Monetizing A Daughter’s Death

I was mortified when my “father,” Mike Rinder, brought the death of my sister, Kimberley, into his bigoted comments in responding to a woman’s loss of her son. And worst of all, he tried to monetize the deaths, using them as a sales pitch for his own “story.” I’m not exaggerating.

He has never spoken to me about my sister before—not once in my life. I was four years old when it happened, but I remember it—all of a sudden my baby sister was gone. I also remember that my mom was devastated. And I remember that my father didn’t really seem to care. In fact, he was quite cruel to my mother.

My mom recently told me a story that exemplifies this. Days after the death of my sister, my mom asked Mike to develop some photos she had taken of Kimberley. These were the few mementos she would have to remember her short life by. Mike took the film, seemingly to develop it, but came back empty-handed. He told my mom that the photos all came out black, so he threw them out. She didn’t believe him and demanded he produce the photos. His response, “It’s better this way,” essentially telling her to “get over it.” Heartless.

Now that I am a grown woman myself, I empathize even more with my mom and how she must have felt to lose a child.

That Mike Rinder so discourteously uses the loss of another woman’s child and my mom’s loss of a baby in the way that he has shows, once again, the type of man that he is. He is a cruel, cold person who does not respect women—or anyone for that matter. He continues to prove this over and over.

Taryn, Justice4Mom