The tragedy here is how the parents handled the situation. They did a disservice to their child, to the 12yo and possibly other victims of the 12yo.
The thin is you can’t go back and change the past. I too would like to know what you feel would be justice served in this situation.
There are a couple of complicating issues with all these kinds of cases. People and even the justice system tend to think that people’s memories are like digital recorders that can be referred back to at any point, even decades later. That is simply not true. Some people have good memories, and some have bad memories but it isn’t necessary for the witness or victim to even know what they are claiming isn’t accurate. The weird thing is that memories morph and evolve over time and the brain destroys its own information audit trail as it consolidates and reprocesses memories so there is no way for the person to know what they claim isn’t accurate.
Perfectly believable memories, especially ones regarding molestation incidents, can be manufactured out of nothing. You can have a molestation “victim” with detailed memories and the pain associated with incidents that never happened. If you don’t believe me, google ‘therapist recovered memory scandal’. That was a mental health craze among some practitioners in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Some therapists created molestation victims complete with memories for things that never happened. A Massachusetts day care was shut down and the family running it went to prison because several kids remembered being molested in a systematic way by them. It later turned out that it never happened.
I know there are plenty of real molestation victims in the world and I have sympathy for them but the problem with these types of accusations is that they can be made against anyone, especially a male, at any time and destroy their life with little way to defend against it. I believe the justice system and public need to treat all accusations of this type with extreme skepticism and also ask what the end goal is for seeking legal action against something so old.
Shagnasty, you do not know the details of the case.
There may be multiple witnesses, which may include people who were adults at the time. There may be a diary, or multiple diaries from the victim and the perp. There may even be photographs or some other physical evidence. Last time I checked, rape does not get some special exemption from the whole “beyond a reasonable doubt” thing. Nobody is going to get convicted on a he-said-she-said deal ten years ago. He will not be locked away without evidence that he was guilty. And there may well be perfectly usable evidence.
As for why now…well, you also don’t have these details. Maybe it has become apparent that he is still a threat to the community.
Perhaps he walked up to her in the supermarket as she was visiting home for homecoming weekend and said “Hey there, remember the fun we used to have as kids? You are all grown up, huh? But your little eight-year old sister…she’s real cute. I’ve already played with some of her friends, and hopefully I’ll get to know her soon.” Maybe he has been followed by a string of shady incidents that have fallen short of something that could be taken to court, and the accuser realizes she is the only one who is going to get this guy out of town. Maybe he is in a position of trust with children and has continually shown a pattern of violating that trust, but nobody has yet been willing to make it public.
The reason my friend was addressing what happened to her is that she got a surprise phone call from one of the younger boys involved. The incidents had severely traumatized him- he had spent a decade wracked with guilt and shame. He was unable to perform sexually because he would have flashbacks when he got aroused. She had gone on with her life, but he had been stuck there, and he had been on the edge of suicide multiple times because of the guilt.
And there were a lot more kids involved in the whole thing. I doubt my friend has any basis for a legal case, but if she felt like it could repair some of the harm done to her community, I don’t doubt that she would move forward legally.
What kind of justice is best? The kind that comes from a jury of one’s peers, according to the laws of the United States of America. I couldn’t begin to say what punishment would fit a crime I know nothing about. But I trust our legal system can figure this one out- that’s why we have one, right?
Even sven, you know I adore you and respect your opinion so I am not going to head to head with on this. My basic point is that it is quite possible for an accuser to create a personal and legal hell for someone regardless of the facts (Duke Lacrosse team anyone?). In the best case, you have your reputation publicly trashed in a way that never be fully recovered and spend needless money on legal bills just to have a jury of random people tell you that they aren’t sure but maybe you didn’t do it.
The weird thing is that the accuser may not even know they are being malicious or dishonest. It is sad thing all around but neither one of us know all the facts of the case so I just put up a mental block that screams automatic reasonable doubt until someone can prove it. That seems unlikely in a case so old and I don’t even see what the overall utility is. If he had the potential to be a habitual offender, there should be other, more recent cases, to worry about.
And of course, neither do you.
True, and there may not be any of those.
It seems to me you’re dismayed that many posting here aren’t expressing horror at how bad the incident might have been. The incident you related is disgustingly horrible, no question. This case may (or may not) be as awful. However, what I see is puzzlement at how what was reported one year after the incident, what was revealed a few years ago, and what led to the current charges fit together. Wondering about how it can make sense isn’t the same as dismissing its potential seriousness. I think it’s as big a mistake to assume it was a godawful worst case as to assume it wasn’t any big deal.
This is why we have a justice system, right?
What I am mostly objecting to is the use of quotes around “sex offense” and things like comparing it to stealing a pack of M&Ms, which appears to be happening only because the alleged perpetrator was young. Who knows, it may have been run of the mill playing doctor. But it may well have been something pretty darn bad, and I don’t think it’s really fair to judge too far one way or another without any real details.
