Wounded Innocents and Fallen Angels: Child Abuse and Child Aggression

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Product Description

Violence of any kind is hard for most people to understand, but crimes against children and crimes committed by children are perhaps the most difficult to comprehend. Child abuse and neglect is a problem with generational effects. Women who were sexually abused in childhood, for example, are more likely than non-abused women to be harsh with their children, withhold affection, or even accept the sexual abuse of their own children by a spouse or lover. Yet children are not always merely the victims of aggression. They also perpetrate violent crimes in the form of bullying, assault, and homicide, as well as crimes on property, such as vandalism. Moffatt addresses the two sides of this cycle of violence, including examples from clinical case studies and treatment options.

Moffatt details crimes against children, ranging from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, sexual and physical abuse, neglect, filicide, and infanticide. He addresses aggression committed by children against other people, property, and self, including self-mutilation and suicide. Written for both professional and lay audiences, counselors, teachers, psychologists, law enforcement, medical professionals, and therapists will benefit from the psychological discussions about causes and effects of aggression.

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Wounded Innocents and Fallen Angels: Child Abuse and Child Aggression Review

The only part of the book I can comment on authoritatively is the section on the Westerfield case in Chapter 4.

The book first states that the type of crime Westerfield was convicted of - a stranger abducting a child from their own home - is very rare. Then it states that he was an unlikely perpetrator - a "puppy dog", well liked, no criminal history, not arrested for or convicted of sex crimes of any kind. It then reveals that there were several more likely suspects - the two men who had been in the victim Danielle van Dam's home that night, and even her own parents because of their sexual lifestyle - but that they weren't investigated because Westerfield was suspected almost immediately. And finally the book acknowledges that the evidence against him was circumstantial and can be innocently explained - Danielle had recently been in his house and could have played inside his motor home. And someone else might have downloaded the pornography on his computer, and two of the investigative officers had allegations in their personnel records of planted evidence (though that was news to me).

So the book makes a strong case that Westerfield was wrongfully convicted. Why, then, does the author believe him guilty? Apparently because he (the author) relied on media reports for his information, and these aren't accurate. For example, the claim that Westerfield's motor home smelled of bleach was disproved by testimony at the trial. The media also claimed that his weekend trip was strange and convoluted. But if you read Court TV's transcript of his interrogation, you will see that he had good reasons for everything he did - which did not include driving "back and forth between the desert and the beach several times", he only went to the desert once. And we learn from the trial testimony that there was the proverbial mountain of evidence confirming his alibi: eye-witnesses, cell-phone records, etc. Furthermore, if he'd had his wallet with him, then he wouldn't have gone to the beach with a kidnapped child, as there were too many people nearby who would have heard anything suspicious.

That Court TV transcript also explains why Westerfield assumed the child could have gotten into his house - he had left the side door unlocked by mistake - and why she could have fallen in his pool - he leaves his side gates unlocked so that other people can use the backyard (pool and patio).

From the trial testimony, we learn that Westerfield asked if he could have "same-day service" on the items he took to the dry-cleaners on the Monday afternoon, which the media sensationalized to "rush service", and that no evidence was found on those items - Danielle's blood was found on an item he took in that morning, for which he didn't ask any special service. It is notable - some would say suspicious - that the dry-cleaners didn't see that blood. And the blood on the motor home carpet was just a single drop - which wasn't photographed or measured. It's because of failures like this that any allegations of previous wrongdoing by any of the investigators become important.

One search dog showed a mild reaction in Westerfield's house, which was short of an alert: if Danielle had been there that weekend then it should have alerted. It was a cadaver dog which supposedly alerted to an exterior storage area of the motor home, but the detective supervising the search didn't see an alert, and the dog's handler said nothing about an alert until weeks later when Westerfield was arrested, at which time he said he thought his dog may have alerted. And because it was a cadaver dog, it would have alerted to any cadaver, even an animal, or even Westerfield's own blood.

Media reports of the ajar sliding door at the van Dam home were inconsistent, but again based on trial testimony, the perpetrator spent over an hour inside that house, and it is virtually impossible that the profusely sweating Westerfield could have done so without the police being able to find any trace of him there. There's also no evidence he was at the body recovery site. He is presumed to have known of the existence of that hidden dump site because he once visited the casino two miles away - and the evidence is of only that one visit. That's quite a stretch. Also a stretch is the pornography evidence. Nasty and disturbing, yes, but it hadn't been recently viewed, and most of it was old and it had been seldom viewed, making it very weak as a motive. And we learned from the unsealed court documents that a law enforcement computer expert said it wasn't child porn - which could explain why Westerfield wasn't charged under a child porn statute.

I don't want to be too critical of the author. I'm sure he was merely repeating in good faith what he had read in the media about this case, and this case was only a small part of his book: he used more authoritative references, including personal knowledge, in the rest of the book. Fortunately, there is now a reliable book on the Westerfield case. It is titled "Rush to Judgement", and is also available on Amazon.

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