why is this a common story?

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QFT

Like I said, I haven't watched the video yet (recently switched to mobile broadband for bare essential internet use and can't afford data overages), so I admit I don't completely understand the context.

Knowing a teenager's age, however, doesn't really improve matters. I didn't exactly call the girl stupid--I just said that stupidity isn't against the law. But the sneaking out part is a stupid thing to do, especially at that age. And before I get judged for calling someone stupid (which isn't what I've done here), I should add that smart people are guilty of doing stupid things all the time. She's not necessarily stupid because of sneaking out--but she IS guilty of doing something highly unintelligent. Being a certain age implies...what?...that she's impulsive? A teenager's impulsivity is never an excuse for breaking house rules or otherwise engaging in behavior that puts the teenager at excessive risk of violent and/or invasive crimes. That's no excuse for horny teenage boys, or whoever, to rape her, either, and that's NOT what I'm saying. Rather than blame the victim, I'm looking at this from an attempt to prevent these girls from becoming victims in the first place.

"Sneaking out" implies a breakdown in discipline in the home. Parents ought to know well enough how to ensure that their kids are right where they should be at all times. Parents have the capability of exercising full control over almost every aspect of their kids' lives, yet they are somehow too afraid or timid to do so effectively.

Like I said, I haven't watched the video yet (recently switched to mobile broadband for bare essential internet use and can't afford data overages), so I admit I don't completely understand the context.

Knowing a teenager's age, however, doesn't really improve matters. I didn't exactly call the girl stupid--I just said that stupidity isn't against the law. But the sneaking out part is a stupid thing to do, especially at that age. And before I get judged for calling someone stupid (which isn't what I've done here), I should add that smart people are guilty of doing stupid things all the time. She's not necessarily stupid because of sneaking out--but she IS guilty of doing something highly unintelligent. Being a certain age implies...what?...that she's impulsive? A teenager's impulsivity is never an excuse for breaking house rules or otherwise engaging in behavior that puts the teenager at excessive risk of violent and/or invasive crimes. That's no excuse for horny teenage boys, or whoever, to rape her, either, and that's NOT what I'm saying. Rather than blame the victim, I'm looking at this from an attempt to prevent these girls from becoming victims in the first place.

"Sneaking out" implies a breakdown in discipline in the home. Parents ought to know well enough how to ensure that their kids are right where they should be at all times. Parents have the capability of exercising full control over almost every aspect of their kids' lives, yet they are somehow too afraid or timid to do so effectively.

On the contrary; parents who limit their children too much are more likely to have children who rebel. My parents were extremely permissive, and I got into far less trouble than friends who had less permissive parents.
My point about her being fourteen is that, at that age, she was still a child and she still expected those older than her to take care of her. She still trusted people. She'd had little enough experience with hard alcohol that two drinks knocked her unconscious for hours. She thought that she was going on a romantic adventure along the lines of a Walt Disney movie, not doing something wrong.

My parents gave me more freedom than they gave my sister, and I was less rebellious and prone to sneaking out than she was. Plus if I was a parent, I'd rather know where my kids are than have them sneak out without my knowledge because I don't let them go anywhere. I never snuck out because my parents were reasonable about it, and all they wanted was for me to say where I was, which I found to be reasonable. My sister skipped table tennis practice to be with her boyfriend for several months because my parents forbid her from dating at the time. Way too little data to make big conclusions out of it, but it's still something worth keeping in mind. That bit of "exercising full control over almost every aspect of their lives" scared me, to be honest.

Also, when I was in high school we used to go drinking with 14 year olds sometimes, who liked to hang out with us. Some of them snuck out. Nothing happened to them, ever.

There is something I must ask though. LKL, if you had a daughter and you lived in a town where something horrible like that was likely to happen, what would you do to prevent it? As lofty a goal as it is to generate consciousness and change that culture, it can't be done overnight, which leaves an immediate, real danger, where precautions must be taken.

I doubt that many people think that they live in towns where such a thing 'is likely to happen.' Indeed, part of this story is that many in Maryville are so convinced that they live in a town where such a thing isn't likely to happen, that they deny that it happened at all.

