The father was charged with murder
Parent accountability + Tin foil tiara tingling
The father of the recent school shooter, the youngest since 1998 was arrested and brought up on charges. When I first learned this, I thought it seemed unusual, and perhaps they were making an example of him.
I saw a headline the day it happened, so was aware but do not follow the news and hadn’t heard any specifics yet.
Here’s the thing. I didn’t have to, there is an algorithm for this archetype that goes a little like, “mentally ill loner from broken family with history of being bullied and ready access to guns.” In an effort to be dilligent writing this, I read the things I linked and can confirm this case fills that bingo card.
I don’t care for adrenaline or trauma, so I don’t seek it out. We’ll find out it happened, I do without following any news. It’s not really turning a blind eye. We know the type, note it and skip the trauma porn. It’s exploitive and manipulative and besides, why would anyone seek out something they knew would upset or traumatize them? There are better hobbies out there, I promise you.
Next, I needed to know if bringing parents up on charges was common practice to determine if an example was being made. Given my disinterest in the nitty-gritty details, how would I even know?
I’m going to stop right here and point out how very strange that it seems rational that may not be standard practice? Why? Parents are legally responsible for the actions of their minor children so it certainly should be. I could be fined if my kid broke a window.
Apparently they only press charges for refusing to grant a child access to a therapist when something terrible happens. My ex did so to all 3 of our children and my son spent months home from school last year after self-harm and suicidal ideation.
[He’s doing well now and eager to attend his new alternative school in person and make friends outside of his former comprehensive 1800 student school.]
I don’t see anyone arresting that jackalope for chasing his son across campus the first week of school, causing school security to take note, which led to relentless bullying by his peers, while also suffering though all our family has been through his whole life, delayed Audhd diagnosis, with neglect and abuse escalating over the last 6 years, leading to refusal to return to his other parent, and the parent “legally” kidnapping him from their campus. He is 15 by the way. Remember there are surges in impulsivity around this age and again a a little later in development. Young men aren’t fully baked until about 23. Young women a little younger, 20 I think?
[I wonder why they enlist soldiers this young and start poaching them in high school? There is an opt out by the way. Find it.]
The primary difference between my son and that troubling archetype is one engaged parent. He knows I love him unconditionally and he’s seen me advocate for him his whole life.
It breaks my heart he doesn’t have two parents like that and even more that many children have none, but also no real rights or protections.
Setting overt negligence aside for the moment, they raised a child that shot up a damn school. Parents should absolutely be held accountable for their horrific failures of their most important [societally undervalued] duty [which used to be more of a choice] of raising future citizens of the world who aren’t total fucking monsters.
We are not only allergic to accountability, we cannot fathom the idea of being proactive either! One fucking move chess players! It’s pathetic. We wait for the worst to happen; nothing but deer-in-the-headlights eyes and complaints when it does. Why doesn’t somebody do something? Why isn’t someone you?
We all make a zillion tiny decisions every day. What to wear, what route to take to work, what time to leave, what to have for dinner, what time, or maybe even whether to go to bed are some.
Some decide to be rude to wait-stuff, call someone different a loser, be indifferent or even cruel to someone obviously struggling for their own entertainment, or find some other way to manipulate it for their benefit.
Fuck them in particular.
There were likely an incalculable number of things that could have been done differently and resulted in a better outcome. No creepy Minority Report shit is required to pull this off, just basic observation, empathy, common fucking sense, and appropriate action.
For the average meat popsicle not employed to handle this sort of thing, It could be as simple as making eye contact, smiling, wishing them a nice day, checking in, or offering other fundamental humanizing interactions. There are people in this world who feel invisible and alone. You never know someone else’s struggle, how many orders of missing french fries away from tears, or how many more straws the camel can take. A nurse was killed in a road rage incident locally not so long ago. She was trying to get out of the way and couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy him.
That’s how on edge some people are right now. Smile at one before they end up there, for fuck’s sake. Being the change doesn’t have to be grueling, burdensome, and most of all fucking Instagrammed. It simply requires us to care about someone other than ourselves intermittently.
“Have you ever heard of the concept of other people” - Dumb and Dumber
In my case, both parents were Becca billed over my youngest child’s attendance after being “legally” kidnapped from school, including ambushed and forced by school staff, and kept home by me because they understood the situation and could not agree not agree not to do it again.
They would not accept the written agreement in our court admissable parenting application conversation, only a court order. Someone recently shared with me her friend’s school school district would not honor temporary orders, only final. My case was under some form of temporary orders in dissolution from December 2019 - May 2021.
[of course my childhood nickname was Becca; there is a punchline in every tragedy *curtsy*]
Six years ago I would have said that someone should have surely noticed the signs, taken an interest, and intervened. That has not been my experience with CPS or any other government agency.
