In her 2016 memoir, "A Mother's Reckoning," Sue Klebold, the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold, wrote about struggling to call her son a "monster" after he killed 13 people in 1999. "When I hear about terrorists in the news, I think, 'That's somebody's kid,'" she wrote in the book.
Peter Rodger, the father of Isla Vista killer Elliot Rodger, wrestled with similar confusion and guilt. He remembers sitting in horror, watching his son's retribution video, which he posted on YouTube before stabbing, shooting, and using a car to hit bystanders in 2014. "Elliot was far from evil," Rodger told ABC that year. "Something happened to him. He was the most beautiful, kind, sweetheart of a boy."
Family therapist Rachel Goldberg said it's very hard for parents to heal after such tragedies. She emphasized the need for parents to find self-compassion and "separate their identity from their child's actions", no matter how challenging.
Annie Wright, another family therapist, noted how such events "force us as parents to contend with our worst fears, the lack of control, at some level, over who they become."
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