This is the last entry you can comment on for December.
What do you think of this mother’s reaction? Is her excuse that it was instinct reasonable? Do you think mothers can become more violent than fathers when they feel that their children are threatened? Did the police react in an appropriate manner? What should be done about bullying?
In my opinion the mother’s reaction was appropriate, even though maybe it was not so necessary, I would probably react in the same way if I was in her position. The girl harmed her daughter, someone she desperately loves, so her reaction was definitely reasonable.
ReplyDeleteThere are many cases, when the mother tries to protect her own child and does something she would never have done normally. I heard about a case, that there was a car crash and the child was stuck under a car. The mother lifted the car and pulled her child from under the car and saved it. If the mother wouldn’t have done this, the child would probably die immediately. In these kind of situations, when the child is in danger or if it has been hurt, mothers react in the rush of adrenalin and they often do something physically impossible, or something they would never done if there was no such situation. I think that even the mother of the girl was really surprised of her reaction and she regretted it a bit. Mothers have some kind of mother instinct, which enables them to react in these types of situations. This is something fathers don’t have, or at least not in such extent as mothers.
I think that the police reacted in an appropriate manner, because even though the girl really deserved to be beaten back, the mother should not have reacted in that way. She should have solved this situation more professionally. The police made probably a good choice when they arrested her.
Bullying is a serious problem mainly at schools. There are always some people who need to prove to themselves that they are stronger, and they prove it to themselves either by insulting other people, or as in this case by physical violence. Bullying should definitely be solved. According to a study done by Californian researchers, around 59 percent of kids admitted that they bullied others. In my opinion parents and teachers don’t really see how big this issue is, and there should be done something about it.
The sad thing about this is that the bullying still persist in our society. It occurs almost everywhere and has many disguises which can go from relatively “harmless” threatening to absolutely terrifying physical and psychical tormenting. While thinking about the possible consequences of the bullying and the subsequent actions which would be appropriate, we have to distinguish among various types of bullying. However, there is no such thing as an innocent bullying. The very basis of it is twisted and horrible. It does not matter how it is induced. What is common for all the bullies is, that the subjects are always only weaker people (maybe it would be more appropriate to talk about kids but even “adult world” suffers from it), the ones who cannot protect themselves.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, lets analyze the situation to better understand what happened. A 14 year-old girl standing at the bus stop with her friend was approached by four other girls, two in her age and two a year older. She was subsequently chased down the road and beaten. She was punched, hit and kicked. Only after a resident took Summer (the victim) into his house was she safe. She then called her mother and tell her what had happened. Now stop. From these information it looks to me as something tremendously bad. When I read it for the first time, it was with disgust and disbelief. I constantly shook my head and could not accept that such monstrosity could have been done by children, even though it is said the children are capable of doing the most terrifying things. What cause me even more chills, however, is the fact that this is actually happening. Summer’s case just happened to be published because it involved one more factor, not present in other incidents, an involvement of adults especially that of a parent. What would happen if there was no one to protect her against the bullies is left to our imagination.
Later in the article is mentioned that the possible reason was because of a rumor that Summer wanted to beat a cousin of one of the four girls. Summer denied having such intention. Apparently, it was enough for the girls to come to a conclusion that she has to be what, what was that they had in their minds when they were beating her, “stopped?” “showed a lection?” I cannot imagine that. We could have a long discussion about the state of today’s society and its influence over the kids and I would luckily join, but let me do something simpler. The mother’s reaction.
After the phone call Summer made, her mother arrived in ten minutes finding her in a broken state, crying and badly hurt; blood coming out of her eye from cuts. I am too young and of wrong sex to fully understand the feelings her mother must have had in that moment. She said her “heart has stopped,” and her instincts took over. We may find in the history a few cases in which mothers were capable of unimaginable things because it involved their own children. Mother-children relationship is probably the strongest thing in this world. Seeing her daughter in that state had to switch her protective processes on arriving to a logical conclusion of dealing with what caused her daughter to suffer. She, deprived of consciousness, found the attacker and combated her, slapping her a few times being stopped only after police put her on the ground. She was subsequently arrested, together with two 14 year-old girls. This proposes another question: “Was Summer’s mother arrest just?” Well, my answer is yes.
