A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy
| Published date | 11 November 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-11-2019-057 |
| Date | 11 November 2019 |
| Pages | 278-279 |
| Author | Owen P. O’Sullivan |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Forensic practice,Sociology,Sociology of crime & law,Law enforcement/correctional,Public policy & environmental management,Policing,Criminal justice |
Edited by Sue Klebold
WH Allen
London
2017
ISBN 978-0753556818 (Paperback)
Keywords Columbine
Review DOI
10.1108/JFP-11-2019-057
The Columbine High School shooting was
meticulously planned and received
unprecedented media coverage in 1999. It
became a potent convergence point for a
multitude of societal issues: gun control,
school bullying culture, alternative youth sub-
culture and the influence of alternative rock
music and video games, to name but a few.
Twenty years on, its legacy persists as a
frame of reference readily applied to similar
spree attacks and it has led to multiple
copycat school shootings. Ostensibly, this is
a memoir of living in its wake. However, given
the author is Dylan Klebold’s mother, its
perspective is singularly unwonted.
Seventeen-year-old Dylan was one of two
shooters to eventually turn weapons on
themselves after killing twelve fellow students
and a teacher. They also seriously injured and
irrevocably traumatised countless others.
Sue Klebold’s professional background is in
the disabilities sector. Her Colorado
household is described as neither staunchly
pro-gun, nor an environment where extremist
views were ever tolerated. She places this in
counterpoint to later experiences of media
and public vilification and exaggeration of
aspects of their home life such as perceived
wealth and parenting styles. In the aftermath,
this memoir is her account of their family’s
experiences in trying to come to terms with
the maelstrom of devastation, grief,
heartbreak, confusion, blame and hate-
campaigns that ensued. They endured death
threats, bankruptcy, tens of lawsuits and
eventually, divorce. In a lucid, measured and
deeply reflective style, she painstakingly
retells the time leading up to and the years
after the event. She does so with striking
candour. The familiar domestic rhythms and
struggles to emerge will surely resonate with
readers as those of a typical loving family
endeavouring to do their best. The New York
Times Book Review said it read, “[…]asif
written under oath”.
Through her own study and research on
mental health, she has come to frame what
happened as murder-suicide and believed
her son to have been depressed and suicidal
in the months before and at the time. The
tragedy is considered with the utmost respect
for the victims and their families. She does so
offering tentative analyses with thoughtful
curiosity and humility. It represents a 17-year
process of reaching for answers. She does
not intend this as exonerative, nor does it read
as such. With her memoir, Sue Klebold is also
reaching out to the victims’families. At the
core of what happened, she also lost her
child. She feels she and her husband missed
crucial –yet subtle –signs in the preceding
months and has made it her life’s mission to
ensure others do not. The Times described it
as, “[…] required reading for the parents of
adolescents”and she discusses her own
learning and insights from relevant mental
health experts at various points. In recent
years, she has since worked extensively with
charities around stigma and suicide
prevention in the USA with any profits from
this book being passed on.
As the narrator and mother of one of the
perpetrators, a fine balance was inevitability
going to be toed –and actuated in readers’
minds –as to self-portrayal and culpability.The
thrust of blame is for the most part leveled at
Eric Harris, Dylan’sco-accomplice,withthe
hypothesis that her son’spurported
depressive state, hopelessness and suicidal
ideation rendered him more vulnerable to
influence from Eric’sreportedlysadisticand
misanthropic outlook. Beyond the
speculations, there remain nevertheless the
inescapable hard truths of her son’s
premeditation and final acts and perhaps
readers mayfeel aspects of their consideration
to be unsatisfactory. Perhaps also, it may be
that the appetite in us for this servesto render
more remote still similar imagined possibilities
in our own communities.
A Mother’s Reckoning:
Living in the Aftermath
of the Columbine
Tragedy
PAGE278
j
JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PRACTICE
j
VOL. 21 NO. 4 2019, pp. 278-279, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2050-8794
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