"He Wants To Be Home"
The human psyche is a fragile, easily-tipped vessel of competing emotions and yearnings. As people mature they become socialized, more aware of themselves within a larger human community and they learn, to some degree, to exert control over those emotional needs. To harness them toward what is possible, and what is reasonable, with some measure of success. For a child balance is not so readily achievable, and they can present as seething firebrands of resentment.
Sometimes there's an outlet for that resentment, sometimes one doesn't present itself. When a parent is faced with a child whose trust and emotional support system has already been compromised through separation of father and mother and attempts to make amends to help his child adjust become paramount, he does not always - with competing interests for his attention - make wise decisions.
It is the parent's responsibility to make a reasonable effort to assess, analyze and conclude what might be the best course of action to help his child over jealousy, resentment and aggrieved aggression when he brings into the family home a replacement for the missing mother. That situation, needless to say, can likewise become a reality when it is the mother bringing home an alternate father-figure.
And the resentful child might as easily present as a young girl. Boys, however, are controversially more direct in their search for a solution in a physical manner, while girls tend to simmer and resent, whine and pout about things they can't change although this is not an immutable human rule. An eleven-year-old boy is a child, not yet an emerging adult, not quite yet struggling with hormonal adjustments.
And in a society where violence is readily seen on television screens and films, it may present to young children - as it most certainly does to older youths - as a solution to a problem that they've been beset with. Direct action inclusive of doing real physical harm to those whose presence is an abiding, insufferable insult to their emotional balance.
A boy living in a farm house in Wampum, Pennsylvania, Jordan Brown, was given a Christmas gift by his father, a youth-model 20-bore shotgun.
It's possible that in the U.S. a boy of eleven would be refused the purchase of such a device. In Canada many merchandisers advertise that they will not sell an air rifle to anyone under 18 years of age. Despite which, parents succumb to the pleadings of their young children and buy these things for them. And heaven help the wildlife, and in some instances, other children.
In Jordan Brown's case heaven welcomed his father's pregnant fiancee, and along with her the child she was carrying. Kenzie Houk, the young woman whom Jordan Brown shot in the head as she slept - first taking the precaution of covering the shotgun with a blanket to muffle sound as he shot her at close range - was, as well, the mother of two young girls who also lived at the farmhouse.
One of the dead woman's daughters, aged seven, asked her step-brother as they were both leaving to catch their school bus what the 'big boom' had been. He did not respond, and they both left for school. Once Ms. Houk's body was discovered, clear evidence led to her step-son, and he was taken into custody at a juvenile detection centre, attending school at classes there, now.
It transpired that some of Ms. Houk's relatives had overheard Jordan claim he wanted to "pop Kenzie in the head". In addition to which he had confided a plan to shoot his step-mother and her two children, to a cousin. It's clear that the boy's hostility to his step-mother and step-sisters was well know, but not, politely, overtly agonized over and acknowledged.
"He looked at [Ms.Houk] like she was a problem, like here is someone about to take my father away from me and have a baby boy", the dead woman's sister reported to authorities. "Life was all about him before." That being so, where was a measure of restraint, an effort to understand the situation and attempt to turn it around?
The result of the boy's aggrieved resentment to this challenger for his father's love and attention is a tragedy of loss, pain and grief that time cannot ameliorate. The boy initially denied any part in the death of his step-mother, and does not appear to fully understand proceedings in the charges against him. A judge has ruled that he not be tried as a minor.
If he is convicted as an adult he would face a mandatory life sentence. An 11-year-old boy living out his life in prison. That's medieval justice. The lawyer representing the boy explains: "He's OK. He wants to be with his dad. He wants to be home."
What do you do in this kind of bizarre case, to fulfill the obligations of legal justice, and in so doing create an intolerable human-rights-abuse against a minor?
Sometimes there's an outlet for that resentment, sometimes one doesn't present itself. When a parent is faced with a child whose trust and emotional support system has already been compromised through separation of father and mother and attempts to make amends to help his child adjust become paramount, he does not always - with competing interests for his attention - make wise decisions.
It is the parent's responsibility to make a reasonable effort to assess, analyze and conclude what might be the best course of action to help his child over jealousy, resentment and aggrieved aggression when he brings into the family home a replacement for the missing mother. That situation, needless to say, can likewise become a reality when it is the mother bringing home an alternate father-figure.
And the resentful child might as easily present as a young girl. Boys, however, are controversially more direct in their search for a solution in a physical manner, while girls tend to simmer and resent, whine and pout about things they can't change although this is not an immutable human rule. An eleven-year-old boy is a child, not yet an emerging adult, not quite yet struggling with hormonal adjustments.
And in a society where violence is readily seen on television screens and films, it may present to young children - as it most certainly does to older youths - as a solution to a problem that they've been beset with. Direct action inclusive of doing real physical harm to those whose presence is an abiding, insufferable insult to their emotional balance.
A boy living in a farm house in Wampum, Pennsylvania, Jordan Brown, was given a Christmas gift by his father, a youth-model 20-bore shotgun.
It's possible that in the U.S. a boy of eleven would be refused the purchase of such a device. In Canada many merchandisers advertise that they will not sell an air rifle to anyone under 18 years of age. Despite which, parents succumb to the pleadings of their young children and buy these things for them. And heaven help the wildlife, and in some instances, other children.
In Jordan Brown's case heaven welcomed his father's pregnant fiancee, and along with her the child she was carrying. Kenzie Houk, the young woman whom Jordan Brown shot in the head as she slept - first taking the precaution of covering the shotgun with a blanket to muffle sound as he shot her at close range - was, as well, the mother of two young girls who also lived at the farmhouse.
One of the dead woman's daughters, aged seven, asked her step-brother as they were both leaving to catch their school bus what the 'big boom' had been. He did not respond, and they both left for school. Once Ms. Houk's body was discovered, clear evidence led to her step-son, and he was taken into custody at a juvenile detection centre, attending school at classes there, now.
It transpired that some of Ms. Houk's relatives had overheard Jordan claim he wanted to "pop Kenzie in the head". In addition to which he had confided a plan to shoot his step-mother and her two children, to a cousin. It's clear that the boy's hostility to his step-mother and step-sisters was well know, but not, politely, overtly agonized over and acknowledged.
"He looked at [Ms.Houk] like she was a problem, like here is someone about to take my father away from me and have a baby boy", the dead woman's sister reported to authorities. "Life was all about him before." That being so, where was a measure of restraint, an effort to understand the situation and attempt to turn it around?
The result of the boy's aggrieved resentment to this challenger for his father's love and attention is a tragedy of loss, pain and grief that time cannot ameliorate. The boy initially denied any part in the death of his step-mother, and does not appear to fully understand proceedings in the charges against him. A judge has ruled that he not be tried as a minor.
If he is convicted as an adult he would face a mandatory life sentence. An 11-year-old boy living out his life in prison. That's medieval justice. The lawyer representing the boy explains: "He's OK. He wants to be with his dad. He wants to be home."
What do you do in this kind of bizarre case, to fulfill the obligations of legal justice, and in so doing create an intolerable human-rights-abuse against a minor?
Labels: Justice, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 11:51 AM
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