As for what I would do, I'd start with age-appropriate sex ed and warnings about the effects of drugs and alcohol, and probably warnings about male athletes since they seem to be disproportionately included in cases like this. I wouldn't tell her that she couldn't hang out with male athletes, but I'd tell her to watch her back and always have an exit strategy, and I'd tell her that she could always, always, always call me at any time, from anywhere, and I would come and get her. Honestly, I was never 'into' jocks, so I don't really have as much of an experience base to draw from.

There's a limited amount that the girl or the parents can do, though; ultimately, I wonder more about what the boys' parents were telling their sons to lead to this, than what the girls' parents were doing.

Parenting styles seem to be individualized, or unique. I tend to be more of an authoritarian at times because that's what comes natural to me. I just can't fake my way through being chilled out and "yeah, man, do whatever you want, I don't care." I feel like my kids respond more to my authenticity than they would if I were trying to be someone I'm not. But it all depends on what's called for in any given situation. MOST of the time I'm really affectionate towards my 18 month old. I make a point of taking one-on-one time with my other two children and there's at least an hour every day when I WILL NOT pick up my toddler and play with him--he'll cry for a little while and then run off and play with something. I've been that way with all of them because even though I've raised both my older kids under a demand for obedience (and I explain to them often why that is), I also emphasize independence. We seem to have less trouble with separation anxiety than most parents/children seem to because we don't go to much of a length to protect our children from rapidly changing environments. We also allow for a few hours every day for unstructured time, so I think we have a good balance between two extremes of letting our kids run wild while having to deal with Darth Vader/piano Nazi.

Regardless of parenting style, however, the point to get across to kids is how to make the best decisions that will ultimately keep them safe and successful in life. Sure, I order my kids around, but they are aware that "Daddy's just like that." I've explained to both the older two that half the point is keeping them safe and establishing a pattern of behavior that will guarantee success in all areas of life, not "do this because I said so." I've explained to my daughter that (to be plain) she's a ditz and I need her to be more assertive and grown-up. So, yeah, I'm really impressed when she can turn around a joke or derisive statement on me and ask me, "Dad, do you need to go to the doctor? Because I think something's wrong with your brain, and you need to get that checked out." And she's 4 years old.

Point being children are amazingly wise and clever, and their inquisitive moments are strikingly teachable. My oldest son watches me play a certain violent video game from time to time, and one of the main characters will say "lobotomized" when he scores a headshot. One of their favorite movies is "Suckerpunch," and the final scene reenacts an actual lobotomy. So I helped my 6-year old connect what was going on in the game with the movie and explained that there was a time when people actually did that and why lobotomies are no longer performed.

All that to say this: It's irresponsible parenting, regardless of what kind of parent you are or your personal style, not to keep these kinds of conversations open and often explain to kids what poor behavior is and what potential consequences are for those actions. So I'm sure what this 14-year-old got mixed up in was purely emotional and irrational, not very well-thought-out. But even at 14 years old SOMEBODY should have made her informed enough to stay her butt at the house.

It's not her fault for getting raped. It IS her fault, and maybe, too, her parents' fault somewhat, that she made a poor decision that placed her at the wrong place at the wrong time that increased her risk of getting into trouble.

There's a lot of space between 'yeah man, whatever,' and strict 'obedience.' My parents were at neither end of the spectrum. I could go where I wanted, but I had to tell them where I was going and when they could expect me back; I never felt the need to push that.

I wish you and your family all the best, Rho.

Thanks for the well-wishes. I'm sure we'll be just fine!

Here's the thing, though--YOU never felt the need to push that. Something I hadn't thought of earlier (and I wish I had) was that often children and teens are prone to rebellion or otherwise aberrant behavior are so because that's just the way they are. Like I said before, all parents and children are different, so no one single rule is going to apply to everyone. I'm sure YOU didn't push things, and likely for your own reasons. You weren't that kid. Neither was I.

