To the editor:

The case of Harmony Montgomery has generated, once again, the usual righteous condemnation of a perpetrator, along with the corresponding outpouring of sympathy for the victim child. The latter, in her case, was enhanced by the fact that she was so astonishingly cute. The pictures of her are more than endearing; she not only symbolizes but embodies innocence and goodness. Her sweet smile projects what can only be called a “beautiful vulnerability” seeking an affection which no one can refuse. Clearly, she captured the public heart.

Understandably, politicians, law enforcement, and the public now compete in denouncing the heinousness that took her from – us. They criticize those who let her down.  They lament, vocalizing the now commonplace, “how can anyone do such a thing to a child”?

But it is to be remembered that not all that long ago she was homeless, living in a car. She was just as cute then, just as much the incarnation of innocence and goodness; but it was no defense. There was no comparable effusion of compassion then. There was no denunciation of a perpetrator, because since the cruelty she suffered was legal, there was no perpetrator!  Her plight was rationalized as the regrettable outcome of complex economic realities, when in fact it functioned as a necessary element in the maintaining of the economic order on which we all see our own security based!

The protection from the harm she endured was assigned, as it is in the thousands of these cases, to the particular obligation of designated adults. But she had an absolute right to shelter, and an equally absolute right to freedom from harm, which, being absolute, cannot depend on anything; they inhere in her. We just don’t recognize them!

Perhaps, in lieu of flowers for this darling child, we should contribute to stopping the legal harm of evicting her fellow innocents!

Joseph R. Noone

Lynn