c. 1997 Religion News Service
HAMILTON, N.J. _ Just hours after learning that her daughter Megan had been murdered, Maureen Kanka opened her door and, she said, unexpectedly encountered God on her front lawn.
“That Saturday evening, there were hundreds of people here,” Kanka said,recalling the gathering of those who had helped search for Megan. “I remember standing out on the front porch, and there was so much love in my yard and on this street.
“I remembered saying to my sisters, `God is here.’I could feel him all around us. It was really awesome. I just knew.”
Since those initial hours following 7-year-old Megan’s death in July 1994, Maureen Kanka said faith in God has been her family’s anchor, sustaining them through a turbulent three years.
It was a time in which the Kankas sought to come to grips with the personal tragedy, even as they led a movement to enact legislative safeguards to protect the public from sexual predators like Jesse Timmendequas, the neighbor who raped and murdered Megan.
“My feeling is that God didn’t choose for that to happen to Megan,” said Maureen Kanka. “But I believe God used Megan as an instrument and us as a tool to try and make a difference for children worldwide.”
While Timmendequas’ recent death sentence brought the criminal case to a close, Megan’s life and death remain everyday issues for her family. In the Kanka home on Barbara Lee Drive, things will never again be “normal.”
“There’s no such thing as closure,” said Maureen Kanka. “It’s an end of having to deal with (Timmendequas). There is no closure. It hasn’t brought our daughter back.
“Ultimately, the one thing I think about is her fear and pain and what she went through in that house, and that’ll never go away.”
But from the depths of her grief, Maureen Kanka found hope and comfort through a deep personal faith, which she said was a source of stability and guidance during the drive to enact Megan’s Law and the six-week trial of her killer.
She is convinced God used miracles to encourage her, and Maureen Kanka _ a Roman Catholic who does not go to church with any regularity _ prays daily.
“When Megan died, God showed me that he was there for me,” she said. “I put all my faith in him. I went from believing to actually knowing for sure that he is there.
“I talk to God every day, and I talk to my daughter every day,” she added. “I believe they can hear me.”
The process of mourning a child has rarely been so public as it has for Richard and Maureen Kanka and their two surviving children, Jessica and Jeremy.
Megan’s death hit the American public with unusual intensity. Her picture, all bright eyes and chubby cheeks, broke through the emotional detachment with which many people digest gruesome crime stories. As the Kankas publicly confronted every parent’s worst nightmare, a nation responded.
Thrust into the spotlight, the couple used their visibility to work on behalf of children’s safety issues. While academics and lawyers debated the dueling constitutional rights of victims and sex offenders, the emotional power of the experiences of the Kankas and other victims’ families prevailed again and again in legislatures across the country.
But it has also been a time in which the Kankas have confronted the most weighty spiritual issues.
How could a supposedly benevolent God allow such atrocities to be visited upon an innocent 7-year-old?
“I went from blaming God to wondering: Even if it had to happen to her, why did she have to die?”said Maureen Kanka. “I now know that God didn’t do that to her.”
She said her husband, Richard, has struggled with some of these issues.
“He’s had a lot of feelings as far as `How could God allow something like this to happen’ _ a lot of blaming God,” she said. “He has a hard time with how God couldn’t intervene and let her live.”
While giving the victim-impact statement during Timmendequas’ trial, Richard Kanka spoke about the emotional toll the murder has taken on his family.
“It feels as raw as if it happened yesterday,” he said. “We want life, as it was, back and don’t know if it ever can be (the same) again. We worry about the impact Megan’s death has had on her brother and sister, and pray for their well-being each day. It has been necessary for Jeremy and Jessica to undergo therapy sessions to deal with the loss of their little sister.
“We grieve differently and take our frustrations out on each other. Sometimes we don’t know if we will withstand the pain as a family or if we will be a family in the future. We had a responsibility as parents to protect her from harm, and feel that we failed her.”
Maureen Kanka said that Jeremy and Jessica “still have the anger” but have been supportive of their parents’ high-profile efforts on behalf of Megan’s Law, which requires state authorities to inform communities of the presence of convicted sex offenders like Timmendequas.
“I remember one day asking Jeremy, `Do you want me to stop?’, and he said, `No, Mom, this is something you’re doing for Megan,”’ Maureen Kanka recalled. “I was very proud of him.”
Maureen Kanka was raised a Catholic, participating in all the sacraments and rites of the religion. Still, she had stopped attending church for some years prior to Megan’s murder. Afterward, she briefly returned to the church, only to stop again, saying church attendance was just not for her.