Whatever the situation was, the fact is that Summer’s mother attacked a child. That is without a question crime. Whether she should stay in the jail or not is doubtful. Events preceding the incident are a little bit complicated. A motive is clear but the action not. She did not plan it nor she intended to do so. It was a matter of a moment, of strong emotional distress which literally caused her to act that way. She herself said that she regrets it. I believe her. In my opinion, she should be freed on compassionate grounds but it does not mean I approve of her actions. I am strongly against any type of violence. The cases in which violence would be appropriate can be counted on the fingers of two hands and even then would I recommend to reconsider it first, but clearly, this was not that type of circumstance. At this point I may seem to be contradicting myself, however, intentional and aggravated are two different things which have to be distinguished.
ReplyDeleteTo sum it up, it is an appalling crime and should be punished. I hope there will be justice. However, any punishment would not solve the situation, nor the problem. The girl, as we could read in the article, is too scared to come back to school, too scared to even go out. The damage we may see in the picture will heal after some time, if It will be the same with her “soul” is another case. I hope she will recover and be able to continue living a normal life somewhere else. This all is entirely up to her mother. What is however on all of us, is the problem. Also a subject for another, long discussion with contrasting opinions. At the end I want to say that there is one thing which all of us can do, and that is to not shut our eyes in front of reality but rather confront the “demons” head on. It may at least set an example for others.
Although I kind of understand how the mother must have felt after seeing both what physical and mental state her daughter was in after the assault, I believe that the mother definitely should not have reacted in the way she did. She should have known better than to hit the two dense and immature teenagers on such a whim. Not only did she do nothing to help the situation, she also only worsened it since she got arrested afterwards.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, if I had been bullied when I was Summer’s age, and ended up in the same situation, I would not have wanted my mother to even leave my side. I would have just wanted her to be next to me, she wouldn’t even have to do anything, because the very presence of my mother in tough situations is an immense comfort in itself. And I reckon that this is true for all people, because just like Barbora said, a maternal bond is probably the strongest thing in this world, both from the mother’s and child’s point of view.
Of course, this is how probably everyone would react after reading this article, “an adult cannot beat a child” and “the authorities did right in arresting her”, however, I think that if. Had I been in the mother’s shoes, I do not know how I would have reacted at all. Just like the mother said, “motherly instinct took over”.
What shocks me the most about this article has nothing to do with the response of the mother, but the reaction that the school principal had to this situation. The fact that his opinion on this assault consisted of the words “always disappointed when students end up fighting” made me stare in disbelief. Disappointed? Is that seriously the extent of his feelings towards what happened? I don’t know about you, but when I look at the photo of the beat up girl, I feel a great deal more than disappointment.
If not parents, principals and teachers are the people that should educate adolescent individuals in how they should behave. If one of these authorities has such a vague opinion on the vast issue of bullying, then there is obviously something wrong.
What Mellissa did could have very well been one of the worst possible choices she could have made at that moment. Trying to avenge her daughter by inflicting similar damages on her assailants gives a completely new meaning to the phrase “eye for an eye”. I find this very disturbing and highly inappropriate, though, I think Mellissa has already come to a similar realization of this situation. Her motives are more than justified, her actions, however, are not. As far as her excuses are concerned, depending on her intentions she could have done better. If she really wished to avoid imprisonment or paying fines, she could have at least pretended that slapping the bullies was the only possible way to prevent them from harming her daughter. However, seeing how she pleaded guilty after all, her excuse that she was in a mother’s rage, is, perhaps, more geared towards herself as a mean to justify her own actions and stop feeling so bad.
ReplyDeleteThe authorities did what was expected of them, even though, we might not feel that it was the right thing to do. The mother shouldn’t have confronted the bullies, at least not physically. Despite that, I think she was very aware of what she was about to do. She knew well that children beating on children and adults beating on children were no things that would mutually cancel each other out, but she decided to go for it anyways. She should have sought the help of authorities instead if she truly wanted to punish such misdemeanor effectively.
Lastly, there is only one thing I disagree with and that is the highly probable school staff’s decision to suspend the people involved in the accident. In my opinion, the assaulted victim shouldn’t be punished any further for what others had done to her. Despite the fact that leaving her current school might be a viable choice, I don’t think the school staff would act appropriately if they did decide to suspend her in the end.
This is a completely absurd type of situation. When I read about something like this, I always think to myself: “Change is needed”. And that is undeniably true. Just take a look at today’s society and tell me, where do you think it is heading? A peaceful future? Hell no. So yes, if we do not want to die all together, we need to change.
