Boy, 8, Killed Defending Sister From Rapist

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: sheepslayer247

So you say that the kid was stupid for not running for help, then also say that he wasn't smart enough to pick up the brick first?

You putting words in my mouth too? At that age he isn't "stupid", just ignorant. His parents are at fault for not teaching him to run for help instead of fighting a psychopath "down on the tracks". Am I also the only one that wonders about little kids "playing on the tracks"?

The parents are at fault. I said it twice this time…

HOw the hell do you know what or what his parents didn't teach him?

Do kids do everything their parents tell them? Do people not react different when they are in dangerous situations? Grown people get into situations like this and have trouble rationalizing, you're telling me this kid should have known what to do because his parents would have told him at some point? You don't think that maybe he just acted first because he was scared and not thinking?

Go judge the man who killed a kid, not the parents who lost theirs...

a reply to: MCJustJ

Go judge the man who killed a kid, not the parents who lost theirs…

The state will do that, not me. I was talking lesson learned and prevention, just because you needed to hear it three times. Where were the parents by the way while their kids were playing on the tracks?

There thats four times, just for you…

America has morons on its team. No wonder kids get "left behind".

a reply to: intrptr

You're asking me a question we both know I can't answer, where were the parents? Not with their kids, like parents commonly aren't since they don't spend every waking moment with their children.

You also continue to assume they never told the kids not to play there. My parents told me to do things I continued doing all the time, as well as countless other children I knew. You argued as if you had children but I find that hard to believe because you seem to be pretty ignorant about how they act, especially at a time when still growing up.

a reply to: MCJustJ

You argued as if you had children but I find that hard to believe because you seem to be pretty ignorant about how they act, especially at a time when still growing up.

I was lucky to survive to adulthood, too. My parents were around and absent at the same time. Unless they needed to punish me. There was that. If I had kids today, I would be more responsible in that regard than mine were. Much more.

There are numerous lessons to impart to kids about strangers, firearms, matches, pier pressure, whatever. Because I never received much of that I am doubly aware of them today. Every time I see this occurring I know its a lack of parental support that set up the trouble situations that kids find themselves in today.

Not what happens to them by a criminal, but why they became vulnerable in the first place. Thats preventable.

ETA: I know because I was a kid once.

originally posted by: shrevegal
Amazing that anyone can defend psychopaths that kill children or molest them.

Explaining or offering up explanations as to how the world or human minds work are not a defense of how the world or mind works and simple attempts at creating understanding so that we can then consider our options. Please stop flaming the fires by accusing everyone who attempts to explain WHY these things happen with those that would excuse the behaviour. There is no excusing this and the person/minor in question should be removed from society ( well he should have been removed or helped before but that's another story) until such a time as he can be returned without posing a risk to others.

All the psycho-babble crap I'm reading here is nonsense. From the moment the very first cave man clubbed his neighbor to rape the neighbors wife and steal his possessions....there have always been psychopaths.

Isn't that just what all 'men' did back then and what often rather normal seeming men have been doing ever since when under some kind of duress? Sure there has always been sociopaths but if all violence is to be explained in this way churches would be empty and jails full. In fact if violence was symptomatic of 'broken' brains there would never be peace and perpetual warfare and crime given the lack of self control that normally goes along with these types.

To blame society or faulty child rearing for the predators behavior is an issue for great debate.

The debate is only had by those who wish to try to remain blameless by assigning all the fault on individuals; why would you want to change the socio-economic system when you already control the school, churches and most of what constitutes valuable land? Off course our leaders and academics will fight tooth ( last few thousand years) and nail to make sure criminality is blamed on those who 'commit crimes' instead of listening and making obvious notes as to what their crimes says about their motivations!

Predators/psychopaths are born without a heart/soul/conscience. There is no changing that...you can't "add" all that into a person if it is not there and never was.

Science at 'worse' indicates that a very small percentage of people may be born this way with the vast majority being conditioned or abused/injured into being much less able to control themselves or how to act according to some external sense of morality. At least in recent decades we have begun to see real progress and it as far as my reading goes the results are pretty positive in terms of what can be prevented and how.

