Terror where it's least expected (Amish school murders)

[shereads]

"The oldest girl said, 'Shoot me and leave the others alone." He shot ten girls, ages 6-13. Five died.

Senseless violence isn't as shocking as it used to be, even when it happens in the least likely place, among the gentlest people. What's most surprising about this story is that the victims' families offered comfort to relatives of their children's killer, a non-Amish local man. It's their custom to forgive even while their grief is fresh; they believe it helps them heal.

“How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?”

How can you not?

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/463/05amishlgpi9.jpg

New York Times online/October 5

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Oct. 4 — In the past two days, Leroy Zook has talked his way into a bloodied schoolyard to free a nervous carriage horse, visited wounded children in hospital gowns and viewed dead ones dressed in white, shaken the hand of a killer’s father-in-law, prayed, sung and milked his cows.

Seven members of Mr. Zook’s family were in the one-room Amish schoolhouse on Monday morning when Charles C. Roberts IV rapped on the door armed with chains, clamps and guns. Mr. Roberts shot 10 girls — aged 6 to 13 — killing 5 of them and then committing suicide. All the Zooks — Mr. Zook’s wife, two daughters, one of whom was the teacher, two daughters-in-law and two baby grandchildren got out unharmed, but not unshaken.

The police have praised Emma Mae Zook, the 20-year-old teacher who, with her mother, slipped out to call 911. Less has been said about the three women who were left behind as the gunman separated the girls from the boys and lined them up.

“They’re actually hurting about as bad as anybody else,” said Mr. Zook, standing on the driveway of the family farm just before supper, wearing suspenders and a straw hat with a papery black band around the brim. “I didn’t realize that until I talked to them today. They were there when he was tying the girls up, and they were telling the children to stay calm, and he come down the line and turned them loose.”

Mr. Zook said one of the wounded girls had been removed from her ventilator on Tuesday night and had told her parents about what happened after the children, who according to Amish custom are insulated from violence, had been left alone with Mr. Roberts.

“They talked with this gunman and asked him why he was doing this,” Mr. Zook said. “And he told them why: he’s angry at God, he’s just bitter. He told them that they’re supposed to pray for him that he wouldn’t do this.”

He also said, “The oldest girl there, she said ‘Shoot me, and leave the others alone.’ ”

Investigators are still trying to determine the motive of Mr. Roberts, who was not Amish but drove a milk truck in the neighborhood of the West Nickel Mines School. Mr. Roberts, 32, left suicide notes that said he had never been the same since he and his wife’s first child, Elise, died 20 minutes after birth nine years ago.

<edited>

As the community struggled to comprehend the killer’s actions, families prepared for funerals. Horse-drawn buggies used by the Amish filled the field next to the home where a wake was being held for Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7. Children in bonnets clustered quietly in the yard, and women in long aprons carried casseroles to the door.

Throughout this ordeal, the Amish, whose avoidance of vanity extends even to buttons and zippers, have been the object of fascination not just because of their old-fashioned dress and rejection of modern conveniences like cars and electricity, but because of their stoicism, faith and capacity for forgiveness.

It is not unusual for the Amish to reach out to those who hurt them. When an Amish dies in a car accident, for example, the motorist is often invited to the funeral. Mr. Zook said he had shaken hands with Mr. Roberts’s father-in-law, whom he encountered at the home of the Fisher family, who had three daughters in the school. One escaped, another was wounded and the third was killed. Mr. Zook said such encounters helped the survivors victims heal.

“I think it’s helping him to meet people too, and see that there’s no grudge,” he said of the father-in-law. “How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?”

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/8799/05amish2rg9.jpg

 

[S-Des]

"The oldest girl said, 'Shoot me and leave the others alone." He shot ten girls, ages 6-13. Five died.

Senseless violence isn't as shocking as it used to be, even when it happens in the least likely place, among the gentlest people. What's most surprising about this story is that the victims' families offered comfort to relatives of their children's killer, a non-Amish local man. It's their custom to forgive even while their grief is fresh; they believe it helps them heal.

“How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?”

How can you not?

It is a remarkable display of love and compassion. One that most of us would be unable to duplicate. They were discussing on the radio the possibility that this was a copycat of the Colorado one. That the man was intent on assaulting the girls first, but the police arrived and he just started shooting. It's horrific beyond words. I wish there was something profound to say, but it's far beyond my skills.

 

[Liar]

“How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?”

How can you not?

Oh, I can imagine how one can hold no grudge. It takes a baisic view of life, that if you have it makes shifting blame a totally alien thought.

