Note: Cross posted from [wp angelfury] Mothers Global Justice Alliance.

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Shared guilt in child’s murder

I suppose that by now most of us have forgotten the unutterably sad story of Shaniya Davis of Fayetteville. Let’s be reminded.

This lovely, sweet 5-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, and killed and her tiny, innocent body dumped by the side of a country road. Her mother apparently had sold Shaniya into prostitution.

We probably reacted to this tragedy initially by shaking our heads back and forth a couple of times. Then we quickly moved on to more important things like Christmas shopping and “Desperate Housewives.”

Yes, let’s move on in a hurry so we don’t notice how deeply sick, broken, and lost we are in the depths of our American soul.

Something as horrific as this must affect us, disturb us, horrify us, keep us tossing and turning in our sleep. We can’t forget this tragedy in a day or two and then “move on” as we do with everything else. For we’re all guilty of this child’s inhuman end. We’re all complicit in it at a deep, dark level.

Shame on Shaniya’s tormentors and killers. But shame on all of us as well.

JERRY GILL

Hertford