Are boys born with perverted sexual know how? I don’t think so. So what would cause 3 teen-age boys to do this?
A 21-minute recording of a sexual assault shattered lives in O.C.
For a party in July 2002, skinny, fresh-faced Haidl gathered two teenage buddies and a 16-year-old restaurant hostess in the garage of his father’s home. The girl drank too much, and according to descriptions of the video in court, the boys took turns on her limp body, using a pool cue, a cigarette and a Snapple bottle.
Why would they video tape this act? Why would they document it?
Please read the complete article. Things have not changed much when it comes to rape. Girl gets smeared and boys get coddled. Because of the tape these boys are doing time. But if there was no tape these boys would have gotten a slap on their wrists.
Meanwhile, the defendants — Haidl, Nachreiner and Keith Spann — have grown into men in the glare of the national media, their faces maturing before millions while their frames filled out in jail scrubs. Haidl is now 20, Nachreiner and Spann 21.
Convicted last March for sexually assaulting the girl, they are now at the Orange County Jail. They will sit before Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseño for sentencing Friday, where a prosecutor will ask for prison and their lawyers will plead for mercy. Haidl could face up to 18 years, Spann 16 and Nachreiner 14.
“This is a time in their lives when growth is exponential, and that makes it all the more tragic and troublesome,” said defense attorney Barnett.
He characterized the case as unique, saying it involved teenagers from relatively ordinary families, no serious criminal records and a national media spotlight.
And not least, the explosive videotape. “You have a tape which is graphic and disturbing, and which is a reflection of a subculture that is really unknown to middle-class America,” Barnett said.
Meanwhile, that girl will pay for the rest of her life.
Where do boys learn to do such things?
Sorry if I am offending anyone with my ‘porn’ diaries the past couple days. I seriously think I am suffering from PTSD that was triggered by reading the sexual crimes many of my sisters have reported about the past two weeks. I am outraged. I have always stuffed my anger and rage and really believe that is why I am so ill today. To the good men here and I know a few of you, I apologize with any generalities I’ve made about bad men’s behaviors. But you must realize that good men often get the brunt due to your bad men brothers’ bad actions. The scars run deep.
but how would I know? I just believe that a lot of violent ideas come from some kind of outside stimuli, unless there’s some other male school that teaches boys dirty tricks.
If women run the risks of losing their right of choice about abortion, I think men should run the risk of losing their rights to porn. Fair is Fair.
If women loose rights so should men.
I’d prefer that men have their winkies cut off if they rape, but that’s just me.
While cutting off their manly parts sounds satisfying, since rape is about anger and control can you imagine an angry man with his penis cut off back out in society? As the sad article above points out, you don’t need a penis to rape.
Yeah,I know, it’s just the instant gratification thing.
I think studies have shown that castration doesn’t really stop rape — since we all know rape isn’t really about the sex.
But it feels good to think about it.
They actually do cut off the penis after the third conviction in Texas.
I was working part time at a phone bank in Florida. This “woman” who sat behind me gave me the creeps. I truly thought I was going nuts, as this woman and her ability to turn the most innocuous thing, like eating green certs, into filthy sexual statements made me feel raped and dirty.
After a few weeks, a former SAS co-worker from Britain found me crying on the lawn during break. I explained to him that I had totally lost my mind. He is the one who informed me that “she”, had previously been “he”, with three sexual predator convictions in Texas, and had the penis surgically removed. And although the “she” dressed as a woman, there had been no hormone therapy or etc, just a disguise in dress and make up to “get close to females”.
The SAS persons story was confirmed when I went to personnel to request a seat change to another area.
Bottom line-surgical removal does not guarantee safety-they just find other ways to practice their perversions.
I think you’re thinking of “chemical castration” which has nothing to do with removing a man’s penis.
You could be right. All I can go by is what the former SAS Brit and the lady in personnel said, which was that they “cut it off”. When I asked in disbelief if they did surgery, I was told yes.
Frankly it was such a creepy experience, I still get slightly nauseous just talking about it. So thank you for your input, but I think I need to bow out of this discussion.
Leave winkies, take testes. Now that’ll leave a mark. Also calm ’em down.
The most disgusting aspect of this is the possiblity that all the participants knew what they were doing. And if that’s the case, they were re-enacting a brutal rape because they thought that was arousing.
While I’m sure a lot of people do get such ideas from porn, people are as innately creative as they are innately violent and innately sexual, and all those innate drives sometimes come together with horrifying results.
It may be convenient to blame porn (or rock music or dressing in black or whatever) for monstrous behavior, but the hard truth is that everyone is capable of terrible deeds under the right circumstances.
That is not an attempt to excuse these boys for what was obviously a terrible act of rape. On the contrary, I think searching for external causes is ultimately a search for an excuse. The monster lives in all of us, and is in fact more dangerous in those who steadfastly deny it.
