Doug Clark : For child abusers, justice can require a rope, tree

Anybody out there not apoplectic?

Anyone not seething with rage?

I didn’t think so.

Like you, it’s all I can do not to choke on the details surrounding the abuse and death of a 4-year-old Spokane girl named Summer.

The reported tortures that were inflicted on this helpless child make the Marquis de Sade look like a guidance counselor.

Summer Lytle was burned and bitten. She was beaten and bruised. She was made to wear a dog’s shock collar. Torn-out patches of her red hair were found where she lived and in a nearby trash bin.

The girl “stopped breathing in a bathtub Saturday night as her resentful stepmother left her alone to cook an anniversary meal for the girl’s father,” a Spokesman-Review story stated.

My God. This is like getting slugged in the gut.

You know it’s bad when a hardened police detective compares the fate of a little girl to that of a prisoner of war.

“Shock treatments, sleep deprivation, use of water torture, beatings … there is no other way to describe it but torture,” said Spokane police Sgt. Joe Peterson in a Wednesday story.

“This is the worst case of just systematic abuse.”

Summer would have fared better at Abu Ghraib.

And the question we’re all left with is …

How?

How did the prolonged, nightmarish suffering of this innocent go unnoticed by the Lytles’ neighbors? And more importantly, how did Summer slip through the cracks of the child protection system?

As expected, state bureaucrats in the social and health services have swung into full “cover-yer-ass” mode.

They even released a news release absolving the state from any incompetence.

Allow me to translate: While Summer’s daddy and stepmommy were contacted by investigators, no abuse was detected and the case was closed, so please, leave us alone, and let us go back to calculating our retirement.

Jonathan D. Lytle, 28, and Adriana L. Lytle, 32, have been jailed and charged with homicide by abuse.

You know something? I really get offended when people categorize society’s worst offenders as beasts.

That’s such an insult to the animal kingdom.

It would be terrible enough if Summer Lytle’s fate were an aberration. But since 2000, as we reported, Spokane police officers have investigated a dozen child deaths that have involved abuse.

That’s a sickening statistic. But crimes against children are hardly unique to this city.

In Portland, federal agents arrested a couple for arranging to trade marijuana for an opportunity to have sex with a 5-year-old girl.

In Missoula, a 36-year-old man was charged and jailed for allegedly breaking his infant son’s skull, legs and ribs.

And I found those two examples just by reading Wednesday’s paper.

Child abuse is so rampant in this country that catching online perverts has turned into a popular TV show.

My 84-year-old mother has a more pragmatic suggestion for what should be done to monsters who prey on kids.

“They oughta hang ‘em from a tree and let people throw darts at ‘em.”

I know. I know.

We are a civilized, law-abiding nation. We can’t resort to vigilantism.

We live in a society of order and rules and wood-paneled courtrooms where sleazy defense lawyers present their scumbag defendants as poor, misunderstood individuals whose hard luck and frustrations are really to blame.

Call me heartless, but I don’t give a rip.

I’ll save my tears for Summer.

And to be honest, Ma, your dart idea really isn’t me.

I’m more of a baseball bat kind of guy.