If you leave your 4-year-old child in a car on a hot day and he succumbs to heatstroke, are you as a parent responsible? Nearly every court in the land has said, repeatedly and unequivocally, “Yes.” When deciding your degree of negligence, does the justice system account for your wealth or social status? Nearly every court in the land has said, “No.” Simply put, whether rich or poor, working-class or white-collar, you cannot leave your child alone in a car, or you will be found guilty of a host of charges.
Legally, parents and guardians have an obligation to look after the welfare of those in their care, regardless of financial or social circumstances. If they fail to do so, that is criminally punishable.
Why, then, has our justice system failed to prosecute the scores of New Orleanian mothers, fathers and guardians who refused to obey a lawful and mandatory evacuation order given prior to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2005 — leading in many cases to the injury or death of their children?
One reason many parents have escaped the law is that their arrogance or ignorance led not only to their children’s death, but their own as well. A recent CNN article pointed to a man named “Ditty” who died at home with his two children after a 20-foot current swept in and drowned them all: Three senseless deaths that could have been avoided had “Ditty” taken the proper parental initiative.
Perhaps the real reason is that we as a society do not want to blame the victim. We feel a collective guilt, looking to the faceless and monolithic government as the one source of fault — and indeed there is much blame to be heaped on it for its gross incompetence. Yet so far, the personal responsibility of the individual is an unexamined element in our blame-game logic.
Legally speaking, one of the exceptionally rare post-Katrina tests of responsibility ended last month, when Sal and Mabel Mangano were found not guilty on charges of negligent homicide after 35 elderly residents died at their New Orleans nursing home. Avarice, prosecutors claimed, led the Manganos to disobey the mandatory evacuation order, causing the suffering and death of their infirm tenants. The case was not easy — legally, emotionally or ethically — but at least some effort was made to re-engage New Orleans with a certain tenet of democratic justice: responsibility for actions taken, or in this case, not taken.
The charges against the Manganos were brought mostly at the insistence of the children of the 35 dead victims, and the particular circumstances of this scenario correctly voided criminal liability. However, this should not be taken as blanket immunity for parents and guardians who may truly have contributed to the injury or death of their children. It is certainly a case-by-case situation, but what troubles me deeply is that these children may not have an advocate in their corner to speak for them — case-by-case becomes no case at all.
I recognize that many people in New Orleans were extremely deprived and had very little real means of escaping the city. But how does this fact lessen parental responsibility during a disaster? Does the parent who leaves his child in a hot car get to use the “I’m poor” defense? Argue all you may for financially related immobility, but warning was given many days in advance, and the mandatory evacuation order was given to those hangers-on more than 24 hours prior to Katrina’s landfall. I remain skeptical that any ambulatory parent from any social strata did not have ample time to hop on a city-run shuttle bus or National Guard transport, or even walk as far as was necessary to an evacuation center to get their children out of harm’s way.
No matter how they managed it, these would have been the actions of a good and responsible parent — the onus is on them, and so are the legal repercussions of failing to live up to certain obligations for their children.
Yet sadly, according to Columbia University’s Earth Institute, 139 identifiable Katrina victims were between the ages of 1 and 24 (nine more victims were under the age of 1). The parents of the dead and of the countless other children injured by the storm, those who refused to evacuate, did not meet the burden placed upon them by law, society and the rules of human decency.
And while human decency dictates that we should feel compassion for any parents who have lost their child, should we not feel more sympathy for those parents whose child is struck down by a random drunk driver rather than we do for those who refused to leave New Orleans and lost a child as a result? I find a great moral disconnect between the two kinds of tragedies as I look to extend any form of commiseration. The only common bond, I believe, is the unnecessary and heartbreaking death of the children, who remain the ultimate victims of the storm and of their parents.
The Greater New Orleans Clergy for Restorative Justice and other organizations recently held a mass vigil to memorialize the dead and unaccounted-for children of Katrina’s aftermath. Now, the GNOCRJ, local prosecutors and other advocacy organizations should seek to truly memorialize these tiny victims by pointing an accusatory finger at the parents who sacrificed their children’s welfare. Whether they were injured or deceased, it is the parents’ actions that led to their children’s suffering — unfortunately, Mother Nature cannot be prosecuted, but I hope those parents who refused the mandatory evacuation will someday soon get their chance to face justice.
Neil St. Clair, a senior in the College of Communication and College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He is also the host of butv10’s On That Point. He can be reached at nstclair@bu.edu or on.that.point@gmail.com.
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