Okay, seriously, WTF?Follow

For some reason I don't think that physics work this way. Perhaps you know more physics than I do and can correct me. Please do.



Why? What's the point in even making distinctions between children and adults if heinous crimes are always encouraged to ignore age. It's as if people want children to have no rights whatsoever because of their age, but be held accountable for each and every of their actions as if they did. Some arbitrary decision to try a child as an adult is not justice; it is just emotions interfering with justice, even if the end is the same. He shouldn't be tried as a juvenile? I hope to god that he had the right to vote then.

The baby is fine right? Is it hurt at all? The article is painfully vague.

This thread serves to teach me that parents are barbaric.

***

Wow I watched the video after making the previous post (internet was acting up earlier). I'm even less overwhelmed after seeing it. I'm amazed this is even a crime.



The one and only one thing for which I recognize you on these boards is being a mother. Unfortunately, every little *******, including the 16 year old, also has one who is probably just as devoted.

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 1:07pm by Pensive

The article states that they aren't sure yet if there was any head trauma or brain injury. However, you are missing the point--not only could the baby had been injured, HE COULD HAVE DIED. See that moment in the video where the baby is heading head-first toward the floor? His neck could have been broken and he could have died, and then we'd be looking at murder, or at the very least, manslaughter charges.

This is not hysteria, it's not something that "might coulda possibly in a blue moon" have come to pass, it was a very real possibility that the baby could have sustained a serious, perhaps even fatal injury. Yes, it's fortunate that such a thing didn't happen, but the idea that the offense should be shrugged off just because it didn't is mind-boggling.



Then you are an idiot. Child abuse is the least of the charges that should be leveled at these people. That baby could have been killed. He might actually have a brain injury. The idea that you think no one should be punished for willfully and maliciously tormenting and possibly injuring a baby just so they could get some notoriety on YouTube is astonishing.



Then she should have taught her kid that propelling a helpless baby across a room was wrong, not to mention potentially fatal for the baby. Something tells me that if you fail to teach your kids even the most basic tenets of common sense, and then leave them unsupervised with the baby you yourself were actually supposed to be watching, you don't get a mother of the year award.

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 10:47am by Ambrya

Clearly this teenager is high on meth.

They all are.

I'm sorry I didn't know I was suppose to baby-sit the baby-sitter baby-sitting my baby.

If I have to supervise my baby-sitter then I clearly chose the wrong one.

Is it too late for Ambrya to go all postpartum depressive and drown her kid in the toilet?

I mean, I just think her guilt would be awesome.

I remember very well what it was like to be 5 years old. I gave my favorite book to a class mate because I felt so bad for her that it was her birthday and no one brought her presents. I cried at a cartoon movie about a tiny donkey that was rejected by his peers because he was so small. I was a highly empathetic child, and I would never EVER had done something that would hurt another child, much less a baby. Not because I feared punishment, but because I couldn't stand the thought of anyone being hurt, and certainly not hurting someone myself.



Five years is absolutely old enough to have a solid foundation of empathy built. I can't even say it's all about proper upbringing, because my own upbringing was extremely lacking and yet I still managed to develop the facility to see other people as feeling beings who could be hurt and to go out of my way NOT to hurt them.

If a five year old can do that (and they most certainly can) then a sixteen year old has no f'ucking excuse whatsoever for not being able to do so.



So by you, the appropriate punishment for deliberately endangering the life of another person, much less a baby, for yucks and attention is--grounding?



No, he doesn't need to go because I'm outraged. He needs to go because he committed a crime, that crime being child abuse, just like any other child abuser, be they sixteen or sixty. He's old enough to know better, he did it anyway, he pays the price, end of f'ucking story.

Should a sixteen year old parent not be held responsible for abusing their baby because they are only sixteen? What this kid did was child abuse. Child abuse is a crime. Criminals who get caught face criminal penalties. Thank god.



