What good does it do us to hate Scott Peterson?

This may be the most difficult blog post I have ever written.  Not for what it contains, but for what it implies.

I’m reading “The 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life” by Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow, more due to my respect for the authors than any specific interest in the topic.  The fourth “wonder” in the book is Compassion, and Ablow shares this story:

You may remember the story of Scott Peterson, the Modesto, California, man who, on Christmas Eve of 2002, reported his pregnant wife, Laci, missing, then led the search for her. In fact, Peterson had killed Laci and disposed of her body in San Francisco Bay. He’d been having an affair at that time with a massage therapist...

What other explanation could there be for a man killing his pregnant wife on Christmas Eve other than being born with pure evil inside?

In my book Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson, I think I provide a much more credible answer. Scott Peterson was taught that human life—including his own—had no value. Back in 1945, his maternal grandfather was murdered for about five hundred dollars by a disgruntled former employee. Peterson’s mother, Jackie, was only two years old at the time. Despite her own mother still being alive (though widowed), she was placed in an orphanage that has since been called a “cesspool of pedophilia.”

When she left that orphanage as a teenager she gave birth to two children out of wedlock and quickly put them up for adoption. She didn’t give it a lot of thought. She finally married Lee Peterson, a man who had divorced his wife partly because he didn’t like the kids they’d had together. Together, Lee and Jackie had a baby. They named him Scott.

There was just one small problem: they had a funny habit of leaving him behind in places like a neighborhood restaurant, where the manager would have to call out to them, “Jackie! Lee! You left Scott!”

That’s just one part of Scott Peterson’s ugly biography. Sound like the kind of life story that leads a person to value a mother? A baby? Or does it sound like the kind of life story that leads to the creation of a person who instinctively despises new life?

What good does it do us to hate Scott Peterson?

I hated Scott Peterson as the story of his crime played out in the media and courtroom in 2002-2004.  I hated Scott Peterson for killing a beautiful woman who had agreed to be his wife “for better or worse”.  I hated Scott Peterson for killing a baby he never met.  I hated Scott Peterson for having an affair and using some warped logic to justify (if that’s the right word) murdering his wife and unborn son in order to be with the other woman.

But after reading the above background of Scott Peterson, what good does it do to hate him?  The hatred yesterday was at a much lower level than it was when his picture was in the news every day, but it was there.  Today, after reading the above, I cannot sense any hatred.  I don’t what the emotion I now carry is.  Pity?  Fear?  Anger?

Ablow continues, with an explanation:

None of our views on compassion should be taken to mean that we advocate forgiving people for harming others without them facing the consequences of their actions. Compassion does not mean that justice need not be served. We can be compassionate about the traumas suffered in childhood even by someone who, in part because of those traumas, grows up to become a murderer. But that does not mean the murderer goes free. Much to the contrary, once we look honestly at the horribly fractured psyche in that individual or someone who rapes or someone who abuses children or someone who blows up a building full of innocent people or someone who defrauds others of their life savings, we realize the very real danger such people represent in society and the very real need to contain them—sometimes forever. But when we do so, we must not hobble ourselves by hating them.

You can pity someone and still punish that person. You can forgive someone and still resolve to keep yourself safe from any further injury from that person’s pathology.

Yes, I now pity Scott Peterson.  He was raised by people who didn’t teach him a value for life.  He grew up without a sense of joy and love for others.  He was narcissistic and interested only in his own good time.  That doesn’t mean that society shouldn’t punish him for his crimes.  But it makes me think of how many other people are out there, being raised by people titled “parents” but have no interest in doing that job?  How many more crimes will be committed by these people over the years?  What can society do to protect itself from these people and, more importantly, break the cycle that causes them to turn out this way in the first place?