12 Boys Abusing A Girl, Werribee

So, today a country was shocked at the despicable and abhorrent acts all done by a
group of teenagers residing in the western suburbs. For our friends joining us who haven’t
heard of this, it involved the acts of 12 teenage boys throwing a cup of urine onto a girl,
burning her hair 3 times (including once with an aerosol can and a lighter), and allegedly
forcing her to commit a sex act on a mentally undeveloped 17 year old girl.

 

Now, for my friends who are aware of the story, let me elaborate on my point of view, and hopefully why such a degrading act came to pass.

 

I’m sure we’d all read the story and say “That’s so terrible, and I feel so sorry for
that girl.” Precisely how I feel. But then, usually the next line I hear is “If I ever
found those kids I’d beat the absoluete daylight out of them” – usually that line
has a lot more expletives in it.

 

So, who’s to blame? I have no doubt that the boys knew what they were doing, and how
they were tormenting this girl. I could see a lot of people however, blaming solely on
the parents. A lot would also mock this, with the retort that the kids are old enough
to know better. Perhaps the best way to address this debate is by presenting both sides
of the argument, and then I shall give my 2 cents on the matter.

 

We hear all the time of parents being to blame for their child’s actions, morales and
outlook on life. I hear parents being positively crucified for letting young ‘Johnny’ hang
out with that boy, touch that drink or start smoking. Is it really the parents fault though?
Are they held accountable for their child’s actions and ethics? We all know from an early
age that it is absoluetely crucial for the role of active parent’s in their lives from
an early age, and neglectment has been linked to multiple disorders and a defensive mechanism that makes emotional attachment’s for the individual harder than the norm. While this isn’t always the case, I firmly believe a corrolation to be present with a lack of parental role at any early age for the child and several problems associated later in life. Some of these may include self esteem issues, including depression, and my belief of many more. Although, the latter of many more problems is also linked to another factor which I will elaborate on my little input when we are finished trying to analyse each situation.

 

So, what’s the answer though? Should we discipline today’s youths moreso? Result back in the old ways of capital punishment? Does hitting someone invoke love and a sense of understanding in them? Or result the child in forming a fear at any early age of when you do something bad, physically painful memories are recalled? Does fear drive them? Or love in that scenario?

 

Should we adopt a more liberal view point, where we let the child make his/her own decisions, while not executing any physical punishment at all, and try to make the child make the independent decisions and hopefully they will realise the error of their ways. So, if Johhny wants to smoke that cigarette, should we tell him the dangers of smoking yet condone the acts by allowing him to smoke in the backyard, for you would rather him smoke at home rather than behind your back? However, perhaps I have digressed, considering we are speaking about the 12 boys who committed such an act. Although, I’m not entirely sure about their parental background, I did hear of two parents apparently laughing at the acts their child done when they received word via the media about it. Once again, are the parents to blame here?

 

Or, maybe we need the medium here, of to allow some physical discipline, but not all the time. Hmmm, I do recall a story of hearing a woman being up on child abuse charges though because of smacking her child in open public. Also, the question rises, is how much physical discipline should we administer? Should we completely move away from the dark days of hitting our child when they done something wrong?

 

Now, let us flip the coin. Are the individuals entirely to blame? I have heard of cases where the parents seemed to have disciplined their child, in a loving way, and brought up in an environment ideal to most. However, how was it that this person somehow committed such an deplorable act? Can we still crucify the parents when they seemed to have done all they can? Or perhaps we should try and find an exploit, pin point a timeline and see if we can find something to dig at. The boys in this case (while I’m not entirely sure of their age) seemed to be around 15 or 16. Is this an acceptable age for them to realise their actions? By terms of law yes, and I would assume most of, if not all of us would agree too. So, if it the boys fault, and solely their fault, where exactly did they fall off the bandwagon? Where exactly, have these acts come by? Or perhaps it’s just “boys will be boys?” But if that was the case, why wouldn’t other boys act in the same manner? Surely these acts and senseless brutality has HAD to come from
somewhere. Where, is the answer we all seem to be looking for. Ah, but parents are quick
to stick up for their child, in a lot of cases, blaming their friends being a bad influence,
or external influences such as perhaps the teachers, their schools, some even themselves or home lives. The child simply doesn’t gather those morales from nowhere. They come from a place, where that is, could be a multitude of factors, but my two cents will hopefully clarify this.

 

So, now onto my two cents. While we could blame one party solely, and look at only these
influences, I believe we are all missing the massive picture. Factors such as the media, society, our background, parental guidance, friends and family, down to your birth order can determine events in life. Let me elaborate.

 

I hear a case of a boy taking his camera phone into school, and the teacher had confiscated it, and there was a community uproar on the state of kids, restricting their access, and various other issues which seemed to be off target. My question: Are we blind? Everyday I cannot walk into a supermarket with some model seductively posted on a wall of magazines, insinutating the physical desire sex. I see billboards, media publishments, sales representatives trying to lure me by flirtiously trying to sell me something. I see TV shows such as “Sex in the City” potraying that sex is cool, sex is the thing to do, and if you’re not doing it, you must be a complete loser. The word “Virgin” seems to be an embarrasing word among the youths today – I should know, as I’m only 20 years of age. I constantly hear of others speaking about their sexual encounters and various ‘pick ups.’ Are the children truly to blame when society is spilling out this junk to them 24 hours a day? Ironic that societies morales change over time. 50 years ago homosexuality was considered a satantic commitment, while today it is a widely accepted practice. I wonder what 100 years will bring for us? Married with 3 wives? The laws are static, but people become more corrupted as time unfolds.

