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IIRC all 50 states have civil parent responsibility laws, and there is a growing number where criminal charges with prison time and restitution are included.
http://news.yahoo.com/is-it-a-crime-...190558283.html
http://news.yahoo.com/is-it-a-crime-...190558283.html
Is it a crime to raise a killer?
A tragedy in New Jersey raises questions about where parental responsibility ends when a child becomes a murderer.
Anthony Pasquale stops to visit his daughter at the Cedar Green Cemetery every morning, then returns once or twice more during the day. He sits on the small white bench and faces the polished granite headstone, etched with a hologram of Autumn on one side and the things she loved on the other bicycles, soccer balls, cheerleading, skateboards.
From where he sits he can see the middle school, where his 12-year-old girl was a student, and next to that the high school, where the 15-year-old boy who killed her was one, too. When school is in session, Pasquale has even glimpsed a classmate peering out of the ground-floor science-lab windows, which look directly onto Autumns grave.
Thats how things work in a small town like Clayton, New Jersey, where everyone knows everyone else, where lives and stories intertwine. Because its a small town thats why we live here, says Anthony Pasquale. But it was also why Autumn died.
She trusted him because she thought everyone was raised the way she was, he says of her attacker. That everyone could be trusted. That all parents taught kids right from wrong.
It has been nearly two years since Autumn went missing and Justin Robinson went to jail, pleading guilty to strangling her after she stopped by his house to trade parts for her brand-new bicycle. In that time her parents have learned that the stages of grief now include another step finding someone to blame. Its a stage well known to parents wrenched by a particular kind of loss, a kind arguably more common and certainly more public of late losing children at the hands of other children. And it is raising questions with few answers in the existing legal system.
Where were their parents? grieving families asked after Columbine and Newtown, after Isla Vista and Troutdale.
Where were the parents? asks Anthony Pasquale, sitting in the back booth of the Liberty Diner in Clayton, where his coffee is on the house now, because, as is the case everywhere else in town, everyone knows who he is. Parenting comes with responsibilities, and one of those is to raise your kids right, to pay attention and know when theyre a danger to someone else. Thats a parents job.
To fail at that job is a crime, he believes. Hes recently taken his certainty to court, suing Justin Robinsons parents for, essentially, being bad parents. He has also turned to Change.org and the New Jersey Legislature, advocating for Autumns Law, which would punish such parenting with prison.
Parents who ignore the warning signs of their childrens propensity toward violence are direct contributors to their minor childrens murders, his petition reads. If the minor who murdered my daughter was properly treated, parented, disciplined and supervised my daughter would probably be alive today.
Or, as his lawyer put it, If youre going to raise a murderer, youre going to take responsibility.
It is a controversial point of view, rooted in societys ever-changing expectations of parenting and the increasing impulse to right wrongs with lawsuits. Are todays parents too lenient, creating a generation of undisciplined kids? Or too hovering, creating fragile, dependent children? Are parents too quick to blame their childrens quirks and missteps on issues? Or is our mental health system not equipped to respond to the rising need of families for help? What is a parents responsibility for and toward a child as he gets older? Is it bad parenting to insist on knowing everything about your children? Or bad parenting not to?
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A tragedy in New Jersey raises questions about where parental responsibility ends when a child becomes a murderer.
Anthony Pasquale stops to visit his daughter at the Cedar Green Cemetery every morning, then returns once or twice more during the day. He sits on the small white bench and faces the polished granite headstone, etched with a hologram of Autumn on one side and the things she loved on the other bicycles, soccer balls, cheerleading, skateboards.
From where he sits he can see the middle school, where his 12-year-old girl was a student, and next to that the high school, where the 15-year-old boy who killed her was one, too. When school is in session, Pasquale has even glimpsed a classmate peering out of the ground-floor science-lab windows, which look directly onto Autumns grave.
Thats how things work in a small town like Clayton, New Jersey, where everyone knows everyone else, where lives and stories intertwine. Because its a small town thats why we live here, says Anthony Pasquale. But it was also why Autumn died.
She trusted him because she thought everyone was raised the way she was, he says of her attacker. That everyone could be trusted. That all parents taught kids right from wrong.
It has been nearly two years since Autumn went missing and Justin Robinson went to jail, pleading guilty to strangling her after she stopped by his house to trade parts for her brand-new bicycle. In that time her parents have learned that the stages of grief now include another step finding someone to blame. Its a stage well known to parents wrenched by a particular kind of loss, a kind arguably more common and certainly more public of late losing children at the hands of other children. And it is raising questions with few answers in the existing legal system.
Where were their parents? grieving families asked after Columbine and Newtown, after Isla Vista and Troutdale.
Where were the parents? asks Anthony Pasquale, sitting in the back booth of the Liberty Diner in Clayton, where his coffee is on the house now, because, as is the case everywhere else in town, everyone knows who he is. Parenting comes with responsibilities, and one of those is to raise your kids right, to pay attention and know when theyre a danger to someone else. Thats a parents job.
To fail at that job is a crime, he believes. Hes recently taken his certainty to court, suing Justin Robinsons parents for, essentially, being bad parents. He has also turned to Change.org and the New Jersey Legislature, advocating for Autumns Law, which would punish such parenting with prison.
Parents who ignore the warning signs of their childrens propensity toward violence are direct contributors to their minor childrens murders, his petition reads. If the minor who murdered my daughter was properly treated, parented, disciplined and supervised my daughter would probably be alive today.
Or, as his lawyer put it, If youre going to raise a murderer, youre going to take responsibility.
It is a controversial point of view, rooted in societys ever-changing expectations of parenting and the increasing impulse to right wrongs with lawsuits. Are todays parents too lenient, creating a generation of undisciplined kids? Or too hovering, creating fragile, dependent children? Are parents too quick to blame their childrens quirks and missteps on issues? Or is our mental health system not equipped to respond to the rising need of families for help? What is a parents responsibility for and toward a child as he gets older? Is it bad parenting to insist on knowing everything about your children? Or bad parenting not to?
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