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Beverly C. Russell Jr.

Today I learned about Susan Smith was born Susan Leigh Vaughan.

Smith was denied parole and it made national headlines today. It caught my attention because she's incarcerated just across town, it happened up the road, and I ignored the original case and trial. It's interesting so I'm just putting some notes here for now so I can come back to it when I have time.

  • Susan's father committed suicide after her mother left him for Russell. She attempted suicide several times and became promiscuous.

  • Susan Smith told police that Beverly Russell began molesting her -- once after he'd returned from plastering the town with "Pat Robertson for President" posters.

  • Russell was former chairman of the Union County Republican Party and a high-ranking member of the Christian Coalition.

  • Russell was nephew to former South Carolina governor Donald Russell. Donald was a close ally and protege of James Byrnes and during his governorship endorsed the Thurmond move to the Republican party while Goldwater won SC.

  • Russell had another child from another 'affair' who he fought for visitation rights even after the Smith case.

  • Russell acknowledged that after a long gap, his sexual relations with Smith resumed, the last time in August, just two months before she drowned her only children.

  • Russell - "Had I known at the time the result of my sin, I could have mustered enough strength to assume my responsibilities. My heart breaks for what I’ve done to you. You looked to me for support and love but when the line was crossed I failed you, God and the rest of our family."

  • On election eve last year, Newt Gingrich said that the Susan Smith case "vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting," adding that "the only way you get change is to vote Republican." Gingrich would later admit to his own affairs and refused to comment on the Smith case.

  • correlation between father absense, promiscuity, and young mothers. - low-quality paternal care is hypothesized to signal that long-term male investment in offspring production is unreliable or unnecessary in the current ecology. - https://personal.tcu.edu/sehill/DelPrioreHill_JPSP2013.pdf

For liberalism, blame has increasingly become a simple matter as well. Where liberalism once used to let the individual off too easy by blaming the "system" or the larger "society," now they don't even bother to do that. There no longer seems to be a political constituency for reflecting upon the blame in ourselves.1

 

Footnotes​

  1. Susan Smith's Judgement Day - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/06/25/susan-smiths-judgment-day/b8ade8a4-9311-47d5-a42b-6fc84394bcd4/ ↩