When Jennifer Wilbanks took off on a nearly fifteen hundred mile odyssey across country to escape her impending wedding, I sincerely doubt that she understood the panic and madness that it would cause. I sincerely don't believe she ever expected to be on CNN, to have a nation-wide search party looking for her or to be the center of a major news story. Unfortunately for her, that's exactly what happened.
However, now that the dust has settled, the manhunt called off and the truth is known, authorities and the nation at large face the difficult question of what to do with her. Police point to several laws that her feigned kidnapping broke and the city of Duluth, population barely over 20,000, wasted nearly sixty thousand dollars looking for the woman and her imaginary abductors.
However, the issues isn't as complicated as the media would like us to think it is. For, no matter how much we all find this runaway bride, so scared by her impending grand wedding that she feigned her own kidnapping, a sympathetic character, we have to take any and all appropriate action against her. Even though we've all been scared and done dumb things, the truth is those stupid decisions do carry consequences and we've all paid them. To let her off the hook because we sympathize with her not only creates a two-tier justice system, but is a slap to everyone who has paid in full.
The simple truth is that there is a right way and a wrong way to handle these types of things. Yes, calling off a grand wedding a few days before it was due to take place is a very stressful thing and a very unpopular decision, but there is an established protocol for doing it. At the very least, when she placed her now-famous call claiming to be kidnapped, she could have come clean and told the truth. Yes, people would have been angry, but at least they wouldn't have worried nor would they have involved the entire country in a massive search for her. Most importantly of all, no laws would have been broken and these lingering questions would not be hanging around.
This is a free country, even though it doesn't seem that way sometimes. In the United States, you are perfectly free to go anywhere, anytime, and to call off your wedding, no matter how grand, in the moments before. However, as a matter of courtesy, we all ask that you actually deal with the problems such a move creates and, as a matter of law, not do anything that would waste the time and resources of police and authorities.
However, the problem is that Ms. Wilbanks didn't want to deal with the consequences of her decision to call off the wedding, that's why she made up the story, and she doesn't want to deal with the natural consequences of her lies today. She's expressed only mild remorse for what she's done and the damage she's caused. After all, while police all over the country were looking for her, they could have been solving real crimes and her friends and family could have been moving on with their lives, not spending every waking moment looking for her.
She probably didn't expect this to go as far as it did, that much is certain, but she had to know that filing a false police report and making false statements to authorities are both crimes. Furthermore, even if she didn't know what the outcome would be, she had to know that some public funds would be spent finding her. Even though there's a lot wrong with this country, we're not in the habit of letting people be kidnapped without making an effort to look for them.
In the end, Ms. Wilbanks isn't a sympathetic character at all. She's a selfish woman who feigned a kidnapping because she didn't want to deal with the consequences of canceling a wedding. She wasn't responsible enough to look her friends, family and husband-to-be in the eye and tell the truth. Instead, she created a story that sparked a nationwide manhunt and news sensation. It was a poor decision, to put it mildly, but now she's trying to skirt the consequences that come with that as well.
At some point we, as a nation, have to put our foot down and make people take responsibility for their decisions, even when they don't want to. That's exactly what our legal system, both criminal and civil, is there for and it's time we used it accordingly.
If we don't, there's not much point in having it at all.
I will never understand people … didn't she already get in trouble with the law once before??
I was sympathetic at first because you imagine the family pressure she may have had but clearly what she did was wrong and she should have to apologise and pay up the money for the search as punishment.
Selfishness doesnt even begin to cover this women what if at this time a young child went missing and most resources were already focused on this 'kidnapped' bride, what then…?
She is selfish and naive in her attitude to justice and should pay the price.
Woh yah totally agrea in the morning when i herd the news of her being missing i prayed and all this and told other poeple how i felt and it was a totall drag that she was just faking it
I'll admit, I was sympathetic to her at first…but I can see your point. I think what she did was incredibly thoughtless and immature (to say the least) and I think she should have apologized in person to the media instead of her Preacher, but that's just me. I wonder what the outcome of this case will be. One things for sure this has been one of the craziest cases I've ever seen. I thought it was humorous at first, but the more you learn, the less funny it is. But I wonder, what are they gonna do with her? Well, we'll just have to wait and see, I guess…
Your poetry has really inspired me to write some of my own, it may not be as good as yours, and it may never be. But, thank you for the inspiration!
Heh.Its strange and a bit off topic here but bear with me.Ravens poems are good but i mean that in al posible respect are simply put, very barely above average.His stories in my oppinion though are a whole other deal.He is original in the ideas and characters and the wornig of his stories.Even his poems are more in the way of a rhyming story than a poem.Yet i find no one ever felt inspired by his stories.
Oh and about this bride.Well simply put she is childish.We learn at about 15 that coming clean is probablly better than waiting for the end and hoping you get off scot free.Seems like she didnt .Oh well.Let her foot the bill i say.Course with the US justice system she is likely to sue for something done against her in that manhunt and actualy win.