I have a three year old daughter. There is no fucking way in hell she would ever be left alone in a library, or anywhere else, for any length of time, for any reason. A three year old is a baby.
I think there is a legitmate question of neglect here. It’s not victim blaming. The victim is that baby.
I’m conflicted by the knowledge, on the one hand, that this ten year old must have been utterly fucked up himself to get to this point, and the desire, on the other hand, to beat the living shit. out of him.
My god, I’m sick of seeing stories like this. :eek:
I’m saying my daughter has never been left unsupervised. At home, she may occasionally scurry into another room and be briefly out of sight,. In public, no we have never taken our eyes off her for a second. She is usually in close physical contact, either being carried or holding our hands.
She does go to a pre-school which has rigorous security protocols and standards.
It is inconceivable to me that we could ever dump her off at a library and leave. We would also not let her leave our sight while we were in the library with her. This may sound paranoid, but when you read stories like the one in the OP, what can I say…you get paranoid.
he doesn’t deserve to be treated like a kid. He was fully aware of his actions and what he was doing to the child. He made the concious decision to go through with it, and after doing it at 10 years old, there is no telling how many more times he will do it again. I say either lock him up for life or take it away from him.
either way as long as that future nut job is off the streets I will be happy.
This is not about “leaving children unattended.” This is about the horror of a ten-year-old committing such an act. We usually trust our kids with other kids, to some extent. Who as a child hasn’t been left alone - or at least partially supervised - to play with cousins of different ages, or kids from up the street?
It’s usually adults (usually men at that) we don’t trust.
Yeah, what istara said, how does it cross a ten year old mind to beat a toddler to death with a baseball bat? In what kind of fucked up world is this possible?
And to the people recommending locking him up for life, or making idiotic statements like “it’s the child’s fault”, get a fucking grip.
I don’t even want to think about punishment for this kid. Either someone hurt him badly, or the wiring in his head is too messed up. Either way he is broken badly. I don’t know that a child this age really understands death well enough to fully understand what he has done. I think there may be child psycologists here who can answer that, I can only look at my almost 10 year old and know what doesn’t quite quite connect for her, but sometimes she is a kind of immature 9 year old.
Somehow I suspect the tradgedies for this child have been going on for a long time. He may never be able to function in society at this point, but I sure don’t like to put him in a place where he gets hurt more. Someone who should have protected him hurt him badly along the way. I would just as soon not have tax dollars continuing the job. So I have no idea what to do with a kid who can never be in society and probably should never go to jail.
Not too long ago in Chicagoland, there was a case where children were accused of murdering an even youger child. They confessed to the crime under police interrogation. It turned out in that case that DNA evidense linked a known felon to the murder and sexual assault; his semen was in the girls panties. For a while the police said the he just masturbated in them after the boys had killed her, but then they relented even on that. It did make me think that video taping police interrogations were a good idea, especially when minors are involved.
I know as well as anyone that children can be rapists, but I am withholding judgment for now at least.
My girlfriend works at (and I volunteer at) the local rape crisis center. Last week, they received a case involving a five-year-old sexually assaulting his two-year-old cousin. It’s the youngest assailant they’ve ever heard of. Tore her hymen and everything.
The mother of the girl dropped her off at her sister’s house to go to some event or other. The mother of the boy walked in on the assault.
Final note of ridiculousness: when the girl’s mother found out about it, she slapped the five-year-old. His mother then filed charges against her for assaulting her child.
It turns out that the mother had left him in the care of his 5-year old sister while she went to the bathroom. Not so sure about the wisdom of such a decision, but…
What seems creepy to me is that this sounds more like a poorly planned first kill for a serial murderer than a crime of passion or a botched rape attempt. If it occured in a span of less than a half hour the 10 year old must have intended to kill the other child from the start. There’s hardly any time to plan and act.
This infuriates the fuck outta me. As a library worker, I’m sorely tempted to call CPS whenever I see an unattended little kid, even in the Children’s department. It is not okay to assume that library staff are also child care workers. We will not accept responsibility for the saftey of your kid.
quoth Sinful:
Better yet, why don’t we put him in an adult prison, with all the pedophiles? Thank would be, like, awesome.
I really, really hope you are being sarcastic black455. If you are, a rolleyes smilie might have been appropriate. If you are serious, then…I’m completely gobsmacked.
Whilst it is easy to say that people should be responsible for their actions, if a 15/16 year old (eg the boys from the Collumbine shoot out), were not really aware of why they were doing it, a 10 year old certainly isn’t. In a 60 minutes article, people who committed these types of crimes as teenagers were interviewed in jail - they seemed confused and remorseful and didn’t understand why they did it.
So why do children of this age do these heinous crimes? If it isn’t how they have been brought up, how they have been education, what they have witnessed and therefore view as ‘normal’, then what is it?
In the British case of James Bulger, I remember seeing at least one of the parents being interviewed on the news, and remaining exceedingly unimpressed with how they talked about the whole thing - leading me to assume that their parenting skills were not adequate.
:eek: