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In the posted articles, this columnist Tim Rollins raises many good points. Most have been raised before by posters on this forum, but then, posters here talk about the case daily, whereas surely Mr. Rollins does not.

A couple of things he said, though, tend to stick in my craw (to borrow one of his own expressions.) Hearing someone who is described as "a New Yorker with an attitude" accuse people from any other region of "smugness, arrogance, and elitism" is a JOKE! Puh-leeze! Sorry, Mr. Rollins, if we blighted peasants in "flyover country" can't meet your high expectations. Also, I assume this man is some sophisticated, trained, well-educated journalist, so I would suggest he get a new editor. Well-educated journalists are not supposed to use phrases such as "like I said," or "she could have fell asleep."

Mr. Rollins apparently has a bone to pick with the people of SLC, and I think it's a sort of religious difference, stemming from the old debate between free will and determinism. He can't seem to understand what he apparently sees as their tendency to perhaps take too much on faith, and see some things as being preordained. He should leave his personal criticism out of his columns and just stick with his discussion of the discrepancy in stories, which was quite good.

He cites several tragedies that have occurred in the SLC area, and implies that they could have been prevented if the people had been more aggressive in taking safety measures. I hate to break it to Mr. Rollins, but tragedies like the ones he described can and do happen anywhere. Usually each tragedy has a confluence of unfortunate events leading up to it.

If a parent goes to sleep at night at home, with his child in her own bedroom, why is it unreasonable for him to expect the child to still be there when he wakes up? There are still many, many communities in which people proudly say "they never lock their doors." It's not like the Smarts were letting their daughter roam the streets at night. If they are to blame for their daughter's disappearing from her own bedroom, then that means we have to blame the parents of the little girl who was pulled from her bedroom and beaten with a hammer, and the parents of Jennifer Short, b/c someone violated their home, and the parents of Polly Klaas, too, b/c a man came right into Polly's bedroom. That sort of thinking is hysterical and wrong.

Your comments about Mr. Rollins' essay are exactly the way I felt. How can he be so arrogant as to pass judgement on a family when he's never been in that situation? Parents cannot watch their children 24 hours a day and it's ridiculous for him to make some of the statements he did; i.e. the children who suffocated in the family car in their own driveway, and Ed Smart didn't lock the house and set the alarm. Mr. Rollins acts as if accidents and kidnappings of children only happen in Utah and nowhere else because people elseware are not as trusting as people in Utah. He probably would never admit that maybe the reason Elizabeth's disappearance made all the headlines is that this type of thing is not the norm for Utah because of the exact opposite of what he is claiming. Maybe the reason there are so many more child abductons and murders in other states is because people in Utah tend to take the responsibility of parenting very seriously. To say that these parents and the people of Utah are somehow to blame because they have too much faith and are too trusting is beyond silly, it's just plain stupid. Accidents, sexual attacks, murders and abductions are happening everywhere, and yes, people need to be made more aware of precautions and safety measures for prevention, but Mr. Rollins is not the one to be passing out judgements.

If they are to blame for their daughter's disappearing from her own bedroom, then that means we have to blame the parents of the little girl who was pulled from her bedroom and beaten with a hammer, and the parents of Jennifer Short, b/c someone violated their home, and the parents of Polly Klaas, too, b/c a man came right into Polly's bedroom. That sort of thinking is hysterical and wrong.

Excellent point. I have had some of the same feelings about Salt Lake as Mr. Rollins has. One of the charming things about the city is that it has an almost small town feel to it. That is changing as crime rates go up and the people are surely more on gaurd now than before the unfortunate events of this summer. I haven't lived there for many years so my opinions are somewhat dated but it always seemed to me that there was a rather large segment of the LDS population there that would benefit greatly by getting out of Salt Lake for a year or two to see how the rest of the world lives. This could be said about the people from any small town in the country, especially where there was a dominant faith. Some of my favorite people in all of the world live in Salt Lake but I also know some people who have blinders on as to what goes on in the world.