Folks say we should address the problem ahead of time so such individuals are not in our society...in that regard, wouldn't it be grand if there was some way to tell if a fetus was a psychopath and abortion was used(a t least that is how I assess the opinions/ideas that some folks are putting forth here)....

Eventually ( probably not too long) we will be able to make a decision to abort fetuses with abnormal brain chemistry or growth/enlargement in areas where there should not be... The problem with this is that certain segments of society still believes that God would choose to %$$^^$ up like that and that it's all part of the grand plan to keep our lives interesting and or miserable. These are sadly generally the same folk who talk and preach 'forgiveness' ( and why not forgive someone when God is responsible for how their brains work) but want to hang and execute whenever the damage is close to home or too horrible to accept as 'part of the plan'.

Off course we the people should notice people who are not raising or managing their kids well ( when they start to hurt others) and then find ways of dealing with that specific situation or considering what we can do to prevent the parent from being a bad parent in the first place.

.no matter what we as a society do, there will always be those certain amount that are born lacking a heart, a soul, a conscience...it has always been that way and always will be.

But that number is so small and we are so many that we could easily manage the problem if we were working towards achieving such and end. The problem is not that a few 'monsters' are born but that our economic system creates thousands for every one that nature/god delivers onto us.

To blame society and/or parents or even the victims themselves is unrealistic.

So you are making a argument against personal responsibility? We can certainly blame all of those involved and i can personally blame society as a whole as well as the criminal and his parents and perhaps the victims parents for letting them play without supervision in a dangerous neighbourhood; my parents never let that happen. We can both do that and it will be fine as long as we do not stop at assigning blame but also responsibility onto everyone who could have and didn't do anything to avert these horrible crimes.

This is a beautiful world but there has always been violence...it seems that is the way of things relevant to the human species. Perhaps we can genetically engineer the violence out of humans? Otherwise, we're dreamin....it is what it is.

Violence is perfectly normal responsible in abnormal circumstances where there is no time for reason and temperate methods or where they failed. Peace can be far more horrible than war if it is the sort of peace where people are being dehumanized by exploitation and other demeaning practices. Our current economic model is based on predation by the few of the many and while the few can steal from the many without too much bloodshed they do but they prove every day that they will resort of overt and horrible crimes against humanity to maintain their wealth and power against those they robbed. The really terrible thing is that after having dehumanized and exploited people into a rather base state of being they then use the state of their victims as excuse or reasoning behind their self serving crimes.

Sure there are monsters without much resources to their name but the damage they do to society is negligible as compared to wholesale genocides visited on us by the monsters in fine clothed well mannered and spoken monsters.

I feel sorry for the innocent children involved. As for the "perp", you can't infuse him with a heart/soul/conscience if it is missing.

No you can not but if his society were not spending trillions of dollars creating more terrorist by bombing largely innocent people all over the world there might have been money to notice and prevent the crimes at home. A criminal society will yield criminals by the prison load.

I'm glad not to be related to those here defending this heinous crime...I guess those types would "run" and leave their spouse/wife/mother/sister in a similar situation.

Few men run away from their responsibilities to their families or kids and the very large majority of men would in fact defend their wives at the risk of their own lives if only so they could go on abusing her in their own way( women were little more than possessions of men for most of human history and often treated as such). You have as much to learn about men as you do about society and it's history and it shows.

Stellar

originally posted by: stormcell

originally posted by: Subnatural

originally posted by: buster2010

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: doompornjunkie

You are right, it is the little boys fault he was murdered…

Don't be a moron. Its the parents fault for not teaching him how to react to dangerous strangers.

"Now junior remember, runaway from big bad men, not towards them".

So it would have been better for the boy to run away and leave his sister behind? It's obvious the man had already grabbed the girl and the boy came to her defense. The boy did the right thing and paid for it with his life. Whether you believe it or not there are times when a person has to make stand no matter what age you are and this boy made one.

