The May 3rd issue of the New Yorker Magazine has a compelling story written by Janet Malcolm, reporter at large."Iphigenia in Forest Hills (New York)
Anatomy of a Murder trial.
The accused is Mazoltuv Borukhova a 35 year old Physician, a very attractive small thin woman with extraordinary long flowing black hair and a face, a physical demeanor that conveys confidence, competence, compassion and unfaltering courage to meet whatever challenge the trial and beyond might bring to her life. Her destiny is in the hands of lawyers, a not impartial judge, witnesses, the jurors, none of whom seem to understand her and most of whom were convinced of her guilt before the trial began.
Janet Malcolm chose to focus on the travesty of justice afforded Mazoltuv, a fascinating emotionally draining story of seemingly unlimited scope. I chose to examine the particulars, as presented by Janet to see how this crime, whoever committed it was compelled by circumstances that forced the issue. The child's father, the former husband, had to be stopped. But why?
This true story emerges from the tightly knit ethnic group of Jewish people known as the iphigenia Jews identified by their distinctive clothes, distinctive way of life. They have strict rules seldom broken that encompass how the men and women relate to one another in public ( they don't hold hands nor show any display of physical contact). They are intensely private people living within their group(cult). Imagine the trauma afforded this ethnic group when one of their own is murdered. Murdered in plain sight of his young, four year old daughter whom he was meeting to take from her mother to his home for parental visitation. The crime was unthinkable. The public exposure of ways and customs of this cult, unbearable.
There is a long and ugly history of fathers who sexually abuse their daughters. In the film
An Americian Haunting 2006 , reviewed below, the underlying theme is the sexual deflowering of the budding teenage daughter who then goes crazy with all the hysteronics that horror flicks champion. What was less than appealing to a mature adience, the horror flick excitement, was more than made up for by the performance of Sissy Spasak who played the suffering Mother with such perfection that she left no doubt in my mind that I know this mother, I know her and so do we all. She is fully aware of her husband's night time sexual escapades, her husband's nightly assault on their daughter and chooses to look away thus by omission allowing him to abuse the one person she wanted to protect. There is an ending to this situation. The father dies. He dies and the film ends. The symptom vanishes covered up by all the right phrases, sentiments apologies. But the problem remains. Fathers who express their love for their daughter through unacceptable sexually compelled acts of physical violation. that is the issue, the problem that remains taboo, almost unspeakable.
A third exposure of this theme is the recently shown film (on Cable)The
Color of Rain. The husband, a judge by profession who gets a young heroin addict pregnant and she has the baby which he then takes as his own. He makes of the baby's mother, a weekly babysitter for which the mother must pay with sexual favors that she can't afford to deny. Not if she wants to see her daughter, to spend time with her.
In this case the young girl becomes a hero of sorts. She doesn't go to the police as Mazoltuv tried to do And she doesn't arrange for anyone to be killed. She is not a doctor, she is a street person, without professional credentials and she does what she has to do to save her daughter. She kills her. She takes a pillow and weeping quietly, she suficates her baby daughter into the quiet more tolerable hereafter.
What does Mazoltuv do? That question can not be satisfactorily answer because the fact of her husband repeatedly playing with their daughter's vagina did not get the attention such a crime by a grown professional man, whatever his religion or occupation, deserves or rather must have.
And further........
The item which proved to me beyond a doubt that Mazoltuv was not guilty of sanctioning the murder of her husband in pain sight of her daughter and friends was the one detail in the trial no one could explain.
Why did Mazoltuv fail to hear the gun shots when her husand was shot and killd? The gun had its silencer in place for the first shot but then the silencer was dislodged and the next two shots were heard by people far from the crime scene. Only Mazoltuv who was right there, bending over her estranged hsuband's body did not hear them. This detail Mazoltuv insisted on, never vied from. It remains to this day immutable.
"I did not hear the gun shots"
Why?
Have you ever walked down the street or better yet been on a subway platform and there is a loud jingle of metal as an item falls to the ground albeit a cell phone or a key ring with keys affixed. You are walking behind the sound and it pierces your ears and yet the culprit of the sound, the person whose keys or cell phone it is doesn't hear the clatter. Does hear it!
You pick the item up and return it to its rightful owner and they are momentarily confused. They didn't know the item was out of their possession,
But how could they not know, you ask. Because.....they didn't expect it. They had no reason to listen for it and they were sufficiently engaged in other matters to not hear it and certainly even if something got through to their oratory faculty, they didn't associate the sound with anything that they might be concerned with. They had more important things to hear and think about then the sound of the metal hitting the pavement or the sound of a gun shot going off somewhere in their vicinity. In this case Mazoltuv was involved with her daughter and husband as they formed a momentary bond, swinging the child between them, laughing, enjoying once again that special moment of being together. She didn't hear the gun shots because she didn't exect them and she didn't expect them because she had nothing to do with the arrangements that led to her estranged husband's demise.
The beginningof this trial, the end and everything in between does not make a pretty story. It is not just the trial that is so dreadful but the ultimate result with Mazltuv found guilty as an accomplish to the murder, her daughter at large surrounded by a paucity of love and understanding and women everywhere being given the message once again that if and when your husband or an uncle sexually assaults your child and you complain;
Beware
Your actions might lead to a life time of incarceration or worse.
Linda Zises
