Children & Violence: How Can We Prevent This Happening?

Recently in Washington state, there was a man, Josh Powell who burned his house down with himself and his two young children inside. This was supposed to be a supervised visit with a caseworker, but Powell closed the door in her face. 

 

Powell has been a suspect for his wife's 2009 disappearance and according to an update story I just read on Yahoo, one of the children drew a picture of his father driving a van with his brother and himself in the back seat and their mother in the trunk. The teacher asked him about it and he said "Then my mom and dad got out of the car and my mom got lost."

 

There are other things that they're talking about, a charge for extreme child porn on Powell's computer that was said to be his father's, but I'm not going to get into that. What I'm going to get into is how the sons, who were old enough now to start remembering at 5 and 7, started pointing fingers at their father for their mother's disappearance.

 

Powell sent out emails and left some voice mails to say goodbye, so this was - obviously - premeditated. I'm not sure this was a man who missed his children like he said in his emails. I think this was a cowardly man who, once he realized his sons knew something about what he did to their mother, killed his children because he didn't want to be found out while alive. 

 

One of my long-time friends is a caseworker here in British Columbia and she's been to houses where they've needed to remove children. I've yet to talk to her about what a caseworker can do, what Protection Services can do in Canada and in the United States. I'm not sure about it all myself. 

 

Near where I live right now, there was a man who killed his children to get back at their mother. He ran, but was subsequently discovered. It boggles my mind how people can kill their own flesh and blood, children or not. There's plenty of instances, if you look back, where people have killed their children, their spouses and other relatives. I think it's sick.

 

In Powell's case, I don't quite see why they would allow supervised visits at his house with him being a suspect in their mother's disappearance. Even if he wasn't, shouldn't supervised visits be somewhere neutral? I'm not sure it could have saved these boys' lives, though.

 

There was another case from 2009 that was recently ended here where a man killed his three daughters and his first wife in a polygamous marriage. He, his son and his other wife were all found guilty. It was an honour killing and there were signs that this man was abusive previously. The daughters talked to their school counsellors and I believe their home was visited twice. Once by French children's services and once by English children's services (this was in the province of Quebec in Canada). 

 

Obviously there are limits in place for what protective services can do and obviously it needs to be changed. Measures need to be taken and fast.