AS more and more information comes in about Jesse Matthew, the 32-year-old black former football player accused of abducting University of Virginia student, Hannah Graham, who is still missing, some compelling details have been revealed. Matthew has also been linked through DNA evidence with the murder of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington in 2009 and the rape and assault of a third woman, police say. Two other Virginia women have disappeared in that area.

Judging from the headline of The Washington Post’s story yesterday, these allegations are completely out of character for Matthew. The Post’s headline was, “Suspect in Hannah Graham disappearance described as popular athlete, ‘gentle giant.’”

This is a grotesquely misleading headline, as is the article itself.

It is true that friends described Matthew as likable and unthreatening, but the Post failed to acknowledge that a major newspaper has reported that Matthew was expelled from Liberty University in 2002, where he was studying on a sports scholarship, after he was accused of raping and assaulting a student. Liberty University has not publicly denied this report even though it has been reproduced by many news outlets. Three Post reporters could not dig up or disprove the same information or even acknowledge the other newspaper’s findings. They don’t even mention it. They do quote Liberty officials, who refuse to explain why Matthew left. They also quote the police chief at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, which Matthew attended after he left Lynchburg, as saying he has “some information that is pertinent” to the Hannah Graham case. Matthew also left Christopher Newport abruptly, after less than a year. [UPDATE: Christopher Newport officials now say that Matthew was indeed accused of sexual assault at the university. Three reporters from the Washington Post could not establish this or infer from the police chief’s statements that something serious had occurred while he was at the school.]

So the real story here is not that Matthew’s friends say he was a “gentle giant,” but that possibly two universities knew that Matthew was a dangerous person. And he was released into the world as if nothing had ever happened.

There is a further compelling detail in the Post. Matthew apparently was close to illiterate and may have been incapable of reading.

One classmate said it was clear to her that Matthew had trouble reading and that he required special attention from teachers in high school. She said he attended classes for students with learning disabilities.

[…]

One of his teammates, Terris Gregory, a wide receiver, described Matthew as “goofy” and “kind of immature.” He said Matthew, while a stellar athlete, was not “the brightest guy in the book.”

 In other words, Matthew was not qualified to be at any university.

Perhaps this helps explain Matthew’s possible obsession with and rage toward college girls. He was sent to college because he was a football player and possibly because he was black. That Liberty University boasts of its diversity is obvious from this recruitment video. He could do nothing in class because he could barely read. He was placed in a world where he did not belong and given expectations he could never fulfill. Perhaps these thwarted expectations will help explain his violent rage, if the allegations against him are true.

— Comments —

Aditya writes:

You theorize that the villain’s rage could be attributable to the realization that he was unfit for his environment. Alas, were that true! For that would be proof of the ability to be introspective, to peer into one’s soul, examine it, and discover that is wanting.

“Teens” and “youths” and similar persons such as “immigrants” from Mesoamerica or Hindus from the lower orders lack the intelligence to permit such critical self-examination. Their rage is more primitive: it emanates from the same darkness which soars out of Faustus. It’s almost as old as Creation and it will last until Creation’s final victory over Destruction.

These fiends exist solely to destroy that which is beautiful; or even that which is pretty and delicate. Moved by their inner darkness, they need no rationalization or justification: they destroy because they can and they must.

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