Forty years ago, Rosemarie D’Alessandro’s 7-year-old daughter, Joan, was raped and murdered by a neighbor while delivering two boxes of Girl Scout cookies to his home — three doors down and across the street.
CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Rosemarie D'Alessandro of Hillsdale, whose daughter, Joan, was murdered in 1973, has become a victims' advocate.
CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Joyce Davis of Warren Township lost her infant son Garret after he suffocated in a crib. She now runs Keeping Babies Safe.
But it was a phone call 20 years later — when she learned the man responsible for Joan’s death was up for parole — that thrust the quiet Hillsdale homemaker into the role of forceful victims’ advocate and helped her to make some sense of the unfathomable.
Today, D’Alessandro’s story is well-known. She has worked tirelessly for the past 20 years to pass a cadre of state and federal versions of Joan’s Law — which carries a mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of sexually assaulting and killing a minor under the age of 14. But she’s not alone.
This weekend, the families of victims in Newtown, Conn., marked the first anniversary of the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six adults with quiet, private memorials. In North Jersey and elsewhere, there are people who have experienced the unimaginable — losing a child unexpectedly from violence, suicide or accident. A few of them have come out of it like D’Alessandro with a new purpose in life, hoping to reverse what seems to be a profound injustice.
“It’s really hard because after you lose a child, you feel like your world has crumbled,” said Joyce Davis of Warren Township, whose 4½-month-old son, Garret, accidentally suffocated between a mattress and the mesh siding of his crib. “You’re not ready to face the world. You’re not ready to fight for anything but your child or your family.”
Davis said she was so “angry” after Garret’s death in 2000 that it was five years before she decided to take action. Her deep depression was taking its toll on her family, so much that one of her daughters didn’t want to go to school one day because she knew Davis would be home crying.
It was then that she pulled herself together to make sure what happened to her baby would not happen again, and to show her three daughters that she could heal, too, even after years of grieving.
Davis’ husband already had been researching crib safety issues relentlessly as the products they purchased had no warning about accidents readily available. The couple then took the reins of Keeping Babies Safe, a foundation established after a similar situation, to make information about consumer products easily available and to donate cribs to families in need. The couple also lobbied to pass a national crib safety law, which was signed by former President George W. Bush in 2008.
Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Rutgers University whose research focuses on bereavement, aging and end-of-life issues, said in all deaths of loved ones, people often go through a period of depression then tend to bounce back. But when the deaths are premature or traumatic, the response can be more extreme — and some say such experiences can never be overcome completely, she said.
“Often, your worldview changes, and everything you believe shifts,” Carr said.
Peggy Frazier O’Connor, a film producer originally from Hillsdale but who now lives in Texas, is working on a TV series called “In Search of Steel Magnolias,” which tracks the lives of women who overcome tragedy to help society. As Joan’s baby sitter, she also has partnered with D’Alessandro to create a short film to teach lawmakers about Joan’s Law in hopes expanding it across the country.
O’Connor said families or individuals who go through such trauma can crumble. But the women she is featuring — including D’Alessandro — have not only recovered but made great accomplishments, often with no experience or funding behind them.
“Women are doing amazing things with little to no assets, or turning tragedies into triumph,” O’Connor said. Gradual progress
For the first three months after Joan’s death, D’Alessandro said she could not listen to the radio; hearing the slightest detail would cripple her, the pain was so indescribable. She poured her energy into raising her four other children, all the while battling a chronic medical condition that often left her fatigued. D’Alessandro quickly threw herself into creative endeavors — turning the location where Joan’s body was found into a prayer site, a project that the mother found highly therapeutic — and over time learned to ease the anxiety of an overactive mind by writing down everything she aspired to do on small papers strewn across her desk. http://www.northjersey.com/community/Grieving_parents_turn_pain_of_losing_a_child_into_activism.html#sthash.1eX9AkoK.dpuf
I can relate to this story very well. My son Deshon Johnson life was taken by a Coach USA bus driver who was operating NJ Transit bus 709 on Broad and Bay in Bloomfield NJ. The bus driver sped around the corner and his back wheel jumped the curb and dragged my only child body 50 to 100 feet to his demise as my son was waiting for the bus. The prosecutor allow the bus driver to walk free without charging this bus driver for manslaughter or vehicular homicide. With further investigation the bus driver was in a bus incident 2010 prior to ending my son's life.
A month in a half later the same bus driver who ended my son's life was in another bus incident and the Essex County Prosecutor covered that information. There is a lot of new information I found out that the justice covered up. This bus driver is able to go to his family a back to work but my son cannot. I am fighting for laws to be change and raise awareness about some of these reckless bus drivers. You can click this link to sign my petition http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-reckless-aggressive-and-rude-bus-drivers-from-carelessly-taking-young-innocent-lives-like-deshon-johnson. I also started a scholarship in my son's name called The Deshon Johnson College Scholarship Foundation http://deshonjohnsonscollegescholarship.blogspot.com/2013/05/in-honor-of-deshon-johnson-college.html. Every year on March the 5th our foundation will be hosting a big College Scholarship Foundation Dinner and on September 30 every year we host a grieving parent and honoring our children who are no longer with us.
Please check The Deshon Johnson College Scholarship Foundation blog, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Eventbrte for time, location and ticket donation price. Every day I struggle with pain of losing my child. He was all I had and he was only child. Together Activist Parents Can Make A Change! We need to stick together because we are share the same pain and some of us are fighting for justice. It is heartbroken when you lost your child in the hands of another senseless human being. Grieving parents, our life will never be the same. On holidays, birthday and other events we will be great pain because we cannot share it with our children.
I can relate to this story very well. My son Deshon Johnson life was taken by a Coach USA bus driver who was operating NJ Transit bus 709 on Broad and Bay in Bloomfield NJ. The bus driver sped around the corner and his back wheel jumped the curb and dragged my only child body 50 to 100 feet to his demise as my son was waiting for the bus. The prosecutor allow the bus driver to walk free without charging this bus driver for manslaughter or vehicular homicide. With further investigation the bus driver was in a bus incident 2010 prior to ending my son's life.
ReplyDeleteA month in a half later the same bus driver who ended my son's life was in another bus incident and the Essex County Prosecutor covered that information. There is a lot of new information I found out that the justice covered up. This bus driver is able to go to his family a back to work but my son cannot. I am fighting for laws to be change and raise awareness about some of these reckless bus drivers. You can click this link to sign my petition http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-reckless-aggressive-and-rude-bus-drivers-from-carelessly-taking-young-innocent-lives-like-deshon-johnson. I also started a scholarship in my son's name called The Deshon Johnson College Scholarship Foundation http://deshonjohnsonscollegescholarship.blogspot.com/2013/05/in-honor-of-deshon-johnson-college.html. Every year on March the 5th our foundation will be hosting a big College Scholarship Foundation Dinner and on September 30 every year we host a grieving parent and honoring our children who are no longer with us.
Please check The Deshon Johnson College Scholarship Foundation blog, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Eventbrte for time, location and ticket donation price. Every day I struggle with pain of losing my child. He was all I had and he was only child. Together Activist Parents Can Make A Change! We need to stick together because we are share the same pain and some of us are fighting for justice. It is heartbroken when you lost your child in the hands of another senseless human being. Grieving parents, our life will never be the same. On holidays, birthday and other events we will be great pain because we cannot share it with our children.
To one grieving parent to another.