But why do excessively strict parents seem to have the rebellious kids? Is excessive strictness a cause of rebellion? I'm sure it's possible. Or do parents become excessively strict because their kids are rebellious? I think that parents more often adapt parenting style to the behavior one way or the other. It's either, "I know she's in a bad situation, but if I don't let her go, she'll just sneak out anyway," or "We found out she's been partying, getting drunk/high, and God-only-knows-what, so we keep the car keys, take her to school, and she has to go bowling with us or watch movies at home with us on the weekends." If a kid shows that he or she is worthy of more freedom from parents, the kid should have that freedom. If you never gave your folks any trouble--and you seem to have turned out just fine--then it's no surprise they felt they could let you do pretty much whatever you want without fear of police knocking on their door. If I have a child who can't walk into a room without something spontaneously bursting into flames, it should come as no surprise that I'd tend to be hyper-vigilant.

If a 14-year-old is running with crowds prone to partying and sexual deviancy, the parents are in a position to change the crowd their kid is running with. I love my church, but the kids all go to the same school, all act alike, and aren't always very friendly towards my oldest child. I don't have to like it, but I can deal with that for a couple of hours a week. I don't think I could handle that 5 full days a week. If an older child or a teenager is having issues choosing friends who won't negatively influence, bully, or rape her, I don't see why it should be a problem for a parent to choose better friends for the child or teen. If we need to keep a child at home until college, that's what we'll do.

Hopefully it doesn't ever come to that, but I think we're all better off when parents are willing to go to whatever lengths NECESSARY to keep the child safe and healthy. If it's an issue with school, get into a different school or homeschool if possible (which is possible in my case). If it's cyberbullying, pull the plug on internet and social media. If it's taking the car to behave irresponsibly, take away the keys. If you don't have a kid who acts like that or has those kinds of problems, then GREAT.

But we don't live in a world where 14-year olds HAVE to sneak out to get in bad situations in which they risk rape or worse, nor do we live in a world where parents HAVE to put up kids sneaking out, getting into heartbreaking situations, and then cry about how the world isn't fair. It doesn't HAVE to happen in the first place, and somewhere between parents and the kids, preventative measures CAN and SHOULD be taken. If all it takes is sitting down with the kid for 5-15 minutes in which the basic message, however it is presented, is "Don't do it," and the kid gets the message, fine. If it takes barring the windows, voice-activated/retina scan security in the home and motor vehicle and electrified razor wire around the home perimeter, fine. I have a real hard time understanding why it is parents seem to feel so helpless in these situations. It doesn't have to happen in the first place, and I'm not talking about rapists who get young girls drunk or drugged and feel that their status or whatever gives them the right to do those things.

If you want to decrease the likelihood of becoming a victim of violent crime, stay away from where violent crimes are being committed.

Excellent point. Correlation is not causation.

That said, I've met more than one kid who assumes that if some of the stuff banned by parents isn't bad, then most of it probably also isn't bad. One boy told me once something along the lines of, 'the government lied about how bad pot is, and they're probably lying about how bad the other stuff is, too.' Not a parent, but the same principle. I suspect something like that's probably what happened with this girl: she thought that her parents were being over-protective, that this football player was wild but 'good at heart.' She didn't have enough life experience to know not to trust him.


Good luck with that.


if you want someone to stay away from dangerous behaviors, they have to have a sense of mortality first. Most teenagers don't.

Why do so many people feel that way? It's like parents are powerless, or have a sense of powerlessness. They're not. Parents are the gatekeepers in their children's lives. We're not obligated to turn over the keys, and we can take the keys back any time.

On the other hand, if a child is so determined to run away (and succeeds), we aren't obligated to support them. One can only bum off friends for so long before he has to get a job to support himself, pay his own rent, buy his own car, buy his own food. If I had a child that went that direction, debit cards would be deactivated, bank accounts frozen/closed, and vehicles repossessed. A smart person would do what any adult would do in that situation--find sympathetic family/friends who could keep him going for a month until paychecks start coming in, then he'd pay rent until he could save enough money to buy a car. Anyone can do it within 6 months. A rebellious teenager who is rebelling because parents won't let him party and womanize won't ever keep money long enough to pay rent or save enough to buy a car.

