The Steubenville Big Red rape case all happened while I was living in Steubenville, a year or so after I myself was raped and that rapist, too, got away with it. Words can’t describe how that felt– how it must have felt for other survivors all over this town, to see exactly how Steubenville’s Lady Justice winked at Ma’Lik Richmond so that he could play football. To see how the Justice of Man views violent criminals who destroy women and girls, if the violent criminals are youthful and athletic.
That next year, all the football fans had red cardboard horses with “MA’LIK” painted on them decorating their gardens. I had to walk past the displays while I ran errands, and meditate on how quickly the Justice of Man forgets- if they can get entertainment and a moment of earthly glory from forgetfulness. If Ma’Lik hadn’t been an athlete, I suppose he would be in prison this very day. We’d be priding ourselves on the long memory of Lady Justice, who is a human just like us only blind, and easily led by the hand.
Judge Bruzzese had nothing to do with the Big Red Rape Case, however. As far as I can gather, having not had dealings with the man myself, Bruzzese is a good man and well-liked, a man of justice. I quietly muttered to myself about a family of bad apples, a murderer father and a rapist son. Rightly or wrongly, I privately wished that both Richmonds would become household names– that Steubenville became a household name, like Sodom.
The next day, the news was reporting a possible motive.
Judge Bruzzese was presiding over a wrongful death lawsuit, filed by Richmond, against the Jefferson County Housing Authority. Richmond’s mother had burned to death in one of LaBelle’s notorious house fires in April of 2015, along with a two-year-old boy whose relation to Richmond I don’t know. The cause of that fire was said to be exposed wiring. There were no smoke alarms in the house to warn her before it was too late.
I remember that fire. We lived just two blocks away at the time. It burned so hot that the houses on either side were scorched and damaged; the neighbors put up a homemade shrine with silk flowers and an ugly statue of an angel. I’ve walked by that spot many times, and shuddered at the thought of an old woman and a baby burning to death.
I have no idea how Bruzzese is going to rule on that lawsuit, and whether his ruling will be right or wrong. I don’t know if there was wrongdoing by the Jefferson County Housing Authority. I don’t know if that lawsuit is why Richmond tried to murder the judge, and since Richmond is dead I can’t ask him.
But I am reminded that violent men who father violent children, have mothers. I am reminded that mothers and toddlers are sometimes driven by poverty to live in unsafe houses, and sometimes they burn to death in those houses in the middle of the night. Those deaths could be prevented, and true Justice demands that we work to prevent them, but all too often, they’re not. This is true, just as it’s true that violent men sometimes freely choose to commit unspeakable horrors like rape and murder. True justice demands that we fight to prevent rape, but it still happens, and the Justice of Man pretends it doesn’t matter because the rapist is a local sports hero. True justice demands that we fight to prevent murder, and sometimes we do, though the means of having judges carry firearms doesn’t seem to me a good one. Both just and unjust men are surrounded by families and communities which ought to be just to them, but usually aren’t. Every human being is a mystery to everyone else, but it’s a safe guess that that mystery involves a great deal of trauma, injustice and horror.
I draw no conclusion from all of this– except that the world is already a terribly dark and unjust place. Lady Justice ought to see more clearly than we do, not less.
(Image: Steubenville Courthouse seen from Fort Steuben via Wikimedia Commons)
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