On Sunday, Josh Powell, long suspected in the disappearance of his wife, immolated himself and his children in Graham, Washington following an unfavorable court ruling. His particularly brutal killings of his children, which involved subduing them with a hatchet at about the same time he set his house ablaze, removes a good deal of doubt about the fate of his wife Susan. Not all, to be sure, but not just anyone has it in them to take a hatchet to little kids, particularly their own.
Now, here in Washington state, we are being subjected to the media hand-wringing that accompanies the death of a child who is under any degree of CPS (child protective services) supervision. Sadly, this happens from time to time, and although people are always angry when CPS “failed to protect the children,” it is exactly these families that are prone to tragedies, CPS involvement or not.
However, this particular case bears extra scrutiny, because although CPS may have done all it legally could to protect the children from being harmed (not much given the circumstances), precious little was done to prevent them from being placed in harm’s way in the first place. And by this I don’t mean they should have been removed from their father at the first whiff of suspicion (which is illegal for good reason), but rather that they were used as pawns by a number of adults both within and outside of the family to pursue their own goals, which ultimately placed them in grave danger.
From the moment Josh Powell’s wife’s disappearance came to light, there was ample reason to suspect him of a foul deed. He had been gone overnight, skipped work, and his wife vanished without a trace. Somehow, for whatever reason, West Valley police in Utah were unable to find any clear evidence of foul play. No blood, weapon or signs of a struggle were evident. Most importantly, there was no body. It is very difficult to successfully prosecute for murder when there is no body, because people do sometimes disappear, only to show up years later if at all.
Despite the lack of evidence, West Valley police stayed on the case. They grew increasingly frustrated as, after Josh moved up to Washington, the case grew colder. Enter Chuck Cox, Josh’s father-in-law. Sure of his son-in-law’s guilt, Mr. Cox pressured police in Utah and Washington to stay on the case. He engaged in a public feud with Josh Powell and his father Steve Powell, who also decided to get involved, provoking police and the Cox family. The end result was a grudge match between the Powells, the Coxes and police in Pierce County, Washington and West Valley, Utah. Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, the children became the point of contention.
Last fall, after Steve Powell took his provocation of the police one step too far, he was arrested for his alleged habit of taking inappropriate photographs of local females. Chuck Cox smelled victory, and stepped in to seize custody of the children. Josh, of course, “temporarily” lost custody as police and prosecutors worked in tandem to use the children in an effort to pressure him. It has also come to light that the police and Chuck Cox were working together to provoke Powell.
So, what we had here was a custody battle that was being exploited by police to advance their investigation, and an investigation that was being exploited by one party in the custody dispute. It was a sort of double-pronged assault on Josh Powell, with the children used as the primary weapon. This is where things went terribly wrong, and where any intelligent person truly concerned for the children should have stepped in to protect them.
First, the police and prosecutor shouldn’t have been involved in the custody case. The prosecutor did not charge Josh Powell with any crimes in relation to his father’s arrest, and it was highly inappropriate to cynically use the custody issue to pressure him in an unrelated matter.
Secondly, if the state were to remove custody, handing the children over to their grandfather was an enormous mistake — they should have been placed in neutral foster care. As it was, Chuck Cox immediately began trying to turn the children into state’s witness against Josh Powell in his wife’s disappearance. This was a very bad idea. Along with the fact that the two-year-old recollections of preschoolers would have extremely limited use in trial, if you really suspect someone of being a killer, why on earth would you give them a motive to kill children they have legal access to? This could have been prevented if Chuck Cox did not win temporary custody of the kids. His feud with their father and his family should have been reason enough to keep him away from the kids, but he was working with the cops, and they pushed the issue.
Finally, ordering the “psychosexual exam” was a step too far — the judge who went along with it was a coward. Josh Powell may well have been a murderer, but there was no direct evidence to suggest he was a pervert. It was just another investigative tool and pressure tactic, again using the children as the excuse, and the humiliation factor (including the use of a plesmograph, I assume), was virtually guaranteed to create a great deal of anger. The police in this case did everything they could to create an explosive situation with the children right in the middle. Without evidence, police use pressure tactics to elicit confessions. This is what they had been doing for the last six months, and they were using the children as the lever.
This is why some of the police involved have been angrily denying even a trace of responsibility for the outcome. One went so far as to say we shouldn’t call this a tragedy, presumably because it implies that factors in addition to Josh Powell himself may have contributed to the outcome.
Sure, in a cop’s perfect world we could always wrap up blame in a tidy little box – or a couple little coffins, in this case – and dispose of it neatly. But that isn’t the way the world works. Sometimes, when you put enormous pressure on people, they snap. Sometimes you might want them to snap. But when you push them right up to the brink when there are innocent children involved, and then push them farther, you bear some responsibility for what follows.
As soon as the state started using the children in the Powell case, it took on some responsibility for their fate. Unfortunately, given contemporary family law, children have become an irresistible tool in the state’s arsenal, and this will go on until we put a stop to it. Quite frankly, if the police had not chosen to use the children in their murder investigation, they would be alive today.
As for Josh Powell, he deserves no sympathy at this point. I and countless other men have been through the same custody process he went through with even less support than he had (he had a lawyer, family and a pastor to lean on), yet somehow the overwhelming majority of us never even think of hurting our children. Nevertheless, feminists will exploit this tragedy to their best ability to make the situation even more difficult for fathers than it already is. Ultimately, what Powell did was extremely selfish and hurt not only his children and immediate family, but all the rest of us as well.