The external consideration with these boys isn’t what was there, but what wasn’t there: the learned human traits of compassion, friendship, respect, forebearance, and self-control. Without those qualities, a person is merely a very smart and dangerous animal. Something like porn is at most a trigger, but it’s not like the possibility of rape would never occur to anyone; it’s too obvious.
There is a wonderfully misguided notion, born of 19th century romanticism, that humans are essentially good by nature until they are ruined by worldly society. That is utter bullshit. Humans are self-centered bundles of appetites who can, with effort, be taught to look beyond their immediate desires, consider consequences, and feel compassion with others. Anne Frank can be excused for thinking that all people are basically good; she was young and wrote that before she and most of her family were murdered in a death camp. We cannot afford such contra-factual myths.
Parents and society could have taught those boys forebearance, respect, and compassion, but evidently did not, with disastrous results for their victim. To judge from the slimy legal strategies at work, those are lessons they still haven’t and may never learn. For us to address the problem of violence against women, or violence in general, or the full spectrum of the horrid ways people treat each other, those are the lessons we must teach.
Without rehashing our conversation yesterday, I’d just suggest as others here have, that blaming the reinforcing mirror (porn) can distract from looking the real problem square in the face. I don’t recall who it was who said if you want to know about the sexual health of a society, look at its porn & its role in that culture.
Not that the problematic behavior holds still to be easily understood. Behaviour like this has been around long before the internet or videos. We still know very little about why some little boys show anti-social, psychopathic behavior at an early age. My wife’s work involves working up detailed family histories of convicted murderers (often with a violent sexual component) & the common feature that stands out is some form of chilhood abuse — physical, sexual, mental, nutritional, drug/alcohol — usually by a parent. Yet even those factors won’t ‘explain’ it all. Sometimes there’s a nice, well-cared for little boy who starts torturing the neighborhood pets to death around age 8 or 10, & no one ever can figure out ‘why.’
These stories are important to be told & talked about. Thanks to you & everyone else here who have been sharing such painful memories & triggers.
“A 21-minute recording of a sexual assault shattered lives in O.C.”
A recording shattered lives.
Not: A sexual assault shattered lives.
It’s just the recording.
The implication here is quite clear: The boys were doing just fine until that recording shattered their lives. The sexual assault — which may or may not have BEEN an assault — may or may not have shattered the girl’s life; who gives a fuck, really? The important lives are the ones shattered by that darn recording.
Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Pretty hard to deny they were there when the video shows what happened… Nonetheless, a valiant attempt by the defence lawyer(s)to show that it was actually the woman’s fault…
Of course, you’d also hope that any person who watched the video recording would be shattered by it, too.
This is horrible. Thanks, songbh.
The defense actually used the videotape to argue that it WASN’T rape. The camera’s presence turns the victim into a wanna-be porn actress.
These rapists, they can find an excuse no matter what the evidence is. If there’s no videotape, then it’s her word against theirs. If there is a videotape, then that is proof that they were actually doing a good deed, helping her further her career as a budding porn star.
This is further proof that we live in a rape culture, where women are always asking for it and men are never responsible.
And the law in many cases enables them to get away with these things, as in the case of this defense. What the heck is up with that? Why is it so easy for defense to mislead juries?
Even complete degenerates are entitled to a defense (unless he/she is a terrorist (er… foreign terrorist)). I agree that this defense sounds particularly disgusting and the crime particularly heinous, but a defense is what they get.
into the very premises of our rape culture: women are asking for it, and men aren’t responsible.
I’m sure this particular defense was also inspired by the Rodney King case, in which the apparently damning videotape was analyzed frame by frame and shown to the jurors so many times that they became numb to the actual violence, the actual crime, and were free instead to pass judgment on the crime of being black — another structuring principle of our unjust and oppressive society.
So, when you get right down to brass tacks, this defense wasn’t misleading — it was absolutely revealing of what makes our society tick. Rape, practically an item on the Bill of Rights.
It’s not just that his defense lawyers dreamed up this awful argument…it’s the fact that the jury bought into it in the first place.
In a healthy–and sane–society, this little trick would have been seen as the stupid and sick and desperate stunt that it was.
But this is our society we’re talking about here, and counsel simply knew it would work.
Yet the OJ Simpson jury members were morons, right???
The defnese did not mislead the jury.
They may have applied their knowledge of the prevailing cultural values, in fact it’s safe to say that’s exactly what they did.
In a society with different values, the defense would have moved heaven and earth to keep the jury from seeing that tape.
In the US, it worked in their favor.
AP is right on with the Rodney King analogy. Millions of people all saw the same video.
Some saw six terrified officers, armed only with sticks, trying to defend themselves from a large dangerous black man who was writhing on the ground in a defiant and threatening manner.
Some saw six guys with sticks administering a brutal beating to a defenseless man who was already down and wounded.
It’s just a matter of culture: attitudes, opinions and beliefs, I think they call it in the advertising classes, where young people are taught how to use these skills to cause you to purchase products you do not need.
I find it hard to comment about this because it’s so despicable and I don’t even want to think about it.