But from that, to go out of your way to comfort them in their grief, when you have your own troubles to deal with, that's strength.

 

[Just-Legal]

“How could you hold a grudge against the wife, the family?”

How can you not?

The wife and family didn't walk in with the gun. They didn't shoot the kids. The only "crime" they have committed is to know this man, to perhaps have not seen this coming (if you even could). Enough people are going to lambast them, blame them, I think its extremely honourable of the Amish families to say they don't.

<gets off soapbox>

 

[Guest]

my head says that blaming any one but the person who did this is illogical.
could i sit down to dinner with his family?
i just dont know.
logically, i know they are victims as well...still...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

It is a remarkable display of love and compassion. One that most of us would be unable to duplicate.

THIS is the thing that makes me saddest.

I don't know why, it just makes me think of Stephen King's phrase from the Gunslinger (no pun intended): "We have forgotten the face of our father."

 

[shereads]

The wife and family didn't walk in with the gun. They didn't shoot the kids. The only "crime" they have committed is to know this man, to perhaps have not seen this coming (if you even could). Enough people are going to lambast them, blame them, I think its extremely honourable of the Amish families to say they don't.

<gets off soapbox>

I agree. I'm just wondering why their reaction is unusual, and how the world might be if the impulse to absolve the innocent of guilt-by-association was as strong as the urge to strike out.

<climbs up on soapbox; thank you for sharing>

In the case of the Amish, all the usual excuses are in place to begin a cycle of blame, alienation and revenge. They're a small religious minority surrounded by people whose lifestyle is a threat to theirs, and whose influence is becoming impossible to ignore.

There was a National Geographic feature last month by an author who lived with an Amish family. Their children seem so sheltered, but at Halloween one little girl dressed as Britney Spears.



I wondered when I saw this news story if it was the same community, and if any of the children in the NG feature were victims of the shooting. Can't find the magazine now. Does anyone know?

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I don't know why, it just makes me think of Stephen King's phrase from the Gunslinger (no pun intended): "We have forgotten the face of our father."

My God! I thought I was the only one who's been reading that series for the past 25 years

But one point... The Amish are among a very few who truely accept and put faith in the teaching at Danial 2:44. It's much to their credit.

As far as hating the wife and family is concerned, why? They had nothing to do with it.

 

[shereads]

my head says that blaming any one but the person who did this is illogical.
could i sit down to dinner with his family?
i just dont know.
logically, i know they are victims as well...still...

But if you could do it - if tradition encouraged it - and you could make yourself reach out to his family, you might benefit from it in some way you didn't predict. Like ripping a bandaid off all at once, or plunging into the swimming pool instead of suffering another inch of cold water, one step at a time...you'd be facing and defeating a lot of useless anger that has to be dealt with, somehow, sometime.

It might make you feel less helpless, too. Isn't that what's really going on when someone drops a bomb on the village of a suicide bomber? We can't take revenge against a dead guy or a killer we can't find, and that makes us feel helpless; going after people who are guilty only by association is a way of feeling in control. "At least we did something." The benefit is short-term; misplaced revenge inspires revenge against us, by the families of the new victims, and we find ourselves consumed with something that might have been handled with a handshake. A terrible, courageous handshake.

 

[3113]

It might make you feel less helpless, too. Isn't that what's really going on when someone drops a bomb on the village of a suicide bomber?

To be fair, I think the logic there is to warn off other suicide bombers. "If you do this, this is what will happen to your families." It is an old and brutal preventitive tactic. I don't think, however, that we should go into it's validity or invalidty here because it's not a valid corollary. A suicide bomber sees themselves as a soldier in a war, killing as many of the enemy as they can for the benefit of their society.

Roberts was a sick man who hadn't been able to express or get over a defining moment in his life. He had allowed that moment to become the centerpoint for every bitter or angry feeling and he had decided that this was the way to release those feelings. Why or how he came to that conclusion we'll never know. Why he couldn't get over this one moment, why it fliped that switch in his brain we'll also never know. We also don't know why he picked this particular act. He could have gone into a McDonalds and done the same thing.

This was not the act of a soldier in a war; and retaliation against his wife and kids would not be an attempt, however right or wrong, to stop families from aiding and abetting such soldiers.

I think the Amish are very wise to understand that the wife and kids are victims as well of this act, and are going to suffer, also, for the rest of their lives from this man's actions. I think they're also very wise to avoid that knee-jerk reaction that everyone else seems t have had since Colombine--which is to search for some simple, outside reason as to why this happened and fix it.

