In 2005 my seventh novel, about an unloving mother tortured by whether her son’s high-school mass murder was all her fault, designated me the go-to girl for commentary about school shootings. Consequently, the overweight, tremulous, flush-faced Jennifer Crumbley belongs to me. Known for arguably overloaded character names, I couldn’t have invented a better surname for an iconic Bad Mother. Hitting harmonics with ‘crummy’ (lousy) and ‘crumby’ (untidy), ‘Crumbley’ also suggests unsoundness, dereliction and collapse.
In 2021, Jennifer’s son Ethan, then 15, killed four of his classmates and injured seven others at his Michigan high school with a handgun his father had bought him for Christmas. After pleading guilty to 24 charges, Ethan was sentenced to life without parole. Last week, his mother was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for her son’s four murders. Jennifer could face up to 60 years in prison without having pulled a trigger.
Why criminalise parents exclusively for school shootings? Shouldn’t they be jailed for their children’s robberies?
Nearly all 50 US states have parental liability laws, but these are civic.
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