Schadenfreude
For a long time last year I was captivated by the Natalee Holloway story from the tiny island nation of Aruba. I wasn’t interested in the case due for the reasons most people were interested – which I presume was because a young (allegedly attractive) blond girl was missing in some ‘barbaric’ foreign country. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the disappearance of the girl on more than an academic level. With as many young people go missing all over the world each year, it’s quite difficult for me to give her case any more weight than any of the hundreds of thousands of other abductions that you can look up at any given moment.
Rather, I was interested in the story because of the absolutely awful way in which I thought the mother of the girl was acting. I understand that her daughter went missing and that it seemed likely that foul play was involved. That’s more than enough reason to engage in a bit of theatrics.
What I found shocking about her behaviour was the total extent to which it showed a lack of understanding of international relations and the basics of judicial procedure. Without knowing the evidence (because the Dutch legal system doesn’t permit the kinds of transparency we allow), she pointed the finger at three young men who were seen in her daughter’s company the night her daughter disappeared. Presumably, we in the United States hold that a person should be considered innocent until proven guilty, not because it is in our laws that way, but because it is the right balance to strike in adjudging parties alleged to be guilty. By fingering these young men, the mother of the missing girl abdicated the moral ground on which all of U.S. justice is built.
When the American FBI weren’t allowed into the country to conduct as full of an investigation as the mother would have liked, she railed against the Dutch/Aruban authorities and instigated a travel boycott to the tiny island nation. To this day, I’ve never seen such a terrible case of “American Exceptionalism.” Are we really to believe that if an Aruban went missing in the United States that our law enforcement agencies would step back and tell a foreign, sovereign jurisdiction’s law enforcement to enter our country and conduct their own investigations? Surely not. Such an act would be an affront to American justice, and one can even imagine the outcry if the Netherlands sent a demand to the United States to allow their law enforcement personnel to conduct investigations on U.S. soil. But somehow, alleged the mother, America was different. We had a right to have our officials conduct investigations in a foreign, sovereign country.
What’s more, the Aruban officials detained the three men in question, and held them for quite long periods of time while investigating the disappearance of the young girl. Again, in the United States, we presumably think that a detention without charges is wrong after some short length of time, not because it is in our laws that it is so, but because we think it is right. In the United States, after arresting the three young fellows, we would have had to charge them with a crime or let them go. Not so, in Aruba. They were held, without charges, for what in the United States would have been unconstitutional lengths of time. But when that length of time ran out in Aruba (they as well feel that after some set period of time that it becomes wrong to hold people without charges), the Aruban authorities had to let them out of prison. What did the mother of the missing girl do? She demanded that they not be released. Again, she abdicated the moral ground on which the U.S. justice system is built. When Aruba let them go despite her protestations, she initiated a propaganda campaign to smear the country even more and got several governors from the U.S. to publicly bash Dutch protectorate.
When it was revealed that the father of one of the young guys was a judge, she accused the entire government of the colony of being biased and protecting one of their own. Can you imagine how that would fly if this were the reverse case? Say some young Aruban man goes missing in the United States, and it looks like he was killed in a drug deal gone bad on the streets of Miami. The police diligently investigate, pursue numerous leads, interview hundreds of people, and collect forensic evidence. When the suspicion lands on a man who lives near where the young Aruban went missing, it is discovered that this man’s brother is a judge who lives a half a state away. Would we really find it a plausible story if the parents of the missing islander decried our system of justice, suggesting that the police who investigated and the District Attorney who charged the alleged criminal were all in cahoots with this judge to keep his brother from being convicted? And wouldn’t we likely find such a propaganda campaign to be a little on the offensive side? I think we would find it quite in bad taste.
The actions of the one grieving mother went too far. The United States may be a great nation, but we do not have any authority over other countries outside of our borders. To suggest that other countries should abandon their own codes of justice must be based on some claim about the right way to administer justice or be about the nature of justice itself, and not based on the idea that we have the right to demand concessions from foreign powers just because we want something to turn out our way.
Well, a few days ago, a new witness stepped forward in the case, saying that the missing girl was seen voluntarily using drugs on the night she disappeared. The police in Aruba are now pursuing the case as a potential accidental drug overdose case and are following new leads. It makes me very happy to know that all of the mother’s sanctimonious preaching - how her daughter was a top honor student who never, ever did anything wrong, and so it must have been those three spawns of the devil who did it to her – must be a bit deflated now. Guess what? Your daughter might be responsible for her own death.
