A respect for and interest in protecting children is nearly a non-issue in American political debate, even as the “personhood” of a fetus gains increasing recognition. “The rights of the unborn child are taking precedence over care of actual children,” notes sociology professor Neil Websdale. Petit emphasizes that the “parental role is a stewardship role, not an ownership role,” but it’s a distinction not everyone recognizes. There is a sense in “some American communities, where religion might play a part, that parents own their children,” he observed.
Why are child-abuse fatalities and murder so high in the United States? Reasons offered by experts range from lack of supportive social services, to poverty, to easy accessibility of guns, to an American culture of violence.
The United States has one of the highest rates of relative child poverty in the developed world, according to UNICEF calculations. Of the 35 wealthy countries examined by the agency, only Romania had a relative child poverty rate higher than the United States.5 UNICEF based the rankings on an equation to gauge relative poverty established by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Under this definition, a child is deemed to be living in relative poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and composition, is less than 50 percent of the median disposable household income in a particular nation. By this standard, the United States has a relative child poverty rate of 23.1, compared with 4.7 in Iceland, the best rate of 35 “economically advanced” countries examined by UNICEF.6
And just when families are suffering in the United States, budgets for support services are being cut by localities strapped for cash. “We haven’t seen a big cut in national expenditures on social services—yet—though that could change,” warned Petit. “We are seeing sharp reductions in services in cash-strapped states.” As families “struggle and stress levels rise, child maltreatment becomes more of a risk,” Jane Burstain of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a think tank in Austin, Texas, testified before Congress.7 “To cut programs that support struggling families in tough economic times is the very definition of penny wise and pound foolish and is a choice our children will pay for with their lives.”
If child deaths aren’t enough to stir our empathy and action, the costs of abuse have tremendous implications for society. The total lifetime toll of child maltreatment is estimated to be $124 billion each year, based on total costs linked to criminal justice, healthcare, child welfare, special-education expenses, and productivity losses, according to a 2008 study conducted for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).8 ”Child maltreatment is a serious and prevalent public health problem in the United States, responsible for substantial morbidity and mortality,” noted the study. Abuse ramifications aren’t confined to a single child; the violence has an inevitable impact throughout society, with the kid who suffers today more likely to become the child abuser or the criminal of tomorrow. Child maltreatment has been shown to have lifelong adverse health, social, and economic consequences for survivors, including behavioral problems, increased delinquency risk and adult criminality, violent behavior, boosted risk of chronic diseases, and lasting impacts or disability from physical injury. Early abuse “gets under our skin,” noted the CDC report, citing findings that maltreatment can affect brain development and learning, blood pressure, and the immune system.9 The earlier the battle against abuse begins, the better, not only for the victim, but for a society that will be forced to deal with the fallout, notes the agency report, adding, “scientific evidence now shows that it’s better and more efficient to ‘get it right from the start’ by preventing maltreatment rather than trying to fix the many problems that result from early trauma later in life.”
JOSH ACTED LIKE A CULT LEADER; NOT THAT HE HAD ANY TRUE FOLLOWERS, BUT HE THOUGHT EVERYONE SHOULD BELIEVE IN HIS REALITY.
—Chuck Cox, father of Susan Cox Powell, who’s missing and presumed killed by her husband
Scads of houses in the massive pancake expanse of the Salt Lake Valley race west toward the foothills of the snow-peaked Oquirrh Mountains in Utah like jet-powered cars on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Save for a scattered, nomadic Ute settlement or a fur trapper’s camp, the vast, 500-square-mile valley was empty when Brigham Young and his 148-person advance team of Latter-Day Saints arrived in 1847 to found what would soon be a massive religious settlement. The pregnant wife of Brigham’s brother Lorenzo felt heartsick upon seeing the lonely, empty land as the faithful emerged from Emigration Valley on their trek to escape persecution from the east. But that didn’t dissuade Brigham. “It is enough. This is the right place,” he declared.1 He was transfixed. The Mormon leader had “seen the valley before in vision, and upon this occasion he saw the future glory of Zion and of Israel,” wrote an apostle. If the space was inhospitable, all the better, Brigham believed. It would dissuade settlement by the persecuting “Gentiles” the Mormons were fleeing. In line with their vision that Utah was the Promised Land, the Latter-Day Saints named the river that bisected the great valley after the Jordan River and set off a massive exodus of Mormons—nearly one million in a century—that would result in America’s nearest example of a religious state. But even 165 years later, the jumbled developments, ribbons of highways, and hundreds of thousands of residents barely make a dent in an overwhelming sense of limitlessness and stark-raving blue sky in the heart of the vast space of the western United States.
