Who's victim, who's culprit obscured by haze shrouding hit-and-run
By MARY JO MELONE
Published April 26, 2004
They want to be super fair to her.
They want to excoriate her.
Either way, there are no dispassionate observers when it comes to Jennifer Porter.
Last week, I wrote about what I saw as Porter's responsibility, and her parents' responsibility, to come forward and tell what happened when Porter drove her Toyota Echo on that terrible night, March 31, when two children were killed and their brother and sister injured.
Oh, how the e-mails came in. How the phone rang.
I suddenly became the smartest person on the planet to most of those who wrote or called - because they agreed with me.
The flip side was expressed in eloquent, powerful terms.
One man left a phone message declaring I was without compassion. Another man wrote in what he called "a white heat."
"I am outraged at the way the news media has virtually prosecuted this case in print," wrote John Feeney, a minister and USF student. "News stories about this event have been written in such a way as to have Jennifer Porter virtually tried and convicted."
Feeney's observations were one extreme. On the other were howls from readers who said that somehow Porter herself has been turned into a tragic figure worthy of sympathy. "It totally disgusts me that Jennifer Porter has become the "victim,' so to speak. What happened to justice?" asked Sherry Burch.
She has a point. I find myself almost deferring to it. I've been calling this "the Porter case" when the name we should remember is Lisa Wilkins, the mother of the four children.
But Feeney also has a point. Night after night, morning after morning, Porter's downcast face appears in photographs and video that accompany stories about the latest little detail. Who could survive such an onslaught?
In defense of journalists, I add: It was Porter's lawyer, the unrepentant and brash Barry Cohen, who put her before the public, who said she was behind the wheel of the car, who led investigators to it. He opened the door to investigators. What's wrong with expecting Porter to step through it?
She's not legally bound to do so. No defendant is obligated to incriminate himself. But what's legally true and what's morally appropriate are not the same.
If Porter had come forward right away, if her parents had come forward right away - if they had all done the right thing - the case would not have generated such attention. We're confronted with a moral drama as a result of what the Porters, parents and adult child, failed to do. We're also confronted with questions about community: What do we owe each other, even as strangers, to ensure that we are civil and fair?
One writer, Pam Stern, reflected on the calls she imagines Jennifer Porter making to her parents after the accident. "It's quite clear that they didn't say, "Stay calm, Jennifer. You must go back, we're on our way."'
The Porters were not the only subjects of reader anger.
Some readers aimed their disapproval at Lisa Wilkins and what she failed to do.
Even though Wilkins had escorted her children across 22nd Street and told them to stay put until she returned, some readers called her irresponsible. In their eyes, she had wrongly left two toddlers and an 8-year-old in the care of a 13-year-old boy.
"Lisa Wilkins does not deserve the public's anguish," wrote Will Young of St. Petersburg. "What parent in their right mind allows their child to roam the streets of a dangerous part of Tampa by themselves at night?"
It's hard not to think that there is some racial subtext to criticism of Wilkins, who is black, poor, and until the accident, had six children and another on the way. Young is white. He denies any racial motivation behind his words.
To these people, I'd ask: Don't they think that Lisa Wilkins will always blame herself? Would it be any different if she had, say, turned her back for a moment and her children had drowned in a swimming pool? Would she be blamed for being a lousy parent then?
There's some indication that Jennifer Porter will be arrested this week. The story continues. So does the moral drama. Stay tuned.
