8 and 9 year old kidnap, rape 11 year old

A lenient sentence of immediate murder might do the trick.

8 and 9 years old? Wow, kids hit puberty early these days. We should try to reverse that.

Boys will be boys...

No offense Brendan, but why is it that if I had posted this, I would have been told it was in the wrong section?

My friend called me to tell me about this just a bit ago, and, I dunno, maybe it's because I'm from Texas, but my immediate thought was fast track to the electric chair.

Do they make electric chairs for 8 or 9 year olds? Or would they have to use the one from the Shocker playset?

No need for murder. There is no problem here that cannot be remedied by these kids spending their formative years getting castrated and passed around like currency in grownups prison for the rest of their lives.

Good question. I was thinking maybe more of a Santa Claus set up. Climb up to sit in fake Santa's lap, pull the lever, then slide them down the chute like Lil' Ralphie.

Objectively, you can't try these kids as adults even though what they did is fucking horrible. They do need to be put away though and I say officials should take this chance to study how kids so fucking young can turn out so fucking twisted. Yeah, more likely than not the parents are going to turn out to be fuck-ups but outside-the-home environment also plays a part. So how did this happen? If people don't try to understand how evil fucked up shit like this happens, then there's no way to look out for the signs in other young children in the future.

I would also like to know how.

How does an 8 or 9 year old decide to rape someone? How do they even know what rape is? How are they physically capable of it? Have their balls even dropped yet?

No, they would just use a chuck-e-cheese booster seat. Melty Ass.

Can we just nuke Georgia and Alabama off the face of the earth. Nick, I know you call that state your home, but please get out now!

The answer to that second question is unfortunately pretty obvious.

Eight or nine year-olds literally do not have the same thought processes that adults do. Not only are many eight year-olds not able to think in abstract terms about concepts such as right and wrong, they are barely able to think in logical terms. These are not necessarily disabled kids we're talking about either.

Eight or nine is way way way to young to try someone as an adult. I bet if you put two identical cups of water in front of these kids and then transferred the water from one into a taller glass, the kids would say that the taller glass had more water. That kind of reasoning is normal for kids this age, and as a result we have laws which protect people who think on this level from going to jail. These children obviously need some serious therapy, first and foremost the victim, and I don't think anyone is served by locking these perpetrators up with hardened criminals at the age of nine.

I don't know, I find the whole thing suspicious. I know blaming the victim is wrong and all that, but I would have a much easier time believing that an 11 year-old girl wanted to get some boys in trouble and threw out a word she knew was reallly, really bad than that 8/9 year-olds could actually do this. I mean, I literally can barely believe this could happen. 8? you shouldn't even have the urges to do this, much less know how to go about it.

But at any rate, charging an 8 year old as an adult for anything is absurd, and pretty much destroys any reason to have such a distinction in the courts.

Get fucked. If we judged New York to be a haven of dumb ass, gossip mavens because of you, would we be justified? Unfortunately, you would fit in perfectly in Alabama.

Are they playing this years Almost Acoustic Christmas?

That's a pretty important quote, and changes the entire situation. Leaving it out is irresponsible reporting, sadly, something all too accepted.

If in some bizarre way this was consensual...were the kids on their way to kill IT or something?

Did the law only become involved after the boys wouldn't volunteer one of their own for a shotgun wedding? And was this refusal because they aren't related to the girl? Does the father feel his "first night" rights have been violated? So many questions.

This case is baffling. I just can't wrap my brain around an 8 and 9-year-old being able to commit rape. Like Werewolf Girl, I don't even know how it's physically possible. I couldn't even get an erection when I was that old. Shit, I didn't even know what an erection was.

And if there was a rape, wouldn't the rape-kit show evidence of semen or vaginal tearing? (Shit, I've watched way too much Special Victims Unit).

Pics?

No offense, but what kind of retard children are you hanging out with? I work with preschool-age children, and what you're describing is more appropriately applied to two-to-three-year-olds. Eight and nine year old children are far, far more sophisticated than you seem to think.

I take psychology as a major, and I'm referring to Piaget's stages of cognitive development. The children typically begin to think logically about concrete events between the ages of about seven and eleven, and begin to think abstractly between about eleven and thirteen.

You've obviously seen more two and three-year-olds in action than I have, but I stand behind the ages I listed. It goes without saying that developmental changes happen at staggered intervals, and that a child can display logic and common sense in limited situations without having developed the ability to extrapolate logic to new and unfamiliar situations.

That's all well and good for the textbooks, Gray...but those ages are way skewed. I've worked with children for years in extracurricular settings and there is nothing more diabolical than 3 or more 6 year olds together in one place.

Especially if they're boys.

You need to be a little careful with Piaget. In developmental psychology he is considered in a similar that Freud is in regards to therapy. In other words, they are both talked about so much because they started things, but much of what they professed has been proven wrong. To be fair, Freud should only be mentioned as a historical note, but Piaget did actually contribute much that has lasted, but it was more in his methodology (which was pretty cunning and inventive at the time).

Anyway, to make a long story short, if you continue to study psychology, when you delve more into developmental psychology, you'll see that many more recent experients are in disagreement with Piaget (in terms of ages when certain abilities are "gained"... like conservation of mass/volume/etc., loss of egocentricity, developing a rudimentary theory of mind, understanding basic physics, etc.).

It turns out it depends heavily on how you ask the question, the type of question/task, and how you check the child's response. One example is that children can do some conservation tasks when under 3 years of age, and it looks like a lot of what Piaget was showing was the result of miscommunication (i.e., the limited vocabulary of the young children were making it seem like they knew less than they did).

Now, when it comes to moral reasoning, I think it is generally accepted (although I'm not an expert and am providing no citation, so take it as you will) that most 8 year olds are still using (primarily) pre-conventional reasoning.

Back to the topic... very disturbing no matter which story is true.

Also, I know I've heard a lot (which doesn't make it true) about the puberty age seeming to have been reducing over recent decades. Also, certain groups go through puberty earlier than others. I believe in the U.S., black girls go through puberty about a year earlier on average than white girls. I'm unsure of the numbers for males, but it is completely possible for an 8-9 year to be able to get an erection... although I would guess it isn't likely.

Well said. Though it is a fairly new science as sciences go, psychology has come a long way. Getting your information from the old core theories is a dangerous business. They're useful things to learn when studying the origins and development of the field, but it's important to realize that newer information usually trumps them. The last several years have yielded many surprises as to how sophisticated very young children really are. The studies on what infants understand were particularly surprising.

Wow, do you people know some retarded 8 or 9 yr olds or something? When I was that age I certainly was curious about sex even though I really didn't know anything about it. It was like the taboo subject. We just only talked about it watching tv with our friends and seeing a hot chick on tv. You meet a girl in the neighborhood, you both get a little curious, play doctor. I mean it's kid stuff.

This is just fucked up.

I just can't fathom how three little boys took down someone 2-3 years older than them. Girls mature faster than boys so do you REALLY think she wasn't bigger than them or something? That's something I just don't get. It actually does make more sense that she was just a tramp and wanted to gangbang some boys she knew because she probably saw it on some porno on the internet. They were willing and curious. Then somehow someone found out...don't know HOW but if you were her age and your parents were getting in your face about it, would you tell them you WANTED to do something like that??? So the saving her own hide theory: Certainly plausible.

Both of my sons had erections while in infancy (C'mon, who doesn't enjoy having his diaper changed? Back me up here, Singer.). Where did this 8-9 year thing come from?

It's really disturbing that I know this, however, I usually can't forget anything I read: Boys are able to get erections at a very young age and they can have an ejaculatory response when they're sufficiently stimulated. However, until they reach puberty, they discharge urine rather than semen. So, a rape kit would yield signs of violence but not the information it would for sexually mature attackers.

So,have the two boys been charged? I want to see what the courts make out of this.

I was just responding to someone else who said it wasn't possible, and it was just opinion (ill-informed opinion, apparently!).

I actually thought erections were tied into puberty. I don't remember getting erections until I was at least close to puberty, but maybe I didn't know enough hot ladies when I was that young.