The timing of the SC Judge is tone deaf. But the underlying message is one we need to hear. [View all]

[Ms. Toad]

I know first hand that the shooter's family may well also be victims. And those of you who are so sure the parents are to blame certainly don't yet know enough to make that assessment.

Thirty-five years ago this spring, my brother raped one woman and murdered two in a crime brutal enough to make national news.

None of us, including the famiy of one of the victims who grew up knowing him, knew my brother as someone who could have committed such heinous acts as he did on the night he made into the worst night of their lives, our family's, and his own. And he is today, not the man he was that night. He is a respected elder in the prison where he will live the rest of his life, and played a role in minimizing the violence and deaths in recent prison riots. The word in the yard was, "Listen to Mr. {Ms. Toad's sibling}." As far as everyone knows, it was a single violent night in a life of (now) nearly 22,000 nights.

He was raised in a family where violence and racial bigotry were condemned. My father was the first conscientious objector in the state. My parents spoke to the state legislature to urge them to reject death penalty, years before they knew their son would be sentenced under the very law they had lobbied against. My father spent several years working for social and economic justice issues in three different national organizations. We were not the kind of family you would ever imagine would include a murderer.

Although I was too emotionally traumatized to be aware of it at the time, I am sure that in the immediate aftermath there were those who blamed my parents for teaching him to rape and murder. Because it happens every time there is a brutally violent crime that makes the national news. People immediately blame the family.

My brother did not learn at home, the acts he committed that night. And yes, those who love someone who commits violent acts are also grieving deeply.

I've shared it before, but here is a bit of a glimpse through my lens:

As I struggled to reconcile the gentle, imaginative, funny, and beloved brother I knew with the person who was capable of perpetrating such violence, our family was given an almost unimaginable gift – the loving witness and continued friendship of the family of one of my brother’s victims; the acknowledgement that we both had lost loved ones, made concrete the next day by members of the family of one of his victims with this simple gesture: “On that Sunday morning ‘. . . There were two flowers in the front of our sanctuary for us to view as we gathered for worship — one for the victim and one for the accused, put there by the victim’s family’” (Quoted from an article written about the event)

I have no idea about family the SC shooter was raised in. And neither do you - unless you know them personally.

So while I agree that the timing was really tone deaf, the solution from my perspective is not that we should pretend the white-skinned SC Shooter's family is not in pain, but that we need to start talking with more empathy and compassion about the families of all people who commit violent acts - including people with brown skin. Nearly all people who are tangled up in, and commit, violent acts have people who love them, and who are also hurting deeply in the wake of the violence their family member committed.