Again, think of how my friend would feel if you said “Oh, I’m sorry about to hear about your ‘sex offense’”. with air quotes. That’d be pretty uncalled for, right?
The problem is, even if it was pretty darn bad, the alleged perpetrator was twelve years old at the time. A 12 year old doesn’t have adult awareness and understanding; if we thought they did, we’d let 'em vote.
Moreover, the time to decide whether it’s appropriate to charge a 12 year old as an adult is when he’s 12, or reasonably close to that time. How else can one get a read on his state of mind, which IIRC is one of the inputs into such a decision?
It’s obviously way too late to charge him as a juvenile, but IMHO also way too late to make a determination of whether his state of mind at the time of the alleged crime was sufficiently ‘adult-like,’ if you will, to charge him as an adult.
Our legal system doesn’t always have a good answer for every situation. This is one of those times.
I agree with you. However, that’s not even sven’s point. Think about it this way: if the police had uncovered new evidence about a gun accident, and arrested a twenty year old for killing someone at 12, we could have the exact same argument–it poses the same problem–but we wouldn’t put quotes around the word “murder”. We wouldn’t doubt, that if the crime occurred, it counted as murder–we’d only doubt whether or not the justice system could address it. The implication of the air quotes is that whatever occurred couldn’t have been a sex offense because of the age of the boy–but sex acts between a seventh grader and a second graders are not likely innocent, and cannot be handwaved away as “playing doctor”.
I googled the guy’s name and recently someone with the same name in that area got a DUI. Wonder if it’s the same guy?
You’d think so, but many parents will try to deny it, or try to hush it up. It’s really sad.
Granted they may not be “innocent”, but if we continue with your murder analogy and say that sexual gratification, on some level, was the aim, what then? If the newspaper story is accurate we’re dealing with an offense over 10 years old that was committed when he was 12. It’s a “sex offense” by a 12 year old ten years after the fact. If he in fact had intercourse with a 7 year as a pre-teen this is regrettable, but criminalizing it 10 years ofter the fact with the notion that you will somehow be able to mete out just punishment on an adult for his actions as pre-teen seems borderline insane.
I agree. There may be no way practical way to address what happened. If he murdered someone, I would say the exact same thing–that there was no practical way to address what happened. But that doesn’t mean what happened wasn’t real, that it didn’t count. It wouldn’t be an unpunished “murder”, it’d just be an unpunished murder.
The quotes make it seem as if you are saying he shouldn’t be tried because nothing a 12 year old could do would be serious enough to count as a sex offense, hence the quotes. Comments by other posters, like “playing doctor”, reinforce this view. I’m saying he shouldn’t be tried because the appropriate way of dealing with the offense–the juvenile system–is no longer available.
I mean, do you think it’s ever appropriate to charge 12 year olds with sex offenses when they are caught “playing doctor” with seven year olds? Does that really seem to be likely innocent to you? A twelve year old is a lot bigger than a seven year old–and 12 year old boys and seven year old girls are not peers, not friends. A seventh grader is a scary older kid to a second grader.
I agree that a 12 year old acting this way needs to be dealt with in the juvenile system, and that it’s quite possible for him to be rehabilitated. But this isn’t in the range of normal behavior for kids that age, it’s a very serious thing that needed to be dealt with for the sake of both the children, and it’s a tragedy for both of them that it wasn’t.
You’re in such a gray area here that its impossible to say. Some 12 year olds (and you are a teacher so you would know) are a lot more mature than others. If a 12 year old wants to experiment sexually with a 7 year old that’s wildly inappropriate, but is it really a criminal matter or something you would deal with privately?
It’s odd… at one end of the spectrum we have society infantilizing young adults to the extent it’s halfway expected these days that parents will be supporting kids with room, board and financing until their mid to late 20’s, and on the other side we’re advocating calling in the authorities and the legal justice system to to deal with sexual relations between pre-teens.
I think any 12 year old interacting with a seven year old is serious enough problem that it shouldn’t be left to the parents to decide what needs to be done, and that the juvenile system is probably the best system we have in place for that. You are seeing two children. I am seeing an almost-teen and a small child. Yes, some 12 year olds are immature, but not so immature that a seven year old is a peer, a friend. Twelve year olds babysit seven year olds. They don’t hang out, they don’t “experiment” together, they don’t have “relations”. The social and emotional gulf between the two is huge, and sexual activity between the two is way, way outside of normal “playing doctor”. Do you remember yourself in seventh grade? Do you remember any second graders you knew then? They were the little kids on the playground. If one of your buddies had been touching one of the little kids, wouldn’t that have registered as seriously messed up?
If there is a kid like that in my neighborhood, I want to know he’s being treated, and that treatment monitored by experts–not just by parents who have every reason to lie to themselves about how serious the problem is and dismiss it as “solved” prematurely.