Sunday, August 30, 2009

Under Our Noses

The ends people will go to, to ensure one does not become unduly involved. And assuming due penitence having been expressed, no further monitoring need be undertaken. System of protocol to the contrary. There's that old adage of giving a guy a break, not hitting a fellow when he's down, assuming the best, not the worst, and opting to be a good guy, not a jerk. A man's house is his castle, after all. Intruders are those who make their way into the private confines of a man's castle, and make indelicate enquiries.

Some neighbours of Philip Garrido, however, were obviously the nosy, suspicious type. Having made a 911 call to alert public agencies that a neighbour, a nice but peculiar fellow who was once accused, convicted, and did prison time for a major sexual offence, was living in peculiar circumstances. In that, a rapist who was obviously not supposed to be in the company of minors had children about, and people seemed to be living in some degree of squalor in the backyard.

The investigating deputy obviously knocked at the door of Mr. Garrido's home, and not wanting to appear too inconveniently intrusive, asked, is everything OK? Never entered the house, did not take the time to look around the grounds, poke into the shed, have a peek into the tent. Short cut to concluding an irritating nuisance call. "I can't change the course of events, but we are beating ourselves up over this and we are the first to do so", according to the Sheriff of Contra Costa county. Yep.

Mr. Garrido was originally sentenced for a kidnap and rape conviction to 50 years in prison. But in the spirit of benign forgiveness he served a fraction of that time, and was released on lifetime parole. Which meant, of course, that his assigned parole agent had an obligation under the law to regularly visit the man, to enquire politely whether he was behaving himself. His wife could attest to the fact that her husband was being good and carrying himself honourably.

Eighteen years of forced concealment in the backyard of a house occupied by a sex offender on lifetime parole, regularly checked by an assigned parole officer, and no hint of anything amiss. A child of eleven, brutally abducted from her home, and kept prisoner as a sex slave to a seriously unhinged psychopath, yet no one the wiser for it, save the man's wife, who felt that life was unfolding as it must, inexorably.

The child struggling with her fears and the horror her existence took on, and finding it within herself to separate herself from that existence. Discovering from an inner source of strength that she could survive. Surrendering her autonomy to the demands of someone insane enough to confide to police that this would result in the final analysis as "the most powerful heart-warming story."

Two babies, then infants, then young girls, along with their mother, confined to the misery of life within a miserable few square feet of a hovel. The children completely without school, never seen by a doctor, and obviously seldom seen by neighbours who exercised no modicum of curiosity about the peculiar presence of the three, assuming much and asking nothing.

Even while the man conducted religious services for those pathetic few who might be interested in his efforts to initiate his own inimitable take on religion in a tent erected beside the infamous shed. Of course the young girl grown to womanhood became complicit in her bondage. She allowed herself to be schooled in the art of human contact at a remove, representing herself as a capable businesswoman, a daughter of her captor.

"How could that go on under all of our noses?" marvelled one of the neighbours, shivering with dread that it did. Well, society in general - how could it?

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posted by Pieface @ Sunday, August 30, 2009

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