The recent news accounts of the abduction and murder of an 11-year-old girl in Florida presented parents everywhere with a nightmare too frightening even to contemplate.

We can only wonder what the parents of Carlie Brucia, a cheerful, well-liked sixth-grader, must be going through since learning Feb. 6 that their daughter’s body had been found a short distance from the Sarasota carwash where a surveillance camera recorded her abduction less than a week earlier.

Bob and Pat Matthews have followed the tragic story in the newspaper, too, from their home in Houlton. But unlike most Maine parents, they do not have to merely imagine the inexpressible grief that Carlie’s parents must now be experiencing. They have lived with a similar heartbreak every day since their youngest son, Tom, was accosted by a stranger and savagely beaten to death while working as a seaman on the island of Guam seven years ago next month.

“Reading about Carlie Brucia, my wife and I felt we could understand the suffering of that little girl’s parents,” Bob Matthews said recently. “Our son was 33, and the girl was 11, but age doesn’t make any difference when your child has been murdered. No parents can understand how such a thing could happen in their lives. It’s something that most people cannot even comprehend.”

Matthews and his wife belong to a nationwide organization that exacts the most severe membership dues any loving parent could conceive: the death of a child at the hands of a killer. Parents of Murdered Children Inc., which includes more than 150 people in its Maine chapter, provides its members an opportunity to connect with others to discuss emotions and issues that only they are unfortunate enough to know.

The Matthewses, who have three other children, heard about the group shortly after their son’s death and have been active members ever since.

“When our son was killed, the immediate outpouring from family and friends was absolutely overwhelming,” said Matthews, who retired in 1990 as the assistant director of the Southern Aroostook Vocational Education program. “But eventually we needed something more, so when we read about the group we decided to explore it. It’s one organization you never want to belong to, of course. But in a situation like ours, there weren’t too many people around who could understand what we were going through.”

About two dozen people show up regularly for the POMC’s monthly meetings, which are held at the MaineGeneral Medical Center in Augusta. Some have been going since the state chapter was formed in 1990 by Paula Baker, a victim advocate with the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

Because of the unique bond they share – a complex kind of grief, Matthews said, that is different from the pain of losing a child through accident or illness – the parents tend to regard one another as family.

“It can be tearful at the meetings,” Matthews said. “More often than not I shed a tear for my son, but I enjoy a laugh now and then, too. You become very close to people who have shared the same anxieties and pains that you have. The talk can range from dealing with murder cases to jokes about someone’s husband staying out too late the night before. A good belly laugh is a salvation for a lot of us.”

Along with providing mutual consolation, the parents also maintain an active telephone support network for its old and new members, offer assistance in the grieving process, accompany

each other to legal proceedings and share information about federal and state victims’ benefit programs that can help defray the costs of funerals and travel to distant courts.

Through the organization’s “Second Opinion Services” program, an independent board of medical, law enforcement and investigative experts assists families of murder victims by evaluating legal records for possible evidence of misinterpretations, inconsistencies and conflicts in trials, appeals and parole hearings.

“The organization has been a godsend, particularly for my wife,” said Matthews, 75, who serves as a northern Maine coordinator. “We want to make sure people know it exists if they need it, and that they’re not alone.”

The Matthewses carry POMC bumper stickers on their car and truck that read: “Someone I love was murdered.” While driving down the street in Houlton one day, Matthews heard someone honking at him and pulled over. It turned out that the driver had seen the bumper sticker and wanted to know more about the organization.

“There had been a murder in her family in Lincolnville,” Matthews said. “And in Bangor, a woman came up to us when we were parked on the street and told us there had been a murder in her family, too. You never know when you’ll bump into someone who’s in the same boat.”

On the Web: http://www.POMC.com