"... But youâre about to.
I am about to share with you an email I received from a Penny Arcade reader. She also happens to be involved in this case but obviously sheâd like to remain anonymous. She has agreed to let me share her email with all of you and I canât thank her enough for that. Like I said before, I know why most people come to Penny Arcade. You come every other day looking for a joke and a laugh. What youâre about to read isnât a joke. Itâs an extremely personal email sent by a very brave woman and Iâm honored to share it with you.
Gabe,
Your news post about the kids and the homeless man yesterday made me sick to my stomach, before I even read the CNN article. I knew what it was going to be about before even reading the article. It was not the article itself, or even your post that made me sick, it was the fact that I know this boy. Or, rather that I could be considered one of the âparentsâ of this boy.
The boyâs father and I have been together for almost seven years, and I had what I guess could be called a âstepmotherâ relationship with the kid. To say that living with this kid was hell would be a complete understatement.
I donât think I have ever actively hated anyone in my entire life, but this kid just makes my blood boil.
As I write this, my teeth are clenched, my hands are shaking, and my whole body is seething with the hatred I feel for this kid and what he has done. Seeing the article brings back all the horrible memories from when he lived with us.
He was constantly in trouble in school, with the cops, with us, with his mother, and with anyone else who was an authority figure. Not a week went by that the school or the cops wouldnât call us for something. His attitude was basically âfuck you, I donât have to listen to youâ said with a shrug.
We tried absolutely everything we could think of to get him to behave like a normal human being⦠we tried groundings, negative reinforcement / punishment, positive reinforcement, counseling, and anything and everything the counselors suggested. We tried to get him interested and involved in extracurricular activities, like hockey, drama, music, art, anything, but he got himself kicked out of every group he was in with his âmake meâ attitude. When we would ground him, we took away everything. No TV, no computer, no phone, no leaving the house, no snacks or junk foodâ¦. Everything. When he was grounded, he was only allowed to sit in his room and read or draw. He was actually a pretty good artist, and we tried to encourage him to spend his time working with his talent. He would just sit there and take it⦠the groundings had absolutely no affect on him at all. Most of the time, he didnât even remember why he was being grounded. At the end of it, we would ask him if it was worth it to have everything taken away in exchange for what he did⦠he usually just shrugged. He could be grounded for weeks, or a month at a time, and then the very next day would do something to get back in trouble again. Most kids get grounded or punished a couple of times, and then they want to avoid having to go through it again⦠not this kid, nothing seemed to phase him.
And weâre not talking the usual teenager stuff, like coming home late, or refusing to do the dishes. Weâre talking stealing cars, setting fires, drinking, getting picked up for drugs, beating up handicapped kids at school (yes, really) stealing things out of our house⦠all with this âIâll do whatever the fuck I wantâ attitude.
We had absolutely no idea what else we could do. We already had him in counseling, and we did everything the counselors suggested. We tried rewarding his good behavior (what little there was) to try to get him to see that when he behaves like a normal human being, things are good and people enjoy being around him. Nothing phased him at all.
Then, things took an even worse turn when he decided that whenever he didnât get his way, or we did something he didnât like, he told his counselors and teachers that we were abusing him. (Never happened.) And for some inexplicable reason, everybody believed him. I understand that child abuse is a very serious situation, and that they have to take every possible case seriously, but this was clearly a case of him manipulating people to get what he wanted. We had people from the school, cops, and social services over at our house or calling us on a weekly basis stating some new abuse that he had made up. At 14, the boy was already 6â3â and over 200 pounds. Of course, there was never a mark on him, because no such abuse ever took place.
One particular night (cops involved, as always) he decided that he didnât have to listen to anything we said, and that he wasnât coming home. He went to live with his mother, where things got worse by the day. He stole everything out of her home and sold it. He invited gang-bangers and drug dealers to her home, and she feared for her safety constantly. She called the cops numerous times because she feared for her safety, but again, the boy said that she abused him, and the cops always took his side. (For reference, the mother is about 5â3â and barely clocks in at 115.) He planted a loaded gun in her room, called the cops and told them that it belonged to the motherâs boyfriend. The boyfriend actually ended up serving time because of this fucking bastard kid. She had two other young children in the house, and the gun and the abuse charges were an intentional plot to get the other two kids taken away from her. She tried restraining orders against the kid, but since he was a minor, they wouldnât allow it. Every time he got picked up, she pleaded with the cops to take him to jail, maybe that would finally get though to him, but they just kept bringing him home to her. I donât understand why everyone who was involved with this kid just blindly took this juvenile delinquentâs word over all else!
The night that he and his friends murdered that poor homeless man, the mother said that he was acting particularly cocky. Then he threatened to kill her. We had absolutely no idea of what he had done until they found the manâs body. He was immediately waived into adult court (at 15) and sentenced to 15 years. We were all absolutely sick with grief for this man.
We were also sick with guilt⦠âWhat could we have done differently?â was a constant question in all of our heads. After the kid was sentenced, all the cops, counselors, social workers, and people at the school that had been dealing with him contacted us and his mother and apologized for not taking us seriously. They are all trained to take all accusations of child abuse seriously, and as a part of that they blindly took the kidâs side for everything, and dismissed us as âthe lying abusersâ. Many of them told us that they wished they would have taken our pleas for help seriously. Everyone thought we were exaggerating about how fucked up this kid was.
I completely agree with your statement of âThese kids were twelve kinds of nuts and thatâs a fact.â But the reason I am writing this to you is that, after reading your news post yesterday, I felt that I needed to defend the boyâs parents. His mother and father and I did absolutely everything we could think of to try to keep this kid in line. Even the kinds of things that normal teenagers get in trouble for would have been a blessing compared to what weâve been through with him.
What I gave you today is a very small sampling of the kinds of things we were dealing with every single fucking day with this kid. When people hear about what heâs done, I can always sense the âIâm sure there was something you could have doneâ comment coming up. What would you have done? How do you deal with a kid like this? Like I said, we did everything the counselors suggested, and nothing seemed to matter.
If you want to add another element to the ânature vs. nurtureâ idea, this boy has a brother. Both boys were raised in the same house, with the same values. The brother has developed into a kind, considerate, responsible, and independent young man. He is currently working his butt off right now to save up money to go to school for architecture. The only thing I regret is that we spent so much time and energy dealing with the bad kid that this boy missed out on having a normal family life with a normal sibling relationship."