For Charlie and Braden - By Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson is the owner, operator
general contributor and editor of
The Skewed Review. He's also the son
of the late Matt Jacobson, who did
all he could to help children who
suffered the worst kinds of abuse.
Matt Sr. died Oct. 30, 2008, while
still suffering PTSD from his time as
a child abuse investigator for the state
of Utah. To his dying day, the
State of Utah refused to give him aid
due to his ten years of having to
endure seeing child after child being
abused, or worse, killed because of
abuse.

Skewed Reviews that are serious and don’t include a touch of irony or ridicule are few and far between, but this particular column will be just that because of one horrible man: Josh Powell.

I’ll get the review out of the way, although at this point any review I give is moot because I’m sure he’s getting rated like hell (and most likely in hell, too) in the afterlife. Powell gets to go down in history as one of the most despicable people to be tied to Utah. I’m not going to throw in any sarcastic parallels to Utah politicians.

Powell was the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Cox Powell, when he allegedly took his two sons on a midnight winter camping trip and returned to find her gone. Allegedly.

Well, needless to say, he took his two children, Charlie and Braden, and fled from Utah to the state of Washington in what can only be described as an attempt to leave behind an accusing population. He subsequently lost custody of his two children, as well.

It’s true, he was never proven to have killed his wife, and it would be a hard blow to anyone to lose his or her two children. But what he did in retaliation literally made me sick when I found out the details.

We’ve all heard the stories, and I most definitely don’t want to recant them here, but I do want to say there are only a few things that make me lose my appetite. Children’s suffering ranks among the top three.

So why should you care what makes me repulsed? Well, the horrible things that happened to 7-year-old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden are happening to children all over the world. In fact, I’d go as far as to say even more horrible things are happening.

It could be that I’m not informed enough to know the torture that’s happening on a daily basis, and it could be that I’m turning a blind eye to some world news. Either way, Charlie and Braden aren’t the only two.

I’ve seen what witnessing child abuse does to an adult. My father investigated the ritualistic and sexual abuse of children for the Utah Attorney General’s office for nearly ten years, and it destroyed him. I can’t even imagine the things he had to witness in order to give him the level of post-traumatic stress syndrome he had. But something tells me the Powell children’s case would be tame in comparison.

First and foremost, you should all seek to be good parents. When you have children, you need to vow to create an environment for them where they’ll never end up on the evening news because you did something horrible. Secondly, we should all do something, even if it’s something miniscule, to help make news stories like these disappear.

I strongly urge all readers to check out websites like everychildmatters.org, childadvocates.org and americanhumane.org. Those are just three of hundreds of charities dedicated to ending child suffering both nationally and abroad.

Let’s put an end to this.