CHARITY Lee has every reason to hate her son after he sexually abused and brutally murdered her daughter.

Yet despite the savage and calculating attack Paris Bennett carried out on four-year-old Ella, she doesn't harbour rage but instead forgives her son.

Paris Bennett as 13-years-old when he crept into his little sister's bedroom while she was asleep and proceeded to torture and then stab her to death – after persuading their baby sitter to go home.

Ella was found with 17 stab wounds covering her tiny body and Paris's semen was found on his sister and in his bed during the 2007 attack.

Charity, 46, from Texas, has detailed her harrowing story in a memoir called “How Now, Butterfly?: A Memoir of Murder, Survival & Transformation” .

The book tells her story through a series of moving journal entries and reveals shocking details about the merciless killing.

It includes how Bennett watched violent porn for hours before murdering his sister and that he sexually molested her.

Paris didn’t stab his sister a frenzied attack wounds but instead they “were slow and methodical, not frenzied, not an uncontrollable rage. Not all were deep”.

He called one of his friends from school and spent six minutes chatting before finally calling 911.

She found out  he was browsing graphic porn like “S&M,” “bondage” and “sadism” and even searched for snuff films in the hours leading up to her daughter’s murder.

Paris was jailed for 40 years but Charity has forgiven her son for his sickening crime and visits him regularly – despite being attacked by him on one visit.

“My son is a psychopath. I can’t help him. That may not matter in the long run. What may matter is I can’t, not at this point, give up on him either,” she writes.

But she adds: “I love my firstborn with as much intensity as I have since the day I found out I was pregnant with him.”

Her book ends in 2011 and that year founded the ELLA foundation – which stands for Empathy, Love, Lessons and Action.

The charity helps people affected by violence, mental illness and the criminal justice system.

In 2012 she gave birth to “a happy, affectionate, intelligent, stubborn and opinionated 6-year-old” named Phoenix.

Charity says she is honest with him about who his brother is and sometimes even allows them to speak on the phone.

“Critics of mine like to disparage me for allowing Paris to speak to Phoenix,” she writes.

“They tell me what a horrible mother I am for allowing the child who murdered my child to speak to my other child.

“I am setting an example for Phoenix. An example of how unconditional love and forgiveness look and behave.”

Source: Read Full Article