What can forgiveness do for you?

A very loyal reader, Fritzie, posted a comment earlier today to my post Phoebe Prince’s Father Focuses on Forgiveness? and shared a story about a woman faced with a choice. Katy Hutchinson experienced tragedy. Her husband, left their home one night to check on their neighbor’s property when a party broke out while they were away. he never returned. One of the teenage party goers took his life and Katy was left alone with two children.

In this video Katy herself speaks about the choice she made the night of her husband’s death, and how her life, and many others, are now positively altered by forgiveness. 

Katy has not only forgiven the teen, she has forged a relationship based on the power of forgiveness. Watch the video, I promise it will make you think, and you may just find yourself asking how can forgiveness work for me?

Thanks Fritzie, for your contribution and dedication.

Guilty…or not

Innocent until proven guilty. Dynamic words. In the United States the concept is relatively universal. Nearly everyone has heard those words, nearly everyone has an image, sometimes powerful, of what those words mean to them.

To me, they are part of what makes me love my country.  Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. The burden of proof lies with the prosecution and, should a jury find a person not guilty, they cannot be tried a second time for the same crime.  At least that is my novice understanding.

What if the accused publicly admits the crime? Even apologizes and agrees to restitution. Case closed, right?

Not quite.

Do you remember awhile back I wrote about a boy who was forcibly tattooed, with vulgar words and images, on his backside?

One of the teens involved, Travis Johnston, apologizes a few days after the incident. He doesn’t call the victim and apologize privately, so that no one else knows. He makes a public declaration of guilt, apologizes, and agrees to restitution. He says he will accept the consequences for his actions.

One would think the court day would arrive, Travis Johnston would stand in front of the judge, proclaim his guilt, get his sentence and restitution, and move on with his life. He wouldn’t waste the court’s time, after all, there is a public declaration, right?

Wrong. Travis Johnston, has pled not guilty.

Now I do not know about you, but I believe in the court system. I really believe that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. I believe that the media  makes it hard for a person to get a fair trial because they effectively judge a person and present evidence, long before a person sees the judicial process in action.

I believe that people are sometimes pressured by police to make false confessions. It happens a lot, more than I would care to see, actually.
Travis Johnston was not pressured by police, maybe his mother, but not police. Now, he goes into court and says not guilty. His mother has changed her story a bit too, saying her son has “more disabilities” than the victim, and the victim agreed to it.

I would like to make it clear, there are of course other aspects of the story that I know nothing about.

Perhaps the boy did “agree” to being tattooed.  Perhaps the media has skewed the  story one way, and there is a different side, unseen to the public. Happens all the time.

BUT. and this is a really big BUT.  Travis Johnston admitted his part voluntarily on camera. His mother allowed video cameras in their home. 

Maybe Travis  was bullied by his mother to speak up?

Possibly.

Ultimately, a fourteen year old is not legally able to consent to a tattoo in most places. And I do not believe, for one second, that anyone would ‘consent’ to being tattooed with ” Poop D*ck”, ever.

I do not know how Travis Johnston plans to present any sort of defense against the charges after his very public admission. I wondered it then, and I wonder it now. 

I do know is this is still the most disturbing case of “bullying” I have heard of in a long time.

Making a difference

Last night, on Nightline,(See The Teenage Lifers) a story about teenage “Lifers” brought me to tears. The excerpt discussed a young man, who as a teenager committed several acts of “armed’ robbery. In reality, he was never armed, no one was ever hurt, and he was with an adult drug dealer who forced him to take part; to pay back his mother’s drug debt. He received a life sentence with no possibility of parole. The sentencing judge admits he never anticipated the boy would never be released.

Working in Juvenile Corrections I saw many young men who made really bad decisions and ended up in a place that offered them little hope. I understood that they should be held accountable for their actions, but I thought they were young enough, they deserved a second chance. A chance to change.

 It did not take long before all of my illusions were shattered. I saw child after child leave, only to return, usually, with more severe charges. Many children could not behave within the confines of the institution and a one year sentence, turned into three. New skills were rarely offered, and although the boys went to school all year round, the curriculum did not seem challenging. Few teachers seemed to posses the passion they would need to ignite a love for learning in children who had never had to learn; who had never had anyone expect anything from them.   No art programs, few chances at teaching new ways to reduce stress, and positive outlets for frustration,were available. Furthermore, few opportunities to combat the poverty that many of them came from, existed in the form of vocational training.

Part of the reason I left Juvenile Corrections, other than the birth of our daughter, was because there was so little hope for the future there.

Last week the United States Supreme court ruled that life sentences without the possibility of parole were unconstitutional, if that did not involve murder. Maybe, there is some hope for young, impulsive, offenders. Certainly they should be held accountable, but do they not deserve a chance to change? Doesn’t everyone?

 All I want from my life is to make a difference. A difference in the lives of my children, a difference in the lives of all children. I see so much injustice in the world and I have no idea how I can help; how can I make the most impact?   

Tell me the ways that you help? Do you feel the same frustration I do?

What happens when “kids being kids” goes to far?

