A twelve-year-old girl’s lifeless body is found in a picturesque Vermont town of about 5,000. She’s been missing for a week. Federal prosecutors soon file kidnapping charges against the child’s uncle, who could face the death penalty.
What are we left to think? The news is as gruesome and horrific as you’d ever care to hear, especially if you’re a parent, or an uncle of a beautiful niece.
You take a deep breath, and you wonder. And then you read on about authorities alleging how Michael Jacques, 42, had carefully orchestrated events to look like his niece had gone off to see someone she had met online. A parents’ worst nightmare. But another teenage girl then changes her story and claims that Jacques had, on the night in question, violated the trust of his niece by talking her into thinking she was going to a party. Instead, he took her to his home to initiate her into a child sex ring. The same child sex ring the 14-year-old witness claims to have been a part of since the age of nine.
Now Jacques is charged under a federal law that provides for the death penalty in a kidnapping resulting in a child’s death. To make matters worse for the accused, and one’s conscience, Jacques has prior convictions for kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault.
Police unearthed Brooke Bennett’s body Wednesday from a makeshift grave about a mile from her uncle’s house. With autopsy results still pending, prosecutors said they could not say whether the twelve-year-old had been murdered.
But the press sure made it appear as though she had. And reading about it makes one immediately jump to the conclusion that this beautiful child’s uncle killed her. That the man is a horrible monster-predator who preys on children and deserves to be put out of everyone’s misery.
The words, “The death penalty is too good for this creep,” slip to the edge of my tongue. They are followed by an inspiration, a desire, a want to pull the switch myself. Or is it the syringe? I forget. How are we killing them off these days? And who needs a trial anyway, right? “Hang him from the highest bridge.”
But after the anger subsides – and the sick feeling in my stomach dissolves into acid – I begin to remember my compassion for the child’s family. A feeling of understating absorbs me, the same kind of feeling I shared in other matters involving the killing of other children such as Nicholas Markowitz and Larry King. I send warmth and prayers to the victim’s parents for having to endure something that may lack closure for a very long time.
And then I think again about the mother of Brooke Bennett, and what she must be thinking about her brother who’s still in jail without bail, facing the very real prospect of a death sentence.
In what form will justice be found for this woman? Will it be discovered through the ultimate conviction and state-sanctioned murder of Michael Jacques? And if so, how should I feel about that? Should I really want to see another human being put to death? Should I care? Or should I be feeling something else? Maybe a sort of compassion for this wretched human being. Some type of forgiveness and hope that this man, who could be a murderous pedophile, gets his day in court. And if found guilty, that he would be sentenced to prison for a very long time, to keep him away from society and to punish him for his sins. But then again, I think, maybe we should just kill him. Wouldn’t that really make me feel better? After all, two deaths are better than one, right?
This man – who is not Brrok Bennets mothers brother, he is her mothers sisters husband should never have been in the public ever!! His first assult that were not hearing about was ongoing for 5 years…and was only discovered after the victim- his younger sister got pregnant by her own brother! * years later he raped a women in her home for 6 hours. The 14 year old that he had been abuseing for the past 5 years was his step daughter. You tell me – why should this man ever be a drain on our prison systym. If It was mydaughter he would be dead already!
Again, as I’ve mentioned before in your prior blogs, this guy should fry (or whatever capital punishment is done in his state. How can he, you or anybody do something so disgusting to someone he’s supposed to protect and love. She was his family, which is even more unthinkable. It comes down to the fact that some of us in society creep closer to our barbaric animalistic side than others. We’re all capable of this, however, we do not do it. He broke the laws and how do you feel when he’s released on parole because he wasn’t put to death and kills your daughter? Do you go with your hope and “HOPE” he doesn’t kill another young girl, your daughter, your wife, or your mother? Or do you do what is necessary and put him out of his misery? You decide.