Last week, multiple news outlets reported that Robert Latimer has
submitted a letter to the Minister of Justice seeking a pardon or a new trial
following his conviction for the murder of his daughter Tracy in 1993. When I heard these reports, I, like many
Canadians with disabilities, felt a sickening sense of deja vous.
From the time Latimer
was first arrested for killing Tracy, he
portrayed his daughter as little more than a suffering bundle of flesh.
And, from the beginning, the mainstream media was quick to promote this image
of Tracy. This monolithic mainstream
media portrayals of Tracy as constantly and intractably suffering
continued throughout Latimer’s trials, even when testimony from Tracy’s mother
and teachers clearly showed that Tracy was quite capable of enjoying her life. But two-and-half decades after Tracy Latimer was murdered by her father,
some mainstream media reports about his petition for a pardon still described
Tracy as a “bedridden quadriplegic,” despite
the fact that Tracy rode the school bus to her school program right up until
the weekend that her father murdered her.
So, in order to save myself many, MANY hours of typing, (not to mention possibly saving what little, if anything, is left of my sanity), I will, for the time being, be dedicating this blog to posting previous-published articles which highlight what the mainstream media appears to consider inconvenient truths about Tracy Latimer and her life.
Tracy Latimer's legacy; What of other children with disabilities? What of aging parents with
dementia?
Janz, Heidi L . Edmonton Journal ; Edmonton, Alta. [Edmonton, Alta]15 Mar 2008: A.19.
Thirteen-and-a-half years, two court trials and thousands of media reports after Robert Latimer gassed his 12-year-old daughter Tracy to death in his pickup truck, his legal saga has come to an end.
Late last month, the National Parole Board Appeal Division reversed a decision in early December by a three-person panel of the parole board that denied parole to Latimer, saying he refused to acknowledge his actions were a crime.
In a written decision, the appeal division said the denial could not be supported in law and a delay in releasing Latimer "would be unfair."
It said the circumstances of Latimer's offence were "unique" and it was unlikely he would find himself in a similar high-risk situation.
So, what have we, as Canadians, learned about life, death, and disability through the whole saga of the Latimer case?
In my mind, and in the minds of most Canadians with disabilities and their supporters, frighteningly little.
A chief reason for this, I would argue, is that so much of the mainstream media's coverage of the Latimer case has consistently been characterized by one-sided, often blatantly erroneous, portrayals of Tracy Latimer as an unfortunate, less-than-human being, whose pain-filled and burdensome existence was bravely sustained by her stoic and heroic parents. Indeed, most media stories about the Latimer case were, and are, constructed around the dichotomy of Tracy as a pain-ridden subhuman being versus Robert as a long-suffering, devoted parent.
The glaring problem -- and, indeed, the grave danger -- inherent in this typical mainstream media portrayal of Tracy Latimer as a perpetually suffering, subhuman being is that it flies in the face of Tracy's actual day-to-day lived experience, as it was revealed in the court testimony of her caregivers and even her own mother.
What's more, the apparently general public acceptance of this portrayal of Tracy Latimer blatantly ignores the experience of thousands of Canadians who live with severe disabilities and chronic pain, while systematically undermining the value of their lives.
Given the enormous stakes implicit in the Latimer case -- both for those of us currently living with disabilities, and for those of us who are still currently temporarily-able-bodied (TABs), -- I feel it is imperative at this juncture to critically compare the facts of Tracy Latimer's life with the one-sided image of her that has been constructed and promulgated by the mainstream media.
The Problem of Pain: One of the most common descriptors of Tracy Latimer is that she was in constant, unremitting pain. For example, the subheading of an article in the March 1995 issue of Saturday Night reads, "With his little girl in constant pain, Bob Latimer just couldn't see the point of any more operations. Enough was enough."
Indeed, a great number of mainstream media stories about the Latimer case were written in this vein. However, as Dick Sobsey, Director of the University of Alberta's John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre, has pointed out, the widely accepted notion that Tracy Latimer was in constant, unremitting pain is, in fact, an assumption that is fraught with numerous logical and factual inconsistencies: numerous sources printed a direct quote from Latimer's lawyer, describing Tracy as both in a "vegetative state" and "undergoing tremendous pain as a result of degenerative disease."
Since a person in a vegetative state is not conscious of or highly reactive to pain, it is difficult to understand how such a statement would be accepted without question.
The fact that cerebral palsy is not a degenerative disease adds to the misinformation. In early accounts of Tracy's suffering, she was described as "wracked with bedsores" (Craig, 1993, Nov. 5) and no mention is made of a hip dislocation. Later, the hip dislocation became the source of her unrelenting suffering. Tracy Latimer was repeatedly described as being in unrelenting distress. Yet, in Mr. Latimer's confession, she was in no distress the Sunday morning that he killed her.
One can't help but wonder how much of this kind of misinformation has affected the way in which judges and jurors have viewed Tracy as well, if only subconsciously.
It seems at least a distinct possibility that, in describing Mr. Latimer's situation as "unique," members of the National Parole Board Appeal Division had in mind the idea that Tracy was in constant, unremitting pain when her father killed her. But the simple fact that Tracy was evidently well enough to attend school just two days before her death should raise serious questions about just how much pain she was really experiencing.
Not Dead, Or Even Dying, Yet: Closely connected with the erroneous yet widely-accepted notion that Tracy was in constant, unremitting pain is the equally false idea that her condition -- i.e., her disability -- was progressive, and, ultimately, terminal.
Frequent though its appearances are in over a decade's worth of coverage of the Latimer case, this notion has its roots, not in any kind of empirical knowledge of cerebral palsy, but rather in the erroneous, yet culturally-entrenched, assumption that the presence of a disabling condition is intrinsically linked to a shortened lifespan, or at least to a low "quality of life" which is comparable to the "quality of life" of someone who is at the end of their life.
In other words, because Tracy had a severe disability, it was, in many cases, assumed either that she was dying, or at least that the "quality of life" that she experienced was so poor that she may as well have been dying -- or dead.
Not Quite Human? It can, I think, easily be argued and demonstrated that the cumulative effect of these factual misrepresentations of Tracy's life is to turn her into a somehow less-than-human being, who was actually better off dead than living with such severe disabilities.
This kind of subtext is readily apparent in the media's pat description of her as someone who "could not walk, talk, or feed herself." It is this assumption that Tracy's life was somehow less worthy -- if not completely unworthy -- of being lived that makes the Latimer case of enormous significance for all Canadians.
Even though Robert Latimer's legal saga is now over, the ripple effects of his actions will continue to be felt in this country for years to come. If the value of a person's life is ultimately contingent on a person's ability to walk, talk and feed themselves, what are we to do with the rest of our children with severe disabilities? And what of the growing numbers of our parents with dementia?
For me, as for thousands of other vulnerable Canadians, these are haunting questions. Our very lives depend on their answers.
Credit: Freelance
Illustration
Photo: Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Canwest News Service / Robert Latimer leaves a Saskatoon courthouse after a jury was selected for his trial in 1997. ;; Caption:
Word count: 1174
Copyright Southam Publications Inc. Mar 15, 2008
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