As the rape diaries the past week have shown, the girl/woman is often portrayed as a whore in order to exonerate the “boys” who were just playing along.
Mine may be an unpopular opinion here, but I’m positive that the massive amount of internet porn that is available to any teenage boy with a computer is at least partly to blame.
Most porn does not depict couples having healthy sex. It’s degrading the woman, using her as an object, treating her like a whore, ejaculating on her face, slapping her around, passing her between several men and the laughing about it.
It doesn’t just blur the line between consent and rape, it obliterates it. The “dialogue” is often about how she really wants it, how she just says no to egg them on.
I believe in free speech, I really do. So it is up to parents to not just monitor what their sons are doing on the internet, but to talk to them about it.
I have spoken to my sons about porn. I have told them that what they “may have seen” on the internet is not healthy sex, it’s all about dehumanizing the woman. Hard as it is for me to talk about, I tell them that sex can be lovely and fulfilling when it’s consensual and in the right circumstances, but what they are witnessing on the internet is just ugly and profit driven.
Parents have got to start from the very beginning giving their kids boundaries and holding them responsible for breaking them. Too many kids today have never had natural consequences for reprehensible behavior, because their parents step in and get them off the hook at every opportunity.
:::deep breath:::
kinds of things in videos, from crazy stunts with automobiles, to people harming others in every possible way.
And they all see these things, it does not matter what your thinking is about the racy videos, or the violent videos, they are everywhere and the kids will watch them, even those whose parents have taught them that this is not wholesome fare.
Teens are not really that interested in what the older generation considers wholesome fare.
But when you have boys who actually commit the acts they see in these videos, whether it is drive cars off of buildings, or do harm to other people, that shows that the parents were not successful in imparting much more basic and important values, and not only the values themselves, but the understanding that some of these values may not be the values of the prevailing culture, and the skills to cope with being “different.”
I’m not saying that most boys do things like this, but I do not think that most boys are taught with the necessary emphasis not to harm others, and to protect and respect ladies – and themselves – regardless of what others do or what is depicted in the videos – or the news stories – even if these things are considered acceptable by the larger society.
I hope that this young lady will be able to recover, it will take time, and a great effort on her part, but it is my prayer that she will emerge triumphant and whole.
I think the bar is constantly being raised as far as what constitutes acceptable behavior. I also think boys are naturally thrill-seeking and there is so much excitement, so much stimulation in his everyday world that he is constantly seeking something more and bigger and louder and more dangerous.
You are absolutely right that as parents or mentors we must instill values in our children as to what is acceptable behavior and how to treat women and girls. But with so many parents working today and the lack of supervision which allows kids unfettered access to all of the garbage on the internet and tv, not many of those parents ever find the time or the inclination to do that. It’s as if they feel guilty for working so much, so they shower their kids with material things and are reluctant to punish them in the 30 minutes a day they do get to spend together.
You are not the only one who thinks that. Both of my parents are teachers and they have constantly discussed the declining quality of parents and parenting — that unwillingness to punish the children is something that they also notice and remark on all the time.
I would absolutely hate to be a teacher today. My teens tell me stories about kids who openly defy their teachers and then dare them to do anything about it. And the teachers know that they’ll get no support from the parents so they just drop the issue.
Shall we say it together? “In MY day …”
But really. I know my parents were actively involved in talking to my teachers about my education. BUT they would never have told me that a teacher was wrong (even if they told the teacher that to his/her face). The message I heard was that teachers were to be respected and obeyed — even IF I thought they were wrong. Life is tough and you will meet people who you think are unfair all the time and you just need to learn to deal with it.
It was a good life lesson.
The rule when he was younger was that if he got in trouble at school, he was in double trouble at home.
I continue to make it clear to him that I expect him to speak of and to his teachers with respect. And I make it clear to his teachers that this is the message we reinforce at home and that we are interested in supporting their work in the classroom.
I’m not sure how much good it does — in this college town, most of my son’s peers in his honors-track courses are from highly educated families, and I think that cultural expectation within his peer group means a lot more than one mom’s lecturing by now.
Interestingly, what I hear from my stepson’s teachers is that the wealthiest parents are often the biggest problems — they pass their sense of entitlement directly on to their children, to everyone’s detriment — especially the kids who then expect a free pass in life.
Gawd, don’t I sound like quite the social conservative today? This comment wouldn’t be out of place at the blogs we love to hate!
But that was the point of Rosee diary yesterday (I think). That we have allowed the social conservatives to hijack this discussion to the point where we think that these values are consesrvative values and therefore it is BAD for us to express them.’
These aren’t conservative or liberal values. These are community values.
“That we have allowed the social conservatives to hijack this discussion to the point where we think that these values are consesrvative values and therefore it is BAD for us to express them.’
That is exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you again Mary!
