Crimes
Warning: disturbing content follows.
Very recently, I read a People Magazine article about a mother who'd had enough back talk from her 16 year old daughter and 13 year old son. So, she wrote a note about her plan to kill them and herself, and bought a gun specifically for that purpose. After picking up her son from soccer practice, she shot him twice in the head, and left his body in the vehicle. She then went to her daughter's room, where she was at a computer doing homework, and shot her twice in the head. Police found the mother on her front porch, shaking, apparently having been ultimately unable to finish her plan. She is in jail, awaiting trial.
On a Dr. Phil I saw today, his guests were twin 18 year old girls who had been raped frequently, sometimes multiple times a day, by their brother, starting when they were 5, and going on until they were 13. (It was at that age that they learned what name to put to what had been going on, in sex education class in junior high.) As if this were not bad enough, when their other older brother discovered what was happening, he started having sex with them too. At one point over these years, they told their father. He called a family meeting and told the boys to stop. Of course they didn't, but not long after that, their father started having sex with them too. As for their mother, she was "gone a lot," but whenever the girls did ask for her help, she denied it and dismissed them, even though there were occasions when she actually walked in on one of her sons having sex with them! The brothers and father are currently in prison.
Some people might hear such stories and think, "What a terrible time we live in that such things happen." I don't think that. I think things like this have been happening since the dawn of humanity. One difference today is that there are hugely more people in the world, so these horrible things do happen more often over the same period of time. But what I don't understand is that people in general seem to fail to realize that media and the internet make it far more likely that we are going to hear about things like this when they do happen. Or am I wrong? I assume that the rate at which crimes are committed against children is probably relatively equal to what it has always been, for thousands of years. But is the rate lower, higher, or is it actually the same, like I think it probably is? I wonder.
Very recently, I read a People Magazine article about a mother who'd had enough back talk from her 16 year old daughter and 13 year old son. So, she wrote a note about her plan to kill them and herself, and bought a gun specifically for that purpose. After picking up her son from soccer practice, she shot him twice in the head, and left his body in the vehicle. She then went to her daughter's room, where she was at a computer doing homework, and shot her twice in the head. Police found the mother on her front porch, shaking, apparently having been ultimately unable to finish her plan. She is in jail, awaiting trial.
On a Dr. Phil I saw today, his guests were twin 18 year old girls who had been raped frequently, sometimes multiple times a day, by their brother, starting when they were 5, and going on until they were 13. (It was at that age that they learned what name to put to what had been going on, in sex education class in junior high.) As if this were not bad enough, when their other older brother discovered what was happening, he started having sex with them too. At one point over these years, they told their father. He called a family meeting and told the boys to stop. Of course they didn't, but not long after that, their father started having sex with them too. As for their mother, she was "gone a lot," but whenever the girls did ask for her help, she denied it and dismissed them, even though there were occasions when she actually walked in on one of her sons having sex with them! The brothers and father are currently in prison.
Some people might hear such stories and think, "What a terrible time we live in that such things happen." I don't think that. I think things like this have been happening since the dawn of humanity. One difference today is that there are hugely more people in the world, so these horrible things do happen more often over the same period of time. But what I don't understand is that people in general seem to fail to realize that media and the internet make it far more likely that we are going to hear about things like this when they do happen. Or am I wrong? I assume that the rate at which crimes are committed against children is probably relatively equal to what it has always been, for thousands of years. But is the rate lower, higher, or is it actually the same, like I think it probably is? I wonder.