In this case somebody even did. The FBI sent a Sheriff to interview father and son in 2023, when the shooter, being tried as an adult, was just 13.
Although everyone’s favorite Corporate Media, the article outlines the charges against father and son. They go on to detail the history they have with this family, including interviewing the child a year ago (age 13) regarding a threat made on Discord for a Russian username that translated to the name of a previous school shooter.
Unsurprisingly, a lot was going on: a contentious divorce, the mother took the other two children, and bullied in school. The father was very engaged with the school. He could be a great guy advocating for his kid, but how about mental health care? If there is a parenting issue, there is another parent to consider. The one that left. Or maybe her reasons for leaving point to something.
However…
My ex puts on a great bullshit engaged parent act to cover some pretty fucked up shit. An abusive parent can mask as an engaged one just fine to cover their tracks. I was raised by one too. Obviously there is such a thing as a genuinely engaged parent. I am referring primarily to covert abuse, neglect; the stuff that gets missed but is every bit as damaging as getting smacked around.
The son swore convincingly to law enforcement engaged by the FBI that it was not him and that he would never do such a thing. He closed his Discord account because it was always getting hacked. There were hunting rifles in the home.
Were there fruits, vegetables, snacks, nurturing, unconditional love, spoiling, coddling, abuse, neglect, addiction, access to healthcare, and/or financial strife?
I swear law enforcement accepts the dumbest, flimsiest shit without question but cannot comprehend someone forthright, as many of my non-neurotypical brothers, sisters and children are, could possibly be telling the truth. Have proof, wish I were joking.
There is mention of checking in on the family, but not if it actually happened. It seems like it should have. Why didn’t the middle school, law enforcement, or some social worker set him up with a mentoring program? An officer or social worker could have taken an interest and made a surprise visit.
I also learned that minors may not purchase firearms in Georgia. They close with a student recounting the trauma of realizing it was not a drill this time and worrying for those he loved, which brought him to tears.
I’ve been listening to the
on the way to work this week. The topic of schools traumatizing our children has come up more than once. This is a prime example. They have been trained to react in drills with no support for how frightening that must be for a child. Then the worst happens and anything they haven’t processed or may not even know they have to process, is going to come up to.And that’s just one small part of the overall shitty school experience most children can look forward to. I always bang on about the cost of adverse childhood experiences. The fact that schools are regularly shot up now will have an impact on everyone connected to each one. Loss, guilt, drug addiction, crime, suicides, c-ptsd, mental breaks, jail, violence, health problems, divorces, poverty are some likely outcomes that aren’t great for society.
[Their families will fare better than the $111 (I think) I received on gofundme. See the Corporate Media and Social Media are good for something. Even “if it bleeds it leads” and traumatizing everyone has a silver lining.]
I won’t bother to quote the exhorbinant financial cost to address all of these issues again, again because the truth is nobody will EVER pay what it takes to help these children. It would be far less expensive to just stop traumatizing children, and everyone else for that matter. It could be done for the low, low price of being decent to each other in general.
WHY can’t we prioritize THAT over traumatizing children in other countries with our weapons and support too?
HOW can we say we care about productivity [after all, we’ve got to keep our GDP leaderboard stats, corporate profits, and military budget well fed] while doing everything we possibly can to fuck them up and limit their ability to innovate. I mean other than private prisons and juvenile detention centers fare eeling peckish too.
“Because the ends always justify the means” - Epic the Musical
I bet there’s a spat between the jail and non-jail corporations over slave labor envy. I bet if those lazy ass slave owners had to pick that cotton themselves, some motherfucker would have come up with a cotton gin earlier. Necessity is the mother of invention. They chose to buy, sell, breed, work, and abuse other humans instead.
“Take comfort, in Cotton” - an ad campaign by the Cotton industry
While trying to navigate the legal system and the school system, I learned our district in King County, Washington, is responsible for paying their employees’ legal fees when someone nasty and abusively litigious like my narc ex invariably drags them into court.
My youngest child’s IEP meeting required district counsel to attend because he insisted on bringing his counsel. My former counsel doesn’t do shit like that, so I was unrepresented. Having heard from the body camera footage what this woman had said about me to law enforcement during a failed hostile pick-up on the second day of school last year, I waited last to “introduce” myself to a room full of people I’ve had these meetings with for years to clarify a question I heard the district ask on the footage:
She wondered why he waited all summer to retain counsel and address this, as the children refused last school year. I made it clear she had been his
shady as fuck full-serviceattorney since 2018 [18 months before I even had one.] I got a good look at this subroutine ratmaze shitshow family legal system of ours. Embarrassingly, for as proud as she is of her various credentials, she only seemed to know one route to guide me on. Booring! It allowed me to anticipate her action.
