Perspective: Hurt people hurt people. This principle should be guiding public policy

Hurt people hurt people. Though this phrase is sometimes invoked to excuse bad behavior, there’s an argument that it should be guiding public policy.

A devastating article from Pro Publica last week tells the story of two Wisconsin teens, Maylia and Jack. At the age of 15, Maylia Sotelo was charged with homicide — as an adult — for providing fentanyl to Jack McDonough, who died from it.

Police had been tracking Maylia for months before she sold the fatal dose to Jack. It turns out she was one of the biggest drug dealers in town. Jack’s grieving mother wanted to know why authorities didn’t arrest her earlier. On the most basic level, the answer is that they knew if they didn’t build a significant case against her that she would experience no real punishment as a juvenile — we have moved away from using juvenile detention in recent years — and likely would be back to dealing in no time.

But the real failure of the system in this case is not a failure of law enforcement. It is a failure of the child welfare system. The article’s description of Maylia’s history with child protective services is appalling. Per Pro Publica :

“Before Maylia turned 1, CPS documented that her mother overdosed on cocaine and Adderall with seven children in her home. When she was 5, a caller told the agency that Maylia’s mom was ‘high as a kite’ and her boyfriend was violent. The next year, a mandated reporter alerted CPS that there was ‘absolutely no food in the home’ and that the kids witnessed their mother using heroin.”

The article goes on, documenting sexual abuse and physical abuse from Maylia’s mother and other people living in their home, adding up to 20 referrals to child protective services. Investigations went nowhere, calls to speak with Maylia’s mother went to voicemail. And “staff closed case after case.” At 14, when her mother seemed to be hallucinating regularly, CPS finally placed the girl with her grandmother and then in the care of her older sister, which is where she learned the business of drug dealing.

That Maylia ended up using and dealing drugs is hardly surprising. In recent cases of school shootings in Wisconsin and Georgia, prosecutors have been charging parents as well as the perpetrators. Never mind that it seems illogical both to charge the child as an adult and then also to charge the parents. We are desperately searching for someone to be held responsible. We are looking for the adults — the adults who missed the warning signs, the adults who provided the guns. But we should also be looking for the adults who could have intervened.

In the case of Colt Gray, who killed four people at Apalachee High School in Georgia in August, the signs that he was living in an abusive and neglectful household were clear to both neighbors and relatives. His mother, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had been arrested multiple times for accusations of domestic violence, drug possession, property damage and traffic violations. She was recently arrested on charges of elder abuse for taping her own mother to a chair and stealing her phone. Her sister said that Colt “was begging for help from everybody around him.” Where, we might wonder, was child protective services?

Or what about the case of Lisa Montgomery, who was executed in December 2021 for the murder 17 years earlier of Bobbie Joe Stinnett, who was strangled to death, her belly sliced open, and her baby removed? There’s no doubt Montgomery was responsible, but the stories of Montgomery’s childhood leave little room for question about how Montgomery became the person she did. Her mother withheld food from her as a baby and her mouth was covered with duct tape so frequently that she learned not to cry. She was hit with belts and brooms and left outside naked in freezing temperatures for long periods. Her stepfather regularly raped her and invited friends over to rape her as well.

There are crimes for which we will never have an explanation, and people who simply commit ghastly acts despite coming from decent families and being loved and cared for by friends and relatives. But there are also tragedies whose roots we can easily understand when we dig just below the surface, people who experience so much trauma they descend into serious mental illness and even psychosis.

We have a responsibility to children like Maylia and Lisa and Colt, not only because they are suffering, but also because the potential for collateral damage from the abuse they experience is enormous. Next time we ask, “Where were the adults?” we should look not just at the parents, but at the friends and neighbors and doctors and teachers and law enforcement and child protective services. We all have a responsibility.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Deseret News contributor and the author of “ No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives ,” among other books.