I do the same thing with my boys and their teachers, and I’m always taken aback by how surprised the teachers are to have me back them up and work with them to find a solution when there’s a problem with doing homework or something. And I agree with your stepson’s teachers thoughts on the wealthiest parents passing on a horrendous sense of entitlement to their kids. Those parents aren’t doing their kids any favors, IMO.
Gawd, don’t I sound like quite the social conservative today?
No, no and no.
Social conservatives believe in a sense of entitlement–see GW Bush, Strom Thurmond, etc.
They aren’t concerned about “their betters.” They are only concerned about the morals of the poor.
“The rule when he was younger was that if he got in trouble at school, he was in double trouble at home.”
My daughters heard this constantly – I’d been on both sides of the teacher’s desk and wasn’t about to let them cause trouble in school. And they didn’t. They both graduated with honors from both high school & college and now have Master’s degrees.
Yes and no.
You wouldn’t hear that it’s the WEALTHY folks’ sense of entitlement that causes many problems, because for the wealthy that’s just the way of the world. It’s the POOR people, the ones on welfare and AFDC and what not… THEY’RE the ones who think they’re entitled, and THEY’RE the ones who pass that on.
Invertaworld.
Another thing I’ve noticed that contributes to the lack of supervision is these people with HUGE houses, where you can’t hear what’s going on in the room the kids are hanging out in, even if you are home. They have all the tv, internet, etc in there, and nobody paying attention to what the kids are looking at; the parents are just glad to have them out of the hair. And no risk of the parents wandering by and catching them doing something they shouldn’t be.
I have so many friends with GREAT kids. And all of them have pissed off their kids on a regular basis by doing things like not giving them a computer in their own room but making them use it in a family space where the parents were walking by all the time; not giving them cell phones or phones in their room at a young age; not giving them tv’s in their own rooms.
that portray women as “hos” and “bitches” — someone wrote about the Oscar-winning song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” that having a woman singer was like a slave singing about the joys of plantation ownership. Now, I’m not a connoisseur of rap/hip-hop (despite the fact that I’ve got Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks” as my cell ringtone), but I find it interesting that in that community, the way to lift oneself up is to put others down, just as blacks were put down for years by the white “masters”. (I’d love to hear blksista’s take on this thought.)
And then there are video games like the “Grand Theft Auto” series — remember the big foofraw about the secret code that allowed the characters to have actual sex. It wasn’t the violence — it wasn’t running over hookers and drunks — it wasn’t picking up a hooker and dumping her out of a moving car…it was explicit sex.
I’ve got to share one story here: back in the 1980’s, I was involved with a guy 14 years older than me. I was in my early 20’s, he was in his mid 30’s. He had a very good friend who was a single mother, raising a teenaged boy. The boy was naturally curious, and one day told his mom he wanted to see the movie “Deep Throat” (which I think had just come out on videotape). His mom said yes, but on one condition — he had to watch it with Mike (my boyfriend). So they watched it together, and Mike was able to give the boy some insight into what was real in the movie and what was likely pure fiction (most women don’t have that strong an anti-gag reflex, for one), as well as guidance in how to treat women with respect. So maybe it’s not the media, but the message — people are just consumers in this society, so why should you care about them? It’s all about me…to hell with the rest of the world. (When you think about it, our entire US misAdministration has that same attitude.)
Great diary…
What was left out is that Linda Lovelace ‘performed ‘ in that video at gun point. She wrote her story years later and it was totally coerced at gunpoint by her then boyfriend or husband I forget which.
That explaination or that a drug habit abuse, threat of abuse etc., ought to be explained to boys. You can understand a man’s participation but understanding the woman’s participation is much harder. I doubt that most women are doing it out of pure enjoyment..exploitation includes using large amounts of money to someone in desperation mode.
I think this makes a strong case for having good quality explicit movies that show loving couples having normal sex. The thought of a guy in his mid-thirties watching Deep Throat with my teenage son gives me the creeps.
He had very healthy sexual attitudes, especially for that era — in fact, he was the first person who helped me to realize that I deserved to be treated with respect, both in and out of the bedroom, after I’d let myself be used by guys who didn’t want to be seen out in public with me or who would dump me for the first sexy blond they came across, because I figured that’s all fat chicks could expect. Mike taught me to set my expectations high. And for Ethan (the kid), Mike was pretty much a father figure anyway, so it might have started out more embarassing than titillating — like watching something with your own dad.
Of course, the facts about “Deep Throat” weren’t widely known back then, but one thing Mike stressed was that the folks on the screen were actors…and when you have sex with a real person, it’s not always going to look like it does in the movies.
Yeah, if I had a kid I wouldn’t just grab a random person off the street and say, “Watch porn with my kid”, but if it was someone I knew well and trusted, I would have no problem.
Have you seen the movie yet? I didn’t view it as a celebration of the pimp/ho ‘lifestyle,’ but as a brutal depiction. The lead actor, Howard, wasn’t interested in the role until he realized it wasn’t yet another movie glorifing pimps & violence. It doesn’t make excuses, or present that life as an only choice (the main theme is trying to escape that life: Everyone’s gotta have a dream) but as a fact of contemporary society: What Is.