Well, it would have been wiser for the little boy to run away and scream for help. Simply because he could hardly overpower a grown man. Sometimes it is better to leave your sister behind. This is a cruel truth of a cruel world.

But I agree that it was valiant of the boy. Perhaps even exceptionally valiant. But who will remember in a thousand years? He died and the rapist lived. Of course the sister lives too, this provides some comfort. It is possible that he saved her life. Still, maybe if he would have ran she would have died and not him? Or maybe they both would have lived?

We will never know. Maybe it is pointless to ask.

And maybe the attacker would have run away with his sister, and she would never have been seen again.

It likes a situation I remember from 20 years ago. I was living in a downtown apartment, heard a commotion outside around 2am, and saw two teenagers talking with a tall guy with an rainbow umbrella. Next thing one of them has hit him with a brick, sending him spinning and falling to the ground at the same time. Happened in seconds. There was simply no way of telling that was going to happen.

It's random brutality. I think we might be able to explain it with psychology, I really do, but the problem is we can't really explain psychology yet, to ourselves.

So, we just have to accept it. And prepare ourselves, our at least our children.

Child-murder is horrible, but it is part of the human condition, it is human. It can neither be explained nor ignored. So we just stand here, not knowing how to deal with it.

originally posted by: nenothtu
I refer you back to the first post you made in this thread, defending a defenseless action of "a child" that you were not willing to condemn.

Our law ( meaning to some extent 'us') understands that minors have diminished capacities and that whatever they do the parents or society at large should share a greater responsibility in. There was a time when families essentially raised their children in a vacuum but these days there are a host of state agencies involved as well as churches and much more in the way of close ( urban living) neighbours before than in most of human history. Suffice to say that the larger society is probably more responsible for how children turn out than ever before.

It was actually StellarX who elaborated on that, and gave us the he didn't know what he was doing because he couldn't help himself" defense. You, on the other hand, defend him with "he didn't know what he was doing because he was a child".

For some reason you keep confuting offered explanations with attempts of defending criminal actions... I am not sure whether you are truly ignorant or misguided enough to believe that these ideas are interchangeable or whether you are deliberately trying to misdirect.

Defense is defense. Whether he was misunderstood because he couldn't help himself, or whether he was misunderstood because he was "only a child" is immaterial to the fact of a rape and murder.

The law actually makes a distinction between manslaughter and murder based on the intent and since children and others with diminished mental capacity or reason do not always understand the possible consequences of their actions they may receive lesser sentences.
At least some here are trying to understand WHY these things happen so that we can try to prevent them and while i understand your belief in the notion of an eye for an eye ( the punishment must fit the crime) it has not so far and can never address causation. Basically that is an argument from ignorance that humanity has relied on for a very long time and something we should change now that we finally are gaining the tools and methods to seriously look at causation; the ultimate aim should be an elimination of the necessity, or criminal choice, of violence in our societies...

16 is plenty old enough to know that rape and murder are wrong, and being unable to control himself is, buy itself, grounds for elimination from society when his proclivities are violent and uncontrollable.

16 is old enough to know right from wrong if you had the correct example's and 70 is not too old to be ignorant of them with the wrong example. The cutoff point of 16 is a legal and technical one that does not actually have all that much to do with the actual capacities and i agree that it should not be allowed to be abused by children with proven criminal tendencies.
Larger society should never allow itself to be abused by the laws it has attempted to set up in it's own protection!

It's not about vengeance or deterrence. It's about protecting society, our women and children, from dangerous predators

Truly protecting out women and children will require us to create societies that does not create criminal behaviour that we then eventually attempt to stem with violence of our own. The idea is maybe too big for some and too strange for others ( those that believe god or the devil makes criminals the way they are) but that's what real progress is and why it's so hard to manage.
Violence does beget violence; even if you kill 'them' all you are a killer and all life is thus debased which often results in the killer bringing the violence home to their families&societies. You really can not export violence to foreign countries without expecting your agents of destruction to eventually infect their host societies as well.

