Champions shouldn’t feel that their adult son’s choices directly reflect their parenting

Robert and Pam Champion are members of the FAMU family. The irreplaceable loss they suffered on Nov. 19, 2011 is a loss for all Rattlers. Every person who cares about the university and its students is grieving along with them.

That’s why it was so hard to look at the hurt and frustration on the Champion’s faces during their most recent round of press appearances more than a week ago. The two parents made a tearful-eyed plea before the nation and asked it not to believe the evidence that their son consented to the illegal hazing ritual that took his life.

“Robert was not violent,” Pam Champion said. “He would never do any hazing. And for someone to actually say he would, I’m saying no.”

“My son wouldn't have (gone) along just to get along,” Robert Champion, Sr. told CBS 46 Atlanta. "He didn't believe in any type of violence.”

The Champion parents were only in for more disappointment in the days that followed those interviews. The criminal investigation files released to the public have an overwhelming amount of evidence that Robert Champion, Jr. asked to be hazed and it has convinced much of the country. David Phelan, the lead detective in the homicide case, directly stated that Champion “willingly participated” in the rite of passage that left him dead.

Champion’s mother and father continue to state that their late son would have never agreed to be hazed.

“It doesn’t sound like my son at all,” Pam Champion told reporters. 

It looks like the Champions believe that if they were to admit that their son supported violent activities that went against FAMU’s rules, it would be the same as saying that they did something wrong during the process of raising him.

Robert, Jr. was a grown man and the choices he made in college had nothing to do with his parents. He was 26-years old. That was old enough to be school teacher, a corporal in the U.S. Army, or a police officer.  

Christopher Chestnut, the attorney representing the Champion family, constantly brags about how he founded his own law firm at age 26. Chestnut didn’t want to be thought of as a child when started his law firm and no one should think of the late Robert Champion, Jr. as a child. Men at the age of 26 are free to follow the good example of their parents or do something different.

The comments that Chestnut made about the criminal inquiry findings have made it necessary to ask whether the reaction of the Champion parents is being influenced by something more than simple denial. Chestnut previously said that did his own investigation into what happened to Robert, Jr. But even after that “investigation” and the evidence released by the police detectives, Chestnut is still saying that it isn’t clear to him that Robert boarded the bus on which he was hazed willingly.

"Whether Robert went on that bus voluntarily, whether he was coerced or whether he was forced on the bus we don't know," Chestnut told the press.

The Champions deserve the very best assistance possible during this tough time. They should make sure that they receive their help from individuals who are capable of giving them the highest quality of objective information.