Similar charges could be pointed to the Sopranos & its theme song (“Woke up this moring/got myself a gun) but they’re heard much less often. The only rationale I can think of is race.
We rented both Crash & Hustle & Flo at the same time, & thought they were two of the more provocative films we’d seen in a long time. Crash is more innovative film-wise; H & F more traditional film making, but if anything, even more thought provoking.
You must be a great mother.
And as I said yesterday about what a 14 year old girl wears, society should not dictate what a child does. The parent is key.
I would wholeheartedly agree that kids need boundaries from the start. But readily available internet porn is not the cause, although it certainly isn’t helping. As a former boy, I engaged in my share of stupid behaviors, without thinking about how others might be effected. (and I recognize that this situation is not merely stupid behavior.) But kids need to hear more about empathy and responsibility, something a bit lacking in my upbringing, at least as far as empathy goes. But my point is that this didn’t start with the internet. Parenting is a full time occupation, these kids clearly need more of it.
Absolutely right. It didn’t start with internet pornography, and banning it won’t put an end to the brualization of women. Kids need perspective; they need the other side of the story. And if all they’re seeing is porn films and they’re not being taught how to respect people and have good healthy sexual relationships, it’s a pretty one-sided education.
Going back to what these boys did and putting yourself back in your little boy shoes. Why did they do it? What caused them to think about doing it? Because I too draw the conclusion that they must have seen it somewhere.
But someone who’s actually been a boy may have a different take on the imagination of boys? Where did they come up with this?
Boys just don’t think much about the consequences of their actions. Or how others will be effected.
That’s true. A group of my gradeschool classmates almost accidentally killed another one one time. They were playing some game based on Bonanza or one of those western TV shows. One group was the posse and they chased the other group until they caught them. Then they took the ringleader, put a rope around his neck while he stood on a chair under a tree and were just ready to knock the chair away when the mom came running out of the house and stopped them.
Didn’t and doesn’t make me want to ban westerns. But still, they SAW it somewhere.
Where did these kids get the IDEA for what they did to this girl?
Exactly.
I am not sure that they needed any outside inspiration. Their decisions certainly do not look inspired. They probably were drunk, horny, curious, and stupid. They probably hadn’t had an opportunity to consensually explore a woman’s body. And being idiots, and reinforcing each other’s idiocy, they acted with virtually no brain-wave activity whatsoever.
It’s possible they got the idea from a porn or the internet. The fact they decided to film it kinda of supports that they had been exposed to that type of stuff.
I sometimes think that when men and women get into these discussions there is a feeling on the part of men that the women are really looking to back them into an “AHA !” moment and then take all their porn away. And that is why its so hard to really talk about the impact that some porn has on some people.
(I don’t mean you particularly. )
Maybe my little school friends would have thought up a posse and a hanging all on their own without westerns on TV or in the movies or without books or without ANY exposure to that idea whatsoever. Seems unlikely to me. Same with this situation.
I think porn does have a negative impact on a lot of people.
But, that wasn’t your question. You asked what gave these boys the idea to use foreign objects on a passed out girl. And I said, it could be nothing more than drunkeness, combined with curiosity, combined with stupidity.
That first paragraph was stream of consciousness — I said it wasn’t about you necessarily.
OK it COULD be no more than drunkeness, combined with curiousity combined with stupidity. I just doubt it. I think at least ONE of those boys saw it or something similar somewhere.
Just what i was thinking. It’s hard-wired into our systems. Often, it allows us to create communities, societies, whatever. But it also comes into play in this sort of situation. And, as others here have already said, there’s really no end to the depths an imagination can sink.
I wouldn’t blame this on internet porn, either. Terrible upbringing, yes. Growing up in a vaccuous, cynical society. And, at least one of the sick fucks was already a degenerate with a serious hate on.
Mary,
I think it starts with the parents. Boys will try anything to if they can do it. I believe that parents have to be the guding force in children’s lives (girls or boys). Talking about sex with children and what constitutes healthy sexual activities versus what is seen in the media today is critical, but many parents do not take the time to do so.
My father was 60 and my mom was 43 when I was born. They talked to me about the physical and emotional aspects of having sex and the importance of being fully aware of being a relationship was all about. they talked about I needed to treat a woman with respect if I ever hoped to have a meaningful relationship and my dad was clear that if I decided to have sexual relations with a woman, I better insure that it was mutual and accept the consequences if the woman became pregnant.
This enabled me to not look for sex, but establish a strong relationship with a woman. I believe it was my parents’ willingness talk about the total aspects regarding relationships and sexual activities that prepared me for my adult life.
If these boys did not receive any guidance from their parents, they ended up looking to other places (porn films, magazines, etc.) for information. In the end, their decisions will cost they a portion of their lives behind bars but the real problem started because they never received the guidance from their parents.
That say, some kids will not listen to their parents and that is something that is out of the parents’ control. So, having great input from the parents does not always mean that kids will do the right thing.
