I was half listening to the Nightly News the other evening when I heard about a car driving into the beach at Daytona. I harrumphed, because I had visited Daytona Beach a couple of years ago and was totally flummoxed by the fact that cars drive up and down that beautiful beach just because, well, they can. I just assumed some idiot had gotten distracted.
But as I watched further, it was apparent that this was a different matter entirely. A woman with three children in a minivan intentionally turned and drove into the surf. The children were screaming for help, and the oldest trying to wrestle the steering wheel from his mother. Others on the beach responded to the obvious distress and rescued mother and three children.
As I listened, I felt a bizarre sense of inevitability. I almost said the words along with the commentator: the woman was from South Carolina.
In 1994, Susan Smith achieved national notoriety when she claimed that her two children had been abducted by a black man; after a nine day search, she admitted that in fact she had pushed her car into a lake, drowning her sons. Her stepfather, a Christian Coalition leader, admitted to having sexually molested Smith.
I only relate that story because, as with Ebony Wilkerson, it is pretty much a checklist of what is wrong with South Carolina. A mentally disturbed woman, victim of spousal and/or sexual abuse, responsible for children. It turns out that three days earlier, Wilkerson had called 911 from her Myrtle Beach home to report having been raped by her husband. He had also been arrested and charged with battery in 2005. This time around, the Myrtle Beach police appear to have been "still investigating" the call when questioned three days after she attempted to kill herself and her children.
Earlier on that same day in Daytona, her sister called the police and reported that Ebony was delusional, talking about Jesus and demons. They actually stopped her on the road, but had no reason to hold her.
Wilkerson was 27 weeks pregnant.
Obviously, in both South Carolina and Florida, attempts were made to intervene. But this woman had been wrestling with crises that needed intervention a long time ago.
Here in South Carolina, our governor is working hard to deny people food stamps and health care, two pieces of a struggle that could be easily addressed for so many of us. More difficult problems of mental illness, spousal assault and isolation would require hard work from our government. Ebony Wilkerson has had contacts with various government services, and they have been inadequate.
Poverty, racism, inadequate education, lack of family assistance, inadequate health and mental health outreach, lack of sex education and family planning, failure to pursue and prosecute the abusers of women.
I could go on.
It's been quite a number of years since Susan Smith drowned her children. Sadly, South Carolina continues to be number 1 (or right up there) in all the wrong things.
Isn't it time we stopped worrying about whether we should be feeding people who don't have jobs and just feed them? And how about knocking it off about the evils of the Affordable Care Act, and taking that Medicaid expansion?
Then maybe we can begin to address those tragedies that can be prevented with commitment and work.
