Sad/Disturbing News of the Day

Shocking and sickening.

Where the hell do 8 & 9 year olds learn about rape? Where would they have learned how and what to do? What the fuck?

This story is horrible for two reasons.

First, that boys this age can commit such a horrible crime against such a young girl is beyond my understanding.

Secondly, I just think it’s horrible that society’s response to this is to arrest the three boys, charge them, and make a motion to try them as adult offenders.

How about therapy, or some form of treatment for the boys? Did they not think about that? Does the justice system in Georgia really thinks it’s efficient and *just* to prosecute children this young?

Oni Baba-

And then there’s the case of the teenaged boys who raped that 17-year-old girl and were only sentenced to therapy.

And also, yeah, FTA – “alleged attack.” As if anyone, let alone an 11 year old, would make it all up. Physical evidence be damned.
The attackers are “alleged” as far as innocent until proven guilty stipulates. The attack is not. I wish “journalists” would get that right for once.

First, that boys this age can commit such a horrible crime against such a young girl is beyond my understanding.

Children who have been sexually assaulted themselves and/or encouraged to or witnessed sexual assault, will invariably act out that behavior on their peers or those they perceive as less threatening.

Prepubescent children cannot conceptualize or desire sexual behavior, much less deviant sexual behavior, it has to be taught by an adult. This is where these ‘investigations’ almost always seem to end, or at least the reporting of them; a child acts out and is blamed and there is no follow up to the public that indicates if an adult predator was found to have been involved with the child who committed the assault.

Second, in response to Wiggles… yes, people have and do “make it up.” sometimes. While not often, it has and does happen.

You could say the same about anyone who ever reports a robbery. But that’s not the automatic presumption in every news article that covers a robbery story.

Sexual behavior doesn’t have to be taught by an adult. I first saw porn in the bedroom of a friend’s older brother (who was about fifteen, I wasn’t yet ten.) And that was 1980 or so, long before the internet made all sorts of porn available almost everywhere. I had friends who would go off into the woods at my elementary school at the age of ten or so, in pairs, and come back with tales of touching a girl under the shirt. I can only assume some went further. I know of a seven or eight-year-old who fondled a three-year-old at his house. When confronted, he said, “He’s just a baby. Babies lie.” That baby was my son, and the victimizer’s mother was horrified and has put her son through over six years of therapy so far (I hope.) I also know of a teenage girl who knew from an early age that claiming to be a victim got her a lot of attention and power and encouragement (and luckily, she only falsely accused me of hitting her.) She’s no longer my daughter. My wife and I both made the difficult decision to let her become a ward of the state (again) after a seven- or eight-year attempt at adoption, familyhood, and acceptance was spit back in our face. You can’t fix everyone, nor can anyone be blamed for some “broken” people.

These boys are of second or third grade age. There’s probably a lot to this story. The parents might be blameless, the children might be victims themselves, the prosecutor might be a grandstanding asshole out to get publicity for some discovered acts of consensual play (I sure would like to think so, though my doubts are strong.)

All I know for sure is that there’s going to be a whole lot of therapy, doubt, and lingering questions. And no matter what happens, there will be no happy ending.

Also, Kate, children know what feels good. I enjoyed touching myself at eight or nine. I wasn’t abused, exposed to inappropriate images, molested, a total pervert, or anything of the sort. I liked the feeling of rubbing against things. I had erections. I found them funny, but also enjoyed the feeling.

Not all sex or sexual feelings or pre-sexual body enjoyment or whatever you want to call it derives from abuse or the evils of society. Sometimes having a body is all it takes. Ask any woman who had a hairbrush for a girlhood pal. Ask any man who spent too much time near the swimming pool’s water jets as a boy. Hell, ask those who sat on washing machines, ground themself into a bicycle seat, or whatever actions they are that give prudes nightmares. Children are sexual beings. I was, even before I had a clue. And I wasn’t abused until that girl handcuffed me to a bed at the ripe age of seventeen. And by “abused” I mean: thrust into something I wasn’t ready for. Luckily, she let me go.

I was horribly naive at the combined age of these accused rapists.

The story makes me want to puke. It’s a good reminder that our problems are miniscule compared to the hell that poor girl is going through.

I have a 9yo and I can’t even imagine.

Something came up about sex the other night and the 7yo asked about it. The 9yo said he knew what sex was, but when queried all he would say was “I don’t want to talk about it, it’s too gross”.

After reading this today, I’d say we’re long overdue for a more in depth discussion regarding what he knows and where he learned it.

