Searching for Answers Friday
If, God forbid, we’d lost Ebola when he was 11 ~ had years on end to torture ourselves with what might or might not have befallen him, and what we might or might not have done to prevent it all ~ and then had our baby boy returned to us in a miracle moment…would we have spiffed ourselves up shortly thereafter to go on Oprah? To put aside the damage and hurt that has to be festering to answer questions best asked by investigators and mental health experts vice an empathetic, concerned-head-tilting, multigazillionaire TV talk show host? (Because no matter how she was abused as a child, how many books she’s written on weight loss or how she bought herself a whole Third World country full of uneducated little girls, she’s STILL…just a talk show host.)
And as you bare your family’s soul on that foreign stage in your new suit, clean hair and fresh shaven face, what makes you think that it’s okay to throw in that you think your son has been sexually abused?
The parents of a Missouri teen told Oprah Winfrey in a show airing Thursday that their son hasn’t told them directly but they believe he was sexually abused during the more than four years he was missing.
“OK, I’m going to go there and ask you, what do you think happened? Do you think he was sexually abused?” Winfrey asked Craig and Pam Akers, parents of 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck.
Both nodded and said, “Yes.”
She can ask you, but you don’t have to answer. Or don’t you think you should wait to answer because YOU DON’T KNOW FOR SURE? Or maybe, just MAYBE, it’s nobody’s business but the family’s and law enforcement’s? That maybe your kid has enough to handle in his life without 60 million viewers listening to his parents speculate on something so horrible and so very, very personal?
Pam Akers said she did not know when Winfrey asked if her son was tortured, but her husband, Shawn’s stepfather, stressed that something happened to dramatically change the boy.
“I have no doubt that mentally he’s not the same boy he was,” he said.
Ergo, you’re supposed to protect him, protect that fragile shell, give him a chance to recover. Not trot him out like a science experiment. Not like a limited installation at the freak museum, where you can talk about any aspect of his life in front of him for millions of TV voyeurs, because he really doesn’t understand anyway.
Besides, who in their right mind would blow a shot at being on Oprah.
The kid’ll get over it.
ths note: Hmmm…strange how some great Florida minds think alike.
Media | tree hugging sister | 
January 19, 2007 12:55 am
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And then they say ‘respect our privacy’.
If god forbid I was in that situation there’s no way I’d go on any of those shows, and certainly not within 2-3 days of getting my child back.