Hello...I wish I could stop thinking about this horror...but for a number of reasons, I just can't...the first being that I happened to look a great deal like Sandra when I was a little girl...
But what I want to talk about now is Melissa Huckaby. That what I suspect is that she herself was the victim of some kind of heinous abuse, minus of course, the fact of being murdered.
This abuse may have occured during her childhood at the hands of a trusted family member or other caregiver adult. Or it may have occured at the hands of her ex-husband or other significant male relationship. So why was Melissa Huckaby crying?
Because, contrary to what at least one MSNBC profiler stated, I believe Melissa Huckaby is not a psychopath. She is not a sociopath devoid of all conscience or feeling. I believe she was instead herself a victim, perhaps long ago, but unlike abuse survivors who do find healing, I believe Melissa kept her horror entirely locked inside. She did not tell a soul.
But the secret eventually began to bubble over. She engaged in petty theft as a means of acting out, and as a means of distracting herself from the root of the ugliness that was haunting and simmering inside her. When petty crimes no longer served their numbing purpose, she began to be overtaken by the most unthinkably evil thoughts. She probably felt like she wasn't at all in control of those thoughts. Like they had a life all of their own.
And because she never confided any or all of this to mental health professionals, the sickness inside her grew, and it grew stronger. It was like a drug to her, a drug that wholly numbed her, so that by the time she did what she did to Sandra, she was very, very far away from what the rest of us know to be Reality.
I sense these things about Melissa Huckaby because I have been through a great deal of trauma in my own life, and yet the one form of trauma I did *not* endure was sexual abuse. For example, as a child, I lost my beloved grandmother to alcoholism and my beloved father to alcohol-induced abandonment of me.
Alcoholism and abandonment played themselves out dramatically in my early adult life to the point that I nearly drank myself to death. I was fortunate, however, to get into alcoholism recovery when still young, then into talking therapy to address the post-traumatic stress disorder I'd developed along the way, and also psychiatry to treat depression. And I always talked to qualified therapists. I always asked for help, every month, every year, so that I could finally and fully begin to heal.
My sense of Melissa Huckaby is that she did not reach out in this way. Or maybe she tried to, but her family refused to listen or support her, perhaps believing instead that Christ heals all and saves all sinners who confess. Well, sometimes it isn't that simple. Sometimes trauma severs a person to the extent that they can't find the Light anymore.
This is not *ever* to excuse the monstrosity that Melissa Huckaby committed against Beautiful Sandra. Because I know that every one of us in the United States has an immense wealth of emergency and ongoing mental health resources available to us should we only ask for the help.
And because I have not stopped trembling for days imagining the terror and agony that precious Sandra had to endure until she died...
But, at the same time, I feel like it just isn't enough to simply call Melissa Huckaby a Monster. If we want to prevent this from ever happening to another child again, we need to know what happened to Melissa. What made her do this. What in her memory drove her to snap in this unthinkably, monstrously brutal way.
And we need to bring the nightmare of childhood sexual abuse out into the open so its victims can be acknowledged, validated, supported, and assisted in the process of healing. Because I do believe that all to often, victims do become the perpetrators.
I hope you all don't hate me for what I've written here. This may not have been the forum for me to initiate such a dialogue.
All of this said, Sandra was precious and beautiful beyond what my words can express.
And as for Melissa Huckaby, it is of course too late for her. I understand she cannot be rehabilitated. But she could have stopped herself. She could have asked for help. But she cloaked herself in false faith and denied the monster that was waking up inside her.
She could have spared Sandra. That is why this matters.
Insinuating that new members have committed a heinous crime is unacceptable. I encourage members not to copy this behavior.
