"He was a good person"

For some reason, Rhode Islanders are scratching their heads over a recent murder in which a young man (47) was killed by the mother of one of his children. There were actually six mothers who bore his children and five of them thought he was an excellent father. The sixth? Not so much.

On Wednesday afternoon, the five other mothers and Holland’s relatives gathered at an apartment on Hymer Street to talk about his life. They said Holland had been characterized unfairly in The Journal as an abuser.

“There was also love there,” said Candace Smith, a niece. “He took care of his children. He spent time with them. The mothers [of his children] put aside all of their differences, and the kids spent time with all of their mothers.”

Leihani Rose — who has three children with Holland — and Silvia Vides, Melissa DeCosta, Keiojfa Hie and Jessenia Delossantos –– each with one child from Holland –– said that he made them all a family. They hugged each other and said in unison, “We love our baby mamas!”

He supported them by dealing drugs, his family said –– the best he could do because he was a high-school dropout and had so many children, so quickly.

His mother also thought he was a good son, who provided what she needed with those drug profits. He couldn't help himself, she said, having his first child at age 15 (with a woman ten years older).

OK, so women are their own worst enemies. The first "baby mama" passed him on to her best friend, and he roved from bed to bed after that -- with each woman fully aware of who she was inviting into her life. This is not a question of "more contraception," but one of standards, by which young women have no expectation of a life-long singular commitment from the men they give themselves to. How did they get to this point?

Well, to beat the dead horse, we must move the hands of the clock back to the 1960's with the introduction of devices that separated the marital embrace from the possibility of children; abortion protected that assumption, and soon the marital embrace was effectively separated from marriage -- "free love" (without consequences) was in the air that kids breathed -- the kids, that is, who survived the gauntlet of birth control and abortion.

With a litle help from no-fault divorce, the waning societal approbiation of promiscuity (smart kids know how to protect themselves!) and the ensuing generation who cleaved to government handouts when fathers fell off their radar screen, and voila! We come to a plateau forty years later where six women can share one man, eight children, drug profits and and a group hug in which they can say with a straight face: "“It’s normal! Everybody goes through it.”

Well, perhaps they're absolutely right. More people do go through it than we'd like, considering that only a minority of children are raised with a biological father in the home. These kids had one around occasionally until one baby mama changed her mind about how things worked.

The loving grandmother said her son didn't like drama. And yet he lived one in spades thanks to decades of lies about the dignity of persons and what God has in store for them if they choose well. One less drug dealer on the streets, that much more for welfare to pick up in the coming years, and five smiling women who still cannot see that he wasn't such a good man after all.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Ugh. Stories like this make me sick to my stomach.

[Teresa]

Poor kids. It might be typical that children are growing up without fathers, but it is a rotten shame for them and our communities. To add to the tragedy of their father, he is being mythologized as almost heroic in the eyes of these children. So they can aspire to drug dealing and caddishness?

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

Some things just can't be made up. =(

Prayers for the children . . . and well, for everyone.