Catholic Online Forum

If you follow football at all (or even national news, you already know that KC Chiefs starting linebacker, Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend and mother of their 3-month-old baby, Zoey, Kasandra Perkins last Saturday, just hours before the Chiefs/Panthers football game.

While I have posted here in the prayer section, I am creating this thread because I would like to discuss this tragedy further and the prayer section is not the proper venue to do that.

I chose the "Sanctity of Life" forum rather than the football forum because I believe that it is a more appropriate venue. I purposely did not put it in the "Lion's Den" because I'd like to keep the discussion respectful rather than recriminating. I'm sure that if a moderator believes another forum is better than here, they will move it.

If you follow football at all (or even national news, you already know that KC Chiefs starting linebacker, Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend and mother of their 3-month-old baby, Zoey, Kasandra Perkins in their home, then drove to the Chiefs practice field, where he took his own life last Saturday, just hours before the Chiefs/Panthers football game.

Full Disclosure:

I am a trained counselor with an MA in counseling.
I have struggled with clinical depression most of my adult life.

But I struggle to understand the mentality behind murder/suicide.

While I believe my religious conviction would prevent me from ever taking my own life, I can understand the depths to which one who suffers depression can descend and surely can identify with the despair that would lead to the taking of one's own life.

But the intentional killing of another — especially one so close — is beyond my ken. What is it that drives one's emotional state to the point where he/she pumps multiple bullets into a loved one, then kisses the victim on the forehead, drives to his place of work then apologizes to his coach and general manager, thanks them for what they have done for him, then blows his own brains out?

Perhaps it will eventually be revealed that Belcher used steroids, which definitely have been linked to violent and irrational behavior.

But for the moment, let's assume that steroid abuse is not a factor.

By all reports from those who knew him best, Jovan Belcher was a quiet, apparently normal human being.

Yes, he and his girlfriend had a turbulent relationship but so do thousands of couples.

What led Belcher to murder the mother of his child, then kiss her on the forehead and apologize, then drive to the Chiefs practice field parking lot, thank his head coach and general manager, apologize to them and blow his brains out?

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

My suspicion, based on totally incomplete information, is that Belcher had access to firearms, got into an extended fight with his girlfriend over her being out too late the night before (likely including jealousy of some sort), and the fight escalated due to the usual reasons (pride). It reached the point where he grabbed a gun and, in a fit of anger, shot her.

Overcome by guilt between then and reaching the stadium, and realizing his life was effectively over as a football player and free man, he likely killed himself rather than face the shame, public trial, and a long prison term.

Not a wise or moral decision, but, exempting the moral component, not an entirely irrational one within those circumstances.

I can understand a little bit about what would lead one into that situation. What I have more difficulty understanding is "cold blooded" suicide, where one simply decides to abandon one's responsibilities and does not care about the pain inflicted on others and chooses to end one's own life. Continuing to live at all is not especially difficult, it seems to me.

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Jeff Stevens

Jeff,

All those factors, plus I speculate there was a belief that hell does not exist or that no one is in hell if it does exist. The thought of hell should be enough to prevent any rational person from taking his own life, and to endure whatever trial and justice he faces in this life, rather than face infinitely worse for eternity in the afterlife.

May God have mercy on both of their souls.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

Indeed. The belief that all go to Heaven no matter their merits or beliefs has eroded our moral fabric rather badly.


Amen.

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Jeff Stevens

From an Op/Ed column on today’s (12/06/2012) KC Star newspaper’s Website:

Gun debate misses the real issues in Belcher case

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

The article addresses a straw man.

Nobody, including Jason Whitlock or Bob Costa, blamed the gun. The Brady Campaign doesn't blame the gun. Everyone properly blames the perpetrators. What they assert, rightly or wrongly, is that easy access to guns makes it more opportune and physically easier to kill someone.

I'm sick of red herrings and straw men on these matters. At least bother to address the opponent's real argument.

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Jeff Stevens

Jeff, what a writer says depends very much on the perspective of the reader. You interpreted Sanchez's column a lot differently than did I.

Not having read all the commentary about this tragic event, I don't know what she was referring to when she said

She never referred to Whitlock, Costas nor the Brady Campaign by name so I don't know whether she was referencing them or not. Maybe she read something that railed about gun control and maybe she didn't. But when she said . . .

I think her point was that tragedy was attributable to a very real problem in American society — domestic violence — that occurs far too often, be it perpetrated via firearms, clubs or fists.

I don't what has led her to believe that too much emphasis in the publicity about this tragedy is being placed on the murder weapon, anymore than I know why you believe she is railing against a straw man.

But I do know this from years of reading Mary Sanchez's columns in the Star. She certainly isn't railing against those who blame the weapon because she opposes gun control.