A woman could feel lonely here, even in the midst of family within a neighborhood of warm community barbeques, screeching, laughing, bike-riding packs of kids, and a supportive local Mormon ward. The summer of 2009, Susan Cox Powell, 27, looked and acted just like other moms in the sunny community of young families in West Valley City, a booming town of 130,000 southwest of Salt Lake City, in the fastest-growing area in the state. She was a pretty blonde, sociable with neighbors and co-workers, and a fun, devoted mom to her two little boys, two-year-old Braden and four-year-old Charlie.2 She went to work, biked with the kids, chatted with pals, made dinners, and weeded her garden just like moms down her street. But Susan lived a secret life behind the walls of her home. She feared for her life and for the welfare of her sons from her own husband, Josh, who had inexplicably and inexorably veered off the rails of normal behavior. Susan’s once sweetly distracted spouse had become a prickly, threatening control freak who dictated how Susan should clean and organize their small, white ranch house; whom she could talk to and what she could say; and what groceries she was allowed to purchase. Susan was uprooted, hundreds of miles from the rest of her family, to find herself in a life so tightly controlled that it resembled existence in a small desert cult of four, ruled by a 32-year-old dictator, Josh.
The marriage hadn’t turned out quite the way Susan had imagined. She had fallen hard eight years earlier for the charmingly loopy boy-man who ardently wooed Susan in Puyallup, Washington, where she lived with her parents and three sisters. Josh was slightly built, appeared far younger even then than his 24 years, with pouty lips and blue, puppy-dog eyes, spiky dark-brown hair, and a tiny mustache that looked like the type adolescents grow to look more manly. But to the 19-year-old Susan, Josh appeared as an attractive “older man”—mature and well on his way to a stable, successful life. He was aiming to finish up a business degree at the University of Washington, and he was already working as an on-call subcontractor hauling and installing furniture in various schools for a commercial industrial furniture company, a job he obtained through his dad, Steven Powell, who worked as a salesman for the operation. Even better in Susan’s eyes was that Josh wanted to settle down. He regularly attended services at a Mormon “branch” congregation in Tacoma, which was only open to singles to give them a chance to meet partners within their faith, and he appeared to be focused on finding a mate, marrying, and starting a family. “It seemed like he had everything going for him,” recalled Susan’s dad, Charles “Chuck” Cox, a now-retired investigator with the Federal Aviation Administration, as he sat in the
large, dark-shingled family home on a tucked-away street in Puyallup. Cox believes Josh was set on marrying a Mormon girl. Though Josh’s mom was a devout Mormon, his dad, with whom he lived after his parents’ divorce when he was 16, not so much. “Mormon wives tend to be more submissive,” said Cox. “Husbands and wives are partners, but the man is the head of the household, and Josh wanted a wife who recognized that.” In a short period of time, “Susan fell in love with Josh and wanted to be married,” said her mom, Judy. But her dad amended: “She was in love with the idea of marriage.” Nine years later, Susan would vanish and her sons would be murdered by her suicidal husband.
Figure 9.1. Young animal-lover Susan Cox relaxes outdoors, long before Josh Powell would become part of her life. Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.
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Figure 9.2. Susan and Josh stop for a snapshot on a hiking date. Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.