Despite that, she said she has always believed in God. But her understanding changed the night she learned of Megan’s death.
Many Christians experience supernatural “signs” and miracles that they believe cannot be explained other than by the presence of God. A much smaller number are willing to talk publicly about these moments.
But Maureen Kanka freely shares accounts of what she believes are miracles.
“I started experiencing things,” she said. “I had a sign (from God), and it was a white butterfly. I’d sit on the front steps of the house, and this white butterfly would come, every day. It would actually be right around me.”
Maureen Kanka said the butterfly visitations were manifestations of God’s presence. When winter came and the butterflies stopped coming, her family and friends surprised her with a special butterfly pin.
She said she is completely confident that Megan is in heaven.
“I had Megan come to me in a dream,” she said. “I asked her if she was all right. She said, `Mom, I’m OK.’ I knew she was all right.
“I grieve and I cry all the time,” she said. “But I believe God has blessed me and let me know that she’s OK. I know many people lose children and never have that experience.”
The doctrines and beliefs of the Christian faith aren’t always easily digested, however. Take Jesus’ admonition to his followers to love their enemies.
Perhaps Jesus can love Jesse Timmendequas, Maureen Kanka said. But she can’t. She doesn’t even speak his name, referring to her daughter’s killer only as “him.”
“One of the things I struggle with is that God loves everyone,” she said. “It’s a difficult thing to look at him. I’m sure that God loves him also.
“That was a hard thing in the beginning. I remember a conversation with Father Paul (Rimassa, pastor at Hamilton’s Our Lady of Sorrows parish), where I said, `If he asks forgiveness, will he be in heaven with Megan?’ Father told me yes, he would, but that he has to truly want forgiveness.
“You also have to understand that God is just,” she quickly added. “We have to atone for our sins.”
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The trial of Timmendequas, which lasted six weeks, was one of the most grueling and emotional periods for the Kankas. It meant seeing Timmendequas in court every day.
It also meant listening as prosecutors led the county coroner and Hamilton police officers through exhaustive testimony of how Megan was brutalized _ molested, choked with a belt for at least five minutes, stuffed in a toy chest and dumped in Mercer County Park, where Timmendequas then sodomized her lifeless body.
Yet Richard and Maureen Kanka were in court every day. The details of the crime, awful as they were, actually helped the couple make peace with an issue they’d agonized over _ why God couldn’t have allowed their daughter to survive her initial assault.
“It was only then that we realized that after being choked with the belt for so long, she was brain dead,” said Maureen Kanka. “I believe that God actually blessed us by taking Megan, because she wouldn’t have been the same.”
The guilty verdict was never much in doubt. But the team of public defenders representing Timmendequas mounted a vigorous effort to spare their client the death penalty, presenting videotaped testimony from his brother Paul, who said young Jesse had been beaten and sexually assaulted by his father as he grew up in a remarkably dysfunctional household.
“During the penalty phase when they talked about his childhood, Richard and I for the first time had compassion,” said Maureen Kanka. “That was a difficult feeling to have for someone who killed our little girl.”
That feeling dissipated, however, when prosecutor Kathryn Flicker countered that testimony with evidence that Paul Timmendequas had offered numerous versions of his childhood and now supported his brother’s execution.
As the penalty phase closed, Timmendequas stood and offered a brief apology, saying he prayed for Megan and the Kankas every day and asking the jury to allow him to live so he could “have an understanding of how something like this could happen.”
“I didn’t believe it for a minute,” said Maureen Kanka.
Richard Kanka then rose and told the jury about Megan. Her love for animals. Her concern for neighbors. Her knack for playing peacemaker in domestic quarrels. And the pain of the missing fifth seat at the family dinner table.
“For her brief seven years of life, she captured the hearts of everyone who knew her,” he said. “We thank God for allowing us to have had the joy that Megan brought to us.”
Although the Catholic Church is a steadfast opponent of the death penalty, the Kankas supported the decision to seek Timmendequas’ execution.
“I mean no disrespect to the church, but I don’t believe everything in my religion,” said Maureen Kanka. “We also have to remember what this crime was about. It was a brutal act to a little child who couldn’t defend herself.”
Nevertheless, the penalty phase was an emotionally draining time for the family.
“I struggled that week,” said Maureen Kanka. “It’s not a simple matter. I struggled with the fact that the jury would have to make a life-altering decision, both for him and for them as well. It’s the only time in the past three years I never asked God for a decision. I felt what happened was God’s will.”
MJP END MILLER