Being male, my guess would be some combination of “locker-room” discussions about sex with their friends, porn, a general lack of common decency, and drunken stupidity.
For Better Or For Worse actually had a fairly well-executed mini-story-arc about this a few weeks ago.
I am convinced it does not start with sex, though it may well end there.
It begins with parents unquestioningly taking their child’s side in everything. It is there in “nothing’s too good for my little child”. It is there in having a parent who always believes it is the fault of the other child, or the teacher, or the other adult, or the store or the cop or the girl or whoever, but not the kid’s fault. The kid is never wrong – just victimized by others. It begins with the parent not wanting to “squelch the child’s masculinity” (I had this actual request from a parent of a 12month old once! By 5 the child was unspeakably aggressive.)
There are parents like that. I’ve seen them in court, protesting that their child did not do the crime, when there were virtually videotapes of the crime being committed by their child. I’ve seen parents who arranged an apartment within their house for their teenage son, so the son could have absolute free range to entertain and do anything he wished completely without any adult supervision. Some teens can handle this sort of situation responsibly. But many cannot. Others who can, have friends who cannot, who will lead the responsible kids into more and more deviant stuff.
A decent respect for women must begin with teaching children a decent respect for life and living things as well as appropriate ways to handle anger and hostility.
I am in absolute agreement with you. It seems like today’s parents are afraid of damaging their child’s self esteem by handing out discipline when they’ve done something wrong. It’s hard to even get the parents to decide what wrong is. And it is always, always someone else’s fault.
How does a kid learn accountability when his parents constantly excuse his behavior?
Tell me about it! Several months ago, I used to go to the library to go online. Anyway, there were a few times where parents were also online and their kids would be running around and screaming in the library. I remember asking one parent to keep her kid quiet–this is a library, not a playground. Parents response? They’re just children, they don’t know any better. (Or some variation of that.) Seems like the parents are the ones that don’t know any better.
You should have asked the parent at which point that arguement no longer holds. What if they were flinging their own shit around the room.
Fuck, i hate shitty parents.
In this area, there are so many shitty parents it is unbeliebable. Some even refer to and treat their 18 year olds as “children”. For crying out loud, 18 is a legal adult, are they registered to vote?
And the kids love it, because Mom and Dad always make excuses for their little darlings. Most of the kids around here are greedy, spoiled brats. Makes me sick!
I’m glad you’re trying this again Rosee and I was surprised that your diary didn’t get more notice yesterday. And I think it was a shame the comments got sidetracked off of the discussion I think you were trying to promote.
I completely agree with SN:
This is NOT a discussion about the first amendment rights of these boys or their parents. This is about teaching and learning personal responsibility in an age when children have relatively access to types of speech that are not meant for children.
I hope THIS diary doesn’t get sidetracked into yet another discussion about what consenting adults can do or can watch. Because I think you are trying to engage the community in a discussion of how to bring up boys to become men who respect women.
This is a topic like abortion and guns. Sensitive issues, rights, freedoms that would be great in an ideal world.
My motto has always been do what you want to do, but if it hurts someone else don’t do it. Or the golden rule.
I agree maryb – this is an important discussion. But I need to take it a step farther. We can teach our sons (and daughters). But I work daily with children who don’t have parents who can/will do this. I spend much of my time trying to get people in my community to care about someone else’s kids. That’s how we’ll eventually get cultural change.
I have an example that doesn’t relate to rape – but to violence. A young man in our community was shot by neighborhood gang members. At the funeral, someone was consoling the father of the boy who was shot saying, “You did a good job, you raised a good boy, you were a good father.” The father disagreed and said “I didn’t do a good enough job, I should have worked harder to care for the other boys in the neighborhood.”
I think we also have to consider how to do that.
That’s a really good point. And a much harder issue than simply training parents to be good parents.
I often reprimand a niece or nephew when the family is all together. And then argue about it later with my parents (their grandparents). Bad behavior is bad behavior and sometimes kids don’t know unless an adult explains, and we as a society are too complacent, lazy or as uneducated as the kids.
As I’ve grown older I find that if someone disrespects me I call them on the carpet and I pretty much don’t care who it is. But I also will correct someone in public who is being rude to someone else. I’m lucky I’m still alive LOL! It’s scarey out there.
Those arguements that, “it’s not your kid” are stupid. As long as you’re not being a bully, are taking the time to really explain the issue, then reprimand away. If anything, treating kids as fellow human beings—a part of society—will go a long way towards their social development.
I agree. When my daughter was growing up I was the “Mom” all the kids-boys and girls, would come to to talk with because they couldn’t talk to their folks. I was honest whether they like it or not. I assume they like my honesty cause they kept coming back.
Look, we are living in times where there is no accountability. We have an administration that lies on a daily basis and only one man wants to hold them accountable.
