You and I both have failed Cyntoia
By: Iyabo Onipede: Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
Children are the most marginalized population on the planet. That may sound like a shocking statement, but we fail them, over and over again. And they depend on us adults. They come in the world defenseless and completely dependent on us and we abandon them. We control them and tell them what to do. We indoctrinate them and if they do not follow our wishes, we punish them. They cannot vote. We do not allow them to have a say so. We spend all our energy indoctrinating them into how we want them to be. As much as we revere youth in this country, we do not revere childishness or children.
A wise woman once told me that “Children are books to be read, not written.” Almost everyone I know, tries to write that book.
And it is worse for our brown and black babies. In addition to being marginalized because of their age, they are marginalized because they are considered less than human and are further down the scale. So, we punish them. We punish them with such severity because these brown and black babies must be controlled and we must get the message to them that they cannot, better not, step out of line.
Do you remember when you were 16? Your brain was not fully developed, and your body was racings past your brain. Remember?
Holding that picture in your mind, let me introduce you to another 16-year-old. Picture it: It was 2004. This 16-year-old girl ran away from home. She was a beautiful brown-skinned girl with long hair. She was probably bi-racial. Her mother gave her up for adoption when she was two years old. Her father is unknown. Her mom had a history of psychiatric diagnoses, used alcohol and crack cocaine when she was pregnant with her. This 16-year-old was developmentally delayed as she suffered from fetal alcohol disorder. This means that at 16, she probably had the development of maybe a 12-year-old or so.
This beautiful 16-year-old was obviously troubled. She was sexually active. She had been raped and assaulted. She used drugs. She got into fights at school. She ran away from home. In this state of mind, she found herself in a relationship with a man named Kutthroat. This man raped her, stuck guns up her vagina and forced her into threesomes. They were living in a hotel and he was her pimp and she was a prostitute. Typical sex trafficking scenario.
One night, Kutthroat tells her she is slacking off and needs to go out and make them some money. She goes to the Sonic and encounters a 43-year-old, 6-foot white male, Johnny Michael Allen, a former military sniper shooter. He brags about his professional life and his wealth and takes this 16-year-old to his home. The pedophile did not want to go to a hotel since no one else was in his home. There are guns laying around the house. The 16-year-old was fidgety and anxious, realizing that anything could happen. She felt threatened and intimidated by this physically large man as he bragged about his life. She said that at some point, they were laying on the bed and he turned his back to her to reach under the bed. She took a gun out of her purse and shot him in the head and killed him. She then took his money and fled.
The 16-year-old was arrested, tried as an adult and found guilty of murder.
Her name is Cyntoia Brown. The State of Tennessee’s parole board decided that she will spend a total of 51 years in prison.
Here are some facts:
- Cyntoia had a history of violence and drug abuse.
- Cyntoia never took the stand.
- Cyntoia claimed self-defense.
- The jury did not know of her backstory of prostitution and the threat she felt.
- Cyntoia’s pimp told her that she was born to be a whore, and nobody wanted her.
- Cyntoia had a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized as a “severe mental disease and defect.”
- Cyntoia has a lowered IQ.
- The jury was not made aware of her mental illness and lowered IQ.
The pedophile was shot in the back of the head and the position of his hands suggested he was asleep and not reaching for something under the bed.
This story appeals to me because I remember when I came to this country at 16 and I was living on my own. I look back at that 16-year-old and I wonder how I made it. Cyntoia also reminds me of how I looked at that age.
In researching the death penalty a few years ago, I discovered something pretty amazing. Do you know the one thing that people on death row have in common throughout the country? Guess? They are NOT all black. They are NOT all habitual criminals. They are NOT all men.
But the victim is almost always a white male, and usually in the military. The statistic was pretty scary because it shows that the profile of the victim dictates the severity of the punishment. The prosecutor is who decides to pursue a case and decides how to charge the accused and they inform the jury as to what type of punishment to dole out. The severity of Cyntoia’s punishment is because her victim was a white military man.
I don’t know if Cyntoia knew what she was doing that day. I don’t care if she was high on drugs. I don’t care that she lied to him about her age. I don’t care that she may have killed him and robbed him. I don’t care about her specific actions because all I can hear is her cry for help.
I imagine her tortured, abused body, her broken psyche and her fractured soul crying out for help in all those actions. Although a pedophile lost his life that day, and nobody deserves to die like that, just because he is a white male who has served in the military does not mean that his life is more valuable than hers. Her life matters too.
He wanted sex and took an underaged teenager to his home. Who does that? If I were in Cyntoia’s shoes, I would be scared that he wanted to kill me too. He bragged about guns and being a sniper and he had guns laying around the house. I would be jumpy too.
Here is the thing to think about: As they both laid in that bed, if he turned his back to her, how would she know that he was trying to sleep or trying to reach for something beneath the bed? Maybe he did roll over, after he slept with her, and started to go to sleep and her brain processed it as him reaching for something.
She shot him.
I do not condone that she took her frustrations out on another human being, but it was an act of standing up for herself and trying to reclaim some of her dignity.
The two souls are victims. One at the hands of his killer, the other at a system that failed her. We failed her. Our tax dollars, and our votes, and our political ideology elects and supports prosecutors and when they are not just people, when they are ambitious, when they are racists and misogynists, and when their jobs give them the power to abuse and marginalize our own children, dear reader, we are to blame. You and me.
Why? Because we don’t demand better of our criminal justice system.
You and I both have failed Cyntoia.
More by Iyabo:
Iyabo is a Leadership Development Coach whose work focuses on the soul of the leader. She moves leaders from thriving careers into discovering, crafting and living into their life work. By helping successful people integrate spirituality into their leadership roles, they become more engaged with their work, expand the connection of their work to social justice issues and experience more satisfaction in their life work. Using the power of narrative and reflection, she helps leaders fine tune the sacred “work their souls must have” (Alice Walker).
Iyabo is located in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated from Goucher College (B.A.), Georgetown University Law School (J.D.) and Candler School of Theology at Emory University (M.Div.).
Iyabo’s home on the web is at http://www.coachiyabo.com
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