Sitting in the Maricopa County Superior Courtroom, I could think of little but my own 12-year old son as I heard the Pinal County Prosecutor reel off in graphic detail the sexual atrocities committed against a 14-year old boy by Susan Brock, the wife of Maricopa County Supervisor Fulton Brock sentenced this month to 13 years in prison for her admitted crimes. I watched her as she sat at the Defense counsel's table, in her zebra-striped couty jail garb, flanked on the right by mounds of expensive toys and electronics that she had given to the victim to buy his submission to her own depraved and deviant sexual desires. The methodical and patient manipulation of this boy into sex acts with a woman old enough to be his mother and then her ability to make him feel in some way responsible for them made my stomach turn even as I struggled to keep an objective view as I was reporting this for my day job.
But there's more. Revealed in the evidence at sentencing was audio of jailhouse phone calls between Susan and her husband Fulton Brock, a prominent resident of my own city of Chandler, laughing and joking, talking about trying for a pardon from the Governor, disparaging the character of the victim, even as he put out press releases about how terrible his wife's crimes were, how he had to divorce her and about how sick she must be as a human being for hurting this boy in such a heinous and immoral manner.
Wait, there's even more. Revealed in those same calls was information that prominent leaders in the Mormon Church, the faith folllowed by the Brock's and the victim, knew of the crimes and they did nothing to inform law enforcement, instead trying to handle it between the Brock's and the victim's family.
Hold on, there's even more. Fulton and Susan Brock's daughter, Rachel, who is attending college is also charged with molesting the same victim but pleads "not guilty." It's hard to say where the evil and disgust of this "family affair" begins, ends or is most eggregious but what is certain is that it points out the ongoing and endemic problem we have in this society: that of valuing the lives of our innocent children less than we do the lives of the adults who victimize them.
This devaluation begins in utero as we continue the neverending debate about the ethics and morality of abortion. While not arguing one side or the other, it does give us the reductio ad absurdum argument that belies the fundamental truth behind the coarsening of our artitudes toward children: where do the rights of children equal or exceed those of adults (if ever) and do those rights diminish or increase proportionally with age? It is obvious that a child's rights do increase with age as the baby about to emerge from the birth canal has almost no rights as s/he is still considered to be "unborn" while the moment the child is born, s/he is a baby and enjoys the full protection of the law. As a society, we have chosen an arbitrary, if definitive, boundary. That span of seconds between unborn and born makes all the difference and if society can draw so sharp a distinction then it can blur the lines just as easily.
Some states have passed laws to protect the lives of the unborn, such as those that count the killing of a fetus in the killing or attempted killing of a pregnant woman as murder, but that same child is still nothing but tissue to be discarded if that pregnant woman herself decides that it is so. So we must ask ourselves, in that instance, if the law is really protecting the rights of the child or of the mother.
Once the child is born and s/he enjoys the protection of the law, that protection still is predominantly enjoyed by the parents or other adults far more than by said child. Some would argue this is nnecessary to allow parents and elders the authority they need to protect, guide, and exercise responsibility over their children, but that very authority is all too often turned against the children and used by adults to further injure them. One need only remember the Catholic Priest Pedophile Scandal, or watch the news to see teachers, preachers. politicians and entertainers sexually or physically abuse the children who trusted them and who were comdemned to subordination to them by the law.
Of course, in some cases the pendulum has swung far to the other side with over-zealous adults who, in a search for their own empowerment, see molesters and violent abusers where there are none and innocent people are forever tarred and feathered, but those are rare cases and are overwhelmed by the number of real cases of abuse that are reported to authorities. But what of those that are not reported? In the Susan Brock case, the abuse lasted for years because it was not violent, there were no obviious outward signs and the boy was made to feel as though it were his idea and any physical pleasure he may have felt in the acts merely served to further ensnare him in her web of guilt and sin. How many movies or TV shows have we seen where the younger man is "schooled" in the ways of love by the experienced older woman? How many stories have we heard of "Lolitias" luring older men into sex? Society sexualizes these children and then wonders why these things happen.
Susan Brock could to this because society not only allows it, it encourages it. We sexualize our children at a very young age and we celebrate said sexuality through toddler beauty pageants and sexed-up TV shows depicting high school kides getting pregnant ot losing their virginity in bouts of underaged drinking. We have reality shows, like Toddlers and Tiaras and 16 and Pregnant and dramas like Skins and The Secret Life of the American Teenager that glamorize the sexualization and sexuality of minors. Millions of dollars are made in the entertainment industry showing us that kids are sexual objects and perhaps billions of dollars are made through the merchandising and marketing that results from that media onslaught pushing kids across America to buy the products (clothes, makeup, etc...) they believe they need to help them achieve that themselves. It is a vicious cycle, powered by money and abetted by a voracious appetite for sex.
None of this is to absolve Susan Brock, Fulton Brock, Rachel Brock or the Mormon Church of any guilt they may share in the destruction of this boy's life. Each is answering, or will have to answer, for the roles they played in this tragedy. The victim is forever scarred, forever wounded by this theft of his innocence. Children abused like this often become sexually confused, socially inept and even suicidal.
But there is another side to this tragedy and that is the self-immolation of the Brock family. They had everything we are told a family needs in order to be successful: money, careers, faith, values, fellowship and all kept within a beautiful home and surrounded by a white picket fence. but like all facades, theirs was thin and brittle and what little there was that was solid was eaten through by their own decadence. And it all came crumbling down.
