When Judge Cheryl Matthews sentenced James and Jennifer Crumbley to ten to fifteen years in prison for involuntary manslaughter earlier this year after their son took the lives of four classmates in a school shooting, they became the first parents directly charged for the consequences of their child’s mass violence—and parents in the U.S. were put on notice that we’re now legally accountable for acts we did not commit and never saw coming.
How Did We Arrive at This Unprecedented Moment?
We may not have to look much further than the frenzy of finger-pointing and unverified allegations from the media, legal representatives, and even the presiding judge—as well as the wrenching statements from the victims’ families, most of whom advocated for the harshest punishment. But whatever thin comfort we take from having someone to blame, we are missing the mark, with far-reaching implications.
A Troubling Precedent
By pillorying the Crumbley parents, we set a troubling precedent for future cases involving parents of children who commit violence and perpetuate the ingrained stigma against parents of mentally ill individuals. We also promote a fundamental misunderstanding of the root causes of these tragedies, one that lets the true agents of these horrors—those who demand a gun for every pot, to borrow from Hoover’s famous campaign ad—off the hook.
Much has been made of early reporting that Ethan Crumbley begged his parents for help for his mental health. But this proved untrue, as Ethan admitted in a pre-trial hearing that his parents were unaware of his mental health struggles and his plans for the shooting. Yet the prosecution wasted no time in laying the groundwork for parent-blaming, a narrative that the media seized on and amplified. It’s a wearingly familiar tactic with a deep history in our society, one that blithely overlooks the complexities of mental disorder diagnosis and perpetuates the myth that the mentally ill are violent, a correlation repeatedly debunked by research.
Inconclusive Testimonies and Misleading Accusations
Both the defense and prosecution relied on testimony from school counselors and three psychiatrists who interviewed Ethan Crumbley after his arrest. This testimony was not only inconclusive and contradictory but ill-informed, since it is nearly impossible to assess someone’s mental health in brief interviews taking place after the incident in question. Not only that, in nearly every school shooting, the perpetrator has been judged not to be mentally ill. This should give us serious pause before assuming that warning signs were missed, but instead, there has been a cacophony of voices condemning Ethan Crumbley’s parents for not having known something was wrong.
Widespread accusations that the Crumbleys were neglectful and abusive parents, however, seem reverse-engineered once the facts are examined. Not only was the defense’s case given much less media attention than the prosecution’s, but many salient points have also gone largely overlooked. For example, the Crumbleys broke no laws regarding the giving and handling of guns in their home. Following Jennifer Crumbley’s infamous statement that she wouldn’t have done anything differently, she added, “I wish he would have killed us instead.”
It is impossible not to wish, as one mother said on the stand, that the Crumbleys “had taken their son to get counseling instead of buying a gun.” But this heart-wrenching hindsight in no way proves that the Crumbleys knew what their son was planning or that they should have intuited that counseling was called for—or indeed that there was an underlying mental illness to be diagnosed. As a mother, I cannot imagine the pain the families of the victims are suffering. As the mother of an adult with a serious and stigmatized mental illness, I fear that this case will further stigmatize people like my daughter—and me as her parent. I do not know the Crumbleys; I doubt anyone can accurately judge their parenting based on what little has been reported.
Any hope I have that reason might prevail over emotion in future decisions was dashed when Judge Matthews defended her decision by saying it should be a deterrent to future school shootings, proving that we’re still living in a cataclysmic fairy tale when it comes to understanding youth, mental illness, and violence.