Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns says that one of his most important priorities is “protecting our families, with an added focus on initiatives which will help ensure the health, safety and success of our children.”
This would be a pretty good time for Gov. Johanns to show that he means it. No one else in authority in his state seems capable of it.
As we reported Sunday, a 6-year-old boy is on the verge of being ordered sent to a Nebraska state prison for sleepovers with his mother, who is serving two life sentences for brutally murdering two people.
The woman — Kimberly Faust, 35 — lured Shannon Bluhm, who Faust believed was having a relationship with Faust’s estranged husband, to a rural area in Otoe County where she stabbed Bluhm repeatedly. Faust then left Bluhm bleeding in a car, and set the car on fire. A man who lived nearby — Robert Parminter, 45 — saw the car in flames, and ran from his house to see if he could help whoever might be inside. As he was trying to rescue Shannon Bluhm, who by then was on fire herself, Kimberly Faust returned and shot him to death, then shot Bluhm. Mr. Parminter left a widow and three young children.
Prosecutors wanted Kimberly Faust sent to the electric chair, but she got the life sentences instead. And now she is demanding that her 6-year-old son be brought to the prison so he can sleep there with her twice a month.
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In Nebraska, children between the ages of 1 and 8 can be sent to their mothers’ prisons for sleepovers. The reasoning is that for mothers who will soon come back into society, the sleepovers can keep the family connected. But Kimberly Faust is never coming back into society — as a double murderer, she’s in prison for life, twice.
But because her former husband, Bruce Faust, agreed in their divorce to allow her to have overnight visits with the child, Kimberly Faust has taken him to court, and is saying he is guilty of civil contempt because he does not want his son to sleep in prison twice a month. The former husband says he did not realize he was agreeing to literally send the boy to prison.
A judge in Otoe County, Neb. — Judge Randall Rehmeier — is apparently befuddled by all of this. Last week, Rehmeier told Bruce Faust that if he doesn’t agree to do what his wife is demanding, Faust could be sent to jail for contempt. Faust could not afford an attorney; he is scheduled to be back before the judge Monday with a court-appointed lawyer.
Which is where Gov. Johanns should come in. At some point, someone in a position of responsibility has to say: Enough is enough. Regardless of what you think of the message of sending children to sleep in a prison — as if prison is just another lifestyle choice, one that young boys and girls should become accustomed to because that is where their parents are living — requiring the boy in this particular case to sleep there would be appalling. This is a woman who ruthlessly killed two people, one of whom was only trying to save a stranger in need; this is a woman whose own defense attorneys have said she is unable to handle stress, and does not appreciate the consequences of her actions.
And the 6-year-old boy is going to be ordered to the prison where she is locked up, because she wants him to sleep in her company? Putting the safety issues aside for a moment — not that anyone should — does the state of Nebraska really want to force the boy through the psychological torment of shuttling between a state prison and his home, friends and school?
You would think that by now the state of Nebraska would have done the sane thing and said that this is not a question of what two people may or may not have agreed to in a divorce — this is a state matter. The state runs the prison — and a double murderer does not have the right to demand that a 6-year-old boy sleep there.
Gov. Johanns claims to care about the children of Nebraska? Then it’s time for him to say: Stop this right now. The boy is not going to be sent to sleep in a prison in this state. It’s the state’s decision, and I’m making it.
Gov. Johanns can be contacted via e-mail ([email protected]), telephone (402-471-2244), fax (402-471-6031) or mail (P.O. Box 94848, Lincoln, NE 68509).
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– Bob Greene comments on the news of the day Thursdays on the “WGN News at Nine.”