Kids Who Kill the Growing

Kids Who Kill

The growing social phenomenons' regarding violence among children and especially such heinous crimes as murder is beginning to startle the culture as a whole. The world, not the just the United States is desperately seeking answers for this growing problem. The problem has gained international recognition as similar crimes are becoming evident in other nations, such as the killing of 2-year-old James Bulger in the U.K. By two very young boys. Yet, when one looks at the statistics in the United States alone they are made painfully aware that such events are increasing in number and in severity.

In the United States,...between 1984 and 1989 the number of youths arrested for murder nationwide in the United States more than doubled from 1,004 to 2,208. One study showed that youths under eighteen years of age now make up about ten per cent of all homicide arrests in the United States.

Lowenstein)

The current question has become the big, WHY? Why are these children violent, angry, and why do they feel like the consequences of their actions are minimal to either the victim or themselves.

There is a great deal of evidence that the media plays a role in the situation as its increasing glorification of violence creates scenarios and scenes that then become mundane and commonplace to a child. Children imitate that which they see, and they are made aware through the media that acts as heinous as graphic sexually motivated murder are punished by a bunch of people wearing plain clothes asking the killer questions in a room with a one way mirror, conviction in these dramatic representations are not shown and sentencing is a mystery. Children are intelligent enough to understand that the fate of the killer is bad but on the screen it doesn't look like anything to be afraid of. Additionally, the representations of the actual crimes, where they occur often leave the child believing that they are easy to commit, staged punches and kicks are something anyone of any strength and size can manage with one dramatic groan or maybe even in silence. Weapons are easy to weald and even look cool in the movies and on television, constantly present in most homes.

The minimizing of the consequences of violence the constant torrent of the embellishment of violent acts and violent people; the idealization of lawyers and doctors; the acceptance of dysfunctional families, sexual abuse and wife battering -- all these have become a subliminal brainwashing

Hausen 169)

Yet, a single causation cannot be isolated in a vacuum. The media does play a role in the fundamental increase in violence committed by children but there are also other factors worth exploring as well. There are several new rather intriguing theories. A few individuals believe the reason is associated less with violent media expressions, though the seeds of possibility are often planted by the media, and more with individual kid's feeling of cultural isolation and lack of personal control. This work will explore this theory through an analysis of literature both primary and secondary in association with murder committed by children.

We have heard a great deal about the recent high school massacres yet the focus of this work is on younger children. It will focus on crimes which have been given less airtime, yet also dealing with kids killing other kids. Examples such as, Joshua Phillips who killed an 8-year-old neighbor and then hid her body under his bed for several days.

Moffatt 112) the case of Mary Bell and Norma Bell, (not related) 10 who committed two murders against young children in the UK in 1968, and were flagrant show offs about their crimes. The case in Britain where 2 boys age 10 brutally murdered 2-year-old James Bulger, basically they said to see what it was like to kill another human being. Michael Hernandez 14 killed his best friend of many years, in a conscious bid to become a serial killer ("Dark Ambitions: A Born Killer?" Court TV crime library website) and the Recently released Lionel Tate now 17 (12 a the time of the murder) who killed 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick, he said while imitating professional wrestling moves he had seen on TV, this claim was later discredited when prosecutors claimed Eunick had been brutally beaten to death. (Associated Press "Convicted Child Killer to Return Home" CNN website) leading education expert expresses concerns about the isolation children experience when they are removed from their community to attend school and states that such isolation may be a root cause for increased violence and disassociative disorders. "Holt feels that children are not treated as if they are part of the community, that they are removed from the community for their education, and that they are not ready for it..."

Hausen 163) His observations are as a response to many years as a teacher in public schools. He believes that the challenges students face, in a public school are absolutely contrary to their natural development into successful adults. In addition to this I will add that the artificial culture, one finds in a school of almost any type, harbors punishments and restrictions that for the most part seem arbitrary and unfair to a child, especially when those sanctions come from peers and are associated with factors completely outside one's control, such as athletic ability, sexual interest heightened by the desensitization of sex by the media, dressing in style exacerbated by market economy advertising, physical appearance, intelligence and personal wealth of the family. In one outstanding work on the subject of human progress as it applies to children and education explains that exploring; the effects of advertising that emphasizes youth, sex, beauty, health and wealth...could lead to examining the repercussions of that type of advertising for aging, illness and even death, on society at large: showing how aging, illness and poverty have become stigmas that the sufferers are held responsible for...those inflicted stigmas and shame at natural human developments have forced all of us to wear masks hiding our true selves.

Hausen 169)

The same could be said for the helplessness of the youthful victims in the cases of murder here being addressed. It has somehow become popular to see the helpless as victims rather than as human beings, children are unwelcome in society and are either superficially capable in the media or desperately intolerable and in need of physical and psychological abuse.

When children who kill are interviewed the kinds of problems and psychological states they exhibit, where they are not directly associated with a disassociative disorders are linked almost inextricably to feelings of complete and utter lack of personal control over their lives. The finding among many children who have taken the life of another is often that they feel trapped by the unfair and arbitrary control of peers, parents and educators, in that order. "Illich claims that schools are meant to enforce a social class system where children learn values appropriate to their class. He feels that "[c]ompulsory education forces an individual to compete for equality," -- which is a paradox.

(Hausen 163) Competeing for equality in conditions that are arbitrarily created does not often give a child the ability to choose right from wrong when much smaller decisions are at stake than whether or not to beat their playmates with baseball bats, because they fear punishment for other more slight transgressions against them, see the Phillips case above.