If Roberts had been a teenage boy, the media would be telling us what music he listened to, what books he read, etc., and putting the blame on the musicians and writers. It's not just the Amish forgiveness of the man's family that's remarkable, it's their willingness to understand that there was no one cause behind this, and that there's no point in searching for scapegoats or easy answers--be they the family or any other thing this man might have been into.

If our society can learn anything from this, it ought to be this. Creating and killing the scapegoat won't make things better, and it won't stop it from happening again.

 

[CharleyH]

I feel for anyone who is the subject of senslessness. This long forgotten story before the current sensationalism, choked me and I think you should all read it. Pre-warned - it may give nightmares.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics4/likens/

Why do I bring it up? Well, I dunno - It brought me to tears and I wanted to share it so none of us make these mistakes as adults looking in as neighbors.

 

[rgraham666]

I feel for anyone who is the subject of senslessness. This long forgotten story before the current sensationalism, choked me and I think you should all read it. Pre-warned - it may give nightmares.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics4/likens/

Why do I bring it up? Well, I dunno - It brought me to tears and I wanted to share it so none of us make these mistakes as adults looking in as neighbors.

Sigh. Such a sad story. Not the least bit surprising but sad.

 

[rgraham666]

I learned when I was being bullied as a kid that nobody in authourity wanted to now. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my neighbours, not the police.

And 'telling' just ensured an extra hard shit kicking the next day.

I learned to weather the abuse eventually.

 

[Lisa Denton]

These Amish are amazing in that they not only did not hold it against the mans family ...... but also offered thier condolences to them.

I also realize they are not responsible for his actions but thought it a random act of kindness that they made sure and told his family to not leave the area and they would have friends ...... even while they were grieving the loss of children.

As for the man, obviosly mentally defective, but a brutal coward nonetheless. He should have just ended his pain, not dragged 10 innocent children into his nightmare and shot them, some as young as 6 or 7 years old.

I don't blame his family, but they would not be able to keep him alive anywhere if he had not killed himself, not even long enough to stand trial.

The Amish wouldn't kill him, or me, but I would understand more the person who murdered him, then I would ever be able to understand why he murdered and wounded these children.

I guess I want revenge, and I would camoflage it by saying it was protection, that whoever stopped him, dead, prevented it from ever being able to happen again.

Yes, the Amish are strong and courageous, much more so than me.

 

[cantdog]

Revenge and retribution are the wrong path. There are logical reasons for it, but never mind those. It's wrong not just for those reasons, but more importantly for you, the aggrieved.

Take comfort that, if you grow, you will outgrow revenge, outgrow grudges, outgrow the desire for retribution. And be the healthier and the wiser for it.

 

[Guest]

But if you could do it - if tradition encouraged it - and you could make yourself reach out to his family, you might benefit from it in some way you didn't predict. Like ripping a bandaid off all at once, or plunging into the swimming pool instead of suffering another inch of cold water, one step at a time...you'd be facing and defeating a lot of useless anger that has to be dealt with, somehow, sometime.

It might make you feel less helpless, too. Isn't that what's really going on when someone drops a bomb on the village of a suicide bomber? We can't take revenge against a dead guy or a killer we can't find, and that makes us feel helpless; going after people who are guilty only by association is a way of feeling in control. "At least we did something." The benefit is short-term; misplaced revenge inspires revenge against us, by the families of the new victims, and we find ourselves consumed with something that might have been handled with a handshake. A terrible, courageous handshake.

id love to say i could and i probably would be able to.
but...
then i think about what happened in our family and how one person was so damn destructive. it wasn't his mother or his father...and still, i could NOT have dinner with them or even carry on conversation with them.
so how could i say i would be able to sit to dinner like that?
its a hard balance and totally hypothetical because until you are in that situation you have no idea how you will behave, no matter how strongly you think you know at this moment in time.

 

[Lisa Denton]

Revenge and retribution are the wrong path. There are logical reasons for it, but never mind those. It's wrong not just for those reasons, but more importantly for you, the aggrieved.

Take comfort that, if you grow, you will outgrow revenge, outgrow grudges, outgrow the desire for retribution. And be the healthier and the wiser for it.

Wise words from a friend, thanks Cant.

I even knew it when I wrote that, where was my right to feel pain?

Maybe because its little kids I guess.

You pointed it out with kindness, that the greatest loss was suffered by those who are forgiving.

Still with this, I remain lost, and sad.

I hope to grow, and become wiser, with your help and the Amish.