 

So, back to our story of the boys. The penetrating question. Who’s to blame? I definetly agree that their parents play a massive role in their development. However, they are not totally to blame. Provided they have tried to the best of their ability to make their child feel supported, loved and guided them in the right ethics and choices they should make in life, how we can we possibly hold them accountable? However, of course the child, or young adolescent has a conscience too – and it is acceptable to say that they should know better. But, I have also seen time and time again, including myself, to be swayed and corrupted by those undesirable bullies or “friends” at school. The conformity of peer pressure is massive. The group of friends that a child interacts with will have a massive impact on their behaviour – perhaps in some cases more than the parents strong teachings of what and what not to do. But no high school teen like’s a “moma’s boy”, and I see constantly young teens trying to fit into a group. Certain people seem to have the cool status, usually the rebellious type (even though they may be quite intelligent). Temptations and risks of doing something completely out of an individual’s character is very real, especially in the small confinements of the high school, where there is no escape, and I don’t care what anyone says, but the teachers really are powerless. If the
individual tells the teacher of a bullying, sure, the teacher will confront the student, give
him a detention and in many cases, be off with it. In some cases, the parents will be called,
but a lot of the times those parents to be the ones condoning the demmoral acts of their child –

 

So, in essence, it comes like this. Those faulty parents who failed to raise their child
properly, resulting in that child to be rebellious, depressed, and suffering from self esteem
issues is now unleashed within the high school, ready to mix and bully other kids to make
himself feel better about life by gaining power over others. So, even though young Billy
on the other hand was raised good, young Timmy who doesn’t give a damn about life because his folks didn’t give a damn about him could very well manipulate (usually through physical intimidation) young Billy. Now, in the scenario that Billy tells the teacher, Timmy gets a detention, and do you think Timmy really cares about this? Do you think someone who has given up on everything care about staying back after school for an hour? Granted, he probably won’t even go – What’s worse, is he’ll get more mad. He’s not going to suddenly become enlightened in the error of his ways through a miraculous stare-at-the-wall for an hour after school. In fact, usually these types have a lot of friends, or well, similiar friends who’ve come together because of their negative energy towards, well life. I’ve seen this at school. In fact, I used to be like that Timmy there. Where did it come from? Falling in with a bad group of friends. My childhood was OK. Some parts were a still patchy, but overall, the best was done considering the circumstances. However, in high school I fell in with the “cool” group, or at least I tried to. As a result, I started smoking, became more rebellious, drank alcohol every weekend (Started at approximately 15), smoked marijuana, and I distintively remember wanting always to hurt someone, to try and empower myself. While this could be argued from
a neglect in my childhood from not my mother, but another source, I strongly believe those events wouldn’t of occured if I had not fell in with those group of “friends.”

 

Now thirdly, I perceive society as a problem. If a child at an early age is suscepted inevitably to the acting of how other people behave, or the things in society which seem to contradict what our parents are trying to teach us, how can the lessons of our parents hold any form of a foundation? For example, our parents may tell us not to drink because it’s unhealthy. However, what if a young child (I mention the word young because it is crucial at an early age of the forming of one’s concept and belief on life) see’s a billboard or a flurry of TV commericals with a group of people drinking their bottles of whiskey, laughing and seemingly having the best of time? Now, this is just a minor example, but if you see we’re constantly bombarbed as a society with all this corrution, media, lies, threats of war, other’s opinions and newspapers swaying everyone into chaos, how can this not affect us?

 

Can people screaming and yelling in road rage while movies at the local cinema in a new “Kill-Em-All with my Single Uzi” premiers. Hurting someone seems to be classified as something cool to do nowadays. The movie “Jack-Ass” serves to an audience to say that it’s funny to demolish homes and act like complete primitives. I don’t think I can ever board a train without a youth behind me telling me how he “smashed” some guy at a party because he was “Looking at meh Mrs”. Where is all the anger and hatred boiling from? Parents? Themselves? Kids at school? Society? The media?
All of these answers are correct, and perhaps quite a few more, but those seem to be the main ones that ring the bells in my mind.

 

Like I mentioned, I cannot walk into a supermarket without seeing some model posing her “perfect” body, with all these magazines and tips and tricks on diets, what to eat and how to live life, be cool, get lots of sex and get in fashion – otherwise, you MUST be a loser. May I remind everyone that anerexia has increased dramatically within the last 10 years? Should I even open up pandora’s box on various other depressive related disorders, crime rate and suicides on the rise? I can’t walk down the street without someone begging me to buy some product I haven’t heard of, or come home and sit down without receiving a telephone call with the first words “You’ve just won a new Nokia phone and a holiday! Congratulations. Now all you have to do is buy this and this
and that, oh and sign here.” Door knockers trying to sell me foxtel for the 50th time, TV
flooding our minds with all this pathetic advertising, while governments debate like an endless sea trying to back scratch commercial corporations while the media feed us these complete and utter lies all to keep the good citizens ignorant while our world plummets into chaos. You may be thinking that I’m just a pessemist, but I shall ask you this question:

 

If you were to answer, if the world was getting better or worse as time unfolds, which
would it be? Now think of why your answer is that way.