According to a leading child treatment specialist, there are several traits that supercede all others with regard to children who commit murder. These traits an almost always associated with the environment and have implications for prevention, rather than treatment. These children, already violent offenders are troubled in many ways, according to Lowenstein they have not only been failed by their environment but feel as if they are failures themselves.

A witnessing violence in reality such as between parents or others, suffering from either physical or sexual abuse themselves, being interested excessively in acts of violence such as watching violent TV programmes or videos, having failed to be disciplined sufficiently when acts of aggressiveness occur towards others, towards animals and hence having failed to develop a conscience about such behaviour, there is also frequently a history of both being bullied and acting as bullies.

Lowenstein)

What happens in these cases, according to Lownestwein is that children fail to form the connection between what they are thinking of doing, actually doing and the consequences of their actions. They do not expect to be caught or punished because they have not been shown this to be the case in their history. Their much earlier transgressions are ignored or avoided by parents, who come ill equipped to deal with them or worse yet, they are physically punished, further enforcing their idea that a person must get what they want through violence. "Children who abuse others have frequently seen their own parents act as negative role models." These children feel as if little if any attention or feeling is expressed toward them they often do not express feelings of remorse over what they do to others.

Lowenstein)

These children also might see their own feelings of a wish to do physical harm toward another reflected in the feelings of others, the psychological term known as projection, and may be afraid or paranoid of others intentions.

Sometimes the criminal act of murder is an extension of previous anti-social acts of less serious forms of delinquency and criminality and children merely graduate to more extended and more violent and extreme forms of behaviour in the form of murder.

Lowenstein)

Anti-social behavior is rare but is often a trigger for the child, he or she does not have a clear sense of self or a clear sense of the pain he or she inflicts with his or her actions toward another. They are partly or completely disassociated from the emotionally charged elements of violence. They do not have fear, and as Lownstein states they do not often experience guilt.

Because of the relative difficulty perceived by many professionals of changing such feelings, once they have become a part of the child's psychology, the key for most would be prevention rather than rehabilitation.

Lowenstein) Though the main problem with prevention as the one and only best solution for the problem is that families are increasingly fragmented and isolated from community and warning signs could be creatively masked by an unhealthy and secretive family net. It is this lack of remorse that often leads the drive by proponents of these children being tried as adults, with punishments that fit the crimes they commit, often so heinous even professional investigators are shocked and awed by the intensity of the anger expressed by these children in their actions. "Having interviewed such children on numerous occasions, I have found that they frequently have a mask of non-feeling or defensiveness but beneath that mask there is anger, depression and in rare cases, guilt. Some of these children suffer from psychotic illness, most do not."

Lowenstein)

Lowenstein also reports that the there is a disproportionate representation of children of divorces parents with previous criminal records, and truancy. Yet, the cases of children as young as 10 are outside this possibility as children are rarely old enough to have committed offences serious enough to warrant police or official intervention by this age, though there are such cases. Also disproportionately represented where boys, minorities, and those in a lower socioeconomic bracket.

Lowenstein)

The case of Michael Hernandez on the other hand is a clear example of the kind of emotional detachment a child killer exhibits. He had dark and sinister plans, laid out in a kind of murder journal that the trial brought to light. There had been no known animosity between himself and his best friend of many years, Jamie Gough, and yet he brutally murdered him in a school restroom as a birthday present to himself, "It seems that Hernandez had devised for himself a little birthday celebration. He had a list of three people that he had planned to kill: his older sister, a long-time friend referred to in the reports as "A.D.M.," and Gough." ("Dark Ambitions: A Born Killer?" Court TV crime library website) His plans were not sketchy and indicative of an argument they were premeditated and planned, with lists of needs and necessities outlined and obtained for the killing spree.

In his journals, Hernandez had a six-page Internet printout about mass, spree, and serial murderers on which he had drawn a hanged man and had written "will become a serial killer."...He also had written a list of violent videogames and movies, had instructions for making a bomb,...Oddly, another note said, "You will be a serial killer and mass murderer, stay along, never forget God ever, have a cult and plan mass kidnapping for new world be an expert thief." ("Dark Ambitions: A Born Killer?" Court TV crime library website)

The extreme sense of disconnection found within this boy and his environment is telling of the possible causes of his actions, but they are yet unknown, probably even to him. Additionally, in a few ways Michael Hernandez's case is also anomalous, in that he came from an affluent background and attended a school for gifted and artistic children. Though one case, because of its age does bring to light many clues as to the kinds of thoughts and problems children who kill have, at startlingly early ages.

The case of Mary Bell, who had an accomplice of sort Norma Bell who was not found guilty and seemed to have played only a supportive role in the crimes, is absolutely storybook of the severity of the situation facing these children. As the crimes occurred in 1968, when Mary was 10 there have been many years of analysis concerning her case and her own reflective observations have also been detailed by the press and biographers. She has since become an adult and been released from prison (she spent several years in boys juvenile facilities and then was transferred to a women's prison) she is now a mother and a married woman. She has much to say about her history and has claimed to be a totally different person, reformed and non-violent. (many say this remains to be seen) ("Making Mary Bell" Crime TV Library website)

In her case there were many early signs of disassociative behavior and violence. She was from a troubled home, her mother an S & M. prostitute, which she was at least marginally aware of, and her father was unknown, though a man married her mother when she was an infant and was around through most of Mary's childhood. He had not much more to offer Mary than her mother, as he was a professional thief, which Mary was also marginally aware of. Mary and others have described her early life in grave detail and paint a picture of an emotionally and physically starved child, with cunning and disturbing intelligence and pride rather than remorse in her actions of violence.