What were these girls thinking? Or Better yet, what are their parents thinking?

Teens videotape revenge beating, and 8 teens charged in video taped attack

I saw part of the coverage of this story on the Today show this morning, and then have read a bit more about it tonight.

What I saw this morning was the shock and horror in Matt and Meredith's voices and faces as they were trying to introduce the story.

What made me stop and listen was when Meredith said that this story scared her and sickened her because she has a 15 year old daughter at home. Which I have to agree with her, between having two teenagers (or one almost teenager, and one full fledged teenager) at home and then the kids that I taught last year, this is a scary sight indeed.

What makes me sick is that the mother of the one child that has been arrested and charged in this horrendous crime Christina Garcia, seems to be making light of the incident, and not accepting that her daughter was just as much to blame for the incident as the others that were involved, if not more to blame since it was at her grandmothers house.

And if the attack was not enough, the girls that did the attack then took her off and dumped her, threatened to do more damage if she reported the attack?

What kind of sick twisted young people are we raising? What kind of society is this group of teenagers living in that they think that they have the right to do this to another human being? That when they were arrested they were more concerned about not getting to go to the BEACH that day, than they were that they were being arrested for severely beating a fellow human being? I mean this quote says it all:

Judd said the most shocking thing about the attack is how lightly the alleged assailants took their actions. Vieira asked him if they showed any remorse when they were arrested.

“None at all,” he said. “When we had them arrested and in detention, they were laughing and joking, ‘Guess we’re not going to go to the beach on this spring break.’ One girl actually asked our detective, ‘Am I going to be released in time to go to cheerleading practice tomorrow?’ ”

And you know what this is all over?

Posts on Myspace.... Yep, you read that right! The victim supposedly posted something not nice on Myspace about her attackers, and they "got even" by beating the crap out of her, and they (and obviously at least one of their parents) think that they had the right to beat the crap out of her.

This is what was said in the interview:

The vicious attack in Lakeland, Fla., was supposedly in response to slurs and insults the victim had posted about them on MySpace. But the alleged online comments are no justification for the attack, Polk County, Fla., Sheriff Grady Judd told co-host Meredith Vieira.

“I don’t have the specifics of those comments, but there is nothing our victim could have said on the Internet that would have caused that kind of beating,” Judd said.

(And my girls wonder why I will not allow them to get a myspace account, and if they do get one behind my back they will loose all rights to the computer for a very very long time.)

I for one hope that the girl that was concerned about cheer practice the next day, gets kicked off the team, I believe that getting arrested for assault negates your "right" to be on a team sport. I am sure that there are others that will disagree with me on that one, since the event did not happen at school, but we as educators need to step up to the plate and do something to stop this kind of violence.