News-Leader editorial: Use anger over Rowan Ford's death wisely

An editorial in today's Springfield News-Leader suggests that the anger over the death of nine-year-old Rowan Ford of Stella needs to be channeled in a positive direction:

But we believe the best advice for southwest Missourians upset over another senseless death because of our community's problem with child abuse is to not quite let go of our anger but to redirect it.

We should be angry.

We should be angry that such deaths continue to occur around us with too much frequency. We should be upset that even calls to the child abuse hotline don't protect our children. We should be mad that after Dominic James, DJ Parker and Rowan Ford, little changes.

We should be so horrified over the fact that child abuse rates — and domestic violence rates, as well — are higher in our region than other parts of the state that we don't stop fighting for justice until those rates come down.

We're not looking for blame here. We're confident the courts will properly assign the blame for Rowan's death.

But if we don't do something about our rates of violence in southwest Missouri, then we are all to blame.