ReplyDeleteWithin legal boundaries, the mother did not have the right to hit the child. That is a fact. But then again, if the two assailant girls attacked Summer, they clearly went out of the legal boundaries, and sometimes what the law does, is not correct. This is a nice example. By a series of logical steps, Mellissa’s outbreak could be easily justified (but then again, anything can be). The reason for the girls attacking her, is to punish her for her intention to beat up one of their cousins. By beating Summer up, they clearly established, that their idea of fairly punishing someone for beating someone else up, is to beat them up as well. So in the zone of their own logic, Mellissa was actually SUPPOSED to beat them up. And this logic is ridiculous, because had it been applied to the world, everyone would constantly get beaten up by everyone.
That is why in a case like this, people have to turn to the law, and do as it states. But if all that the principal can do about it is feel disappointed, then nothing will change. The bullies will always bully the weaker.
And now let’s analyze the reaction of the mother, and the reasons that made her act that way. Bullies beat up her child (a violation of the law), and she decided, that that was more than she will tolerate, so she decided to beat them up. Clearly she would not have beaten them up, had they only threatened Summer and also I think it is safe to say she would not even have heard about it, had it only been a verbal taunt. What I want to point to is that people always turn to the principal, when a child is bullied, and the principal remains “disappointed”. And now, the side that does wrong went over the line with a mere mother that was defending her child and she decided to beat them up. Do you see where I am going with this?
Apart from in fairytales, good never wins against evil. It is always the bullies that get away with everything, until they come across someone that is too strong for them and decides to fight back. The ironic thing is that in this case, when good decided to fight evil, good did not get away with it. It got pushed down by the same law that fails to deal with the bullies, and got caught by the same cops that failed to catch the bullies when they were chasing Summer. The thing is that sometimes, evil just crosses the line and the good people turn bad. Why? Because good never wins. If you need to win, you have to turn evil. And when that comes, it leads to events such as last year’s shootout in Devinska Nova Ves. That was a person, who was in contact with bad people that obviously crossed the line. The problem is that no one would have defended his actions on trial, despite the fact, that he clearly helped tons of people that had to deal with that same Roma family as well, they are just afraid to admit it.
ReplyDeleteOne day a mother beats up bullies that beat up her daughter while the next thing you know, some person on the other side of the world shoots several people. Do you see the pattern now? Badness turns good people bad, because they realize that being good doesn’t save them from badness. And I can safely assume, that one of these days when the bad people will be racing the city streets at 150 miles per hour, throwing firecrackers at other people, bullying someone at school or stealing from others will make someone else mad, and one day, this person will be more than they can handle.
How would one of these bad people react, when after throwing the firecracker, the target would pull out a gun and start shooting back? They would probably think twice when thinking of doing it again. The problem is, the person who has the firecrackers thrown at them is usually not the one with a gun and even if he was and decided to shoot, the law would be against him regardless of the danger the victims of his shootout were posing to the other pedestrians.
This world is constant war against evil. The only problem is, that evil has all the weapons. You never see a small student bullying a big one. You never see the weaker stand up to the stronger. And as it would seem from this article, neither does the law stand up to the bad people.
How can the law expect the mother not to beat up the bullies, when the mother cannot count on the fact that the law will punish them?
@Simon
DeleteWell, you are mixing together very different things which, I believe, cannot be compared. You have simplified the problem to the level of a fairytale. I am sure that everyone would be happy if it was that simple. However, the real world does not have only two colors, black and white.
In your first example you put Mellissa and the shooter in the same category of the good people which were forced by the circumstances and turned bad. In fact, you said that a few slaps which may as well be seen as educative in the sense of a punishment for misbehavior, are the same as a few shots which may as well be seen as lethal in the sense of a murder. The similarity here is that both were provoked (induced by something prior to that). You are absolutely right at this point, however I would rather focus on the differences which are, at least for me, more important. Slaps hurt, they inflict a physical damage and probably even psychical damage, but nothing which could not be eventually healed. On the other hand, shots do not hurt. They cause worse physical damage, but a psychical pain is not even worth mentioning. Why is it so? The correct answer is that you do not care about these things after you are dead.
My point is that evil breeds but more evil. It is a circle with hatred fueling its movement. The evil was at the start, the evil will be at the end. You excused the evil deeds with another evil deeds. You said it is alright to have a revenge, false! If there is no-one to cut the circle, the people will suffocate in their own feelings of loath. Hate destructs. Love creates. In order to preserve life we have to build, not destroy. I hope I made myself clear. If not, I will be happy to continue this debate, as this is only one aspect of how it can be looked at.