Stellar

originally posted by: CornShucker
The point you are attempting to make has been shown to have a (partial) biological connection. There is a small organ down in the central brain near the brain stem called the amygdala. A biological psychopath has a dysfunctional amygdala and can no more change what they are than you could change someone's eye color through advanced pediatric therapy...

So what percentage of psychopaths are 'this way' damaged and what is the true extent of the damage? Why do psychopaths do so well in the armed forces environment of structure and very clear rules and violent outlets? What i have read suggests very strongly that while psychopaths and others might not naturally "understand" ( emotionally or morally speaking , i think ) they should not do certain things they can be taught 'right' ( what they are allowed to do) from 'wrong' ( what they are not allowed to do) the same way that anyone else is taught even if it will require much more attention and discipline than regular children . As far as i understand being a psychopath ( and the definitions and what the definitions mean are by no means set in stone) only rarely entail a marked tendency to violence itself with most of it having to do with a lack of self restraint&inhibition.

This would not be a massive problem if our societies and national policies did not set the example in the popular media and in daily activities of resorting to overt or covert violence to resolve all our problems. If anything our societal form and massive use of violence as entertainment fodder shows psychopaths how to resolve the issues in their own lives and since they lack the more natural moral compass&inhibitions that comes as mostly standard for the rest of us they do what the think is 'normal'.......

In his book about this topic Jon Ronson shares an anecdote of when he found himself providing a ride to the airport for the man who'd just given the lecture he'd attended. After a stretch of silence, he asked (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "So if psychopaths are born that way and can never change, should we feel sorry for them?" The man that gave the lecture didn't hesitate and Ronson was somewhat taken aback. The immediate response was, "Why should we, they'll never give a d@mn about us!?"

It's like one of those bad Good News/Bad News jokes...

It's actually just very bad and in very bad taste; do you kick and or beat your dog when it nips the finger of the child that has been pulling it's hair for the last hour despite you telling them not to? No you don't unless your part of the problem. We should no more wish to execute or hurt the last majority of criminals ( most them suffering from some diminished capacity to interact properly with society) than we should want to beat dogs for their acting in the only way their tiny brains knows. The fact that we should sometimes put down the dog ( or give it away if you are a coward) to protect children from stupidly antagonizing it is more often than not just another condemnation of how our societies are set up. We taunt and taunt and taunt people with diminished capacities with wealth, power and beautiful women while inundating them with daily reports and tv shows about how others with diminished capacities have criminally tried to gain them.

We have wars to 'liberate' people ( well the one's that aren't killed by air bombardment and starvation, etc) and interventions to do this that and other things all requiring massive levels of violence and then we are surprised when the least well equipped people among us get the wrong message and resort to such measures themselves!

Well done us.

Stellar

originally posted by: nenothtu

Grouchy and fed up.

I would label them grouchy and fed up.

Grouchy and angrily ignorant mostly stemming from a feeling of inadequacy to understand the issues at end. Luckily this isn't a very strange thing to feel so don't feel too bad about it.

Grouchy and fed up with all the nonsense about how "fixing society" is suddenly going to make all men all sweetness and light, and make psychopaths not psychotic any more.

Any other questions?

Not all men. Also the idea is not to 'fix' society but to bring about the understanding that society creates the crimes ( the type of crime can vary quite a bit given the reigning norms and economic/social conditions) that some of it's citizens then commits. In fact i have gone so far as to say that the society mostly creates both the crime and the criminal to later commit it!

If you think this is very strange please start reading and informing yourself about other countries; i have no doubt that you will learn as much as i have.

Stellar

originally posted by: nenothtu
No lies involved. They can read it and figure it out for themselves - it's all there, and ATS readership is generally pretty bright.

The readers may be bright ( hard to be sure) but the posters rarely are especially so.... This thread is far from an exception to the general rule of slightly less ignorant posters finding slightly different reasons for the same old hatreds.

You betcha. I will. I always have. I can't figure out any reason for you to worry about it, though - you're not there, and you probably have no intention of harming anyone, even if you were there, so I can't see any danger from it coming to your doorstep, therefore no reason for you to worry.:

So shouldn't we ask what the hell is wrong with your ( and certainly mine) society instead of wanting to kill and torture some members of it?

