I’m not even quite sure as to how to start this off…
I live, as one can when one looks at my location, on Long Island. Middle class community - mix of blue & white collar, not a whole shitload of crime, pretty nice. I opened the paper one morning maybe a week ago to find an article about my old high school’s football team. Was it about a spectacular touchdown scored recently? No. About some award that the team, as a whole, had won? Hardly.
It was about an horrific sexual assault that was allegedly perpetrated on three junior varsity players by three varsity players at a summer football camp in Pennsylvania - a “hazing” incident. As the linked article states, it’s alleged that at least one of the victims was anally assaulted with a broomstick. The boys accused of having done it are, according to the articles, 15, 16 & 17 years old. The criminal investigation is ongoing; PA has jurisdiction.
Linkety links: http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-limeph133452958sep13,0,7818093.story
I just. don’t. get it. WHAT is wrong with someone’s brain that they feel the desire to be so incredibly brutal to their fellow man? I mean, I’m just fucking stunned - I want to cry. What in fucking hell makes someone so incredibly fucking vicious? I mean, making the JV players carry your lunch tray or wash your car is “hazing” - what allegedly happened here is a crime that’s right up there at the top in terms of horror.
How often does this really happen, I wonder? That it’s happened at all is quite a bit more than enough, to understate, but if it could happen once, I’m sure it’s happened before or will happen again. I’m just…sad. And ashamed that this happened in my community, at my former high school.
I observed there last semester; I was impressed with how nice all of the kids were, how relatively calm the school was. I mean, I have few illusions about the behaviors of high schoolers. I know that kids’re sometimes better behaved around strangers in a school setting, especially if the stranger is close to their age. But to think that maybe one of the kids I saw in the hall did this… I just can’t wrap my brain around it. I almost don’t want to - no one wants to believe that people, especially children & teenagers, could behave so cruelly… “Cruelly” lets them off easy, if they did this.
I’m sorry about the rambling quality of this OP - like I said, I’m still trying to get my brain around the whole thing. I’ll keep people updated as to whether criminal charges are filed, etc.