Sacrificing Rebecca

Back in mid-October, I posted here about an article I'd seen in the paper, about a mother who'd overdosed her 14-year-old "disabled" daughter and then herself. I entitled it Safe, and questioned the mother's motives, a question that elicited comments along the lines of, "Don't judge" and, from someone named Chris who said he'd been reading my blog because he thought I was "really pretty," how he was now "shocked and dismayed by your lack of compassion for others."

My compassion, in fact, led me to want to know what happened in Laurie and Rebecca Recht's home the night they died, and the road they took to get there. The result is this week's cover feature in Willamette Week, "Sacrificing Rebecca." As for judging and not judging, I will go on record as saying part of the reason Laurie was allowed to do what she did is our institutional reluctance to judge people, and to hold them accountable for their actions. Chris and others may feel compassion for Laurie when they read her story; I do not. I feel sadness and pity and rage, and also, and always, the certainty that we must hold people accountable, lest we passively enable weakness and in this case, murder.

Comments

[Jackie Danicki]

This one really shook me up. Blogged.

[Sarah Minnick]

Me too. I read it last night before bed and when I was finished, I didn't want to sleep for nightmares. I went and kissed my little girl. An intensely well written story. Very scary.

[vj]

Strangely, I heard about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy twice yesterday. What a frightening story. Thanks for writing it.

[Lizzy Caston]

Nancy told me that Laurie and her Rebecca were invading her dreams when she was writing this story. After reading it yesterday, they also appeared in mine last night. Very powerful and haunting stuff.

In addition, yes, the sickness of it all, but also the institutional failures on so many levels. I am really pissed off about the lack of communication from and within the medical community in this story. Yes, I understand the right to privacy is a great one and that individual workers can not comment, but when medical institutions are not held to questions and can hide behind "by law those are closed records" it makes it very easy to sweep systematic failures under the rug (as I believe they are able to do so here). Did the medical profession contribute to the potential abuse and death of this girl? We will probably never know will we, since they seem structured to be able to pull off a complete lack of accountability.

This story also illustrates the complete lack of coordinated care and information sharing between medical providers themselves. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that this woman was a danger to her child within the medical field itself given her history with them and love of pharmaceuticals. This is crucial to me because if this can't be figured out in the very institutions that are supposed to keep people healthy (both mentally and physically), and if others are not allowed to question them on their role in all this, how the hell is something like this ever going to possibly be prevented again? The article touched on this, but I'd like to hear more from Nancy on her take.

And finally, what is also surprising and disturbing is that despite a fairly large amount of local media attention (it was certainly the 2 minute 11pm human interest story of the week there when it happened), Nancy was the only reporter here in town to sniff out that something was amiss and that things just didn't add up. Sure she's a genius, but come on. Lazy, lazy reporting on the part of Portland's daily paper and news channels who instead focused on the mere surface sensationalism of the "tragedy" and the "poor little disabled girl and her overwhelmed mother" Anyone can report the “what happened” but a good journalist will also get to the whys. Good work Rommelmann.

[KateCoe]

I'm always surprised by people who get upset at a writer who's just trying to find out what happened. Reading the comments on your original posts suggests to me that many people really don't ever want to know the truth about anything, if it disturbs their view of the world and their place in it.

I've just finished jury duty. A number of my fellow jurors were surprised to find out that the defendant lied on the stand--not just about his crime, but about his military service, education, and previous crimes. If you're charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, what's a little perjury?

[katrina]

I would be quite surprised that people would accuse you of a lack of compassion. I do feel a shadow of compassion for Laurie- she is a human being, after all. However that is of course no excuse for what she did to her poor daughter. I read this article and realise how far manipulation can affect one, and especially a kid. Who wouldn't have emotional problems with a mother such as that? Rebecca was probably a pretty much normal girl who was manipulated into her disabilities.
I also agree with your comments about the institutional forces at large. On the one hand, as I was reading your article I was thinking, "Where in hell were the school boards? No one ever tried to intervene? No one thought this out of control?" But on the other hand, if you believe a kid to be disabled, then keeping that facade could make one go insane. Not to mention the vast array of examples of lousy parenting seen by education officials. I feel very sorry for all those to whom Rebecca was a dearly-loved friend, and I hope this will encourage people to ask questions when they should. I think people are worried either that they might open up an issue they couldn't sustain, or that they would turn out to be dead wrong, which could result in legal repercussions. But thanks for writing your article.

[Curtis]

Nancy, you aren't casual in your determinations, your conclusions, but it seems to me that you're even gentle sometimes so as to avoid intruding on the considerations & conclusions others might make given the same material to work with.

I like that. I think it's commendable.