Pillorying Brian Laundrie’s parents misses the point of domestic violence awareness.
As news broke about the likelihood that the remains found in a Florida preserve were Brian Laundrie’s, I was unsurprised. The longer he was missing, the greater the likelihood that he was dead.
I suspect that when your crime blows up to a national level, there isn’t much you will be able to do to escape capture. I doubt he thought it would be a viral story.
But he killed a cute, blonde, young, white cis woman. This made the story a prime candidate for national headlines. In the search for Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie, nine bodies have been found.
With the discovery in Florida, eyes have now turned to Brian Laundrie’s parents. Some people are suspicious of their knowledge and believe they planted evidence. I am suspicious, too. But.
The police department they are working with say that they have been nothing but cooperative, and that they entered the park with the officers.
What concerns me is that as a society we are so quick to shift blame in our search for vengeance. Brian Laundrie almost assuredly strangled Gabby Petito. Now, he is dead before we have the chance to have retribution for his killing of the all American girl.
Because of the way society works, when we can’t deliver consequences, we shift focus to the next nearest target. Our vengeance is too important to us. In this case it’s his parents. Brian Laundrie’s parents may have known where their son’s body was. Maybe.
But to what end? The idea that they could stage his death? Dental records have confirmed the body is Brian’s. At the end of the day, it was their son at the root of this sensationalized case. They have become social pariahs.
They were not there when he squeezed the life out of Gabby. And in our thirst for vengeance, we have erased Gabby from the narrative. We can’t punish her killer, so we will punish his parents. It’s just a wrong, unhelpful mindset.
He is their son. I think the most morally they could do, caught between a rock and a hard place, is to be hands off. So they were. They cooperated with the police. The police have said so.
Does it seem suspicious that they wanted to search a place recently searched by others, and found something within a half an hour? Yes. But.
What if, though?
What if they got a letter from Brian explaining where to find his body? What if they just got lucky? What if someone else who knew him told them after he confided in them or they stumbled on him? The point is that there are a ton of permutations that don’t necessarily paint them in a bad light, and yet we are obsessed with finding that bad light.
Society wants someone to pay. And this is not for Gabby. It is for us. Our collective anger has become too important for us to quell by any means necessary. Doesn’t that sound a lot like abuse?
Let’s not forget the real tragedy here, and teach our youth to do better. Teach our youth that they deserve so much more. Address the factors that make abuse commonplace, but not cause more by demanding retribution from Brian Laundrie’s folks.
I feel for all of the parents involved here. This doesn’t mean that the Laundrie’s are absolved of guilt. It just means that for myself, I am breaking the cycle of abuse by not demanding that they pay for their child’s atrocious acts.
I wish the parents of Gabby Petito peace. I wish them healing. And I wish the same for his parents as well.