I also pointed out she had never met our child and was there to represent her client, and I was glad for it because I was hoping to broker his agreement not to attempt another traumatizing, hostile pick-up at school. You could have heard a fucking pin drop, plus she was late to the meeting. She finally signed off the case a few months ago—one less flying monkey. Go me!
Ultimately, I have not signed the IEP because there is still language around restraint that I do not accept. I’m hoping that the bill passes or my custody gets settled so I can get that threat to my child managed.
Back to patterns and playbooks for a second. My mother had police pick me up my first day of Junior year at a swanky suburban highschool in my grandmother’s school district, forcing me into foster care until it was resolved again. She reported me as a runaway again despite CPS brokering her agreement for me to stay with my grandmother in spring and knowing where I was all summer. She reported the travel agency for child labor for my job as a receptionist there. She tried again later in the school year. A school counselor smuggled me out a side entrance and told my grandmother to take me home, and not to answer the door. I got my GED, about a year later, instead of returning to school. She cut me off her state [she worked for L&I] health insurance. My grandmother took me to apply for medical coupons and they gave me child support too.
[I was working because I didn’t want to be an extra expense for my grandmother beyond the lodging. I bought my own clothes, minor needs, and various wants (mostly records), quit my second job, and moved out on my own. I was 16.]
Back then, they went after parents for things like this. When I got married I discovered she had another social security card for me too. They confiscated mine just as I was starting a new job and needed it. I’m sure there were consequences for that too since they had to notice to do all that.
I think this aptly demonstrates karma. She made her petty gestures to make my life harder. I could have rebelled, retaliated, or done some short-sighted thing to make myself look bad. It would have only given credibility to her claims, which she continued to repeat in a letter that found its way to CPS last year, having been written during dissolution, after 35 years of estrangement.
I ignored her, trudged through it, and lived my life. Let her deal with the consequences of her actions without retraumatizing me in the process. Fuck her, lol.
I handled the dissolution and custody shit the same way for the same reasons. I will not jeopardize my children’s safety for a moment of smug satisfaction. Not after going through the hell of representing myself legally, which I am also still doing, and not after sitting on an EP I should have finished and released 16 months ago but haven’t, for reasons.
I just used this one and will use it again: “You’re bitches ain’t got shit on me” - Khia
“and above all, squeaky, fucking, clean” - Death to Smoochy
I care about them, not him, fame, or “winning.” I want my damn kids safe so we can go on about our lives. It just doesn’t seem like that big of an ask or even a weird thing for a concerned parent to want. It is sure is when nobody will entertain the question after a 6 year (+, probably) smear campaign.
This ties the hands of mandatory reporters who cannot be seen as “taking sides” to the tune of ignoring abuse, neglect, and behavioral signs of trauma. It is a huge conflict of interest that makes mandatory reporting laws useless to the detriment of children who are then blamed for their inability to cope at school. It is medical gaslighting to blame a child’s condition for behavioral outbursts easily explained by neglect and abuse. The parent is listened to.
Guess who did that to our children too? Yep, and my mom too. Playbook shit.
It’s worth mentioning that school staff are not the only mandatory reporters with this limitation. Neither our pediatrician nor the therapy provider could give me anything that I could use to support a protection order or defend my position in the Becca Bill thing. [Which, I think, just dropped when she returned to school?]. Our dentist wrote a letter on my son’s behalf, after asking only I bring him to visits, because of his troubling condition and behavior when he arrived for visits, because he is a, “totally different kid with me.”
Our school district is also [hilariously] piloting Trauma Informed Approaches with University of Washington. The same school district that will not stop the restraint and isolation of children [most often used on special needs children and/or those with behavior problems] when there is already a bill progressing through the state legislature to end it [I submitted testimony for inclusion in January].
Back to the Becca Bill, Baby!
Everyone, including her therapist and district staff, understood why she was home from school. She was forced by school staff to go with a parent she is afraid of and refused to even see. It’s fucked up. Her therapist supported my decision to put my child’s safety and mental health first. Having worked in the Protection Order office once, she urged me to get a protection order.
Oh honey, I failed at that 3 times last summer, because the school and pediatrician are bound by the same restrictions you are, despite being mandatory reporters to and agency that can’t communicate with my children effectively and will not offer the equivalent of a translator for traumatized special needs children who don’t know where to start with such vague questions, and aren’t listened to or believed when they can.
She asked her supervisor what she may document. Nothing. I waited for the summary or recommendations at the end of her treatment in February in hopes of finding something I could use, and I am still waiting. Isn’t it remarkable how much silence a drama major narcissist with a trust fund and county job can buy in this economy?