COMMENT ON MICHAL'S COMMENT (PART 1)
DeleteYou will be happy to continue this debate you say. Very well. First of all, you did not really understand my point of view. I am not trying to justify anything. I am trying to look at it logically. So allow me to describe something. What is the root of this conflict? We do not know. What we can safely say is that whatever it was, it led to a chain reaction of people getting beaten up by everyone. If I understand correctly, the girls attacked Summer, because she was (according to some rumor) about to beat up one of their cousins. So the girls beat her up before she got a chance to beat up the cousin. This then led to the mother beating up one of the attacker girls. And we have everyone beating up everyone. So how do we stop this from starting in the first place? This is the question I have been trying to answer for a long time now. How do we stop these chain reactions of evil? There are two ways, both eliminating the source in a different way. The source (or spark) was in this case Summer’s intention to beat up the girls cousin. So we have to prevent this. The two ways:
First option:
Prevent people (Summer) from having the intention in the first place.
This would require a complete change in the way of thinking of human beings – a change in their psychology. Only advanced mind manipulation methods, hypnosis, subliminal messaging or, in the worst case, a complete physical reorganization of the neural pathways of all the people on the planet. I think you see that this method is almost impossible to use.
Second option:
Threats
As much as you might want to reject the idea, it is the undeniable truth that the only thing people react to with absolute devotion, is threatening. This is the way law is trying to make people obey laws. “Do this and you go to prison”? Not true. The current truth is as follows “Do this and if we catch you, if we are able to prove you are guilty, if you do not have enough money to buy your way out of the problems, if you are not famous and if you are not a politician, you go to prison”. Where is the fairness? It is as though we are giving evil specific instructions on how to be successful. That is the way it is now.
There is one thing that would change this to fair. “Do this and you die”. Unconditionally. Attack a girl in school? You die. Steal from the state? You die. Cruel? Yes. In the eyes of a normal person, this would seem mean, cruel, wrong, too sadistic and maybe even evil. A realist however would start to think and I ask you. If everyone that broke laws would simply die, how many people would dare break laws? I do not think a single one. Only a cruel threat (evil) can make sure evil will not get it’s way.
COMMENT ON MICHAL'S COMMENT (Part 2)
DeleteYou say that someone has to break the circle. I think this would qualify as doing so.
You say that there are more than just two colors. You are wrong. There are never more than two. In any interaction there are only two people and there are only two colors, and which person is of which color can vary from interaction to interaction. The second part of that sentence is key. This world is divided into only good and evil. It’s just that these two terms are a bit exaggerated. In normal it would be called right or wrong. But for the sake of trying to make my point, let me call it good and evil. It is not that the world is divided into them, it is that every violent interaction between two people (just like this case of assault) is created because of the existence of these two sides. The evil (no matter what circumstances led to the interaction) is the attacking side, since we can argue that attacking someone cannot be considered good. The good side is therefore the defending. In this case Summer was the attacked and the girls were the attackers. Clearly determinable good and evil/right and wrong (In this particular situation – The actual minute or two the girls spent chasing after summer).
You say that a few slaps pose no permanent damage. Therefore the consequences on the attacker girls actions pose no real danger to their well being. So how can you expect them to give a damn about the rules? Breaking them causes them no permanent problem anyway. The logic of all evil. Evil is at peace with evil and only evil causes permanent damage. So how on Earth are you planning on breaking the circle? Oh yes. The “good people” have to simply take all evil gives them without doing anything. I disagree with that conclusion.
Last of all, you said that it is wrong to take revenge on anyone. I agree, but not in the way you would think. I want to eliminate whatever reason it is that causes a person seek revenge in the first place. This would eventually make sure no revenge could take place at all.
And just to be clear on one thing. I am not fond of this ideology. I simply observe people’s behavior and come to conclusions based on my observations. (The fact that anyone who decides to watch people would eventually come to the same conclusion is the greatest disgrace of the human kind) I would prefer much more if bad people sometimes simply realized what they are doing and stop. But you never see that. I cannot walk the streets of this world without knowing that yes, any one of those people could take out a gun and shoot me and, even a nicer image, they might not even suffer any consequence for doing so. I do not like that feeling.
In my lifetime I want to see the end of evil. Killing anyone that breaks the rules is of course out of the question (I do have some common sense) and I only have very little knowledge on how to change the thinking of the entire human race. So I am searching for a more peaceful way of stopping evil. I will welcome any suggestion, because I have none. I dare you to give me one. I would pay you for one.