I agree with Zebra, what this child needs now, (and probably has all along), is parenting. No policing, not a beat down from a victim, actual parenting.
Is it possible, that the victim realized it was on the parents to act, not to do nothing until another was forced to act in their place? Maybe it will be the wake up call the parents need? Or maybe the victim realized the only thing really wrong with the kid, was his parents?
The kid was threatening to murder his wife and son. Even if we assume that the root cause was bad parenting, that doesn’t make the kid any less guilty.
I wasn’t questioning his guilt. He’s guilty. But maybe the victim, who has much more cause to be upset than you, and is actually interacting with the kid/parents, knows something you don’t. Just saying it’s a possibility, is all.
You’re correct as a matter of law - but as a matter of practice, it’s really hard to pull off a successful prosecution when the victim doesn’t want the State to go ahead. The police and prosecutors usually won’t bother in such cases.
From the article, it sounds like the police have never been involved. If you report a crime, and later don’t want the criminal to be prosecuted, then yes, the DA can still go ahead with the case. But if no one has even reported the crime, then there’s nothing the police can do.
I suppose the parents could turn him in, but that would probably be a much harder case, especially if the victim declined to cooperate with the police from the outset.
I was reading quickly and thought that said diabolical behavior therapy.
Many of the people here who are criticising the victim for not involving the police would be utterly aghast if he’d been raped and others were criticising him for not involving the police.
Both are victim blaming and the victim has no obligation whatsoever to report things.
This was between him and the kid. I couldn’t fault him for telling the police but nor could I fault him for not telling them, especially if he thought the kid had learned his lesson. I wouldn’t have told the police, by the way.
You think “parenting” will fix a person who has gone to the claimed extremes of this kid to stalk and utterly terrorize this man over multiple years as if this was mailboxes being destroyed or playground bullying? This kid is pure evil.
Yes, because the cost to him would be higher. With the exception of other trolls, nobody’s going to say “Well, I bet he wanted to be harassed and death threats sent against his wife for three years, then changed his mind”. Worst case scenario, the police don’t find out who did it, and that’s it.
Children are raw material. At least in my world.
I’d love to visit your planet sometime. What color is the sky there?
Sorry for the snark, but I know too many parents who have one kid who’s great and another who’s total bad news. And people who have adopted kids who have turned out just like their birth parents.
Sometimes raw things are rotten before you even have a chance to get them home and cook a meal.
(Brother. APD. I know whereof…)
Your world is not on Planet Reality. I have three children, all of them parented more or less exactly the same, in the same household, with the same parents. Without going into a lot of detail about their various personality quirks and issues, I can just tell you that some of them have exhibited behaviors that are inappropriate and unacceptable at times, and others have not exhibited those behaviors. (I know this is vague but I don’t want this to turn into a discussion about whether Behavior X could be controlled by proper parenting or not. Suffice it to say, there are three kids raised the same who behave very differently.)
Besides which, this kid is 17 years old. At what point do we stop blaming someone’s parents for all of their failings and assign them personal responsibility for their own actions? At age 17, a good dose of proper parenting isn’t going to fix crap, and in this kid’s case I doubt it would have fixed anything, ever. Sometimes people are mentally ill and all of the great parenting in the world won’t change that.
I can’t imagine being one of that boy’s parents and not having a fucking clue for three years (!!!) as to something going on with my child. I mean really…mailing a Jewish dude ashes to say “hello to your relatives”…threatening the lives and whereabouts of his wife and son? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s waaaaay beyond internet trollery.
What I don’t get is why the police weren’t already involved? Based on the events, it seems like what happened before he knew the kid’s identity was plenty serious enough to contact the police.
I’m hesitant to chalk this up to crappy parenting or even a clueless kid who started a prank that got out of control … it went on for three years. That is a long time to keep something like that up if “it was like a game thing” as the kid says. I think most kids would have long lost interest in something that seemed hilarious to them at the age of 14.
And that’s the big difference. Most kids might be passingly or situationally cruel in their interactions, but this kid made it his *job *to go after this guy, and kept it up for years. This is way beyond pranks or even criminal mischief. This was a campaign to terrorize this man and it was an undertaking that took considerable effort.
Honestly in thinking about this I’m wondering why or how (and why) a 14 year old would have done this. I’m taking the veracity of the story at face value, but this is so off the beam I’m wondering if this story can be real. Why would 14 year old even care about what this guy is saying?
Here’s Traynor’s own description of the event.
I’m kind of starting to have my doubts about the veracity of this story. I just don’t see a kid, even a crazy kid bieng interested enough to do this.
Yeah it really is, part of the reason I found the article and its subsequent popularity a bit stupid. I’m curious too as to whether Mr. Traynor was the kid’s only victim. Shades of Crabwalk by Gunther Grass about the whole thing.
According to the dad of the shit-head teenager.
The parents knew he was like this. I don’t think the parents would have been able to parent him into being a better person.
If it had been my kid, I would have insisted on police charges and probably called them myself.
Barring that, I guarantee that the police would become involved, because the first thing that would happen after getting home and closing the door would be beating the ever living fuck out of that kid. Second thing would be confiscating his computer, phone, ipod, etc.