Understanding Sylvia

[Admin]

One common thread in this story is evil. Most people do not use the term evil to describe anything they have experienced in life. It’s one of those religious words. Yet only one word comes up when speaking about this tragedy, evil. Even atheists use it. It’s the only one. This case has so many questions, so many aspects, that it can only be understood by understanding the spiritual forces that caused it, and answered if you can hear spiritually.

If the senseless murder of Sylvia Likens still hangs on your soul, and won’t leave you alone, it begs for some kind of closure. If you are looking for answers, put your emotions away, and consider how evil influenced and finally overtook a young family, and eventually destroyed itself and another. Evil grows from a seed planted in the heart. This tragedy was years in the making. There was once a happy young girl who suddenly lost her daddy. She had no answers either, and like us, longed for truth about tragedy to calm the heart. Who you see as the worst people ever in existence were once just like you, loving, caring, peaceable. Something happened along the way.

If you are not a believer, consider, or laugh if you wish. The most important thing for you to remember in this case is knowing Sylvia Likens was a born again Christian. If you honor Sylvia, and want to keep her memory as a testimony, look at her life from her perspective. You do not need to believe in Jesus, just that she did. We know she read her bible, and found comfort in it. Life was her hope, but in the last hours she knew to focus on Jesus. She was taught how. “When death comes, I’ll be in the Saviors arms.” would be her last hope, her last thought.

I take great solace in knowing Sylvia is in heaven with her family. It has healed some of the sorrow.

Sylvia Likens, sometime in the summer, confessed Jesus as her Lord. She is in heaven. Sylvia is not in heaven because she was tortured and murdered. Sylvia is in heaven because she believed Jesus.
Her voice was silent but she spoke. As she studied her bible, Sylvia learned patience, humility, and faith. This answers the question of why she took the abuse for so long, seemingly submitting to it.

Sometimes, you meet a person that has a humble spirit on them. Mean spirited people can sense it, but it looks like a weakness to them, so manipulation starts. Then when Sylvia got baptized, a type of jealousy began and escalated.

In two months this girl lived out the Christian walk, being persecuted, tortured and murdered. She saved her sister in the most selfless way. Most people do not care to look at it in this way because they still see a victim that could of had a family of her own, and 60 more years of life taken away.

I see it as Sylvia was marked to do something big in this life for God. The devil can see an anointing on certain people and will attempt to destroy them as a priority. From what I read and know and can see the traits, I believe Sylvia had a special call on her life. “The devil comes but to steal, kill, and destroy” God says in another scripture” They kill my prophets all day long.”

These things explain much about a murder case that is so bizarre and evil, it must have something supernatural to it with a stigma still so large 50 years later.

[murphysmom]

I personally feel that the reason that the story of Sylvia hangs on your soul is because people fail to understand how society as a whole failed this person. From the neighbors, to the sister, to the clergyman, the teachers, the "friends", the school, other adults, her own family, Gertrude's family, etc.

Everyone of the Baniszewski's attended church along with Sylvia. So while some may argue that Marie, Shirley, and James were too young to know better, others feel that by attending church on a regular basis each and every member of the Banniszewski family still should have known "right from wrong" enough to know that "something" wasn't right.

The family members turned on themselves & threw their own members under the bus rather than closing ranks when Sylvia died.

If the family members were also being abused, why didn't they go to John Baniszewski Sr. who was a police officer? Wouldn't they have felt safe & protected?

Then instead of feeling or displaying any signs of remorse, John Jr. told the police that he was proud for what he had done and would do it again; Paula confessed to the pastor that had nothing but evil in her heart, and smirked in every photo taken. Stephanie was only concerned that no one thought she was involved. Gertrude claimed that the children were totally and completely to blame and that she had nothing to do with any of it.

Later on, John Jr. would publically announce that he was sorry for everything that he had done and that he was proof that criminals could be rehabilitated, but he was the only one that ever announced any form of remorse.

When Paula was caught in 2012 and fired from her teaching job, she had the perfect opportunity to announce that she was sorry for what she had done years prior, but failed to make any form of a statement.