Obenieta: Men in black

Friday, October 21, 2011

TRAGIC but true—we’re not far apart when doom hits home. A tale of two families—spanning the distance between the heartland of America and the navel of the Visayas—shows disturbing similarities. This story, set in Kansas and Cebu, is about domestic affairs gone gothic. Its ending would hopefully be a sobering reality check on behalf of men with a tendency to see red, painting as it does sordid portraits of patriarchy in distress and in dire need of help.

In the name of all fathers and husbands, what James Kraig Kahler and Emmanuel Ponce did to their wives and children may be an isolated case.

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Then again, the nagging question is disquietingly constant and quite familiar: Could it be the last time we would ever hear of their crime?

“No one in his right mind would do these things,” Kahler’s attorney tried but failed to convince the jury. Rejecting the mental illness defense, they recently found him worthy of death penalty for the 2009 massacre of his wife, two teenage daughters and his wife’s grandmother on Thanksgiving Day. As reported, Kahler’s rampage came hot in the heels of rumors about his wife’s lesbian relationship and the loss of his job.

Jealousy also reared its head in Ponce’s suspicion about his wife, a medalist for marathon running, when she was out at the gym or practicing. A relative claimed Ponce, a seaman, had a nervous breakdown after an accident abroad. Neighbors whispered about the bruises that his family members endured from his violent temper.

Describing Ponce as “a good man,” one of his friends told reporters how Ponce acted strange, looked shabby, and mumbled about shooting someone. The rest is headline story, or so we shuddered at the details: After his firearm mowed down his wife, their three children, and a housemaid, he killed himself.

As if to show a shard of humanity from their shattered view regarding their victims, both Kahler and Ponce spared the youngest child in their respective families. Whether or not leaving a lone survivor in each household is an act of mercy, we could only wish for both children to outlive the horror and find healing in due time.

In the meantime, it bodes ill to society’s basic unit if the rest of us would flinch from finding the tell-tale signs that foreshadow these cases of “familicide.” Does our society possess the means to detect the signals, which are essential in getting involved with and to intervene in alleviating homegrown hurts?

Private matters are public issues, one sociologist attested. Another talked about the fatal consequence of “anomie,” a sociological phenomenon that occurs during disruptions or estrangement from the individual’s personal and social orientations.

A 201o forum of experts in the United States revealed that “men accounted for majority of the perpetrators were men (91 percent) and most used a gun (88 percent). Richard Gelles, a dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, talked of “overenmeshment…in which perpetrators either view their family members as possessions that they control or (they) don't see any boundaries between their identity, their wife and their children.”

More than meets the eye, these details may yet steer us beyond the dead weight we bear while sharing the blood-soaked stories toward contemplation and action.

(geemyko@gmail.com)