A broken home

Well, there you go. The shooter came from one very fucked up family.

And no, the problem isn’t that we look at mental illness when it’s a white shooter. It’s that we don’t look at it for EVERY violent criminal. The vast majority of violent criminals have serious trauma as children, much of it sexual. (A shrink once told me it’s almost a recipe for violent crime.)

Via the Daily Mail:

The white loner accused of shooting dead nine people at a black church was raised by a violent father who beat up his stepmother and hired a private detective to follow her when they split.
These shocking charges were made in court papers by Paige Mann – the ex-wife of Dylann Roof’s father Franklin – that were obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.

Franklin Bennett Roof, 52, who is known as Benn, bought his son the gun he allegedly used for the massacre. He is also said to have subjected his wife Paige to a ‘pattern of control and mental manipulation’ that ended with a vicious assault.

Exclusive photographs obtained by DailyMail.com show multiple bruises to her body allegedly caused by him. She claims he battered her on the back of the head in 2008 and made her ‘world fall apart’.
Franklin is said to have shredded Paige’s self esteem during their ten-year marriage. He also kept her in a ‘virtual prison’ by calling her several times a day and demanding to know what she was doing.

[…] Paige wrote that she was ‘so scared of him that I knew I had to get out of this violent situation’. She moved back to Columbia with Morgan – leaving Dylann with his father.
The court file contains numerous other documents filed in support of Paige’s claims. Her mother Patricia Hastings said in a letter to the court that her daughter’s nature was ‘one of caring, cheerfulness and devotion to her family’.

Paige was there for Amber and Dylann on the occasions where their own (mother) chose not to be, including church, driving Dyalnn to and from school and extracurricular activities.
She wrote that her daughter ‘loved Bennett Roof’s other children Amber and Dylann unconditionally as her own’.
And she added: ‘I was afraid that love for these children clouded her judgement in getting involved with Bennett Roof.’

Dylann stayed with Paige and Franklin far more often than with his own mother, who was supposed to have him every other weekend, Patricia noted.

‘Paige was there for Amber and Dylann on the occasions where their own (mother) chose not to be, including church, driving Dylann to and from school and extracurricular activities.’
Her daughter’s marriage had been a ‘source of great concern’ on numerous occasions, she added.
‘Prior to the marriage, a pattern of control and mental manipulation was evident to me and many of (Paige’s) friends.

‘Having worked 30 years as a registered nurse and most of those years were in women’s health services, I am well acquainted with the signs of an abusive relationship. This is even more frightening when you see it unfolding in your own child’s life’.

She described how over the years she saw Franklin ‘isolating (Paige) from her friends and family’.