I'm not saying it's impossible...I'm just saying I'd make it as difficult for my child as I possibly could. If he/she has nowhere to go when reality hits, sure, I'd take my kid back. But it would be with the understanding that my child would forfeit all privileges he might have had before rebelling. Hopefully my child would see that it's for the best. There'd be no 3rd chance, though. I wouldn't love my kid any less. But if you've learned your lesson and you still persist, I can't take a chance at you living at home anymore. By that point, the kid is probably old enough he's got no business living at home anyway.


MOST teenagers. This is true. Which is why parents are responsible for instilling that sense in their teenagers or having that sense FOR them.

Not that I agree with everything my mom did growing up, but she did have a keen sense of impending stupidity when I mentioned I was going somewhere to meet up with classmates. I mean...the day after I graduated high school, the answer was still "No." It's one thing when a mom asks you "if you friends all jumped off a bridge, would you do it?" It's something else entirely when they all actually DO jump off a bridge.

Part of that probably stems from how my brother died. Supposedly he was the perfect kid (I never knew him). So my folks bought him a motorcycle (he was 10 years old at the time). He was hit by a drunk driver crossing a highway.

The questions nobody seems to want to ask is "What was a 10-year old doing with a motorcycle?" and "Why didn't he look out for other vehicles on that road?" I personally wonder if things would have been different had the driver been sober. He did have the right-of-way, after all. At the point on the road where my brother was killed, the driver could have been going 100 mph and my brother would have seen him coming soon enough to wait.

But regardless of whether my brother had a mature sense of mortality or not, the lack of that sense of mortality has not brought him back to life. He's still dead, and there's nothing we can do. And I know this isn't like a rape incident in which the rapist can't be compelled to commit rape; had the driver been sober, there still might have been nothing he could have done to avoid hitting my brother that wouldn't risk his own life as well. However, it stands that lack of sense doesn't excuse anyone from the consequences of putting themselves in high-risk situations. It's not her fault she was raped; but she still should have made better decisions.

Actually, you can't, or at least shouldn't. Part of raising a kid is letting them go, and if you can ease into that it's going to be easier on both of you. The kid's going to leave at some point, unless it has some sort of profound issue that prevents it from doing so.


Really? You'd cut a kid off if he or she didn't toe your line?
My parents made it clear that, no matter what, I could always come home and that they would never stop loving me. I never tested that, but I never doubted it even when we couldn't stand to be awake in the same house for an hour at a time.

again, really? Why? That sounds mean to me. It's one thing if the kid is doing drugs and needs to get clean, but it's another entirely if it's because they just want to get away from your over-strict rules.

I've never had friends stupid enough to jump off a bridge for no reason; if I saw them all going, I'd seriously consider going with them because they'd probably have a good reason. Especially if the bridge wasn't that high.

That reminds me of the story AronRa told on on one of the feminist threads. He said that he later suspected his stepfather of trying to get rid of him.

It wasn't your brother's fault that he got hit by a drunk driver. It wasn't the 14-year-old's fault that she trusted a 17-year-old too much. Could both of them have been wiser? Sure - but at that stage in their lives, 'wisdom' is not one of their responsibilities.

Actually, you CAN, and you SHOULD--IF it is necessary to. You don't give a drunk a drink, give a drug addict drugs, or enable wild teenagers to smoke/drink/have sex. Those are choices in their lives you can make for them. As long as a child remains dependent on a parent, no matter how old the child and even after the child reaches adulthood, parents retain a level of control. I'll let my children go when the time comes, but I prefer letting them go in a direction that keeps them out of harms way.


No. I'd cut a kid off if by supporting the kid I'm enabling him or her. If the kid learns the lesson the first time and comes back, I can live with that. But I can't live knowing that by accepting a kid back time after time that all I'm doing is encouraging bad behavior.

The issue is that I'm responsible not solely for the hypothetically errant child, but for the safety and security of all in my household, to include their spiritual, mental/emotional well-being. Bad enough I'd have to put my family through that once. Bad enough I'd bear the burden of knowing I cut a child off from the family. I'm not easily going to tolerate threats to our family, whether those threats are from outside or from within.



