Hate abounds on the Internet.

Masked by witty usernames and anonymity, people espouse spiteful judgments with no accountability, seldomly true facts and abundant ignorance.

I was struck again by this phenomenon recently as people responded in droves on comment boards to the situation in Arizona where a mother left her 2-month-old son in the shopping cart and drove home with her three other children. Cherish Peterson realized her son was missing when she got home and returned to the store to find him unharmed in the care of a police officer.

My first reaction to this story was how terrified this mother must have felt when she saw the empty car seat. I imagine her mind raced with possible outcomes and that her heart was in her throat as she raced back to the store in search of her child. I’ve been there in those tired, distracted, frazzled moments where accidents happen, so I felt sorry for this mother.

But not everyone shared my reaction. Here’s just a small sample of some of the comments I’ve read this week about this mother:

“Birth control anyone? Good grief stop overpopulating the earth. By all means please don't have any more, you clearly can't handle the ones you do have safely.”

“It takes a special type of idiot to suddenly misplace your youngest and most vulnerable child.”

Such hate. Such judgment. Even if this mother was completely in the wrong, what purpose does it serve to belittle and mock her publicly on comment boards?

Police decided to charge the mother with a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment.

I’ll leave the legal decisions to the law, but in my mind, the only thing this mother is guilty of is being a multitasking mother of four with a newborn. She is guilty of being an imperfect human being.

“People went crazy thinking that I should have my child taken out of my home and they should have never given me my baby back and I should be in prison right now,” Peterson said in an interview. “Nothing they can say can make me feel worse than I did in that moment I turned around and saw my car seat missing.”

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Many people have come out in defense of this mother through an I Stand With Cherish campaign. I think mothers particularly identify with the often frenetic pace of motherhood that could lead to a moment like this. We all understand that we could just as easily be that mother. We could make a mistake. We, too, are imperfect human beings.

And that is what is missing from the hateful comments I’ve been seeing this week — a sense of humility. Perhaps people feel that by judging this mother’s mistakes, they can distance themselves from the situation and believe that such a thing could never happen to them. They would never be that stupid or distracted or flawed.

But bad things do happen to even the best, most careful people. And when that day comes for some of these online trolls, I wonder if they will finally realize that the thing they need in their darkest moment is not a finger of judgment shoved in their face. In that moment, they’ll need the compassion and humanity they withheld so tightly from others.

Erin Stewart is a regular blogger for Deseret News. From stretch marks to the latest news for moms, she discusses it all while her 8-year-old and 5-year-old daughters dive-bomb off the couch behind her.

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