After a long day, this was not an easy movie to watch but a very rewarding experience all the same. Dear Zachary is about many things - about a very brave couple who continue to strive against loss no human being should have to endure. It is also about a justice system and bureaucracy that failed spectacularly and also about a young man who had touched a disproportionate number of lives in the short lease of life he was granted. Finally it is about a beloved baby who died needlessly, killed by his own mother. It takes a tragedy of this scale for the deep flaws in the justice systems to become commonly visible. In the meanwhile, every day, it is a death by thousand cuts and children continue to be hurt, their pain unseen and unheard - and even when there is a cause celebre like Gabriel Hernandez, there is no lasting, durable change.
The presumption that a parent - specially a mother is somehow beyond reproach just because of the facts of biology is at the root of much of such tragedies. A woman can be a deeply flawed human being and becoming a mother does not magically render her perfect. The stories that make news headlines and the subject of documentaries are at the extreme end of the spectrum where the depravity of the mother is such that no reasonable person can ignore it. The smaller infractions add up across society and no one is counting those or the cost to the physical and mental health of the children such women are mothers to. Unfortunately, there is little to no recourse for those children, their problems will not even rise up to the level that garners legal or social services attention. Sadly the stores of Zachary and Gabriel are just the tip of that colossal ice-berg.
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