Last month, a man in Utah was arrested for domestic violence. Hours after he was released from jail, he flew a small plane into his house. His wife and son escaped the house after the plane crash, but he died.<\/p>\n
The day after the incident, I heard a comment from his daughter: “He\u2019s not this person that\u2019s being portrayed.”<\/p>\n
It’s a jaw-dropping, but typical, comment from family and friends of men who attempt to harm or kill a family member or colleague or even a stranger, and it infuriates me.<\/p>\n
This man attempted to kill his wife and, very possibly, wanted to kill his son as well. That’s not a media portrayal, it’s just the facts: the man drove to an airport, he boarded a plane his company owned, he got clearance for takeoff and he flew that plane into his family’s home.<\/p>\n
I’m always stunned by family members and friends in denial about a person that commits a violent act. It’s a denial that results in comments like what his daughter said. Or comments by a woman that is frequently the target of her husband’s physical or mental abuse. You don’t know him. He’s not always like this. He’s more than this. This isn’t him.<\/i><\/p>\n
This IS him. A violent family member can be a very nice, supportive person sometimes, even most of the time. Just like a co-worker may be a fantastic colleague, someone you trust absolutely, and later you find out that person subjected another co-worker to sexual harassment. The good times are, indeed, who they are – but the oh-so-bad times are too.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, the news hits too close to home. And this is one of those times. I wonder how many family members are silent as they hear this daughter deny her father’s violence, who think, This is <\/i>exactly<\/b> who he was. <\/i>But they will never say so…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last month, a man in Utah was arrested for domestic violence. Hours after he was released from jail, he flew a small plane into his house. His wife and son escaped the house after the plane crash, but he died. The day after the incident, I heard a comment from his daughter: “He\u2019s not this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}