Silent Cries
Anyone who has looked into the eyes of an abused child, can all but hear their silent cry for help, and
each face that turns away from this cry, not only adds another wound but is, in fact, an accomplice to a
heinous crime. Without change through time, anger, hate , control, fear and violence have been the love
language of the abuser, often leading into the downward spiral culminating to the unthinkable. The end of
the innocence of a child is and always has been reached long before the end of their precious life, and the
depth of their pain speaks so loudly, so clearly, not hearing this cry must be a conscious decision on the
part of those who turn a blind eye.
Screams echo through a court yard…“Help me . . . help . . . “CHILD [from inside the house] “What do I do? How can I escape my mother's hands?” The cries go unanswered and end with the abruptness only death can bring. These desperate pleas for help come from children being murdered by their mother Medea, in the play Medea by Eurphrades. Written in 431 B.C. this play bears an eerie portrayal of modern day filicide, atrocities exemplified in Medea’s behavior have always been part of human experience and may have become even more common today.
“Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001.”(Brown A.5) Bob and Debbie Holmes, neighbors of Yates report her looking like a “dangerous animal” (Holmes 16) and said that her children seemed afraid of her days before their murder. Yates’ husband was aware of her two threats of suicide, and “testimony from Andrea Yates' capital murder trial revealed that she walked in circles and failed to eat or feed the children in the weeks before their deaths. Other adults - her mother and her mother- in-law - took turns staying with her.”(Brown 5) Not one of these adults took the necessary measures to protect the children, going so far as to leave this woman alone with the five innocent...