As far as boys are concerned, I blame the parents there. When a parent continues to bail a child out of trouble, they are just rewarding bad behavior. Why would that child not continue on the path of destruction of their own lives and others when there are no consequences. Look how far it has gotten George. Daddy always bailed him out of trouble, in college, in the National Guard, in failed business ventures.
How long have people looked the other way and said, “Well now, you know, boys will be boys”?
who try to flout the rules. My second niece climbed out her window in the middle of the night one time — even though all she was doing was sitting on the front porch with her friends talking, my sister grounded her so fast it would make your head spin. That was the last time she pulled anything like that; the quick action may have prevented her from getting into real trouble later.
And eventually you have to let the kids learn from their mistakes, or they’ll always be kids. Sometimes, when you get that call from Officer Mulrooney down at the precinct telling you that Johnny or Janie is in jail, the best thing you can do is roll over and go back to sleep, then bail them out in the morning…it might be the one thing that prevents that same call from eventually coming from the morgue.
Our puritanically-based society has no mechanisms in it’s culture to deal with male sexual energies. Boys and men are driven by their hormonal drives, and in the deeply coarse attitude of Christian morality to repress what can’t be repressed, we see this kind of scenario acted out. Instead of encouraging love, affection and creative touching, we angrily expect boys to repress their outflowing hormones — punishing them, or trying to moralize with them.
But culture can’t repress forever these drives for human touch, affection and sex. And they will come out in perverse ways, influenced by things like twisted cruelty, since kids aren’t encouraged to express themselves with real human community, but to be competitive and overly protective, with a huge dose of egotism (provided by doting parents) mixed in.
You can punish your kids all you want, chide them all you want, but you can’t change the culture that we’re living in by yourself. The forces of repression are all around, and that sexual/passionate energy will be perverted into cigarettes, pool cues, and beverage bottles.
This is a poor attempt to address a real physiological and psychological issue for people, I apologize for not writing a diary with citations and all the rest.
If the society’s repressed sexuality were at fault, then the majority of teenage boys would behave in this amoral fashion, instead of the minority.
Gang rape situations hinge on two factors, the male group which has a mind of it’s own, and the background of the boys involved.
If one or more has been raised to have a sense of entitlement, and there’s a history of violence or abuse in the family for them to pattern their own behavior on would be two of the major factors.
Where there is situational rape and abuse (Abu Ghraib, anyone?) two factors are involved, that particular society’s modeling of abuse and the individual, whose background contributes to the idea that involvement in abuse is acceptable.
Soldiers with a moral compass turned the Abu Ghraib torturers in, rather than participate.
I get a little uncomfortable whenever I hear complaints about repressing the male sex drive. Perhaps I get nervous waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The usual solution to the repressed male sex drive problem is that women should have the same feelings men do, and if we don’t we’re neurotic, so why don’t we just have sex all the time with everybody.
I appriciate you not making that argument.
Why not openly encourage mastubation and same sex contact, particularly for teens.
I’m sorry, but…
…is BULLSHIT. Unmitigated bullshit.
There are only “good girls” and “bad girls” and the “bad girls” have it coming to them, in whatever form it may take. That is where our society still is.
Violence is neither unknown nor unique to the middle class. Period.
Top to bottom, this whole thing is just bullshit. And it stinks to high heaven.
… that we’re all prim and proper, and only the lower classes have the genetics to commit crimes. Such bullshit! But that’s our American Puritanical culture blaring it’s trumpet of purity and classism and racism!
Yup. See my comment upthread about just whose morality we are concerned about.
There is something deeply wrong in our society when one can watch something on videotape this violent and believe the suggestion that the victim wanted to try her skills at porn stardom.
That is just so stupid until there are no words. Just patently, mind-numbingly, stupid.
Or–more to the point–how much violence are people willing to dismiss because their stereotypes get in the way?
I’m actually more weirded out by the suburbs than i am about any “downtown” in terms of anti-social, degenerate behaviour. I got the hell out very early in my life and never looked back. Ugh—i hated living in the suburbs.
I was told by the SAS Brit, as well as the lady in Personnel, that it had been surgically removed, and that s/he was saving for hormone therapy.
I have no way of verifying the truth, but perhaps you may be right. Which ever was used, that was one very creepy experience and person.
I imagine the woman was a male-to-female transexual. And, if hormone therapy had not yet begun, neither would the surgery have already happened.
deviant behavior is just that, deviant. I, and most of the males I know would consider this type of behavior to be deviant, disgusting and totally beyond the pale.
Not an excuse, but as an attempt at an explanation, you know young males, on an average, in a non aroused state, think of sex (their penis) about once every few (7 , I think the figure was from my now long distant Human Sexuality Seminar.) seconds and if that drive is not tempered with a sense of women as equal humans this behavior erupts in deviant ways.
For me personally, my mom taught me to respect women. Not my dad. My mom taught me by talking to me honestly about sex and being my best friend so I knew women as something other than sex objects.
I firmly believe that it is in the family context that the deviant behavior is either nurtured or suppressed.
Appreciate your comment.
