this topic that in her mind, it’s offensive that Angela Harrison is even part of the story…that the story should begin and end with “Insane man kills children and self.”
It is human nature to wonder why…that’s why “why” is one of the 5 “W’s” of journalism…and it is one of the hardest to accurately determine and report on.
That difficulty is one reason that conjecture about the “why” of a story becomes the focus of the extended news cycle– the follow-up stories after the purely observable facts of the initial story have become known.
It is Erica’s commentary that “Breakup ignites dad’s rage” is automatically meant to be read the same as saying “Woman causes man to kill children”–which, to me, is a leap of logic that I’m not willing to make with her.
I think she’s reading what she wants to read into this, based on her prevailing opinion and suspicion towards the way that the media covers certain stories as being inherently misogynistic–but, that’s my commentary/analysis and I don’t happen to automatically share that same bias.
I actually agree with Erica’s take on the STORY, which is that this man’s actions are unjustifiable under any circumstances, no matter what the irrational “why” might be reported to have been. I just don’t agree that the headline wording from the coverage of this story indicates a sense that the actions were somehow justified.
That’s where we differ.
The elephant in the room seems to be that the mother is an obese, chain-smoking, cheap-tattoo clad skank who started pooping kids out of her cooze at age 13.
@63: Are all your adjectives supposed to add up to a point?
@64 well, it’s not quite a rape joke, and it’s not quite a trailer-trash joke. I think it’s the rare breed of internet troll who couldn’t decently scandalize if he was handed a picture of the Queen defecating on a Sudanese amputee.
I re-read that section several times to understand what I was reading. Your interpretation, ECB, is right on.
Yeah, yeah, we’re trying to “make sense” of the tragedy, but to speak to the women, get the facts, and then call her a liar because she contradicts a raging lunatic/murder and/or faceless relatives AND then to have this third-hand information as a tacit justification for the murder/suicide is unacceptable.
Let’s all go pick cherries!
I Have looked at all the comments regarding what some people think about the husband’s behaviour after he discovered his wife was leaving him for another man (believe me she was) and what he did afterwords. They describe him as selfish and controlling and murderous. These things may be true but what I fail to see or hear from any of the commenters is the fact that both of these individuals reaped what they sowed. Human behaviour isn’t that difficult to understand or diagnose. This woman had other outlets to remove herself from the home. Clearly her newly conveniently concerned family could have taken her and her children in. It’s not that hard for a woman to trick a simple man (and this man was) into believing that she’s taking her kids to visit her family and just stay there with her family while she tells him that she’s leaving him. But no lets dissect what she did do after work she decided to go with a “concerned” male co worker and decided to go to the Muckleshoot casino, mind you a Casino……not a place to have a cup a coffee to talk, or speak to a family member. And then after that she decided to go to a convenience store (probably to get some condoms) where she gets confronted by her Husband and child. Her child asks her to come home but no she decided she would rather go with her “concerned” male friend and deal with it later.
So the question I gather to ask is what did she think would happen. I mean seriously didn’t she know this man? Didn’t she think to herself “what’s the worst thing he could do to hurt me”? I’m not excusing her husband or any man who decides to hurt their families. But what I am saying is this woman reaped what she sowed. As the prince said in Romeo And Juliet ………….All are punished
FWIW, I remember that some people blamed Andrea Yates’ husband for what she did.
@62:
Right the fuck on.
1. This woman had other outlets to remove herself from the home.
And they were?
2. Clearly her newly conveniently concerned family could have taken her and her children in.
Who?
And many people who would be willing to take one person in, who would not be so willing to take six people in.
Moreover, the kids apparently did not want to leave their home and their dad.
3. It’s not that hard for a woman to trick a simple man (and this man was) into believing that she’s taking her kids to visit her family
The man tracked her movements using the GPS in her cell phone, so I’m gonna say your plan wouldn’t work.
4. after work she decided to go with a “concerned” male co worker and decided to go to the Muckleshoot casino
Which happened to be her husband’s workplace. Maybe she wanted to explain to him why she was leaving him.
5. this woman reaped what she sowed.
Do you have Asperger’s syndrome? Because you seem to lack all human feeling, as well as any knowledge of human nature.
Hey, folks, the person who’s responsible for those five kids deaths is the person who pulled the fucking trigger.
P.S. In her own words, “For the longest time,” she said, “I’ve tried and tried and tried to leave.” But the children always begged her to stay, she said, because they wanted to remain a family.
They didn’t want to leave psycho dad. Hard to believe, but kids don’t actually want to be separated from their abusive parents. Growing up, I had some experience with foster kids, they don’t want to leave their parents and they don’t want to be adopted by a “nice” family. They want their real parents back, no matter how abusive.
P.P.S Seriously, who cares why she left him? It doesn’t really matter. The pig would have killed them (and probably their mother) no matter what. From previous experience with battered women, the abusers in their lives have a “If I can’t have them, nobody can” mentality. Plenty of times the abused spouse tries to leave (with the kids) and daddy-kins will kill them all. It’s about ownership. They can’t stand the thought of their “property” getting uppity and disobeying.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/dv5intr.htm
It’s hard to protect your kids when you’re dead, too. The best thing you can do for everyone is to get yourself out of the abuser’s power. Then you can work to get the kids out of the abuser’s power too. But you can’t do a damned thing for the kids if you’re dead.
At least he killed himself. These sorry white women who have been found guilty of killing their percious children get off with an insanity plea…., but it’s funny how they forget to end their lives. Angela Harrison, played a big part in this man snapping,by her leaving her family
( remember her oldest cried herself to sleep that night).
If you are in an abusive union get out! There are too many resources available for “BATTERED WOMEN”. To keep using the “I Was Scared” excuse is really getting old. Most abused women would be too afraid to have an open affair in front of their controlling and abusive mate. She wasn’t, and I wonder why was she so bold…………