I think putting them in with adults would send a nice, little message to others that being non-adults while acting in the manner those girls did ain't gonna save them from being put in general population...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

I wanted to comment on this part of Salt's response...As one of those parents who had a child that wouldn't help themselves and finally had to make that choice of 'giving up' on said child...

There's only so much a parent can do in regards to a child that is violent, drug/alcohol dependant, etc...

And sometimes the only option, the only right thing to do after you've tried everything else, is to distance yourself from that child's actions.

Like Salt said...Some kids are just bad. And the parents can be as much of victims of that child's actions as those outside of the family the child victimizes.

I should know...For the last 3 years my youngest lived with us, he made us virtual hostages to his madness. After doing the counsiling rounds, the juvie court system rounds, and failed intervention programs... eventually we had to get him out of our own lives, just to save our own sanity and lives.

And it was perhaps the hardest decision, as a mother, I had to make. I still love him very much. But having him in our lives wasn't healthy for us. And it wasn't changing his actions one tiny bit either. Just made him that much more determined to do as he was doing.

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I don't know about all states, but here in Illinois when young offenders are put in with adults, they're actually kept seperate from the adult offenders. Especially the more violent adult offenders. They're actually not released into the general jail/prison population but put in a special wing/unit and the limited adult inmate contact they do have is those inmates that have clean prison records.

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THIS is the important part I was speaking of earlier...

A child can be "unrecoverable", but there's a big difference between an unrecoverable child whose parents ATTEMPTED to salvage them and parents who just gave up without trying at all...

A lot of parents say "we did the best we could do", but when pressed, you find they didn't...They did NOT "do counseling rounds"...They did NOT go through "the juvie court system"...They did NOT try "intervention programs"...They didn't look outward for assistance and just raised their hands and surrenderred...

I DO hold them accountable...

And I commend AP for taking the extra steps that many parents don't...but should...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

Thanks redd. But there's still a part of me that wonders if there was anything else we could have done, that we or the courts didn't think of to do to 'heal' him. Unfortunately though, from everything done, there was nothing 'broken' to 'fix' that they could determine...He's completely mentally healthy. Which makes the decisions he makes even harder to understand why he does what he does.

And as much as I love him...I don't miss having him in our lives though. The son I had, for all purposes and intents, is dead to us.

Harsh, I know. But also true and our little 'fact of life'.

It came down to survival. We choose to survive.

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I would never fault someone for not succeeding...

I will fault them for not trying...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd