Young people think they are invulnerable, immune to the ills — social and physical — that befall their elders. TAKING A STEP to a higher level, we may be caught in a vortex of disgraceful behavior personified by those who should be held in highest regard, the leaders of our land who just let sheer disregard for propriety rule the day, and teetered on the very brink of destroying the country’s credibility.
They take risks when they shouldn’t. They respond when you’d like to think they wouldn’t.
An event that occurred in Maryville, Mo., in January 2012 is a horrifying example of things gone wrong for two teenage girls, and several boys, a little older but none the wiser.
The girls, by all accounts of a lengthy investigative story in the Kansas City Star, let alcohol — first of their own volition and later forced on them — and the intrigue of social media ruin their high school years and leave them scarred for life.
The girls, then 13 and 14, apparently sipped on alcohol they had hidden in one girl’s room and then were led by Twitter messages to where several older boys had gathered. What started as a lark in the wee hours of the morning was a tragedy well before sunrise.
Both were violated — at their age consent isn’t an option — and one suffered more when she was returned home and left lying in a stupor on her front porch in sub-freezing temperature.
Investigations followed and, for whatever reasons, ultimately no charges of consequence were pursued against the boys. Claims of prejudicial treatment surfaced, but nothing made public would compare with the heartache that haunts the girls.
It is easy, from information put forth in the Star’s story, to make judgments and clamor for “justice.”
But, the real shame that unfolded is that the event occurred at all, and that it is a replication of similar ones that crop up with far too much frequency.
Consumption of alcohol is fine for those of age and within proper settings, but not a stimulant that ever should find its way into the bodies of youngsters hardly more than on the brink of puberty.
The second shoe that fell so conspicuously in this case is the effect of social media.
Not only was it a catalyst in what happened, but afterward it became a focal point of cyber bullying, in large measure directed at the girls and their families.
Electronic devices permit an unimaginable amount of information to be transmitted, read and seen every day with no governing restraints.
Easy rebuttal is that parents should step in and place some controls on what their children send and receive, but in many cases adults are just as guilty of misusing social commentary, veiled in anonymity or not, instead of setting examples.
It all may be a problem that only a sea change in attitude could curb, which unfortunately doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the horizon.
— Bob Johnson
Young girls’ vulnerability was robbed
