Zabali -these folks are much worse than bullies. I understand your point, but really, I doubt these guys are redeemable in any way, and with bullies (assuming these are children we are referring to) I think that with counselling and education, they can be helped.
Killing them is too easy. Giving them via their trial etc any media attention is also wrong. I don’t have an answer–they were perhaps abused themselves as kids. I am not excusing them in any way. I guess I am at a loss when confronted with such evil.
Extra hugs for my kids tonoc–including the teenagers…
I won’t disagree with you. Except to say that one of my concerns about public schooling is that it gives the government too much power to pry into private lives. Sometimes, that happens too. Now, we homeschool, but my neighbors see us nearly every day - as do the folks at the post office, the library, the dance studio, and the grocery store. The problem here is not homeschooling, but ‘compound mentality’. Every cult abuses its weaker members; every cult likewise shuts itself up behind high walls and cloisterlike secrecy, forbidding them to go out.
You only get diplomatic immunity if you’re actually a diplomat or in the country on some sort of official diplomatic function. Being on vacation generally doesn’t cut it.
While monsters like these are hardly my main motivation for being anti-DP, I personally believe a quick, clean death is too kind to the likes of these. I want them to live a long time - in prison, of course - and I want it to seem far longer to them.
I don’t really wanna hijack the thread, so I’ll just observe that many people have nopted the way “cult” and “religion” are used as rhetorical devices.
Hello my fellow Houstonian. I read about those cases too. They were appalling, as are the monstrosities linked by the OP. Fourteen year olds that weighed 36 and 38 pounds?? It’s a miracle these kids are even alive. Here’s hoping the Dollars rot in jail until the days of their deaths.
Well, I don’t want to hijack either, but it may well be relevent to this case: I was involved in a church at one point in my former life as a religious person, which I now consider to have been borderline cultish. Certainly it was cult-like. And the more I read about cults, and Jonestown, and the Heaven’s Gate cult, and the Branch Davidians…they all share an alarming behavior: that of shutting themselves behind high walls, and not going out. Horrible things go on behind those walls, always in the name of religion, and people don’t know about it until it’s too late.
This monstrous couple need not have been involved in a group that condoned their behaviour to exhibit these same characteristic behaviours. Two people together can create a ‘cult’ mentality. They just have to agree with each other and possess power over others which they can exercise without restriction.
I do fear that the claim that this family was “homeschooling” will somehow indict homeschoolers. I’d be willing to bet that no ‘schooling’ of any sort was going on. How could there have been? How could children that emaciated have hoped to be learning anything? No. In that case, what was going on was imprisonment and torture, but it wasn’t homeschooling. That word was just a convenient explanation for why nobody ever saw those kids. People hear that word, and they nod and smile. And they would not do the same if the word ‘cult’ were used.
I hope these children can recover something like a normal life. My heart aches for them.
I understand that thinking. It is typical of human beings to want to extract some kind of revenge. I really believe that this only legitimizes and perpetuates victimization. That’s why I think they should be put to death quickly and efficiently, with no thoughts of either inflicting or minimizing cruelty. Then their wealth should be distributed among the 5 children they tortured.
Not to hijack, but the homeschoolers I know do it SO THAT their kids are isolated from the hoi polloi–I know a family in Kansas who home schools b/c they were offended by the racial diversity presented in the curriculum(and freely admit it–and claim they aren’t racist-whatever). My neighbors, while nice people, also home school–because they didn’t want their kids exposed to “secularism”.
Your kids as home schoolers may not be isolated etc–but I don’t think it’s true that all people home school for the same reasons. IMO, the ones I know, fear the outside world and want to control their kid’s access to it by putting up barriers. Will homeschooling get tarred by the child torture brush?
Probably not–but it DID give these monsters the ability to hide the kids away and perpetuate the abuse. To say otherwise is not looking at the facts. Face it, if these kids had been registered in PS (unlikely, given the level of abuse)–there would have been an avenue (via truancy rules) to check on the kids. With home schooling–no such safety net exists, to my knowledge.
As you can probably tell, I am no fan of homeschooling–but I can see why you would be concerned. I just doubt that homeschoolers will be looked at askance (any more than they perhaps already are) d/t this case–this goes way beyond any disagreement about how to teach kids. When I hear of homeschoolers, I may get an image in my head concerning them, but it doesn’t entail child abuse. You have to admit, though, it is the perfect cover.
Yeah, some kind of net to keep the monsters from Getting Away With It would probably be in order for home schoolers. Maybe surprise inspections of the school and its pupils a couple of times a year by a roving omsbudsman. Seems entirely fair and reasonable to me. I understand that some kids do very well academically thanks to home schooling, but obviously, the monsters have to be watched out for.l
In Washington State, children must be evaluated once a year after the age of 8, either by taking the WASL or other standardized test OR by personal evaluation by a trained evaluator. I’ve actually heard of a business that “evaluates” children through a sample of handwriting and other stuff, but I’m suspicious of it. We will likely go with the evaluator-in-person, which I feel is a better assessment of my child as an individual than the standardized test could ever be.
Well, something, anyway. It is too easy for adults to hide stuff. Realize I may be treading on civil liberty grounds, but some requirement of a face to face nature would seem to be in order.
