The little big monsters. The ones next door, the ones sitting next to us or on some parent’s lap. Children who imitate adults, adolescents who feel bad and do it. Strange creatures. William Golding has already written about (presumed) innocent childhood Lord of the Flies and even Stephen King has produced a couple of pretty good books on the topic. In America, James Crumbley has just been tried, whose minor son committed a massacre at a high school in Michigan in 2021. Ethan was 15 years old, a student at Oxford High School, a suburb of Detroit. On November 30, he went to the bathroom, pulled a semi-automatic pistol from his backpack and shot. He killed Hana St Juliana, 14, Tate Myre, 16, Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling, 17, injured six other classmates and a professor.
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He had convinced his father to buy him the gun a few days before, as an advance on the Christmas present, it was a Black Friday opportunity not to be missed (do you want to not take advantage of the sales?) and he had posted the message: «I just got this beauty ». A Sig Sauer 9mm. Last December the boy was sentenced to an adult sentence: life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. He had pleaded guilty to 24 charges. “I am truly a bad person, I have done terrible things that no one should do.”
Ethan is the first minor to receive a no-release sentence. And for the first time in American history, the conviction of his parents was also requested, in two separate trials, on charges of involuntary manslaughter. Not so much for what they did, but rather for what they didn’t do. Neither pulled the trigger, but their negligence cost lives. They ignored the signals, 421 times their son had clicked on the word “school shooting” on websites and as the prosecutor said: “They contributed to the tragedy.” The mother Jennifer underestimated the violent impulses already manifested by her son, did not inform the teachers that the weapon was no longer in the house and refused to go and get Ethan when the school called her to warn her that the boy had committed a crime. pair of worrying drawings on a maths sheet including a gun and a bullet, as well as the phrases “help me”, “blood everywhere” and “my life is useless”. A visit to a specialist was advisable.
James Crumbley, father of Ethan
A week ago the trial fell to the father, James, 47 years old, a sentence was also requested for him. “He ignored the deterioration of his son’s mental health, did not protect him and did nothing to prevent the danger.” Mr. Crumbley in his modest house with the American flag outside had two other firearms, a Derringer and a Kel-Tec, both .22 caliber, kept in a safe in the bedroom dresser, but whose unlock combination was 0 -0-0-0, the default. You didn’t have to be Einstein or even Champollion to open it. Additionally, investigators found the gun case and an empty ammunition box on the bed. A cable that could have blocked the gun was still in its sealed package. The Crumbleys, arrested after escaping from a commercial building in the city, are in prison and risk a sentence of up to fifteen years in prison. They will return to court on April 9 for sentencing.
Never in the USA have parents been held responsible for the murders of their minor children, other times they have been found guilty of inattention and sentenced to community service or to pay damages. And if you read the heartbreaking book by Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the two boys who in 1999 killed thirteen people and injured twenty-four in Columbine High School, in Colorado, before taking their own lives in the library, you will know that the signs are not always flash. There are no warnings of the approaching storm. Dylan, her son, did not correspond to the model of the excluded, solitary and violent boy, he was reserved and affectionate, but capable of masking his suicidal tendencies and severe depression. There were no weapons at home.
Mestalla Stadium in Valencia, Spain, Saturday 2 March, La Liga match, there is a hooded child in a sweatshirt who continues to scream. And that he will be described as a small fanático. He is sitting on the lap of his mother, a young girl, who does not care about the word that comes out of her son’s mouth. Always the same: mono, mono. Monkey, in Spanish. He’s not the only one insulting. Someone films the rowdy child with a cell phone. The mother notices it, she doesn’t tell her son to stop, but she tells him to go to hell and abruptly pushes away the girl she is filming. The offense is directed at the footballer Vinicius junior, a 23-year-old Brazilian from Real Madrid, much persecuted by racist chants. The girl filming the scene attempts a rebuke to the group who responds: “We are referring to an animal.” The words of Lilian Thuram, world football champion with France in ’98, come to mind: «At school they called me Noiraude from the name of a cartoon with two cows, one white and one black, the latter never made any. a right one. I was wondering: why does the stupid cow have to be the black one?”.
Children, yes. Our future. The good ones in principle. Those who are invited to the stadium to replace the big bad guys. Little ones, show us another tomorrow and not the usual today. October 2021, Europa League football match Sparta Prague-Rangers Glasgow: there are ten thousand children under the age of 14 at the stadium to replace the usual fans, disqualified for previous episodes of discrimination in the match against Monaco against Aurélien Tchouaméni, the French player of Cameroonian origins. And what do children do to you? They reply, as perfect stunt doubles. Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara, originally from Sierra Leone and of Finnish nationality, was targeted with racist howls and applauded ironically when he was sent off. The criticism angers Sparta Prague who in a note defines it as “unacceptable and ridiculous to insult children on the internet and in the media”. Same attitude as Valencia’s mother: you are the evil ones.
Hearing the children’s voices at the stadium is nice. It’s the season in which football is still a game. The sign is tender: “We are small but we support big”. Perhaps even prescient. In 2013, Juventus, who had their stadiums disqualified for racist chants against Napoli, decided in their last home match to fill them with 12,500 students from football schools. Nice initiative against violence. But if the rumors are childish, the insults are very adult. The ones that fall on Zeljko Brkic, Udinese’s Serbian goalkeeper, every time he returns the ball. The sports judge sanctions Juve with a fine of 5,000 thousand euros and defines the chants as “a clear episode of emulation”. Juve responds by expressing “its shock at the fine imposed”. Baby fans are not treated like this, a little consideration for the new generations.
There are those who are scandalized by the comparison between children and adults and there are those who would like to punish the children themselves and their carers. The future has an ancient face, even in children’s games, incidents of discrimination are on the increase. On March 10 in the province of Lucca, a 14-year-old footballer in the Giovanissimi B championship, reserved for those born in 2010, offended his opponent with a racist insult. Lord of the Flies ends with the bitter illusion of the British officer who, faced with the horror created by the boys, says: «I would have expected better from a group of English boys». Yes, living up to expectations. Bad Thoughts where are you?
2024-03-24 06:53:36
#Children #watch #Football
