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Ed Yeates ReportingDestiny Norton's violent death has shaken our psyches. Unlike when Elizabeth Smart was taken, then found alive, this tragic ending has stirred up a different, perhaps much broader bag of emotions.
Anger, sadness, even physical sickness -- the news of Destiny's discovery did not come easy for some folks.
Dr. John Malouf, Psychologist, Valley Mental Health: "The sadness is really hard to feel on a long-term basis, and so sometimes I think it's just psychologically easier to turn it into anger."
John Malouf with Valley Mental Health should know. He deals with crisis emotions all the time. Not knowing to knowing, hope to tragedy. A crime happening within a stone's throw of the victims own backyard. Inferences that your neighborhood is somehow different, too lax, not watchful, ripe and ready for something to happen.
All these emotions are our defenses - some healthy, some not! Be careful, Malouf says, how we rationalize.
John Malouf: "We don't want to think our child is as vulnerable as little Destiny was, and so we can figure that her situation is somehow different than ours, then maybe it helps us feel not so frightened."
We talk, we speculate, and now what we feel will play out in the weeks to come.
John Malouf: "You expect your daughter can step outside and be safe. So when something like that happens, it just shakes your whole sense of predictability, your whole sense of security."
We need to watch our kids and our neighbor's kids. Teach them not to talk or go with strangers. But Malouf also warns, don't go too far the other way.
John Malouf: "If you're walking down the sidewalk and someone is going the other way and they say hello, and you can't say hello back."
Common sense, he says, should prevail. We want safe kids, without turning them into social misfits.