Mary Sanchez falls on the liberal side of the center and has written impassioned arguments in favor of gun control.

Maybe I am just so surprised to see her speak out against blaming the weapon in this sad example of domestic violence that I am not objective enough to see the straw man argument to which you refer.

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

He was not married.

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

Daniel,

Husbands kill their wives and sometimes all their children, marriage doesn't stop them. Domestic abuse is as likely to occur during a marriage as outside of one, perhaps even more so because the women are often even more trapped and financially dependent upon the man.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Jeff,



I'm not sure what you mean by "cold blooded" but I don't think that most people who commit suicide do not care about their loved ones. I may be capable of killing myself, I don't think so but it's the near constant thought of what it would do to my loved ones that stops me even more than a fear of hell and desire to be with God in heaven. I know you've suffered with depression lately and struggles with your wife's illness and God only knows whatever personal struggles but your statement that continuing to live is not especially difficult shows a lack of understanding and empathy for those who suffer severe, lifelong mental illness, it wears on you, distorts your thinking and often destroys all hope and faith.

My apologies if I'm misunderstanding you. I read it a couple of times and thought you couldn't really mean what I think you mean because I do have an idea after all these years of what a good man you are. If you'd stopped at cold blooded I wouldn't have said anything because I would assume you meant those who really simply don't feel any sense of wrong doing but just coldly end it without any pang of guilt or concern for what they're leaving behind though I'm not sure there are many suicides like that but what especially got to me was saying it's not especially difficult to keep living.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Is it my imagination but do football players have an unusually large number of violent crimes among them?

I wonder what kind of family life he had. It's hard to believe he came from a stable, God fearing home (though those can certainly produce killers) that kept him grounded despite the fact that he was probably idolized from high school until the end of his life for his football playing abilities. I bet for the last ten years of his life he could date any girl and later woman that he wanted and do just about anything he wanted unless he had a family that reigned him in. Again though, I recognize that it's possible his parents did everything right and he still turned out capable of murder and suicide.

The article stated he punched a dorm window over a girl who didn't love him so he had problems involving women going way back. He doesn't seem to have had a strong enough sense of himself to withstand rejection or enough understanding of what really matters in life to keep a lost love in perspective.

As to guns, they are a particularly popular way for men to kill but for myself, even in my most enraged and seemingly out of control moments, I could be surrounded by loaded guns and would never have picked one up. I know what it's like to have a brain that can put you in episodes where you feel like you can't control yourself but absent frank psychosis...you can always control yourself if the will is there.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

I guess they were 'partners'? There are many homosexual partners too.

I am sure that just as many abortions are from married couples too?

Domestic violence? More like moral decay.

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

I would be interested in a citation for this, because on the surface it would not seem to be a reasonable statement, that the rate of domestic violence in marriage is the same as or greater than other types of relationships where two people are regularly engaging in sexual relations.

Indeed, I have often heard it stated that boyfriends of divorced or single mothers are over-represented when it comes to molestation incidents of children in the domestic situation. I would think that sexual arrangements happening outside of the bonds of marriage would also be over-represented when it comes to domestic violence.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

Are Cohabiting Relationships More Violent than Marriages?

Abstract
In response to increases in cohabitation in the United States, researchers have recently focused on differences between cohabiting and marital unions. One of the more consistent findings in this emerging literature has been a higher rate of domestic violence among cohabiting couples. A prominent explanation for this finding is that cohabitors are not subject to the institutionalized social control mechanisms that may limit violent behavior within marriage. This article uses data from the National Survey of Families and Households (1987-88 and 1992-93) to explore an alternative explanation: differences in selection out of cohabitation and marriage, including the selection of cohabitors with the “best” relationships into marriage, lead cross-sectional samples to over-represent long-term cohabitors, who tend to have more troubled relationships. We find support for this explanation in evidence that there is no difference in the level of domestic violence found in married and cohabiting couples in the first year of the relationship but that violence increases at higher relationship durations in cohabitation.

(Emphasis above mine)

Disclaimer: (You knew there'd be one, right?) This is only one study, I haven't vetted for peer review, don't know a think about the authors and am disinclined to investigate further at this time.

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

Here's more on domestic violence:

The Truth About Domestic Violence in Marital Versus Cohabitational Relationships

• According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, of all violent crimes against women by their intimate partners between 1979 and 1987, about 65 percent were committed by either a boyfriend or ex-husband, while only 9 percent were committed by husbands.
• Another study, published in the Journal of Family Violence, explains the following regarding the association between batterer and victim, “The most frequently cited relationship was cohabitation, with close to one-half (48 percent) of the couples living together.”

