fracas

Picture this.

Some children are playing on the playground. Their ages? 8 to 11.

One of the ten year olds and the 11 year old, begin picking on the 8 year old. The 8 year old’s 10 year old sister tells them to stop. They stop indeed, but instead, choose to re-direct their bad behaviour towards the 10 year old for trying to defend her younger sister.

They drag this ten year old off the monkey bars, and proceed to stomp on he head and legs, shattering her hip in the process. 

So went the day a the playground for Rikki Trianna, the victim.

“They started stomping on my head and legs,” the victim, 10-year-old Rikki Triana, told the Erie Times-News from her bed at Hamot Medical Center. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Triana had surgery Friday and has three pins inserted into her right hip to keep the bones together. She will likely need more surgery and possibly a hip replacement at some point because she is young and still growing, said her mother, Lisa Triana. [5]

But aren’t they too young to be punished?

According to Chief Erie County Public Defender Tony Logue, the law does allow for the prosecution of individuals as young as 10, through juvenile court. The youngest of the accused is 10, the older of the two, 11.  The lawyer for the 10 year old is petitioning the court to have the charges dismissed, preferring instead, to have the case go through a system that aims to help abused and neglected children. In the Erie County court system, children are dealt with either based on delinquency or dependency, the child being ruled “dependent” based on abuse or neglect.

Sounds admirable, I suppose, only her family has come out stating what a good girl the accused is, not that she’s a poor soul who’s been abused or neglected.

“She is not a street girl. She minds adults,” said the grandmother of the 10-year-old. [3]

While the hearings were held behind closed doors, the families of both of the accused whom lawyers are trying to paint as ”abused and neglected” to avoide prosecution as delinquents, filled the lobby of the juvenile probabtion offices. Said the grandfather of the 11 year old,

“She’s an A and B student. She’s never been in trouble in her life. She helps take care of her little brother,” he said. [3]

However, despite family insisting that these girls are good girls, there has to be something wrong somewhere. Brad Foulk, of the Erie County District Attorney’s office had no idea what to make of the events.

“I’ve not seen anything of this magnitude allegedly happening before,” Foulk said. “We’ve seen cases of bullying, but if these allegations are true, it goes way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s very, very, very troubling.” [5]

Ditto for the police reaction.

“I don’t ever remember having a case where kids this young did so much damage,” police Lt. Dan Spizarny said. [5]

Parenting today means never having to discipline!

These attempts to avoid responsibility for the actions of the girls, of course, upsets Trianna’s mother considerably. As a mother, I can understand her feelings. It appears the two girls don’t fit the description of “abused or neglected” yet again, adults are doing their best to teach a youngster, that we make up whatever story we have to, to avoid taking responsibility for our actions. Does anyone question whether or not getting away with stomping someone’s head and legs until you shatter their hip, then getting away with it because the adults in your life concoct a story that’s not necessarily true to get you out of trouble, won’t lead to either of these girls later following in the steps of the Lakeland teens?

“I’m not saying I want these kids to suffer all their lives for this, but they need to understand the implications of what they did, the severity of what they did,” Triana said from her daughter’s hospital room. “They need to pay for what they did to get it through their head that they did a bad thing.”

She said it’s been painful watching her daughter suffer.

It is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” she said. “No parent wants to sit in a hospital room with her daughter and watch her scream in pain. You never want to see this.” [2]

Crush your friend’s hip, plot to kill a teacher… who needs to play ball anymore?

“The plan was very specific. They would knock the teacher unconscious with a paperweight, bind her with toy handcuffs and duct tape, and then stab her with a steak knife, police said.  Each student would have a specific role in the plot.

One child’s job was to cover the windows so know one outside could witness the attack and another would clean up after the attack.”

The teacher’s “crime” and their justification for plotting this?

The teacher had allegedly scolded one of the students for standing on a chair. The plot was uncovered when another student reported that a student had brought a weapon to school.

Indeed, the paperweight, the cuffs and the tape were brought to school, and are pictured here in this image taken by the Waycross Police Department. [6]

Has the world gone mad?

In a word, yes.

“While some are busy scoffing at the effects of the negative influences too much violence on television, in movies, and in video games; the effects of unsupervised time online and too much freedom have on our youth, others are taking it seriously.

More and more, we see violence as a solution to a problem, said Victoria Williams, a psychologist with the Center for Psychological Services in Oak Lawn.

“Our kids have seen so much violence that they don’t experience it with the same regard or even the same caution that we may,” she said.

In many ways, says Doreen Zaborac, a licensed therapist in Tinley Park who also writes a column for the SouthtownStar, society is not just desensitized to violence, it glamorizes it.” [4]

So what are parents supposed to do?

How about parent your children?

Just as I, and so many others have been shouting about for years, this generation of parents has failed their children.  Those of us who are doing the right things have still failed this generation if we have not spoken up loudly enough to our own peers, about what is happening to our childrens’ generation.

It will affect us. Mark my words.

Our animalistic and violence-hungry children will grow to be adults who behave the same way. They will in turn, bring children into the world and raise them to be the same… or worse, because we allowed the snowball to roll unhampered through the field deep with frosty ignorance.

They may abuse the very parents who allowed this to happen, as their parents’ generation becomes elderly and reliant for their own care, upon the hellions they raised with no conscience for what’s right and how each human being deserves to live as a human… not as though we were all some animated character in a video game that bleeds fake blood and whose broken bones don’t hurt.

Zaborac offers these suggestions:

• Control the things that are within your control.
• Communicate with your child.
• Being a good role model for your kids also is important.
• Show them how to handle conflict by handling it in your own life.
• Maintain a close relationship with their teens so that they confide in you, so they see you as someone they can turn to in troubling times.
• Make sure they understand the difference between right and wrong. Talk them through scenarios and make sure they understand consequences. Sometimes, I think there are too many gray areas. Kids don’t always understand gray areas.
• Another thing parents can do is keep abreast of what their kids are putting online.
• We need to glorify standing up for the right thing. We don’t do that much anymore. [4]

She couldn’t be more right. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in my opinion, being a good role model and glorifying standing up for the right thing are the most important things on that list. Yes, even teens whose parents try have a close relationship with, will go through times where they seem closer to friends. If the parent has shown by example, and made sure doing the right thing is something so ingrained in that teen though, it will be there when they’re faced with the horrible peer pressure.

And if they fall, the parent must understand that… is not the time to put aside being the role model and standing up for what’s right. Seeking quasi-truthful ways to get your child out of trouble will never give them those valuable tools, but will only result in your having condemned them, yourself, and a whole generation… to a world no one would even want their dog to live in.

Sources:

1. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4626462&page=1&GMA=true  (Trianna picture source)
2. http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080411/NEWS02/804110387/-1/NEWS02
3. http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080410/NEWS02/804100401/-1/NEWS
4. http://www.southtownstar.com/lifestyles/vickroy/886085,041308vickroy.article
5. http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20080409_ap_girls1011heldinattackatschoolplaygroundinpa.html
6. http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272619847.shtml (Weapons picture source)