When I was a child, I kept a journal infrequently. I’d write a few sentences…nothing too exciting. By the time I turned 12 I started writing more often, and my teenage years got even more frequent entries.
These journal entries are silly…fluffy…embarrassing…and hilarious to read now, looking back. They’re full of crushes on boys; my hopes and fears; incidents from my daily life, both mundane and earth-shattering. They also show some things I was truly sad about. I wrote about them as I wanted, giving full sway to my feelings because, hey, these were totally private, right? No one would EVER read them…unless I gave my kids permission to read them when they were old enough.
This seems like a basic truth, or right, that everyone on earth should have: their own right to privacy in their thoughts and feelings…their private thoughts, kept in a private journal, diary, or notebook, contained safely away from prying eyes, not something that anyone else should ever see unless the writer chooses to share.
My friend Susan Cox Powell kept many journals during her teenage years and beyond. She filled volumes with her private thoughts, her private feelings. Her hopes, her dreams…probably a lot of angst…teenage melodrama, fun, anger. She felt free to vent her feelings and thoughts in those journals, secure in the knowledge that they were safe to her. She may have at some future point chosen to share those journals with her sons, but she certainly never read even one page of those journals to her closest friends or even her family.
Now Susan is gone: missing, disappeared, snatched from her boys, her parents and sisters, her friends, her life. She has been missing for 19 months without a trace. Susan’s parents have nothing left of her but memories and photographs. They don’t even have her sons—Susan’s husband Josh has denied them access to even visit their own grandsons.
Who has Susan’s journals? Is it her parents, who respected Susan’s right to privacy and never read her journals?
NO. Susan’s private journals—the diaries of a teen girl—are in the hands of the Josh and Steve Powell family.
Do the Powells respect the privacy and sanctity of her journals? Do they offer, out of the kindness of their hearts, to give these journals to the Cox family for safekeeping? Do they keep them stored away safely, so her sons could read them someday and get to know their mother, who was ripped away from them?
NO. The Powells READ Susan’s journals. Her father-in-law, Steve Powell—a man who should be trying to find Susan, and who should be cooperating with the police, and urging his son, Josh Powell, to cooperate with police—has gone on national television, not once, but twice, most recently this morning on the NBC Today show—to announce to the world that he has not only READ all of Susan’s private teenage journals, but he is planning to publish them on a new website, starting this week.
What kind of a man does this?
What kind of a person not only violates the sacred privacy of a young girl by reading her thoughts…thoughts that she wrote down before she ever met Josh, his father, or anyone in his family…but also decides he’s going to publish her private thoughts to the entire world?
Susan is gone. She was taken away from all she holds dear. Her family and friends are heartbroken, and her sons are without their mother. She is not here to be her own voice, to stand up in defense of her thoughts, her feelings, her past actions, her life.
This is so wrong, on every level. This is an act of total depravity. And I hope the people of this country and this world will realize this and stand up for Susan, for truth, for justice. Tell your friends and everyone you know in any way you can—in person, through blogs, Facebook, Twitter–that Susan Cox Powell is still missing, that she has been taken away from her sons, that her life is not the Powell’s to lay open and expose every detail of her teen years. Those things are Susan’s alone to reveal, and she is not here to do it. Stand up for Susan. And please, pray for her, her sons Charlie and Braden, and the Cox family. Truth WILL prevail. Justice WILL be done. And there is a loving God in heaven who will not stand by and watch these immoral, cruel acts to be perpetrated over and over on the innocent.
I could not agree with you more. I’ve always thought there was a special place in hell for Steve and Josh Powell. They cannot get there soon enough in my opinion. It is not right to read another person’s journal unless they invite you to. Period.
Thanks, Angie.
This is terrible! How can these men look themselves in the mirror every day? Surely there must be some way to stop him? I’m stunned that someone would do something like this!
I cannot tell you how angry I was this morning…. how dare they drag her name through the mud! It’s just another way of showing that they don’t care about “finding” her, they only care about making sure she is to “blame” for her disappearance and look like the good guys. We all know who is to blame for Susan being taken away from her boys, her family and friends. Justice will prevail, whether its here on earth or in the afterlife, it must
!!!!!
[…] public’s feelings. Emotions on Facebook groups and pages are running high today, as well as personal blog posts and Twitter. A new Facebook page, “Stop Josh Powell from Publishing Susan Cox Powell’s […]
I can’t even imagine what her family is going through and now they have to deal with this!…It just sickens me, even if he changes his mind it still say’s something about his character that he even thought that in the first place!
Another sad day, when things like this happen.