The high school excused my son’s absences as mental health under his IEP. I learned something that helped me the second time around so I didn’t end up on the juvenile court radar as “a problem.”
Not that I don’t welcome the opportunity to explain the source of our problem to any judge at this point.
Or Lifetime Movie executive…
So all this ranting about my situation is meant to illustrate how difficult it is to get help for a child who needs it. I have been fighting this fight a long time and made no progress other than becoming more vocal about it.
In the referenced case, this father could have done fuck all, or this mother could have foiled his efforts. We don’t know.
I technically went against joint decision-making by getting my youngest daughter enrolled in school-sponsored therapy. I was fined in contempt for allowing the other two to attend their assigned schools and would be contemptier if I pulled them out of school for a more suitable learning approach, which also wouldn’t work because I do now and am are only income other than child support.
What I don’t understand is why children have no basic human rights to safety. What the fuck possible good is it to hand them all trophies while ignoring their legitimate needs? What the fuck good is it having all of these agencies when they cannot or will not act within their charter.
To paraphrase Orwell: Child Protective Services, which concerned itself with abusing children.
It sounds dramatic but CPS in our state has been caught doing that too. Plus their toothless investigations make targets of abuse less safe. Abuse escalates.
That article was surprisingly hard to find again and ai was no help, suggesting I request case information from CPS. When I put in the sleeping conditions, I pulled up similar articles from California, Nevada, and Illinois and didn’t keep scrolling. It is not just here or just once.
Neglecting and abusing children has become commonplace and systemic. It is no different to our abuser’s medical abuse of our children to ignore the cause of the problem and act surprised when the effects happen. The law and policies are there, so someone can tick off a review goal. They are not equally applied or followed.
Our juvenile detention centers are no better. Neither are schools or residential treatment centers.
What made my tinfoil tiara tingle:
Preamble:
Our government is as indiscriminate as our corporations. They can, will, and do sacrifice innocent people to achieve some alphabet soup goal. Daily. It’s called collateral damage. Cowards use human shields, too. Our government hires contractors to manage that before a single military boot hits the ground Is it to keep our soldiers safe or for optics if things get messy before we get to the oil protect our democracy?
I learned in one of the Starfire podcasts the definitions of diseases morph over time, but seemingly never as much as when there is a drug or vaccination to push.
It is weird timing, manipulative, and not remotely “science” which has been bastardized over the years. Pretty impressive since there are some questionable origins out there.
I’m not saying this is what happened: I believe they would allow a Trump Rally attendee, or any other random citizen to be taken out. After a ridiculous performance like that (well covered by everyone else by now) it’s just the kind of nonsense to add legitimacy to an otherwise terrible performance. They would take out a damn president.
They would absolutely allow a school to be shot up (I saw a meme about that once and had a think). They don’t work to prevent it or even end it in a timely manner.
Why would they? Public school kids aren’t rich.
Things I noticed in that CBS article that made me think of any of this:
They installed some special shooting notification system just 1 week before [if Vietnam was a weapons showroom, a well-equipped school with only 2 deaths after a mass shooting makes a helluva sales pitch for whatever that thing was]
They happened to have 3 resource officers on campus at the time. [some schools don’t even have 1 on campus at all times, how did this school happen to have 3 and still let a student walk all the way to class armed?]
The algebra classroom door was locked. [1. Fire hazard 2. Unusual, because 1. and Triange Shirtwaist Factory. None of my children’s schools do that aside from some sort of drill. 3. Which do drills do more: teach children to stay safe, or future shooters the protocols and procedures they’ll need to skirt?]
Children were at least cherished in Handmaids, so maybe we’re not in that dystopia after all? fully? yet? Children with no rights are what? Property of the state? 4th class citizens?
I’d be fucking enraged if I was being forced to carry a child I didn’t strictly want while the government demanding it refused to protect the children we have.
No babies until you make children’s lives at least remotely tolerable and survivable, thanks!
I can’t imagine the emotional pain of being used as a cannon fodder factory. Will parents push back to protect their children? Stop bonding with their children at all to avoid heartbreak? Have they already stopped at the behest of their corporate overlords productivity mandates?
Like taking mommy candy from a baby. Classy.
There is no more important job, for those who choose it, than raising children, but that’s not what is being asked of us now, is it? Just make them; I’m sure the government will find an institutional use for the surplus [weren’t we overpopulated a decade ago, or is that another Bearenstein Bear thing?] when we can no longer afford to feed them to ensure their future fertility.
Brave New World, indeed! I distinctly remember way more orgies and grammes involved. First hoverboards, then this shit.