I saw this on the news today (I live in the Atl) and what made want to hurl is that they got a comment from one of they boys’ father and he said (something to the effect of)

That’s not how my son said it went down. I think something happened and now she’s embarrassed about it so now she’s accusing (the boys of rape)

Now everyone involved with this case is under a gag order.

Not all sex or sexual feelings or pre-sexual body enjoyment or whatever you want to call it derives from abuse or the evils of society.

well, no shit. but you don’t up and rape people because you like taking care of your erection. RAPING PEOPLE comes from a societal sickness.

Lorelei, I never said she said she was raped. She did lie about getting abused in other ways, however. And my wife and I both feared that she would eventually lie about me abusing her in other ways. We had six in the family to worry about and one member was negatively affecting the rest. It was hard to do, but we couldn’t keep her there.

I could go in depth and mention mental illness, attachment disorder, and a whole host of other issues that make her both untrustworthy and someone deserving great sympathy. Instead, all I can say is that some lives are very complicated. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that all the children involved in this incident had troubled years long before this incident. That doesn’t necessarily excuse any behavior, nor does it suggest that whatever happened was any less a tragedy. Those boys may very well be sadistic little creeps who deserve no sympathy whatsoever, but I have a feeling this isn’t that cut and dry a story. Nor will I suggest that my experience with a lying “victim” suggests that this alleged victim is to any extent likely to be a liar, but I think that an eleven-year-old can easily play along with someone (for instance, a prosecutor) who has an agenda.

Kate, you said:

Children who have been sexually assaulted themselves and/or encouraged to or witnessed sexual assault, will invariably act out that behavior on their peers or those they perceive as less threatening.

This isn’t actually true. Some children who’ve been sexually assaulted or abused (or witnessed abuse or assault) will act out, others internalize.

As to the story itself, it is horrible, but I don’t find it unbelievable that children would abuse other children. When I was in second grade a group of boys constantly bullied me and a friend and were not shy at all about threatening rape or making other sexual threats.

Ugh, I hate it when people romanticize children as Innocents and as The Hope for the Future (TM). They’re undergrown adults, capable of all the same fucked-up crap and incredible kindness, but usually held back by their age.

We were monsters once, and young.

Wow. Well said. I completely agree.

Some children who’ve been sexually assaulted or abused (or witnessed abuse or assault) will act out, others internalize.

angryyoungwoman, thanks so much for adding this to the thread.

There seems to be this popular misconception that children who’ve been abused are overwhelmingly likely to become abusers, when in actuality, we (I was a severely abused child, hence the use of “we”) most often do not become abusers. We are at more risk than children who’ve not been abused, but it’s still a minority of us who go on to recreate the abuse.

Just speaking for myself here, there’s something especially awful about the stigma of my childhood abuse following me into my adulthood and having to live in a world where so many people so frequently assume that I’m half a step away from abusing a child, when in reality, I’m an exceptionally empathetic and compassionate person, and I’m already living with PTSD as a result of what my parents did to me.

I would venture to say that these boys where probably abused.

OR

They have some serious anti-social behavior.

When I was that age, I was experimenting with another little girl my age. She taught me everything I knew about sex until middle school. She knew words and things to do that never crossed my mind (oral and “butt sex”. Though, she thought “but sex” was rubbing butts together. I was mildly horrified to find out what it REALLY was years later in late middle school/early high school). She also threw around the word “rape” fairly freely. (She thought it was an actual sex act, she believed it was dragging the fingers, firmly from the front of the labia to the end of the butt crack. So, she was a little misinformaed.)

But the thought of violently violating someone against their will? Never even occured to me as possible until later middle school when I discovered porn.

As I understand it, there are the people who were themselves abused as children, and then a MUCH smaller subset of those people go on to become abusers themselves. It’s more that being abused puts you at a higher risk of being an abuser, not that anyone who was abused automatically starts acting out.

Mnemosyne, yes, that’s my understanding, too. I generally follow the studies on these things (although granted, not lately) and they seem to bear that out across the board; iirc, the number of previously abused kids who go on to become offenders is not more than a quarter, and may be as low as 12-15%, with kids from non-abusive backgrounds being anywhere from a third to a half less likely than that to be offenders. But of course, it’s hard to get good data on these things.

It’s just that I run across a very high number of people who assume that most abused kids turn around and “continue the cycle”, and since that was possibly implied in kate’s comment #8, I was grateful to see angryyoungwoman point out that it’s not true. I’m always grateful to see people popularizing the reality that most adults who were abused as kids turn out reasonably functional. Well, as reasonably functional as most anyone else is, anyway, heh.