For seventeen year old Raum Fox, life will never be the same. Bullied by peers, he no doubt wanted the harassment to end, but not the way it did. His mother wanted it to end too, but she could never have foretold how far the bullies would actually go to harass her son.

Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night, a custom in the United Kingdom that is said to celebrate a failed terrorist attack on the Parliament in 1605, is celebrated by some with fireworks and bonfires. What happened in 2009 is hardly cause for celebration.

Three teenagers who had bullied Raum, and some say the neighborhood, tossed fireworks into the mailbox of Raum, and his mother’s, home. The house caught fire and while Raum made it out alive, his 59-year-old mother, Mary, did not.

Two of the teenagers were recently convicted of manslaughter and arson, the third had pleaded guilty of the charges prior to their convictions.

Certainly these boys, did not intend to kill anyone, or at least that is what we would hope.  The impulsiveness of  the teenage years got the best of them and now they sit convicted of a serious crime. They will not suffer as Raum will, but they and their families, will never experience life in the same way.

Children are impulsive. They rarely think of consequences in their entirety.  How can we, as a society, continue to allow bullying to stay in the realm of “child’s play”?  

Bullying is the potential criminal act of a child but no one wants to prosecute a child, so what do we do? How do we help them change their behavior? If we continue to allow the smaller acts of bullying, the impulsivity may eventually lead to more dangerous crimes.

As adults we can (one hopes) see the consequences of our actions. We know what would happen if we threw firecrackers into a mailbox, we learn cause and effect after years of experience.  Why are we not able to teach our children to be nicer to each other in the first place, instead of just letting them figure it out for themselves?

No parent wants to receive a call that their child has been bullied to the point of harm and no parent wants to receive a call that their impulsive child has just committed an act that will lock them away for a very long time. Worse yet no one wants to lose their child to an act of violence related to bullying.  Parents all want to help and protect their children. 

If that is the case, and I believe it is, then we must start with ourselves, and how we interact with each other. We must begin to see the influence we have on our children. Snide comments, spiteful behavior, catty remarks, rude and verbally aggressive media, violent media, and overall insensitivity to those around us, all have an effect on our children.  Maybe it is time to make a change.

Sources Teenage Bullies Guilty Of Firework Killing , Three arrested over Bonfire Night house blaze that killed grandmother after neighbours name suspects on Facebook, Guy Fawkes, or Bonfire Night.

Did the Joise Ratley text messages invite attack?

Josie Ratley, victim of a horrific attack several months ago,  is home from the hospital. Her mother said her progress is slow, but steady. Thankfully she survived the attack allegedly committed by a boy named Wayne Treacy.

Treacy, is being held without bail and faces first degree attempted murder charges. His defense attorney is likely pursuing a temporary insanity plea on the grounds that Treacy was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at the time of the incident. 

According to text records recently released Ratley and Treacy had a heated exchange during which Ratley referred to Treacy as a “rapist” and suggested he “go visit” his “dead brother”. Treacy allegedly became enraged because his brother had previously committed suicide, and Treacy had seen his brother’s body.

Treacy, was likely horribly scarred by his brother’s death, as any child would be, and if family support was lacking it could exacerbate  the situation. Sadly, neither child’s life will ever be the same, and impulsive actions have affected both of their families. Ultimately, as wrong as it was for Josie to say the thoughtless things she did, she did not precipitate that attack, and Wayne Treacy, if found guilty, should be held accountable, and receive an appropriate punishment, and counseling.

Teen tattooed by bullies?

One of the thing that bothers me most about bullying, other than the constant repetition of “it’s just kids being kids’, is that much of the time bullying amounts to criminal behavior.

Think about it, as adults if we verbally harass and taunt someone, it could be considered stalking, or harassment, or at the very least disorderly conduct, depending on how one chose to interpret the laws.

Why then do we allow young children to behave in a way that will eventually constitute criminal behavior, all while labeling it child’s play?

It seems ridiculous to me and I will never understand it, just like I will never understand how four young men, and one teen can be labeled “bullies” after what they did to another young teen.

In an article on CBS online (originally The Smoking Gun)  the young men allegedly coerced a boy with learning disabilities to a home with the threat that they would no longer harass him, if he let them tatto him. The boy, who probably felt he had no other options, complied, and the young men proceeded to tattoo his behind with the words “p**p d*ck”.

I cannot tell you how enraged, disgusted and dismayed this makes me, and how I hope these young men, if found guilty, be made an example of.

The fact is that this boy was likely not their first victim, and should they enter the prison system, will likely not be their last.

Why is it that we allow this behavior of torturing one’s peers to go on for so long, and are then shocked and appalled when something like this happens?  I, for one, would love to know what behavior record these people had in kindergarten through high school. I would almost be willing to bet this is not the first time they have done something like this. After all behavior is a result of conditioning, and these young men have probably been conditioned to believe this is acceptable, in one way or another.

In truth, they are innocent until proven guilty but the sad fact is someone horribly assaulted and tortured a boy, and left lifelong scars, inside and out.

When are we going to realize that we must begin to discuss appropriate socialization behavior early, instead of making excuses?  When will we start to speak up and say bullying, or as I like to call it potential criminal behavior of a child, is unacceptable.