Writer Lynn Viehl’s adult son has been arrested for committing a double-murder in Florida and her website guestbook has become a focal point for people venting their outrage over his actions. Lynn talks on her blog today about her son and the situation she finds herself in. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have one of your children commit such a horrible crime. My sympathies go out to her and to the families of the victims.
For anyone wishing to make comments, please be aware Ms. Viehl likely reads this site and is going through a terrible time.
Imagine how it must feel to have your personal life dissected all across the internet on top of such a tragedy.
Just a thought.
M
M
Seeing as how she’s one of the most prominent dissectors — she’s blogging about it, after all — it must not feel that bad.
I’m kind of two minds on this ‘dissection’ thing. On one hand, it seems unnecessarily cruel to say anything but ‘that’s terrible’ to someone who is going through something so, well, terrible. But, on the other hand, it does kind of lead into more general questions of who is wronged by a crime- how much the parent of the criminal suffers relative to the family of the victim, and how far you can go with sympathy for one without minimizing the suffering of the other. (It doesn’t help that the crime was a particularly horrific one, of the type that’s most likely to bring out the fire and brimstone in people, especially when they don’t have to look at the person they are condemming.)
Man, I can’t believe the lack of charity and sympathy here. SHE didn’t kill anybody. She’s a victim, too. One of the bravest sights I’ve ever seen was Jeffrey Dahmer’s father going each and every day to his son’s trial. (He later wrote a book I wish he hadn’t.) But imagine what that must have been like for him. The same holds here, too. She can’t have written about her son lightly. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture her pain and grief. She’s certainly in my thoughts and prayers. –Ed Gorman
I understand, to some degree, what she must be going through. My five-month-old grandson was taken to the hospital one Sunday afternoon not breathing. The doctors called it shaken baby syndrome and my son-in-law was arrested. (Two years later we’re still awaiting a trial.) I am the editor of the local newspaper, and a lot of the community know this is my family, so I am not only the grieving grandmother, and a material witness in the case, I have to cover it for the newspaper as an objective reporter. Not easy.
I think she’s brave to blog about it and my thoughts and prayers are with her, and her family, as well as the families of the victims. Everyone loses.
There but for the grace of god go all of us. Every parent can imagine the hell she’s going through. As for her blogging about it, I imagine it is incredibly therapeutic, plus she must feel the intense need to respond to some of the truly nasty things people are saying. Things I am shocked that ANYONE would say. My god, people. Is there so little compassion in this world?
Not much apparently. There is no way to predict such things.
That’s dreadful, poor woman, poor victims, poor everyone. Nasty.
Just to clear up what I think has become a common misperception, some of the reporters have been very diligent about mentioning her name in the paper which is how people found her on the internet which is, I believe, why she went public.
It’s not about blogging to blog, but taking a proactive stance after being made a target by the media simply because of who you are and what you do for a living in relation to what someone else has done.
M
Looks like her blog is 404ed…
O.k., I’m an idiot, the SFF Link is bad. My appologies.