freespirit
16th September 2011, 06:44 AM
In a remarkable case of rehabilitation, an Alberta teen is now at university, more than five years after helping kill her parents and brother.
http://news.sympatico.ca/oped/coffee-talk/12-year-old_murderer_now_at_university/1c510aaf
We don't know her name, just her deeds.
In 2006, a 12-year-old girl in Medicine Hat, Alta., joined her boyfriend in killing her parents and her eight-year-old brother.
Yes, the case is about as gruesome as it gets.
The unidentified girl's parents had not approved of her relationship with her 23-year-old boyfriend, so the pair planned to kill them. They stabbed the parents and the eight-year-old brother to death in the middle of the night.
The pair were convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. The boyfriend received a sentence of 25 years without parole. The girl was given the maximum sentence for someone her age: 10 years.
No doubt some people at the time of sentencing criticized the system for limiting the girl's punishment to a decade. But her turnaround has been astounding.
Court records – which do not identify her – show she has made progress year after year. She has received "intensive young offender rehabilitation" and has scored straight A's on school report cards.
Last year she began to serve her time in open custody, where with permission, she can make escorted trips to go shopping and to therapy sessions.
Now she's in her first year at Mount Royal University in Calgary, and is about five years from completing both her education and her sentence.
There is no way she can undo the three murders, but the changes she has made since then show the value of rehabilitation over the urge to lock people up and throw away the key.
No matter how you feel about the crime she perpetrated, a second chance was in order. Age 12 is too young to give up on someone.
Had she been tried as an adult and sent away for 25 years, her failure would have been guaranteed and another life would have been wasted. Even though the crime was extreme, her second chance is working for all of us. We should be thankful she will be a contributing member of society in five years, not rotting in jail until 2035.
The fact that her name cannot be reported may irk some people, but that anonymity was key to her rehabilitation. She is a university student while still undergoing therapy and trying to overcome the crime. That is challenge enough. Had she been subject to public attention at the same time, it would be asking for failure.
In the world of "an eye for an eye," this story would have been very different. The 12-year-old girl and her boyfriend would have been hanged, shot or stoned to death, depending on where and when they were caught. And still her parents and brother would have been dead.
When rehabilitation delivers a success story like this young woman's, how could we ever consider life imprisonment or death to be a better outcome?
Should child criminals be treated differently in our courts? Will the young woman in this story have paid a fair price for her crimes when she is released?
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personally, i think the tax payers are the ones to pay the price. we're the ones that have paid for every inch of her rehabilitation, including university.
i think the boyfriend should have been twitching and swingin' in the breeze! WTF is he @ 23 y/o doing dating a 12y/o child??!!
25 years is too good for a POS like that!
i was about to eat my breakfast when i read this, now i'm not so hungry...
http://news.sympatico.ca/oped/coffee-talk/12-year-old_murderer_now_at_university/1c510aaf
We don't know her name, just her deeds.
In 2006, a 12-year-old girl in Medicine Hat, Alta., joined her boyfriend in killing her parents and her eight-year-old brother.
Yes, the case is about as gruesome as it gets.
The unidentified girl's parents had not approved of her relationship with her 23-year-old boyfriend, so the pair planned to kill them. They stabbed the parents and the eight-year-old brother to death in the middle of the night.
The pair were convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. The boyfriend received a sentence of 25 years without parole. The girl was given the maximum sentence for someone her age: 10 years.
No doubt some people at the time of sentencing criticized the system for limiting the girl's punishment to a decade. But her turnaround has been astounding.
Court records – which do not identify her – show she has made progress year after year. She has received "intensive young offender rehabilitation" and has scored straight A's on school report cards.
Last year she began to serve her time in open custody, where with permission, she can make escorted trips to go shopping and to therapy sessions.
Now she's in her first year at Mount Royal University in Calgary, and is about five years from completing both her education and her sentence.
There is no way she can undo the three murders, but the changes she has made since then show the value of rehabilitation over the urge to lock people up and throw away the key.
No matter how you feel about the crime she perpetrated, a second chance was in order. Age 12 is too young to give up on someone.
Had she been tried as an adult and sent away for 25 years, her failure would have been guaranteed and another life would have been wasted. Even though the crime was extreme, her second chance is working for all of us. We should be thankful she will be a contributing member of society in five years, not rotting in jail until 2035.
The fact that her name cannot be reported may irk some people, but that anonymity was key to her rehabilitation. She is a university student while still undergoing therapy and trying to overcome the crime. That is challenge enough. Had she been subject to public attention at the same time, it would be asking for failure.
In the world of "an eye for an eye," this story would have been very different. The 12-year-old girl and her boyfriend would have been hanged, shot or stoned to death, depending on where and when they were caught. And still her parents and brother would have been dead.
When rehabilitation delivers a success story like this young woman's, how could we ever consider life imprisonment or death to be a better outcome?
Should child criminals be treated differently in our courts? Will the young woman in this story have paid a fair price for her crimes when she is released?
================================================
personally, i think the tax payers are the ones to pay the price. we're the ones that have paid for every inch of her rehabilitation, including university.
i think the boyfriend should have been twitching and swingin' in the breeze! WTF is he @ 23 y/o doing dating a 12y/o child??!!
25 years is too good for a POS like that!
i was about to eat my breakfast when i read this, now i'm not so hungry...