The Mollie Tibbetts Case in Perspective

The death of Mollie Tibbetts is horrifying. The photos of Mollie’s open smile and the video clips of her laughter show the whole world a remarkable young woman taken away far too soon. I cannot imagine the pain her family and friends must be going through and my heart is with them all.

As soon as it was determined that Mollie’s killer was an immigrant, her death turned into a flash point on immigration – evidence of a failure in our migration policies, according to our President.

The Tibbets family – unlike the cohort of “angel families” who lost relatives at the hands of migrants and who campaigned with Trump – have eschewed the politicization of Mollie’s death. One aunt wrote of Facebook: “Please remember, Evil comes in EVERY color. Our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.” A friend of Mollie’s also wrote: “Please do not compound the atrocity of what happened to her by adding racism and hate to the equation..Anyone that knew Mollie knows she wouldn’t want that. Respect each other, support each other but most importantly BE KIND!”

Two statistics may be of interest to those trying to make sense of this terrible tragedy.

One – American women are most likely to die as a result of intimate partner (and former partner) violence. Something like 2.54 women a day die in this fashion. Mollie’s death falls into the small percentage of murders at the hands of strangers (16%).

Second, evidence suggests that “Undocumented immigrants are considerably less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens, with immigrants legally in the United States even less likely to do so.” But crimes by migrants do happen, and Mollie was the unfortunate victim of such a crime.

-KitJ