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Eye for an eye

A father caught his stepson assaulting his daughter. He found out at the hospital that his daughter had been sodomized. The man warned his wife not to bail her son out of jail, but of course she did anyways. The father picked the boy up at the jail and promptly took him to an abandoned house and beat him with a baseball bat and sodomized him with a metal object.

Although as a nation we believe in the rule of law and discourage vigilante justice, tell me would you do the same if it was your daughter? It would take a lot of self control for a father to realistically restrain himself. The stepfather took a big risk that now his traumatized daughter may have to grow up without him around. The boy was punished without due process and the stepfather committed the same crime that the boy did.

So I ask, was justice served? Is he less likely to re-offend by going through the juvenile justice system or from his stepfather’s vigilante punishment? If you were the mother, would you bail your son out of jail to let him back in the house with your daughter?

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This entry was written by Scott Allan and posted on January 13, 2008 and filed under news. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

  1. NO! This was not the way to serve justice. That was just sick and wrong. That stepfather ought to be jailed for life. Shame on him and the boy needs some serious help; ESPECIALLY NOW. Of course the girl will need some help as well. This is just tragic all the way around.

    1. c.a. Marks on January 14th, 2008 at 8:11 am

  2. Oh and as far as your last question. I probably would have bailed him out BUT I would have immediately taken him somewhere else, out of the house and not have returned myself either.

    2. c.a. Marks on January 14th, 2008 at 8:12 am

  3. Both acts are probably equally heinous, but the father had some mitigating circumstances, perhaps temporary insanity. The primal instinct to protect your young is very strong. Just reading the story got my adrenaline going wondering how I would handle such a situation with my own daughter. I would like to think I would be able to respond in a civilized manner, but I really can’t be certain. It’s a situation I cannot fully comprehend. Hopefully I would have the wisdom to see that my daughter would need me more at home than in jail.

    Since they committed the same crime, perhaps they should receive the same sentence. I seriously doubt the boy is going to jail the rest of his life so should the father’s punishment be that much more severe? The boy will probably serve minimal time in juvenile detention and his records will probably be sealed since he’s a minor. In some states he might not do any time at all. On the other hand, the girl’s life may be ruined. I’m not sure this girl could ever receive adequate justice.

    3. Scott Allan on January 14th, 2008 at 9:23 am

  4. I would think the boy’s life is ruined as well. Yes, he did something horrible to that girl but I don’t think it justifies an eye for an eye. I would hope like hell you wouldn’t even consider doing what that father did, not even give it a pondering though! I know you want to be protective of your girls, as you should be, and perhaps if it were a stranger…then MAYBE…but this was his step son and you’d think that there was something going on beforehand, some sign, these people needed help along time ago.

    4. c.a. Marks on January 16th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

  5. If someone harmed my child, my first reaction would always be to defend her like a lion protecting his cubs. So I can certainly relate to the stepfather’s emotions and reaction even if I do not condone his actions. There must have certainly been some abusive history there and the stepfather has shown a propensity for great violence, but I am certainly not going to make any excuses for the boy.

    It certainly does defy logic to say sodomy/rape is evil and then do it yourself. There is almost a parallel to the death penalty. Is it ok to kill a killer? In certain cases our society finds a murder so repugnant that we feel that the only suitable punishment is executing that person. But essentially we are committing the same act the killer did. Granted, the person on death row had his day in court and this boy did not. I struggle with the ethics of the death penalty.

    If someone murdered my child, I think I would have an incredible urge for vengeance. Having the urge and acting upon the urge are two different things though.

    5. Scott Allan on January 16th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

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