Judy Cox never trusted Josh; he seemed rude and “off.” Chuck had misgivings, too. Josh first hit on their oldest daughter, Mary, whom he also met at the singles Mormon congregation in Washington. He showed up at the Cox’s Puyallup house, uninvited, the night of Mary’s senior prom. She was getting ready to go out with her boyfriend as Josh sat in the living room talking to Judy. He was still there when a perturbed Mary returned home later that night, still with her date, and Chuck finally had to tell Josh to go.
“He was odd,” said Judy. “There was something off about him.” Unfazed that his attentions were rebuffed by Mary, he moved on a few years later to her younger sister, Susan. Judy didn’t understand Susan’s attraction to Josh. Both Judy and Chuck were troubled when a thrilled Susan accepted Josh’s marriage proposal some five months after they began to date. “We weren’t sure about this guy, but we believe in letting our kids live their own lives,” explained Chuck.
The union nearly fell apart within hours of the young couple’s wedding at the LDS Mormon Temple in Portland, Oregon. Susan overheard her father-in-law tell Josh: “Well, she’s not a lawyer or a doctor, but she’ll do.” Josh just smiled. A stunned Susan, close to tears, rushed to tell her mother what she had overheard, and Judy seized a final opportunity to get Josh out of her daughter’s life. Surrounded by the sound of wedding guests celebrating a marriage she felt sick about, Judy counseled: “Call it off right now. We’ll make an announcement, apologize to people, return the gifts, and let them enjoy the rest of the reception.” But Susan stuck by her man.
Figure 9.3. Susan Cox cuddles up with beau Josh Powell at the wedding reception for her big sister Denise. Courtesy of Charles and Judy Cox.
What seemed to be Josh’s maturity and stability as he wooed Susan quickly dissolved over the following few years. He didn’t finish his college degree and fell into a pattern of ditching or being fired from a series of jobs—sometimes as quickly as two weeks after starting—after he quit the contract work for the local schools. He jumped from work at a car dealership, Home Depot, an eldercare facility, Wells Fargo, and in real-estate sales. He was cantankerous about jobs he was able to find, inevitably complained about his bosses and colleagues, kvetched that the workers needed a union, and was often irritated that his work was “beneath” him. “He was Mr. Know Everything, and always had a complaint about where he worked,” recalls Chuck. “He would call me up to complain, and I would tell him, ‘Slow down, Josh, you don’t want to lose this job, too.’” What the Coxes didn’t know then about Josh—but would later learn from his parents’ divorce documents—was that he had been a seriously troubled teen. The divorce proceedings years earlier revealed that Josh had tried to hang himself at the age of 13, killed his sister’s pet gerbils, and once threatened his mother with a butcher knife. Steven Powell accused Josh’s mom, Terrica, of practicing an ersatz Mormonism mixed with the occult that he described as “witchcraft and devil worship” that he said harmed their five children. Terrica accused Steven Powell in the same divorce proceedings of an obsession with pornography—material she said he shared with their three sons—and of mental and physical abuse. Terrica told the court she believed her husband needed “serious medical help” due to some mysterious “underlying problem.” He proclaimed he had a “right” to take another wife and had his eye on a married woman, detailing sexual fantasies about her in his journal, according to Terrica’s legal filings. Her husband also turned on the children “far more violently than was necessary or fair,” including yelling, name-calling and spankings that were “too forceful or too long,” when he became upset about their behavior, she charged in the court documents. Josh was a particular target of abuse by his father. “For years, he pointedly attacked Josh very frequently, nearly every day for a time,” Terrica added. Steven admitted he found Josh difficult to discipline. “At times I have no idea how to handle Josh,” he noted in divorce documents. “He is very independent, and he is now a little taller than I, and may, with his regular weight-lifting, be a little stronger and bulkier than I. I cannot spank him. Spanking didn’t even help when he was younger.”
