Is It Time To Jail Parents For The Crimes Of Their Children Commit?
Last week over here in England, two young brothers were jailed for subjecting two other boys, aged nine and eleven to a prolonged brutal attack. The boys themselves were aged ten and eleven at the time.
This is an excerpt of a news report about the attack from September 2009
Two young brothers are facing life in custody for beating, burning and sexually assaulting two boys aged nine and 11.
The pair led their victims down a ravine in Edlington, near Doncaster, where they used bricks, broken sticks, a sink, a noose and lit cigarettes to brutally torture them.
The attackers, aged 9 and 11, then tried to force the boys into performing sexual acts on each other.
The younger boy was struck in the arm with a sharp stick and had cigarettes pushed into the gaping wound.
He was then forced to ram a stick down his own throat, being told to “go away and kill himself”.
The 11-year-old victim, who is the younger boy’s uncle, pleaded with his attackers to be left to die after enduring a sickening series of brutal assaults.
He was later found face-down and half-naked at the bottom of the ravine, unconscious, with a large gash to the back of his head.
Both the injured boys have since been released from hospital
The case went to court last week, and there were more revelations about what the brothers had done to their two victims. Apparently the boys were strangled, made to eat nettles, and one of them had a kitchen sink thrown onto his head.
One of the victims, who was found later covered in blood and on the brink of death, had a kitchen sink dropped on to his head, while the other was stabbed so badly that the knife penetrated to the bone.
It has emerged that the brothers had attempted to carry out a similar attack the week before, when they enticed a 12-year-old to the same spot on the pretext of showing him a toad, only to be interrupted by a passing fisherman.
I think I’ve asked the question before about whether or not we think people are born evil, or if it is something that is learned. I’ve always been of the opinion that some people are just born plain evil, however in the case of these two boys, their parents never gave them a chance.
It was revealed in court that at least one of the boys was drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis from nine years old. Also, they were exposed to pornographic films and slasher movies, from a young age. It was also alleged that the father of the two boys threatened to take a knife to the mother and “slice her face to bits”. This threat was made in front of the boys, and according to their drug-addicted mother, domestic violence was a common occurrence in the household where these kids lived.
After learning about some of the things that the boys had been subjected to, and the way they had been brought up, I think the parents themselves should also be jailed. In my opinion, the two of them are 99% responsible for their two children committing these heinous crimes.
This is very similar to the James Bulger case, where two young boys ended up murdering a toddler, and in that case, the parents were also totally neglectful. People will argue that social and economic deprivation was probably a big reason why these two boys went on to commit this crime, and I wouldn’t necessarily argue against those reasons, however I think that being brought up to recognise and respect the difference between right and wrong would have gone a long way towards preventing Jamie’s murder and more recently, the brutal attack on the two young victims.
Now I realise that not all children who turn out bad, have bad parents, but don’t we all know parents who should have been sterilised at birth, in order to keep them from having kids? I know I do. And the most horrifying thing is, these particular parents had five fucking children.
I tell you, it’s cases like this that makes me appreciate China’s one-child policy.
What say you? Is it time bad parents were punished for the actions of their children?
Posted by Karen Scott · 
