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Danielle Van Dam, and Standards
Brian S. Wise
February 25, 2002

Danielle van Dam was seven when she disappeared on February the first, apparently now her body has been found, burned, in some desert brush about twenty-five miles East of San Diego. All that is immediately available as means of identification is a plastic necklace, the one featured so prominently in the missing child fliers distributed throughout San Diego, and an earring. Days will pass before a positive medical identification can be made, but there is no reasonable doubt the body found is that of Danielle van Dam.

Consider now David Westerfield, the neighbor who – based upon discoveries of blood evidence and child pornography – was arrested for van Dam’s abduction and death. Consider him only because a clear majority of those who can form coherent opinions have done so, deciding that if Westerfield is guilty of this thing (and he is), he should be put to death. Far be it from me to disagree with the popular sentiment; one cannot be an iconoclast on all things, because sooner or later the public will get something right.

What piques curiosity is the popular treatments to be levied against David Westerfield as opposed to the varied treatments thus far levied against five time child killer Andrea Yates. It’s impossible to believe we will ever see Katie Couric pimping the Westerfield defense fund on Today, or in depth news magazine reports on the psychological sadness of pedophilia, or family members and friends coming forward to stand up for and explain away his ghastly fetish, or television’s more misguided talking heads concocting impassioned pleas explaining why David Westerfield simply cannot be held accountable for his actions. All of that seems right, as a man of that sort shouldn’t ever be defended, except at trial (if we must).

All of this aside, let’s speculate for a moment. Let’s say it suddenly came out Westerfield was depressed, that he had tried to kill himself twice in the last year, that he believed he was possessed by Satan, that his lover knew he was physically attracted to prepubescent girls but took no steps to help him as a service to the community, that his doctor knew as well but took him off of psychotherapeutic drugs, instead advising him to “think happy thoughts,” and he would heal in time. Were it all true, would anyone (in their own right mind) dare come forward and say Daniel Westerfield’s mental condition suggests his life should be spared because he had no concept of his behavior, that he shouldn’t die because of the horrors suffered by Danielle van Dam? Of course not; and why?

The answer is difficult, more difficult, perhaps, than most of us are willing to admit. It’s because when a man (maybe rapes) and kills a small girl, there cannot be an acceptable excuse, no matter his problems or weaknesses. We have generally been conditioned to believe the modern man wants young girls, all of whom are uncaged animals because they will do whatever they must to have young girls, all of whom are all potential pedophiles and murders because they take what they want without consideration, as uncivilized barbarians. For a man to kill a female of any age is a testosterone laden strike against the very existence of feminity, but par for the course, so off with his head, as means of delivering a message.

When the murderer happens to be a woman (and more often in these times, it is), in particular the mother of her victims, there is literally no end to the excuse making; the theatrical speeches on the frailty of her mind and condition, the huffing and puffing over the changes a woman goes through when having children, how no man can possibly understand the physical and emotional implications of new motherhood. In other words, David Westerfield is to be strung high … Andrea Yates is to be understood.

What frustrates conservatives is the definitive lack of a consistent moral standard of justice among our people. Justice is a plainly stated love of the innocent; how, if we are to defend innocence, can it be rightly said someone who sets into motion the apparatus which destroys three thousand human beings in the Tragedies should be hunted and wiped out, but the Palestinian who shoots the husband of a woman in labor shouldn’t? Or that someone who sets off a bomb and kills one hundred and sixty-eight in Oklahoma City should be put to death, but someone who shoots and kills the clerk at 7-11 shouldn’t? Or that the man who wipes out a seven-year-old girl should burn eternally, but the woman who drowns her five children (aged seven and under) should be lent compassion?

Man should possess a standard of justice and adhere to it regardless of the emotional strings strummed or the criminal’s coincidences to the common man. Base that standard upon the belief those lives marred by the decisions and actions of another should be afforded a proper revenge; that “an eye for an eye” was always followed by “and a life for a life,” we have just selectively forgotten. If David Westerfield should die – and if what we suspect about him is true, he should die, immediately – so should Andrea Yates, and anyone who follows them.