We talk a lot at Prison Fellowship about the children of prisoners—those we have come to refer to as the silent or forgotten victims of crime. Those who suffer because of their loved ones poor choices. But there is another group of people who might be even less remembered as the victims of crime. The parents of the perpetrators.
The Guardian just ran a feature story about Terri Roberts and her new book Forgiven: The Amish School Shooting, A Mother’s Love, And a Story of Remarkable Grace. Terri’s son Charlie was the mass murderer in this well-known story of tragedy and forgiveness.
The day Terri learned about the shooting and that her son was somehow involved, it didn’t even cross her mind that he could be the killer. Her first question to the police officer in her driveway: “Is my son still alive?”
As the word “no” hit her like it would hit any mother, a far harsher blow quickly followed.
“It was Charlie,” explained her husband Chuck. “He killed those children.”
In the days that followed, Terri grieved. For her son. For the innocent lives that were lost. For the inner darkness that had stolen her son away from her as well as from his wife and children.
“How could he … leave his wife a widow, his children fatherless? Leave them to face the shame and the horror?” Terri questioned. “And the gentle Amish families he had come to know so well in his rounds collecting milk. What darkness and evil could so possess his mind that he would want to hurt them? To rip away daughters as precious as his own? To inflict such pain and loss on another living soul?”
I think we often forget that the parents of perpetrators suffer just as much, if not more, than other victims of crime. They not only have lost a child (either through death or a prison sentence), but they have lost a child in a shameful way. Not only are they as baffled as the next person as to why their child would do such a thing, but they are wracked with questions and self-doubt. And they are often treated as perpetrators themselves. Terri said that when she and her husband were out in public they were frequently “looked at and pointed at.”
“It was scary,” she says. “Knowing we were being labelled. In some ways it was harder for Chuck than for me – he’s a retired police officer. He even has the same name as Charlie, so when he was showing his driving license or something, people would do a double take and he’d have to say, ‘Yes, that’s right, I’m the father.’ ”
Still, just as there is healing available to traditional victims of crime and the children of the incarcerated, there is hope for even one whose son became a mass murderer.
Read the rest of the story at The Guardian to learn how the radical forgiveness of the Amish community changed Terri’s life.