Voices
children instead of farming it out
to third-world refugees.”
By faulting the parents, victimblamers seek to convince themselves that tragedies like the Krim
murders could never happen to
them. It’s a phenomenon that
even has a name among health
and safety experts—the “It won’t
happen to me” myth. We hope
that if we can pin evil on someone’s choices, it protects us from
the same evil. But it won’t, of
course. Instead, the rush to judgment inflicts even more pain on
grieving parents, and prevents us
from focusing on how to lessen
the chances that other families
may suffer a similar fate.
As anyone who follows child
murder stories knows, “it won’t
happen to me” parent-blaming
happens whenever children are
the victims of grisly attacks. When
a crazed gunman shot up a movie
theater in Aurora, Colorado, some
questioned why anyone would
take small children to a midnight
showing of a movie like The Dark
Knight in the first. In the wake of
the Trayvon Martin shooting, Geraldo Rivera famously opined that
Martin may have never attracted
George Zimmerman’s notice had