Kids. Gotta love 'em, right? Gotta be careful, though. Kids these days are capable of so much nowadays. Look at any news website, and I guarantee you, in the last week or two, there will have been a story about a teenager (or a group of them) that has committed some kind of crime. Such as the Cincinnatti man who was brutally beaten by a group of 13-14 year old teenagers, for no apparent reason.
Last Saturday night, 45-year-old Pat Maheny of North College Hill, Ohio, had just made a beer run, and was on his way home to go watch the Reds game. Sadly he never made it home that night, as he was too busy getting the hell beat out of him by six teenagers, aged 13-14.
The kids face felony charges of assault, awaiting trial later this month. They're under house arrest at their parents' homes.
As if the fact that this happened isn't bad enough (hell, the man had severe internal injuries and lost a tonne of blood, and had to spend four days at a hospital), the motive for the attack was downright despicable; when police questioned the boys, asked why they did it, what was their answer?
They were just bored.
Hmm... I've been bored before. I live in Ohio, there's nothing here. I don't ever recall having a desire to go beat up the first innocent, middle-aged man I see, just to alleviate my boredom.
I've been following this story on the radio for a while. The general opinion is that these kids should be locked up for what they did. And I agree. However, most of the callers I've heard, aren't exactly convinced they're the only ones responsible. Yes, apparently their parents are to blame just as much as they are.
Um... what? First of all, the parents weren't there, and were never mentioned in any of the police reports. Second, these hick losers don't know anything about the parents. They know nothing about how these kids were raised. For all we know, they could have some of the best parents in the country.
I do agree that, to an extent, that parents should be responsible for their kids' actions, especially when they're as young as 13 or 14.
However, I'm tired of the people who say the parents should be punished. Some of the callers I've heard have even said they should be doing jail time in addition to their kids. Now that is ridiculous.
Parents can't be with their kids all the time. They can't hold their kids' hands all throughout their life to shield them from bad influences. All they can do is raise them well enough, and make sure they taught them well enough to not get suckered into them.
Because, no matter how well you raise a kid, even if you're a perrennial Parent Of The Year candidate, you aren't the only influence in your kid's life. Every day, kids are exposed to television, internet, radio, magazines, and most of all, other kids. A kid can only go so long without developing a mind of their own. And most of the people who sit from behind their computer screens, thinking they can just demonize these teenagers' parents, often forget that yes, believe it or not, kids do have minds of their own. It doesn't make their parents bad people.
Maybe their parents aren't good at what they do. But who are we to make that decision? Like I said, we don't know them. Punish those who actually carried out this brutal attack, before turning to their parents, who, for all we know, probably had nothing to do with it.
Information from WLW-AM was used in this post. If you're in southwest or central Ohio, tune in to 700 AM.
Visit their website at 700wlw.com