It’s disgusting! It’s heartbreaking and horrifying. Siblings snoop through each others diaries and journals growing up, and taunt one another with what is learned from snooping. We hold it over each others heads as a means of blackmail, using stolen knowledge to have the sibling do our chores in order for secrets to be kept. I was a teenager once! Now I am 31 years old. The thought of doing something sneaky like that now is just sick. Once you’ve reached adulthood, you’re supposed to have outgrown that ignorance and stupidity. Grown ups don’t do what the Powell’s are doing!! They have no conscience. They have no love or concern for anyone other than themselves. I am so sorry that Susan’s loved ones are going through this.
I was so deeply disturbed by the today show interview featuring Steve Powell that although I truly try not to judge anyone’s guilt or innocence I am not robbed of good judgment. I have always doubted Josh’s innocence in Susan’s disappearance. Now I seriously wonder about his father. Correct me if I’m wrong most of what I know of the case comes only from the news articles I’ve read but 1. Wasn’t it Steve Powell that Susan didn’t want her kids around? 2. Steve Powell refuses to talk to the police to quote him ” they burned their bridge.” dismissing a legit investigation into his DIL disappearance and treating them like annoying, nosy neighbors instead of giving them the respect and attention that such an investigation dearly deserves.3. He over-inflates his importance in the community and the importance of his job.4. He over inflates his role in Susan and Josh’s family.5. Finally,reading and possibly publishing Susan’s Journals…is in my opinion a act not to build any kind of defense but the act of a man ( or Men ) to exhibit some kind of final control and humiliation on a beautiful young woman who deserves to be with her children, happily watching them grow up. It is disgusting and as long as we are calling it what it is… we should call it evil.
[…] Powell’s best friend, Kiirsi Hellewell, expressed her thoughts on the journals in a July 14 post to her online blog, “Pieces of […]
Mary, thank you for your comment. I agree with every word of it. True evil is right.
[…] on the Today show last month that he had read all 2,000 pages of Susan’s childhood journals and planned to transcribe them and release them to the […]
[…] Comments « Utter Depravity […]
[…] feelings about the absolute immorality and depravity of such an act—reading a teenage girl’s journals and planning to publish them to the world […]
Oh my goodness. Thats exactly how I felt! I dang near wrote that verbatium. Please accept my heartfelt sorrow at the sudden and perplexing loss of your friend. When her little boys grow up, and they see this, and read everything said about her, they will know what a loving and true friend you are to her.
Again, I do not even know Susan but I do know she is a mother, and a daughter, a sister I believe as well and a friend.
I simply cannot wait for justice to be served. I truly believe the Powell’s when they said they have no problem sleeping at night. Sociopaths rarely do. 🙂
Additionally, (wow I am SO angry). I am so sick and tired of what is happening to our nations women and children. Murder, abuse, exploitation, objectification, the nations missing list growing at ever increasing rates.
Frustrated!
Now that we know Steve Powell’s “feelings” for Susan, I’m sure he (for a lack of better words) got off on reading all her private thoughts. It’s despicable and it only shows the character of the parties involved, unfortunately.
[…] very pleased with this decision, and so was the online community of those who love and care about Susan’s right to privacy of her own teenage thoughts, feelings and dreams. Share this:TwitterLike this:LikeBe the first to […]
So much has happened in the case, about Susan’s disapearance, now about Josh blowing up the home, after chopping the boys in the necks??? Lord, why does a father do this , who said he could not HE HE HE HE could not go on without his boys??? Only to murder them???
I now believe Josh grew up in a very sick household, with the father so heavily into child porn? I believe he probably molested his own son. And for that matter, his own grandsons. Is it any wonder that the little boys were like robots? Children molested, grow up with twisted thoughts and memories, thanks to creeps like Steve and then the son.
I think Susan was trying to protect her beloved boys, FROM the sick family of Josh, and especially from Steve Joshe’s father. What an animal to harm children, helpless children, and then so sad that Josh could not find it in him to seek some professional help, but instead kills them all. End of family,,,,,I pray for Susan’s family. I think Susan knew too much, and may have been taken advantage of by Steve especially and when Josh was told a lie or two by his “father”– perhaps he went off on her, murdering her AFTER she was released from the trunk of the car in the snow storm,,,,, and he did away with her and TOLD the boys she disapeared that night. I believe he murdered her in the snow, all proof gone basically when the snow melts, he probably dumped or burried her body out there some place.
What a sick family poor Susan married into, and I just bet Josh was quite angry (even from being molested as a kid himself by Steve) and grew up sick inside. He would be devistated as a man, finding out or hearing from his dad, what a tramp Susan was,,,,,,,,Lies,,,,,all sick lies.
I pray for all concerened, and hope that Steve is kept in prison for a long long time.