And my joy in her pain is surely something about which I ought to feel guilty.
Rather, I was interested in the story because of the absolutely awful way in which I thought the mother of the girl was acting. I understand that her daughter went missing and that it seemed likely that foul play was involved. That’s more than enough reason to engage in a bit of theatrics.
What I found shocking about her behaviour was the total extent to which it showed a lack of understanding of international relations and the basics of judicial procedure. Without knowing the evidence (because the Dutch legal system doesn’t permit the kinds of transparency we allow), she pointed the finger at three young men who were seen in her daughter’s company the night her daughter disappeared. Presumably, we in the United States hold that a person should be considered innocent until proven guilty, not because it is in our laws that way, but because it is the right balance to strike in adjudging parties alleged to be guilty. By fingering these young men, the mother of the missing girl abdicated the moral ground on which all of U.S. justice is built.
When the American FBI weren’t allowed into the country to conduct as full of an investigation as the mother would have liked, she railed against the Dutch/Aruban authorities and instigated a travel boycott to the tiny island nation. To this day, I’ve never seen such a terrible case of “American Exceptionalism.” Are we really to believe that if an Aruban went missing in the United States that our law enforcement agencies would step back and tell a foreign, sovereign jurisdiction’s law enforcement to enter our country and conduct their own investigations? Surely not. Such an act would be an affront to American justice, and one can even imagine the outcry if the Netherlands sent a demand to the United States to allow their law enforcement personnel to conduct investigations on U.S. soil. But somehow, alleged the mother, America was different. We had a right to have our officials conduct investigations in a foreign, sovereign country.
What’s more, the Aruban officials detained the three men in question, and held them for quite long periods of time while investigating the disappearance of the young girl. Again, in the United States, we presumably think that a detention without charges is wrong after some short length of time, not because it is in our laws that it is so, but because we think it is right. In the United States, after arresting the three young fellows, we would have had to charge them with a crime or let them go. Not so, in Aruba. They were held, without charges, for what in the United States would have been unconstitutional lengths of time. But when that length of time ran out in Aruba (they as well feel that after some set period of time that it becomes wrong to hold people without charges), the Aruban authorities had to let them out of prison. What did the mother of the missing girl do? She demanded that they not be released. Again, she abdicated the moral ground on which the U.S. justice system is built. When Aruba let them go despite her protestations, she initiated a propaganda campaign to smear the country even more and got several governors from the U.S. to publicly bash Dutch protectorate.
When it was revealed that the father of one of the young guys was a judge, she accused the entire government of the colony of being biased and protecting one of their own. Can you imagine how that would fly if this were the reverse case? Say some young Aruban man goes missing in the United States, and it looks like he was killed in a drug deal gone bad on the streets of Miami. The police diligently investigate, pursue numerous leads, interview hundreds of people, and collect forensic evidence. When the suspicion lands on a man who lives near where the young Aruban went missing, it is discovered that this man’s brother is a judge who lives a half a state away. Would we really find it a plausible story if the parents of the missing islander decried our system of justice, suggesting that the police who investigated and the District Attorney who charged the alleged criminal were all in cahoots with this judge to keep his brother from being convicted? And wouldn’t we likely find such a propaganda campaign to be a little on the offensive side? I think we would find it quite in bad taste.
The actions of the one grieving mother went too far. The United States may be a great nation, but we do not have any authority over other countries outside of our borders. To suggest that other countries should abandon their own codes of justice must be based on some claim about the right way to administer justice or be about the nature of justice itself, and not based on the idea that we have the right to demand concessions from foreign powers just because we want something to turn out our way.
Well, a few days ago, a new witness stepped forward in the case, saying that the missing girl was seen voluntarily using drugs on the night she disappeared. The police in Aruba are now pursuing the case as a potential accidental drug overdose case and are following new leads. It makes me very happy to know that all of the mother’s sanctimonious preaching - how her daughter was a top honor student who never, ever did anything wrong, and so it must have been those three spawns of the devil who did it to her – must be a bit deflated now. Guess what? Your daughter might be responsible for her own death.
And my joy in her pain is surely something about which I ought to feel guilty.
posted by The Academian | 9:21 PM
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