I don't give a sh'it if it's my baby or not. It's a baby. It suffered. Therefore, I am outraged, just as I am outraged any and every damn time I learn about children being abused and/or suffering. And if YOU are not outraged, then YOU are lacking something as a human being, because if there is one thing on this whole planet worth feeling outraged over, the suffering of an innocent child, whether you know the child or not, is it.

This whole notion of "I don't know the baby, so it's not my problem" is frankly disgusting and it's precisely that sort of LACK of empathy that makes a sixteen-year-old think launching a baby across a room is all fun and games and not serious in the first place. You are part of the problem.

I'm sorry that I don't have to be a self-absorbed hypocrite because I feel that pretending to have interest in some completely average instance of stupidity makes me a good person, all the while going about my daily life and continuing to pursue my own goals and dreams instead of actually doing anything to fix the unjustice, all so i can sleep at night.

Why are you are manipulated into outrage so damn easily by a newscaster?



I couldn't consider a single instance of launching a baby jailworthy. It's not even close. Perhaps if the baby had died. It's still not necessarily a malicious action and you're still a @#%^ing idiot for believing that you can even tell whether or not it was a malicious action.



I think that you are lying, making generalizations, and have forgotten what it is like to be a child. Even if you're not you're generalizing your own experiences to a situation that neither of us are qualified to judge, unless of course you have a phd in child psychology tucked into your back pocket.



No. Read. Think. I've stated already what I think the appropriate punishment should be, mostly that I don't know. Do you know why I don't have to? It's because my argument has nothing to do with what the appropriate punishment is. It has to do with what it is not. Concentrate on the area where I specifically address your question next time instead of pulling from some random pontification which is added for and only for clarity.

Besides, I really don't have anything against restorative justice. Forgiveness goes a long way. And you call me the one with no empathy... at least I'm not selective about it based off of stupid emotional impulses and manipulative newscasts.

Edited, Jul 5th 2008 9:51pm by Pensive

The newscaster has nothing to do with it. I feel outrage because it's an incident worth feeling outraged over, as is ANY incidence of cruelty toward a helpless child. The fact that I learned of it through a newscast is incidental--I would feel the same had I learned of it any other way.

The fact that you DON'T feel outrage is, in my honest opinion, demonstrative of an alarming lack of empathy toward the harmless and helpless. And yes, that lack of empathy seems to be an increasing epidemic as more and more people adopt your "it's not my problem" attitude.



The action speaks for itself--he perpetrated a unquestionably painful, potentially injurious and possibly even deadly ASSAULT upon a helpless baby, and had his friend record it for posterity. It was done for lulz and notoriety. There is nothing about that kind of behavior that ISN'T malicious.

Thankfully, assault upon a baby is, in fact, jailworthy. If deliberately burning the baby with cigarettes (which actually carries far less potential for actual fatal injury than this particular stunt) is jailworthy, then this sure as hell is. Why? Because both examples are painful and cruel assaults upon the baby--whether or not lasting harm is actually done is irrelevant.



Then you are wrong. Plain and simple, you are wrong. Both incident I describe happened exactly as I related them. They are real examples of the fact that 5 year olds are AMPLY capable of experiencing empathy. I remember those events with crystal clarity, and a lot of others in a similar vein.



Nope, just the wisdom of experience. The examples I cited were only of myself, true. So I'll go further. I have witnessed with my own eyes TWO YEAR OLDS comforting adults and other children who cry, or even just pretend to cry. That was a favorite game between my younger brother and an aunt of ours when he was young--she'd ask for a hug, he'd refuse, she'd pretend to cry, he'd go and hug and pat her and then she'd smile and he'd smile and a few minutes later they would play it again.

Another example, I have a friend with a 27 month old toddler, named Sasha. They were at my house a few weeks ago, and my son got upset because I wouldn't let him play with something he wasn't supposed to have. Being quite new to the concept of setting boundaries, my 13-month-old son acted as though this denial was the end of the world. Sasha picked up another toy, offered it to my son instead, gave him a hug, and said, "Don't cry, baby Tristan! We play with this!"

That isn't even CLOSE to being the end of examples of empathetic behavior in young children I can cite.

