Dementia Publicly Released

Are people to be believed? It is quite simply impossible to interpret casually the manner in which some individuals believe themselves to be entitled to behave in situations truly inimical to others, and by extension, society at large.

Their self-absorption is a disgrace to humanity, and their predilections and resulting antics deleterious to the innocent ones around them. In one newspaper alone, of one day's reading, a number of events spring to notice:

1. A woman in Edmonton suing her adoptive mother for a half-million dollars, alleging wrongful adoption. The 44-year-old, suing her 71-year-old widowed adoptive mother has somehow persuaded herself that she was bilked out of an entitlement. Despite that her birth mother was not tricked, as the suit would have it, into believing her child had died during childbirth. The woman was taken in as a foster child in need of care when she was just over a month old. And adopted by the same young couple two years later. The younger woman charges that she was cheated; the adoption was fraudulent and she had suffered emotionally and financially, having been raised in "substandard conditions". Where reality was quite otherwise. The adoptive mother, now living in a subsidized seniors building describes her daughter as "materialistic". "I still basically love that girl but my thoughts are so jumbled up. Should I have adopted 42 years ago or should I have left well enough alone? If somebody was to ask me today if I'd do the same thing, I wouldn't know how to answer."
2. A pathologist in a position of trust, testifying on his own behalf at the Goudge Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario, claims the unhelpfulness of police was behind his having been instrumental in having a 21-month-old girl's mother charged with her murder. Only one of many such cases where this man, then Ontario's chief forensic pathologist, saw his expertise sought both pre- and during court proceedings, his conclusions leding to the wrongful charging, arres, finding of guilt and imprisonment of innocent people. Only later were some of those charged and convicted found innocent of the crimes ascribed to them, thanks to the blatant unprofessionalism of this man.
3. An Internet-based child pornography ring was broken through an international investigation which revealed the complicity of 98 Canadian men, leading to nine arrests to date. The same investigation revealed that thousands of other suspects representing 30 countries were associated with the criminal violations of children, some under school age. One of the Canadian men who was arrested is a volunteer Scout leader, working for an Ontario school board as a social worker who counselled elementary and high school students from four district schools.
4. A Victoria pet store was the scene of the abduction of two high-priced puppies. Soon after the thefts, a man presented himself at the pet shop to inform an employee that he could no longer care for the tiny puppy; he had been drunk at the time of the theft and couldn't explain why he took the dog, but he does know that he's incapable of caring for it, and is fed up with it peeing all over his house.
5. An obstetrician from the Toronto area injected his wife with a fatal drug "cocktail", and she died of multi-drug toxicity. The doctor informed police he had discovered his ill wife not breathing, waited several hours, and dialled 911. His wife evidently controlled the family coffers, and she had somehow incurred significant debts, according to the lawyer of the husband. Interestingly, the wife of 30 years had won a $5-million lottery jackpot a few years previously. Her niece described her aunt as a generous person with her family, who hadn't an alcohol or drug problem, as charged by her husband.
   

Doesn't that go far in explaining how puzzled we sometimes are when coming across people whose actions, motivations and feelings of social separation lead them to compulsive acts of personal insanity?