The Children We Keep Trying to Shield
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
A Utah mother wrote a children's book about coping with her husband's death, then was charged with his murder. The three boys at the center of this tragedy remain invisible in the media spectacle—inheritors of a story they cannot escape.
While cameras focus on courtroom drama and prosecutors detail fentanyl levels, three children exist in the margins of their own story. They are grieving a father. They may lose a mother to prison. They once read a book their mother wrote to help them understand death—a book now cited as evidence of her guilt. No outcome of this trial returns their childhood to them.
The case of Kouri Richins forces an uncomfortable question: What do we owe the people who survive our choices? These boys will carry the weight of public speculation, true crime podcasts, and unanswerable questions about both parents. Whether their mother is guilty or innocent, they inherit a narrative of betrayal that will shape how others see them, how they see themselves.
Scripture reminds us that the sins of one generation ripple outward, that children bear consequences they did not create. But it also insists on a different inheritance—that cycles can break, that mercy interrupts judgment, that the vulnerable deserve protection even when the adults around them have failed spectacularly.
We cannot shield these children from what has already happened. But we can resist making their trauma into entertainment. We can remember that justice is not only about what someone did, but about who is left behind when the gavel falls. In our rush to solve the mystery of a marriage that looked perfect, we risk forgetting the only truly innocent people in the room: the ones too young to testify, too small to defend themselves, too powerless to rewrite the story being written about their family.