• The Family Violence Research Program at the University of New Hampshire conducted a study of more than two thousand adults concerning this subject. It was concluded that the overall rates of violence for cohabiting couples was twice as high and the overall rate for “severe” violence was nearly five times as high for cohabiting couples when compared with married couples.3
• “Aggression is at least twice as common among cohabiters as it is among married partners,” states yet another expert, Dr. Jan E. Stets, in a major study comparing cohabitational and marital aggression. In a one year period, 35 out of every 100 cohabiting couples have experienced some form of physical aggression, compared to 15 out of every 100 married couples. The lowest percent was found among married couples at 19 percent.
• A study published by the University of Chicago found that of women who had reportedly been forced to perform a sexual act, 46 percent reported that the aggressor was someone they were in love with but not married to, while only 9 percent reported that the aggressor was a spouse.

• When it comes to hitting, shoving, and throwing things, cohabitating couples are more than three times more likely than marrieds to say things get that far out of hand.

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

Thank you, Jim. The advocates for reason-free, no-fault divorce were all over the "marriage is a trap for women victimized by domestic violence" argument. What the reason-free, no-fault divorce and sexual revolution has launched instead is a higher rate of domestic violence. When are people going to realize that trying to fool "mother nature" by disdaining even good and natural marriage (let alone sacramental marriage) comes with worse consequences than are wrought by man's fallen nature confined within marriage? Bottom line is, a sexual relationship that is not based on exclusivity and permanence (which only love can foster, and which is per se excluded from sexual relationships outside of marriage) is handicapped from the start, and can only be more inclined to violence than a marriage.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

There are those who know me well who would contend that I don't know a thing about "Think!"

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

Dean,



I don't have statistics but I have also heard that that the most dangerous place for a girl child is in the home of either a boyfriend or stepfather, all the women victims of incest I know were abused by step fathers so I don't know if the bonds of marriage change things.

I don't have citations about domestic violence but it just seems common sense to me. If a woman marries an abuser, he is likely to have a longer time period to abuse her and the longer the marriage lasts, the more likely she is to become dependent and unable to leave. Some abusers don't show signs of being violent during dating but I would imagine that most show at least some signs of a capacity for unreasonable anger or rage even if not directed at the girlfriend. In this above case it was not a casual sexual relationship, it was a long term relationship that produced a three year old child. Do you think he'd have been less likely to kill her if they were married? I just don't see it.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Jim and Dean,

Well I've been wrong before and now I'm wrong again. I was basing it on my small sample of only knowing married women who were abused.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Val,



Let's rephrase the question. If he loved her enough to enter into a public, legal, permanent relationship with her, and she the same, without reservation or keeping options open, do you think he would be as likely to kill her? I don't believe he would be.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

My main reason for interjecting was to point out the elephant in the room. "Domestic abuse/violence" has been but another societal ill primarily growing in frequency because of leftist policies in the first place that has been hijacked by the helpful leftists -used to interject themselves into families and further advance all manners of injustice upon members of society.

Bullying, domestic abuse, the war on women, racism, bigotry -ALL growth industries for leftists... -ALL victims that require the protection of helpful leftists -ALL special interest groups to be community organized... And on and on and on...

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

I am pretty sure that most violent crimes are done by people that know the victim -for instance, police tend to look at associates and family members first when investigating a murder.

The problem with a great part of the domestic violence imitative is that it falsely assigns blame to a patriarchal social system that 'they' claim by its very nature is unjust. "They" seek to do away with it and have been quite successful thus far in destroying the family structure.

There is a fine line that one must walk when dealing with issues such as this -one must always keep in mind that evil means for a just end must never be accepted whatever the 'cause'.

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

My apologies. I read the first part of the article and reacted to that, thinking it was the thesis, without reading the rest. I am sorry.

I have a knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone complains about "people blaming the gun", which she does disagree with at the beginning of the piece. She just then takes it in another direction, which is of course, fine. Nobody blames the gun, and when people claim others do, it bothers me. That truth thing and all...

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Jeff Stevens

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Bob C

Many people are blaming the gun now -Obama leads the community organizing effort on this his latest reform initiative.

I wonder what he will call it -what will the useful idiot slogan be?

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

Jim,

Thank you for your candidness and courage.

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Pax et Bonum


Schultzz

Maybe that will succeed better than blaming it on a film. I saw a note someplace that President Obama phased out a program devoted to improving school safety. Don't expect that the media will pick up on that.

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- Joe Kelley

Death is only a shadow across the path to Heaven.

Nobody blames the guns. Even the Brady campaign doesn't blame the guns for the killings.

What they are saying is that if he had less access to the gun, he may not have been able to kill anyone, or at least able to kill fewer. That's not blame, that's looking at all factors.

Everyone agrees he's obviously the primary person to blame for this.

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Jeff Stevens