After the discovery of the remains of her cousins, Melani Pawlowski makes the following points in a Facebook post that she shared with the East Idaho News (
'My cousins are beautiful souls.' Melani Pawlowski releases message expressing love for JJ and Tylee | East Idaho News):
- Tylee--who we now know was killed, dismembered, and burned--would “be giving the biggest eye roll” at the dramatic way the media is reporting her story.
- Tylee was “the sassiest thing ever” and so would likely chastise anyone who is using what happened to her as a reason to “blame” or “express hate” toward anyone.
- If Tylee could just “go on live television and tell her story,” she could “clear up all the confusion.”
- By continuing to “criticize and twist” things and to capitalize on “this tragic event,” people are distracting from the lives of “these two precious babes.”
- When people express kindness and not criticism, JJ and Tylee will probably “smile down from heaven.”
Melani’s statement is remarkable not only for what she says but also for what she doesn’t say: that she was wrong. If you knew nothing of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow, you could read a statement like Melani’s and assume this was a sad but ordinary missing person’s case. You would likely believe that some very bad people had abducted two children and that, after months of uncertainty, the discovery of bodies had revealed the crushing truth and devastated the victims’ family. What you probably would not believe was that the person making the statement had defended the silence and obstruction of one of the probable killers and cast herself as a victim.
What is missing in Melani’s statement and the earlier statement of several of the Cox family is any admission of personal responsibility. There is no suggestion they misjudged Lori or that this misjudgment almost certainly delayed the discovery of the bodies and prolonged the tortuous ordeal of the people who truly loved Tylee and JJ. There is no hint of an apology to the people they criticized for forcing Lori into what they continued to insist was simply an acrimonious custody battle. And, worst of all, there is no recognition that, when it mattered, they sided with the children’s likely killers over the children themselves.
One of the big questions in this case relates to the role that religion, specifically Mormonism, has played. Here I will offer up a caveat that I’ve offered up before. Mormonism didn’t make Chad and Lori do these terrible things, and you could go to traditional Mormon services for a hundred years without hearing anything as bizarre and demented as what Chad and Lori reportedly believed. But, even so, it is my view that you cannot understand this case without understanding Mormonism. Simply put, I believe Mormon ideas led Chad and Lori to believe they were special while Mormon practice left them feeling like they’d been overlooked.
Melani was raised in the same religious environment. But her sin is much more ordinary. She simply does something we all do from time to time: she blames others for her own failings. But here again Mormonism is relevant. It provides both a model for and justification of denying responsibility.
Earlier this month, when the Black Lives Matter protests were spreading, Mormon Church president Russell M. Nelson said “We abhor the reality that some would deny others respect and the most basic of freedoms because of the color of his or her skin.” He also pleaded with everyone to foster “mutual respect” and “an outpouring of love for all of God’s children.” But here’s what President Nelson didn’t do. He didn’t acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the Church’s role in reinforcing racial prejudices by withholding full membership privileges from black people for decades.
President Nelson’s sentiments are nice in the same way that Melani’s plea for withholding “negative feelings” and just exhibiting “love” is nice. But that’s all they are. Melani’s sentimental outpouring of love for Tylee and JJ won’t bring them back. And worse, it risks co-opting their tragic and beautifully specific stories into our inane and ever-expanding culture war. For shame.
MOO