Some few of your pet criminal types may have an occasional bad day, though.

The type of criminality we hear of on the news rarely pays in either the short or the long run ( habitual criminals soon run into each other or often come from the same areas) and as always going after the bottom rung of this problem will never do much to stunt the growth of the next generation. One could certainly have criminal justice systems that just use the death penalty for everything ( and that does 'work' to a certain fashion) but you would always have to keep it in place as the problem may very well return as soon as the detterence is gone. That being said the real problem with severe punishment for crime is not that it does not 'work' but that we should NEVER give our government the power to execute it's citizens as that's the sort of power that ALWAYS goes to it's proverbial head and something i will rarely refuse to employ in it's own political and class interest.

But perhaps you have not managed to connect the dots and do not comprehend the severe danger a government with the power to kill it's own ( or foreigners for that matter) presents in even the short term? Perhaps you like both Obama and Bush and or Clinton to have the power to kill you for crimes they convicted you of in a secret court in the interest of protecting national security? I can say that because those guys now have the power to do just that for both their own and foreign citizens. Do you think they would have gained the power to kill foreigners so easily if they could not kill their own citizens?

Stellar

originally posted by: StellarX

originally posted by: CornShucker
The point you are attempting to make has been shown to have a (partial) biological connection. There is a small organ down in the central brain near the brain stem called the amygdala. A biological psychopath has a dysfunctional amygdala and can no more change what they are than you could change someone's eye color through advanced pediatric therapy...

So what percentage of psychopaths are 'this way' damaged and what is the true extent of the damage?
-- snipped to save space only --

Your point is 100% valid with politics and business included, as well. Ronson gives a lengthy example of a particular businessman in his book that has had an extremely successful life. What scares me is when you apply the Peter Principle to politics. The point of the pyramid, just as in business, would be occupied by the psychopath able to most efficiently out manipulate all the other psychopaths...

This would not be a massive problem if our societies and national policies did not set the example in the popular media and in daily activities of resorting to overt or covert violence to resolve all our problems. If anything our societal form and massive use of violence as entertainment fodder shows psychopaths how to resolve the issues in their own lives and since they lack the more natural moral compass&inhibitions that comes as mostly standard for the rest of us they do what the think is 'normal'.......

I have struggled with a way to respond to this... We, as a society, have vested interest in making clear to those with psychopathy that violence will wind up costing them more than they'll gain. Even then, someone like a Ted Bundy (who was extremely intelligent) can only be isolated from society once they've been found. In his own words he described himself as "The most heartless son of bitch you could ever meet".

In the case of the businessman mentioned, he was applauded by stockholders but destroyed an entire community by closing what had been a productive plant in a "company town" for the sake of bottom line concerns, only.

In his book about this topic Jon Ronson shares an anecdote of when he found himself providing a ride to the airport for the man who'd just given the lecture he'd attended. After a stretch of silence, he asked (I'm paraphrasing from memory), "So if psychopaths are born that way and can never change, should we feel sorry for them?" The man that gave the lecture didn't hesitate and Ronson was somewhat taken aback. The immediate response was, "Why should we, they'll never give a d@mn about us!?"

It's like one of those bad Good News/Bad News jokes...

It's actually just very bad and in very bad taste;
-- snip --

You're reading WAY too much into that joke. My only point was that there is, as of right now, no way to tell the difference between a biological psychopath and your garden variety asshole, short of an autopsy. The closest we can get is the test mentioned in Ronson's book. As he found out, even then you have to deal with the fact that the results are subjective to some degree.

Lately it seems like, regardless of what is said, someone is wanting to get snappy about it. I certainly wasn't out to pick any fights!

Have a look:
Test for Psychopathy

edit on C2014Sun, 11 May 2014 09:34:33 -05005th090000002014-05-11T09:34:33-05:00kAmerica/Chicago by CornShucker because: formatting problem