Thread by @sandylocks

I finally took a moment to read Judge Cahill’s sentencing memo in the trial of Derrick Chauvin and I’m appalled. Buried deep in Judge Cahill’s justification for Chauvin’s sentence is a shocking disregard of the trauma inflicted on the Black girls who witnessed Floyd’s murder.

The disregard of the trauma imposed on 17-year-old Darnella Frazier who filmed Floyd’s death, her 9-year-old cousin who witnessed it, and two other teens was easily missed by most observers last month who were relieved that Chauvin received any significant time at all.

Yet, he would have received more had the judge given force to a MN law that permits an upward departure in sentencing for crimes committed in front of children. Chauvin committed this crime in the presence four children which should have been enough to add more time.

But Judge Cahill refused to do so, arguing that these Black girls apparently were not traumatized by watching George Floyd lose his life. This is an outrageous disregard for Black girls’ emotional and psychological wellbeing that cannot go unaddressed.

What must Cahill think about these Black girls to dismiss the trauma they experienced in watching a man plead for his life and cry out for his mother as he died? What was it about their girlhood that made committing this horrific crime in front of them a non-aggravating factor?

To arrive at the conclusion that witnessing this crime as a child should be irrelevant in Chauvin’s sentencing, Cahill had to dismiss Frazier’s own wrenching testimony about not being able to do enough to save Floyd, and about her worries about the wellbeing of her family.

Beyond that, she has talked about her panic attacks, about shaking so bad that she had to be rocked to sleep. She has told the world that as a result of this, she is not who she used to be, and that she and her cousin lost part of their childhood having witnessed this crime.

Yet, it’s a loss that Judge Cahill couldn’t value perhaps because he didn’t see Darnella as a child in the first place. Black girls are vulnerable both because they are Black girls, and because as Black girls, their vulnerability isn’t seen or valued. This is adultification.

So as Darnella receives an honorary Pulitzer for filming Floyd’s murder, her trauma remains unseen and unaddressed by the court. #BlackGirlsMatter is an aspiration, not yet a fact. If Black girls did matter, many things would be different, including Derrick Chauvin’s sentence.