Police have arrested Matthew Flugence in connection with the murder of Ahlittia North.
Ahlittia Update
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Monthly Archives: July 2013
The Age Factor: Ahlittia North
Sometimes in the effort to write about extremely difficult stories I cut corners in my clarity of purpose.
It is hard to face so many tragedies.
But this time I need to be painfully explicit:
If the news report is correct, Ahlittia’s mother was a mother by 14. Her current partner is 46.
13 year olds do not decide to have sex for kicks (with other 13 year olds). They are more likely to be the sexual targets of older men. That is rape.
When I was 13 I knew a young woman who was pregnant as a result of incest–raped by her step-father. I hope he went to jail for it, but I am not optimistic.
I do know that my schoolmate was brave and deserved more support and help than she received. To carry a pregnancy at 13…to walk through the aggression of rape by a family member…
Her child is 30 now.
When I say, good folk did nothing, I mean this–
Whatever the story of Ahlittia’s murder, her life proves that her very young mother was a victim as well.
Baby girl is gone, who will help Lisa North? And more to the point–who could have helped before her kindergartener was murdered?
What happened to Lisa was a crime.
What happened to her daughter was unspeakable. But we must learn to speak it.
Make yourself uncomfortable. Ask the hard questions. And treat the Lisa Norths of the world like kin.
Because, to quote Carson McCullers–the life you save may be your own.
–praying for Lisa.
Tough love
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Gizzell Kiara Ford
I went to the Vietnam memorial with my father once. He never said much about his time in the war but I knew it was a game-changer. He combed the wall in silence looking for a name, names…when he found the one he was looking for he touched it in silence. Memories of the dead.
This is my Vietnam memorial. Gizzell Kiara Ford is on it. Beautiful child. Lost.
Alittia North–Another Child in the Trash?!
I tried repeatedly to post the Amber alert for Alittia North. Facebook did not allow it. I can’t tell you why I did not blog about her other than a lack of information and a sinking feeling.
Now the information is grim.
No one should ever throw a child away. No one should ever treat a human life like a discarded gum wrapper.
Years ago I taught in a neighborhood where a little girl was found in a trash bin. There are no words to describe the pain of knowing a beloved child has been treated so abominably. It lowers the value of all human life and raises the haunting question–why?
It seems to me our modern record is becoming mired in the bodies of our children–young, defenseless, abused, and murdered.
Do not turn away. Do not pretend this is some kind of statistical inevitability. In every case like Alittia’s someone did something terribly wrong to a child and…a whole bunch of regular folk did nothing to stop them.
Juror B37
The money quote from a middle-aged white lady in Florida:
“she did not think the shooting was racially motivated and that Zimmerman would have reacted the same way to someone of any race.”
C’mon people tell me you understand why that is freaking scary.
Not just for Trayvon.
Not just for his gated community.
Not just for Florida.
But for all of us–his neighbors.
Stan Who Had Two Dads
Dearest Boy,
After I read about you I wrote a bunch of stuff. Then I walked, prayed, and cried. Some people won’t tell your story out of fear; others only out of fear.
But what I am afraid of is this–that no one will be there to heal the damage, that no one will tell you
none of this is your fault, and little of it needs to define you.
You deserve to survive this. You deserve birthday parties and pony rides, rock climbing and ice cream. You deserve to sit at a table with people who see you, know your story, and say I love you, Stan. You are a great kid..
Just because you were raised by wolves…doesn’t mean you are one.
No, dear, Lamb, you are a boy. Loved by a real Dad…the only one who can heal us all from the monsters, smiling in the picture: so broken.
OJ Simpson, Trayvon Martin, and Justice in America
When OJ Simpson was on trial for murder I worked in an elementary school in a poor, urban area. Most of my colleagues were African American.
We huddled around the tv at lunch to see what was going on. I remember the day of the verdict. Most of my fellow teachers cheered as though their football team had won.
I wondered–
where was justice?
I really doubt that many of them actually thought Simpson was not guilty. What they thought was
life is not fair for black men in America.
It isn’t.
And now we see it not being fair again. We see justice again faltering–this time the victim is African American and the team cheering is white.
This is not a football game.
It is not right for any of us to be so blinded by the outside of another person’s life that we rejoice in their pain, their murder, or their injustice.
Do not tell me God is in charge in the world today if He is not in charge of your heart.
When we bay for blood, hate, and bottled feces in a world shot through with agony and loss we prove we know nothing about love.
And make no mistake. God is not our little Santa Claus, He is not the captain of the white folk football team.
He is love and He is coming soon, with justice in His strong right arm.
That should make us all pray hard. Because not not one of us is holy.
Not one.
A Word for Trayvon
My heart aches for Trayvon’s family. A guilty verdict would not have summoned him back.
That is what a parent wants when their child dies.
They don’t care where the jewelry came from, they go over and over and over everything that happened… they wish they could have a do-over.
A do-over: keep Zimmerman’s ass in the car…convince the boy to stay home and play a video game…something…something that would have kept him alive.
No jury can do that. No judge can raise the dead.
Which is one more reason for all of us to mourn.
Why Do Women Have Abortions?
In the struggle for some kind of life in every abortion story one out of every two people loses. A child dies each time.
Why? seems to matter.
The big google-able voices on this subject are funded by rabidly pro-abortion concessions. You will forgive me if I do not trust their stats or their lugubrious attempts to make the death of a child sound like a mani-pedi.
One thing they say strikes me–1 in 3 women have had an abortion.
Wow.
Just as with all abuse of children, the stories of abortion are often the stories shared in community. But we keep them our secrets because we have no adequate forum for telling them.
These are my community’s stories (a fraction, I am sure, of the whole)–
The college student who aborts her child under pressure from her boyfriend who is a cadet at a military academy.
The wife of a professional who aborts their third child because “two is enough.”
The young woman (who was herself adopted) who decides to have a late-term abortion because the baby may be a Downs child.
The teenager who lives in a no-abortion country who flies to the US to abort a child.
The woman who is pressured to abort because her child has a 3% chance of a medical condition. (Multiply this story by at least 4.)
A young professional who lives in a country with family planning laws. She aborts to avoid legal penalties.
The woman who is in her early forties, married, but surprised by a late-in-life pregnancy. She just doesn’t want a child in her early forties…
The untold story of abortion is a story about value and pressure and time. It is a story about how valuable the life of a child is, and it is a story of what it costs to remove that child.
Each aborted child leaves a George Bailey-esque hole in the life of their community.
Why would we sanction that?
And how could we face God if we did?
Carrying Light 