For those of you not paying attention, Ethan Crumbley was the Oxford, Michigan student who killed 4 students and wounded another 7 in a schoolyard shooting. Prosecutors later sought to hold the parents responsible.
Link here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html
And here: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/us/crumbley-parents-michigan-shooting-prosecutors-sentence/index.html
Note the phrases "Chilling Lack of Remorse" and "Threatened Prosecutors".
Ethan Crumbley was the victim of incredibly negligent and indifferent parents. His mother too busy swinging with strangers to heed his pleas for mental help, his parents instead "placating" him by buying him a gun.
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This is long overdue. While there are "Bad Seeds", Children who despite the best of parenting grow up to be murderers and monsters, this is the exception, not the rule. And just as those dog-owners who allow their animals to maul, maim and kill innocent children and elderly people, they should be held culpable. Ethan Crumbley was more a victim and his parents were the villains.
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This case reminds me of the 2019 manhunt for Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, the two young men who murdered 3 people across Northern BC, disappeared, and were found dead after an intense manhunt across 4 provinces.
You can read the details here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/northern-bc-murders-ito-1.5401732
And watch the interview with Kam McLeod's father here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HGJWr_Ycis
It doesn't take long to realize how this situation developed. Again, the fact that the young men were guilty of atrocities does not diminish the fact they were also victims of appalling parenting that should in some ways be held accountable.
But accountability is an idea so far beyond the pale of our judicial system it doesn't bear mention.