The F Word...

In 1999 my friend and fellow Team H.O.P.E. volunteer, Rebecca DeMauro’s 12-year-old daughter Andria, was murdered.

May 15, 1999 Rebecca wrote; my life changed forever when my beautiful 12 year-old daughter, Andria “Andi” Nichole Brewer was kidnapped from her father’s rural Arkansas home. After a three day state wide search for her that included hundreds of volunteers, state, local, and federal law enforcement her abductor confessed to the FBI that he had abducted Andi.

He had waited for her father to leave the house then he went to the door, told her that her grandparent’s were ill and that she needed to leave with him. He then drove her 10 miles away to the town of Cove, Arkansas down an old logging road where he raped and strangled her. We learned from his confession that she fought him and begged for her life. She promised not to tell that he had raped her if only he would take her home

He didn’t. He strangled her to death.

After he murdered her he pulled her 400 yards further into the wooded area and covered her small nude body with scrub brush and disposed of her clothing into the raging Buffalo River. The murderer, Karl Roberts, was a relative by marriage, so none of us found it odd when he helped all of us search for Andi for the three days she was missing.

When we finally learned what had happened to Andi I wanted to die with her. There is no other way to explain the loss of a child other than to say that dying by slow torture would be better. I have never experienced such great pain emotionally or physically. Unless you have lost a child there is no way to for me to explain it in a way you may understand.

There was a little relief when Karl Roberts was found guilty of first degree capital murder and was given the death penalty. For a time that seemed to pacify my rage and hate for him, but soon enough he began to consume my thoughts again. I hated him. I wanted to blow his brains out. I wanted him to suffer long and slow. I even gave him a nickname “Spawn of Satan” and prayed to God that he was being raped and tortured in prison.

Hate and un-forgiveness consumed me. My thoughts were only on ways to kill Karl Roberts and myself.

THE F WORD

January 2004....
Most people think they could never kill a person, but I could have.

True hatred, I have learned, is ugly and dark. Not like in high school when you think you hate some girl who is trying to steal your boyfriend or a co-worker who sets you up for a big fall. No. True hatred nibbles away at your insides like some flesh eating disease nibbles away at the outside.

The clock on the wall ticks so loudly it is almost deafening. Tick. Pause. Tick Pause. Tick. Pause. Shut up, I want to scream.

Instead I sit quietly, hands folded in my lap in a small office inside the Arkansas Department of Correction-Maximum Security Unit waiting to watch a man die. My demeanor does not betray the hate I harbor. But it is there, consuming me. It has crushed me since we received the call from the prosecuting attorney a few months back telling us that the execution had been set and looked as though it would go through. No, it has been there longer than that. It stretches back to that day in May of 1999 when they told me what this man had done. For five long years I have wanted him to suffer the same way he made others suffer. He has no human contact so that means no prison rapes for him, no one here to make him pay for his crime. He has nothing to live for anyway but a lonely cell and perhaps the guard who slips him his food under the door everyday maybe whispering a "hello" or "how you doing." But then again isn't that punishment enough? To be locked away waiting to die for something that took you less than 15 minutes to carry out? Isn't that cruel and unusual enough?

On the closed circuit television screen is the execution chamber, the Death House they call it here at the Arkansas State penitentiary. It is a small room with white walls, a gurney takes center stage. On that gurney are two arms boards that stretch out to each side with Velcro straps hanging in long strips, it looks like a crucifix they have laid down on an ambulance cot. Three more straps are draped across the gurney, one for the chest area, one for the mid section and one for the legs. I wonder how I, a suburban wife and mother, finds herself waiting to witness the death of another human being. My breath picks up. I have seen someone die before, three people actually, in a car wreck that happened in front of me. They were T-boned on the highway and killed instantly. I couldn't sleep for days after that. It just made me sick. It was so sudden. So wrong.

Like this. What am I thinking. It's not wrong, he's a killer. I snap my head around to make sure no one heard my thoughts. This is making me crazy.

Images snap through my head. Will he say he's sorry? Will he twitch or convulse like a mouse I once saw in a trap? The mouse twitched for a full minute before he finally grew still. I felt sorry for him. How can I have pity and mercy on a rodent and not for another human being? Am I the monster? I didn't condemn this man to death. The jury did. But I was relieved when they pronounced the death sentence on him. Justice had been served.

Right?

My heart races and sweat pops out on my forehead. I feel the urgency to release this man from the trap and from my hatred. The feeling is so strong that I want to scream at the top of my lungs for them to stop. I wring my hands in my lap and pray. For Jesus Christ sake, who am I praying to and why?

And then I think about the F word. How it can mean different things to different people, depending upon your experience. To some, it represents a cleansing, life-altering, explosive experience that rivals no other. To others, it is ugly and dark, taking a person places they never wanted to go. This word is thrown around a lot, widely misunderstood, and a lot harder than it looks.

By the F Word, I mean forgiveness. But at this moment, the word "forgiveness" is more of an expletive to me than the other word could ever be. I have always thought I could never forgive this wrong that had been done to me, never move on until retribution was fully exacted on the one who dealt me the most life-crushing of blows. The only thing I've been interested in will come from the end of a needle filled with sodium thiopental, potassium chloride and pancuronium bromide. Nothing, I believe, can equal the thrill that would overtake me when I see evil take its last, shuddering breath.

Then the phone rings. And the warden, looks at us with pity and says,

"We have a stay of execution."

My heart stops. Hatred comes up like vomit. I can taste it. I can feel it in my eyes. My husband grabs my hand. I jerk it away. Where is this coming from? Only moments ago I was feeling pity for the man about to be strapped down in the next room. Now I want him to die again. The F word is quickly forgotten. What is wrong with me?

I am standing at a crossroads. I can try to push for execution, putting my health and my marriage at risk and pour my energies into fulfilling what has been my mission in life for almost five years. I can hide away, letting bitterness slowly suck me under like mud in a river bottom. Or again, I can face the F-word head on and try to make peace with it. They may say "to err is human, to forgive is divine," but I can tell you that I'm very much human and not at all divine.

So for me to forgive, is an every day struggle that I seek the help of Jesus to make it through, one day at a time.

by Rebecca DeMauro

******************************

Song I Wish (In Search of the Missing Children), by Vienna

In Him there is always Hope!

Richard Abbenbroek...
Team H.O.P.E. USA/CANADA Volunteer
http://teamhope.org/
Child Find Alberta Canada Senior Case Manager
http://childfind.ab.ca/
BGEA Rapid Response Volunteer Chaplain
http://billygraham.ca/Ministries/RapidResponse.aspx
http://billygraham.org/RapidResponse_Index.asp