Natalee Holloway 5

Virgin or Vamp?

Who was the Natalee who disappeared?

Beth's idealised view

A good-looking girl. Punctual and personally organised. Sexually modest. Popular with her peers and something of a natural leader. A good student who was going on to higher study.

Natalee previously has made a profession of religious faith, was baptized, and attends church regularly... She is active in the Bible Club at her school.

Natalee had earned the trust of her parents and demonstrated the maturity to take several prior trips to Europe (Austria, and Germany), Canada, and some cruises.
http://members.aol.com/worldJOURNIER

Perhaps someone should have told Natalee that religious faith is not supposed to be a nine-to-five profession.

The legal drinking age in Australia is 18, and the photos below could have come from many of the parties I attended with my schoolmates when we were 17 and 18, and venues I've worked since. I don't see these as “dishonoring Natlee's memory”, rather providing a more honest view of who we are dealing with under previous party conditions.

In my terms these seem to be the usual sort of gross antics of middle-class teens when they get on the grog. Teen hormones and alcohol, no other drugs required (but E's, the drug of choice for dance rage parties such as C&C's, optional). This may outrage you, but I've seen a lot of it as a musician, and this one looks fairly tame.

Obviously these must pre-date the Aruba trip, and comparing the first group shot to the rest it looks to have been taken at a party some months at least before the timed photo group. It is not unknown for musicians bumping out at the end of a party to have to step over some young thing comatose in a pool of her own vomit and/or urine. Looking at these photos I see a girl who liked to get a bit drunk, but likes to stay in control, and one of the last I'd expect to see in that condition.

The real message of these photos is not that the Mountain Brook students are any worse than most, but rather that they are like most, and not the idealised and sanitised image that has been presented to the public. The problem is not that they know how to party, or drinking underage in Alabama, but the hypocracy of presenting them otherwise.

It may comes as news to the parents of Mountain Brook, but this is typically what youth all over the Western world do when they party.

They drink. They drink too much, occasionally lethal amounts. They smoke. They may smoke cannabis. They may try an “Eccy” or two. Or snort a line of speed or cocain, just this once. Both males and females may get into fights about nothing at all, the way young kangaroos spar at each other.

The fact that the legal drinking age in Alabama is 21 doesn't seem to have much to do with it either.

And they grope and pash and flirt and pose and get into clinches and hook-up, pet, heavy-pet, frot, and even do oral sex which many girls (like ex-President Clinton) don't consider to be actually having “sex”. Never mind the Real Thing.

Natalee may have been a virgin, but she was no more an angel than she was a slut - just a fairly normal healthy well-off middle-class teenage girl with normal teenage hormones.

She, and around 125 of her equally hormonal fellow students brought up in an oddly repressive yet permissive atmosphere, went to Aurba to party. They didn't go to do Bible Study of Aurba, or as Christian temperance missionaries to the gamblers in the Casinos.

They went to have a GOOD TIME, and in this context a good time included sun, beach, swimming, eating, dancing your boody off, getting shit-faced drunk, with perhaps a little holiday romance including sexual dalliance thrown in. Beth may, but let us not pretend otherwise.

Lots of people are providing Councils of Perfection with 20-20 hindsight. In Australia we have a similar end-of-year celebration called “Schoolie's Week” where final-year secondary students take over resorts and generally have a low-level riot where they all go wild and generally “fall over” and hurt themselves one way or another.

Chaperon - Person who ensures propriety, especially married or older woman accompanying young unmarried woman on social occasions
(Oxford English Dictionary)

The duty is clear, and the failure obvious.

Like a schoolteacher the position carries the responsibility in loco parentis, in place of the parent, as their agent of restraint and care. The people who took direct responsibility for her safe return, failed to do so. Given the conservative and religious values espoused by Mountain Brook school this failure of duty is particularly shocking.

And if they were only there as bed-police, they seem to have failed at that too.

http://member.telpacific.com.au/rolyroper/NataleeHolloway/page05.htm | 15/04/06 | Last update: 02:00 11/05/06