Punishment

     I held a wailing little girl.  She was tearing at her hair due to her fear, having learned in her short life that terrible things will happen to her.  I handed her over to warm, soft hands and a cooing voice in a safe quiet room with a large fish tank.
     More difficult was sitting in the police substation listening to the statement given by the girl's father.  He had been renting out his young daughter for gas money.  The beer in her baby bottle kept her quiet he explained.
     "Why don't we take him out back and shoot him," an officer said.  Everyone seemed to be considering it because no one laughed or nodded their head.  At this time I believed that the only appropriate use of capital punishment was for certain sex offenders.  I considered the suggestion seriously.  Perhaps where this man grew up, such behavior was acceptable in a father.  He was surprised and upset when informed he was going to jail.
     So that left me to think about what punishment would be appropriate for the crime.  The girl looked as if she had been exposed to alcohol while in the womb.  She had suffered all manner of horrors in her young life and looked malnourished.
     The little person will suffer the consequences of her parent's maltreatment for the rest of her life.  Abuse, abandonment, hunger and a damaged mind that will struggle to make sense of it all.  As a young man involved in the case, I had a difficult time making sense of it.  Threatening to shoot the father was silly, but I was involved in lots of silly things.  I valued tests of strength, endurance and my fists on a heavy bag.  I thought of testing my fists against the father's jaw.  Vengeance only works in the movies and the rest of us understand that it is only a recourse for the helpless and hopeless.
     As a social worker, I look for the positives.  The child was introduced to caring and safety.  I hope that while she was in the emergency shelter where I left her, she would hang on to such hope as she found it like she had hung on to the back of my shirt while I carried her.
     What consequence should her father face?  There is nothing that could be done to the man that could equal what his daughter went through.  Eye for an eye seems silly.  Our thoughts should be of the girl.  She should never be exposed to him again.
     What she needs is our humanity as her offender was society.  A society which will offer her some sympathy as she grows, then turn away as she acts out displaying her confusion and fear.  Place her father in a cell, stripped of his title and its responsibilities.  Human beings hardly get the simple things right.  Leave vengeance to the Lord.  Find a new family and let her new community know that she is a gift and deserves an infinite gentleness.
     That night I went home to distract myself with my college troubles.  I had been instructed to do so in order to be able to return to work the next day.  In my last moment with her I touched her head and offered what was certainly my first prayer to God.  Peace child.