Josh became withdrawn as a teenager, “unwilling to interact, even to make eye contact for a year or two,” said Terrica in the divorce filings. “He seemed to have a soul-deep hurt because of his dad’s erratic and explosive behavior.” According to Josh’s older sister Jennifer Graves, who believed he and his dad developed a twisted special relationship, Josh’s behavior soon morphed into aggression, and he began to emulate his father’s cocky, demanding attitude, particularly toward women, she would testify years later in a court case against her father. The males in her family, especially Josh, frightened Terrica, Josh’s mom argued in her divorce deposition. “There have been times when I have been afraid of Steve and/or the boys because of their extremely hateful behavior,” Terrica said. “They group together and stir each other up to almost a fever pitch at times. Their vehemence has often flashed in their eyes and body language, making me feel threatened.” When she once asked Josh to show her more respect, he responded: “You have to earn respect, Mom. What have you done to earn my respect?” But even worse, Terrica said, Josh and his brother, John, then 15, pushed and hit her. Once, when she tried to get Josh to wash the dinner dishes, he turned to her with a butcher knife in his hand, flashed it near her face and warned: “Don’t push it, Mom.” Terrica recalled, “I felt extreme fear when Josh made a veiled threat at me with a butcher knife in his hand. His demeanor was menacing.”
While the Coxes knew nothing at the time about the disturbing descriptions of Josh in the divorce proceedings, they continued to be troubled by Josh’s behavior and found him curiously disconnected. He expected strict organization from Susan, but was distracted and disorganized himself. He had a habit of showing up to appointments hours late. The Coxes found one visit from Susan and the family after the couple had moved from Washington to Utah particularly worrisome, they recounted to me in their Puyallup home. Josh, running some errands, was to show up at their house to collect Susan and the boys for a ferry outing. Susan dressed the boys warmly to be ready to go at the appointed time because she knew Josh would be irritated if he had to wait for them when he arrived. But he showed up nearly four hours later. Susan seemed largely unconcerned about Josh’s behavior, perhaps because of her lack of experience in relationships or an instinctive loyalty to her husband—or her enduring optimistic personality, her parents thought.
More troubling was Josh’s behavior during the birth of Charlie. The Coxes traveled to the couple’s home in Utah to help before Susan’s expected due date. As she went into labor at home, Josh remained stationed were he often was: in front of his computer screen. It was Chuck Cox who had to tell Josh to shut down the computer and take his wife to the hospital. Josh ended up following Susan and her parents in a separate car two hours later because he said he needed time to back up his computer files. He took his laptop along and immediately set it up in the hospital room as Susan’s parents ministered to their daughter. Finally, his father-in-law had to grasp him by the shoulders, take the laptop from h
is hands, and tell him, “Josh, Susan needs you now.” Charlie was born in minutes. As Chuck Cox held Susan’s hand after her first baby was born, her dad recalled, “She looked at me, and said, ‘Dad, did you see how Josh helped me? He really cares. Did you see that?’”
The storm warnings then were developing into a full-blown hurricane in Susan’s life in Utah by the time her firstborn boy was three years old. The winning suitor with the big ideas who had wooed Susan had profoundly changed by 2008 to become a nervous, bitter control freak who dominated every aspect of her life in West Valley City. She was expected to run the household with a budget so pared by Josh that it threatened adequate nutrition for her and the boys, who picked at surrounding fruit trees and their own vegetable garden to supplement their diet. Josh had commanded Susan not to buy any meat other than hotdogs and to fill in the amount of each grocery-store purchase she made on an Excel spreadsheet at Josh’s basement desk. Josh also ordered Susan not to waste funds on her favorite small treats like makeup and yarn for crocheting, or that “other crap you buy.” Nor was he willing to spend the $20 copay required by Susan’s health insurance for the psychological counseling his wife so desperately craved to help repair the couple’s marriage. From remaining funds Josh allowed Susan, she had to eke out daycare payments so their boys could be looked after while she went to her office because Josh often claimed to be too busy at his basement “work station” in front of his computer—where Susan suspected he actually spent much of his time surfing Internet porn sites. Despite Josh’s insistence on total oversight of the family funds, it was Susan who was usually the family’s sole breadwinner. She dutifully deposited her paychecks in their joint bank account, and he decided how the funds would be dispensed. For much of their time in Utah, Josh was only sporadically employed and cooking up costly entrepreneurial schemes while staring at his computer screen.
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