Even at as young an age as two, children are capable of recognizing when someone is distress and reacting in order to help soothe that distress. They experience empathy. And yes, those same empathetic kids have their moments of self-centeredness. And yes, SOME kids are complete selfish sh'its. But the fact that many children, even most children, learn empathy from toddlerhood on means that there is not a single f'ucking teen in the world with a valid excuse for not recognizing that his actions are not only painful, but potentially harmful, to another person.



No, you've said it should be left in the hands of the parents. What is a parent going to do--assuming we can rely on that particular parent to do anything at all--except ground the kid. For how long? A week? A month? A year? Does the grounding come with or without phone, TV and internet privileges? What do we do if the parent refuses to take responsibility and discipline the kid at all? Does the kid just completely skate then?



That is a cop-out and you know it. YOU introduced the idea of letting the parents handle this. You opened the door, so don't act indignant when I go through it and attempt to explore if what is on the other side is, in fact, appropriate to the crime.



The fact that your so-called "empathy" is reserved for the person who did the wrongdoing and not his helpless victim is disturbing. The fact that you seem to think this kid did nothing wrong ("I'm amazed this is even a crime") is even more disturbing.

Yeah sure. He has made some very stupid choices and deserves some punishment (as I said before). He does not, however, deserve to have his entire life ruined because of it. That's all. The way ambrya is going about it makes it seem like she wants to throw away the key... I can't honestly distinguish between her sentiment right now and Katie's whenever the subject of child-molestation comes up; that sentiment is a simple gut-level condemnation and refusal to acknowledge the perpetrator as even possibly redeemable in some way.

Very foolish.

No, not throw away the key. But he's old enough to know better, which means by all rights he should be charged as an adult, and receive whatever the appropriate sentence for felony cruelty to a child carries. He should pay the price that anyone else who abuses a child pays. Yeah, his life will be f'ucked up, and yeah, it's unfortunate to see that happen to a young person, but them's the breaks. Ya f'uck up, ya pay the price.

I agree with this sentiment completely. An adult by legal definition is 18, to charge someone under that age is unconstitutional as they had no voice in law. Law without representation is something I am vehemently against. If anything, I think the parents of the 16 year old in question should be held criminally.

I feel outrage because it's an incident worth feeling outraged over, as is ANY incidence of cruelty toward a helpless child.

No it's not. You're a sucker. It's inarguable. This isn't "cruelty", you stupid motherfucker. There was no intent to harm the child, and the child wasn't harmed. If this wasn't a high publicity case it'd be laughed out of court by any judge. This warrants a restraining order *at best*. You're letting your sucker feelings of how'd you react if someone "did such a thing to your kid!!!eleven1!!!" apply for no reason. This wasn't your kid. Grow the fuck up. Idiots like you are why stupid laws are passed.


But he's old enough to know better, which means by all rights he should be charged as an adult, and receive whatever the appropriate sentence for felony cruelty to a child carries.

No, mommy, he's OBVIOUSLY NOT old enough to know better. If he was old enough to know better, idiot, he wouldn't have knowingly participated in something that was videotaped and then shown to other people. Look, we're all pleased as punch that you managed to squeeze a kid out of your ******, but BELIEVE IT OR NOT it doesn't make you more qualified to pass judgment on other people's actions that happen to involve children. In point of fact, in your case, it makes you clearly less qualified.


He should pay the price that anyone else who abuses a child pays.

This isn't child abuse, you dumb *****. Equivocating it with child abuse trivializes actual acts of abuse. It sickens me that you could possibly be so callous about real cases of abuse this way.


Yeah, his life will be f'ucked up, and yeah, it's unfortunate to see that happen to a young person, but them's the breaks. Ya f'uck up, ya pay the price.

Yeah, I agree. This is why your kid should be taken away from you by the state. You're posts on this subject alone show that you're nowhere near qualified to be a parent. Someone who won't irrevocably ruin your childs life should raise it, not you.

Oh wait, let me guess, the breaks don't apply when it's you, do they, sucker?

Sorry, I had to come home, haha.

Nexa