I grew up in a big catholic family where sex was never mentioned and modesty was just a given. Some how my father’s actions as a good man rubbed off on all the brothers. They all married well and their families are happy and I think working well. The daughters are a different story. probably searching for some good man like dad and except for my youngest sister, 3 of us girls have had nothing but heart ache.
My mom definitely favored the boys and felt freer to be affectionate with them, but us girls were not nurtured lovingly. My dad was always respectful, but be it the taboos of ‘catholic’ touching we girls were seldom hugged.
By ‘catholic’ touching I mean like I had this nun who when I was in grade school told us it was a mortal sin to let someone else touch your body. I use to say so many act of contritions LOL! Even if someone just bumped my elbow.
It does come down to education. I do know I consciously made the effort to talk, love and hug my daughter and she is very healthy in all regards. I also threatened every one of her boyfriends with a motherly hug and STRONG SCARY words. 😉
rosee, I take it that you gave the boyfriends strong scary words about how to treat your daughter…?
boys also respected me for that cause they would come visit even when my daughter wasn’t home:-)
Rosie (and forgive me if you use another version of your name), thank you so much for this comment. I hadn’t realized you were from a Catholic family. Your post here reminds me of a very good lawyer friend of mine, who has been blessed with seven kids. He’s a good man from top to bottom, a smart advocate for hundreds of poor people, without a trace of pretension, and you can see it rub off on his kids. I’m also fortunate to have a Catholic father who is just plain good (although he has veered off a bit into Fox News territory in his old age). Thanks for your post! — Arminius
I am numb at the thought of how that girl was put on trial as having faked her unconsciousness. I wondered… she probably wanted them to not know she was finally awake as they had pool cues and bottles and it may have been her way of keeping herself from “more harm”- as if what was being done to her wasn’t already horrific… I dunno… As we know – Some fight, some pray that it ends soon.
As to the porn… There is some sick porn out there. But there are also “blue” movies out there for couples, for couples who want to experience more between each other but don’t know how to go about things. I know of no couple who can actually watch an entire one because sometimes it does the “job” of creating lines of communication or action. Today’s blue movies are not the same as the 70’s stuff. Candida Royalle is a female director who makes movies for women/couples. But by and large – American porn “sucks”
I think what is dementing our young men and society is the lack of respect for life. The non-accountability for any action.
Porn in the hands of a deviant, rapist, sex addict – is … porn in the hands of a deviant, rapist, sex addict.
There is porn and then there is erotica. But – it’s not for everyone and not for every woman or couple. And it’s very scary to even try to find a non-disgusting blue flick in America. There are actually comedies and romances that are sound films just without the sex scenes deleted.
I blame a society that basically demeans and shits on women on every issue. I blame the women and media who are now gossiping about “how much did that slain, sexually mutilated and raped NYC student drink that night”.
And I don’t blame men or women for hating the porn industry. Not one bit. Sometimes I see that industry as like another Exxon… profitting from the ignorance, violence… when it could be used to inform, educate.
What is weird is that I introduced my spouse to erotica – in print mostly as well as some media – so that he could overcome some of the issue crap he had and begin to communicate with me. It showed him where my boundaries were. Where my lines of not crossing were. Did you like that? Why? Why not?
I wish more men and women could be more talkative and open about sexual matters. I think they would find they had so much more in common than not.
You’re playing with dynamite. But I like to remember that it was God Himself who created the universe with a big bang. And created sex. Big Medicine, with Important Rules.
On the other hand a mom was arrested, yesterday I think, along with her son & a bunch of other 20 yr. old thugs, for multiple rape, forced oral copulation, rape with a foreign object & torture. I believe this occured over a 24 hr. period & the mom was shouting encouragement while her son & friends committed these atrocities. The youg lady was the girlfriend of a guy these people had a beef with. This is in today`s LA Times,
Do you think the mom watched too much online porn with her son & his friends & should she be castrated also? I`ve been following the trials of those punks in Orange County & in my opinion they should have recvd. life without. The lawyer`s job is to defend his/her client as vigorously as I hope you would be defended in any legal situation. As far as whacking someones balls off or chopping of his dick sort of puts one in the same shoes as the attackers in this case. What do you do with females who commit horrendous crimes; burn their kids alive, drown them ect…?
I have no answer, but I most surely think of what those 3 did to that young lady. They have given her a heavy cross.
have read about some and that story is horrendous. That mother should be punished ten-fold. Some women should never be mothers. Obviously she’s very sick. And who could ever know the background.
I’ve had some rough female bosses, but women by nature are just not as evil as men. However add drugs, alcohol,abuse conditioning, etc., and look what happens. Porn doesn’t help either. The penis just seems to cause a lot of problems for some men, hense the castration off the hip comment. “Root of all evil” (That’s kind of a joke)
Nice.
I don’t know where they learn this stuff, but I sure know where they don’t learn it. They don’t learn it anyplace where respect for others, and particularly respect for women, is a bedrock value.