I’m trying to imagine how and when stories might affect me more than when they are about young children who have met a terrible fate.
In 2007, I wrote a diary about a beautiful 4 year old boy killed by his father in the bathroom. The father jerked the young boy, he hit his head and drowned in the bath water.
In 2013, I wrote a Top Comments diary about a baby girl found dead, abandoned in a vacuum cleaner box. With no information about who she was, detectives named the precious little girl Julie Valentine, since she was found on Valentine’s Day.
More below.
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Here is a slideshow of the scene where Julie Valentine’s body was found.
In preparation for the 2013 diary, I searched Julie Valentine’s resting place. It was not hard. It wound up being in a very close, well-known cemetery. When I went to the cemetery, no one there (that I encountered) knew her name. Their archives, however, revealed her location in two minutes. So I was able to pay my respects.
When I wrote that diary, I did not really believe there was much prospect of finding out who she was. That was in 1990!
Yesterday, a breakthrough in the case from her DNA resulted in the arrest of Julie’s mother. I don’t know if she’ll ever have a formal name, since she was abandoned without being named, but she has an identity. We know who she is.
One of the original detectives, Capt. Terry Christy, on Julie Valentine’s case (now retired) summed it up.
"It takes more out of you to see a child being violated or neglected like that," he said. "We always had hope."
With Graham (Julie’s mother) in custody, the community can begin to heal, but healing has already come through ongoing remembrance of the child, Christy said.
"The justice for Julie is all these years. The love that people have had for her is her justice," he said.
The love is her justice. I feel that. Even though we now know who she is, the love remains just the same. I will never forget Julie Valentine.
But what we also need to remember is this.
The infant's death has been painful to reflect on, said Shauna Galloway-Williams, executive director of the Julie Valentine Center. Julie Valentine never danced, laughed or went down a slide at a playground, Galloway-Williams said.
(Those two quote blocks are both from the news story about the break in the case.)
On to tonight’s comments!
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