Posted on Wed, Sep. 19, 2007

By BOB RAY SANDERS
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

This past weekend was not a good one for children in North Texas. Too many became the victims of senseless, perverted violence.

There was a time when I would joke about those "Down in Texas ... " news stories that often headlined national broadcasts with some bizarre twist. But there were several cases this weekend that by no means were laughing matters.

I found myself weeping for children I did not know -- had never heard of until their stories hit the media.

Three cases in particular caught my attention, tugged at my heart and had me asking the unanswerable question: Why?

On Friday night in Arlington, 18-year-old Sam Houston High School football player Quintarick Wilson was fatally shot at a homecoming/birthday party at a friend's house. A 19-year-old has been arrested.

On Saturday morning in a Dallas home, police discovered the bodies of Chare Agnew, 30, and her two sons, ages 9 and 10, all of whom had been fatally stabbed. They found two teenage girls bound and gagged in a closet.

Agnew's husband, Robert Sparks, was arrested Tuesday evening in Dallas and could be charged with capital murder.

A Haltom City mother also faces a capital murder charge. She is accused of placing her three daughters, ages 3, 5 and 7, in a closet, dousing them and herself with gasoline and setting them on fire. The youngest, Ariania Green, died Tuesday afternoon. The other girls remained in Parkland Memorial Hospital's burn unit.

All these came just days after a 6-year-old in Navarro County, who had been sexually assaulted, was found hanging in her family's garage.

And they came a few months after a mother in Parker County hanged herself and three children, ages 5, 3 and 2. She also had attempted to hang an 8-month-old baby by placing a noose around her neck, but that child survived.

I've never been able to comprehend violence, period. But God knows I'll never understand what causes people to want to harm a child.

In the case of the high school football player, police have hinted that the episode might have been gang-related because the "uninvited" guests who arrived at the party reportedly flashed gang signs before starting to shoot.

One report said that the birthday boy had posted a notice about the party on the popular MySpace Internet site, in effect inviting everybody (and anybody).

I once actually thought that I'd live to see this gang-banging nonsense go away and would never have to write about it again. Instead I'm still finding myself in courthouses and funeral homes standing between two mothers crying -- one because her son is dead, the other because her son was the killer.

Obviously, in some cases where children are killed, the adults involved have a serious mental illness that goes undetected or untreated. But in too many instances, adults upset with each other decide that the best way to get back at the offending spouse or lover is to kill the children.

How sick is that?

Then there are numerous examples in which neighbors and other family members either know or suspect that there is a history of violence in a home or that children are being seriously neglected or abused.

As a rule, we are reluctant to interfere in other people's family affairs. Calling Child Protective Services is often the last option that people consider. And even when they do, the overwhelmed, overburdened and always understaffed agency can't solve all family problems in this state -- or this county.

CPS had visited the Haltom City family in May, but the children were not removed because there was not enough evidence to substantiate a report of family violence, a CPS spokesman said.

We can't blame CPS for this one, but we can all wonder, "What if ...?"

But consider that in Tarrant County alone last year, CPS received 17,440 reports of neglect and abuse. Of those, just over 15,000 were assigned for investigation, and there were more than 4,463 confirmed victims. In 2006, more than 2,200 children in this county were in foster care or CPS custody.

The abuse is obviously out of hand, and other than continue to be vigilant and try to intervene more quickly in a child's or a parent's life, I'm at a loss as to what to do.

Except weep.

Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775
bobray@star-telegram.com

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/240101.html

Emphasis added by H4K Editor