OK, great. So you were a great kid. You never had to worry about worst-case scenario. So far, neither do I, and I did ok in SPITE of horrible experiences with one parent.


Who says my rules are over-strict? I probably tend to be stricter than most parents. I don't really have that many rules...I just tend to enforce them all and I'm probably more consistent than many parents. And I don't have rules that can't possibly be broken or bent, either. Whatever rules we have are reasonable rules. We take time to help our children understand WHY we do things certain ways. Beyond that we don't feel we owe kids further explanation, so deviating from rules falls under a good reason for breaking rules that we'll probably understand or it's outright defiance, which we DON'T tolerate. Basically our rules boil down to "Stay safe, learn something, do no harm to others." At least one of those rules has to do with keeping social workers from breathing down our necks. Beyond that our kids do pretty much whatever they want.

I don't see why that level of freedom can't continue into the teenage years. If our kids give us reason to believe that it can't, we'll reevaluate if/when that time comes.


Then it is the responsibility of parents to make those decisions FOR them.

If you can't determine for sure that a strict upbringing, or rather strict response to extreme behavior, is what causes the behavior in the first place, then you can't know if strictness or absence of strictness would make any difference in how the stories end. My parents could have NOT bought my brother a motorcycle. However, he'd have missed out on playing with friends/neighbor's kids the same age who had motorcycles (he wasn't alone when he died, he's just the one who got hit). And who knows? He might just as easily died from a snake bite or from jumping out of a barn. Or maybe he'd have started drinking and partying with friends when he turned 15 or 16 and wrapped the family car around a tree. By restricting freedom to what parents or caretakers can OBSERVE, a large number of variables can be eliminated, thus giving the child a better chance at enjoying childhood and adolescence, learning a few hard lessons, and making it to adulthood relatively undamaged.

The same thing can be said for your 14-year-old. The parents were apparently on the right track if the girl had to sneak out at 1 am (if I understand correctly). The questions I'd want answered would have to do with how well the parents monitored communication between this girl and friends/"friends" of the opposite sex and how aware they were of the girl communicating with someone that much older. It's easy for me to say since I'm a stay-at-home dad, care for a toddler between 6 and 8 consecutive hours a day, and my girl is only in school for 3 hours a day. The wife and I share a vehicle most days and only take separate vehicles on days when it's pretty much impossible with both our schedules (I work Tuesday afternoons until 7, and I'm involved in church activities on Wednesdays from 11 am to 8 pm and have band practice immediately after). It's not that difficult to keep track of everything.

I can understand that it's difficult when both parents work full-time. But for the safety and well-being of the kids, parents have to do as much as they can to stay on top of knowing what's going on with their kids.

How about we change perspective? EVERYONE is at fault for something here. The 14 year old is at fault for sneaking out. The parents are at fault for allowing her to sneak out. The rapist is at fault for raping her. The rapist was 17 years old? Then his parents are responsible for him, too. They failed to keep him out of harm's way.

Unless he's PROVEN guilty, we have to assume innocence. Otherwise it's just an empty accusation. The evidence seems to show that he got her drunk, maybe even drugged, and had sex with her against her will. So it seems he did a number of stupid things himself. Why didn't his parents monitor his behavior, forbid him to be out past a certain time, and enforce rules that would have limited his ability to intoxicate and rape a young girl? If he's convicted, is he not aware that he'll now be a registered sex offender, something he'll be labeled with for a lifetime?

If parents were more concerned about their kids, they'd have stopped patterns of behavior that lead to sneaking out or raping young girls. I suspect that having tighter rules and keeping a more consistent eye on kids give parents and kids a better chance at avoiding the kinds of situations we're talking about here.

Rule #1: Don't be stupid, don't act stupid.
Rule #2: Don't hang around stupid people (see Rule #1).
Rule #3: Don't enable stupid people or stupid behavior.

AngelRho, I think that it can be safely said that we have very different views on parenting. However, I don't care enough to keep on arguing; the last word will be yours.

^this.