It couldn't have been easy for Karyn Young - the North Augusta mom whose two young sons were killed by her estranged husband last month - to have the records of her divorce case made public. We commend her for her courage in not opposing efforts by this newspaper and The Aiken Standard to get those records unsealed.
The divorce documents show why it is in the public interest to know of the events preceding Terry Lee Young's murder-suicide in the couple's Mill Run home Jan. 8. Those documents may help the public understand how the family court system went awry, and what needs to be done to fix it.
Before taking his own life, Young drowned his younger boy, 4-year-old Ryker, and then strangled the older one, 7-year-old Gunner. Could this grisly tragedy have been avoided? According to the unsealed divorce records, the answer is "probably so" - if Family Court Judge Dale Gable had been more responsive to the mother and her witness than the father and his witnesses.
Five days before the 45-year-old father carried out his deadly deeds, Mrs. Young swore in a signed affidavit that since they separated her husband's behavior had become increasingly "erratic," even around the children. Mrs. Young's sister-in-law, with whose family Karyn was living after the separation, signed a statement in December stating that Terry Young had a problem with anger management.
Karyn Young also pointed to evidence in her divorce case last year, before Family Court Judge Peter R. Nuessle, that her husband had been consuming thousands of dollars worth of amphetamine-type diet pills that he ordered off the Internet - a whopping 270 or so a month. Imagine what that could do to shake up one's behavior.
Against all this evidence demonstrating Terry Young's strange and possibly dangerous conduct - anger management problems, popping pills, threatening violence, and stealing the kids away - he produced his Augusta Newsprint co-workers to say what a great guy and father he was.
How would they know better? Certainly Young's wife and sister-in-law had better insight into his character and conduct than his pals at work did. Yet less than a week before the murders and suicide, Judge Gable granted the father unsupervised visitation rights.
In fairness, no one would argue that judges Nuessle and Gable could have foreseen what Young would do, but given what they did know, they certainly can be faulted for bad judgment. How could Judge Gable possibly have granted the father unsupervised visitation? Supervised visitation - yes; unsupervised - no way.
And surely Judge Nuessle should have granted Karyn her divorce last year, yet he denied it on grounds she had no cause for the action. So what does it take to get a divorce in South Carolina? Nuessle also sealed the records, which might have served only to cover up his bad judgment.
No one would pile all the blame on the two family court judges. In their rulings, Nuessle and Gable were likely following standard family court procedures for their state. This is where the problem really is - not with a couple of judges, but with the family court system.
Flaws in that system help explain why the Palmetto State has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the nation. Without reforms and improvements in the system, we fear there could be more Terry Young tragedies to come.