this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
748 points (97.3% liked)

News

23367 readers
2742 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The six-year-old student who shot his teacher in the US earlier this year, boasted about the incident saying "I shot [her] dead", unsealed court documents show.

While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted "I did it", adding "I got my mom's gun last night".

His teacher, Abigail "Abby" Zwerner - who survived - filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.

The boy has not been charged.

The boy's mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child.

In Ms Zwerner's lawsuit, filed in April, she accuses school officials of gross negligence for ignoring warning signs and argues the defendants knew the child "had a history of random violence

The documents also mention another incident with the same student while he was in kindergarten. A retired teacher told police he started "choking her to the point she could not breathe".

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I assure you, even though it is likely that the environment failed them, some kids are just plain evil and will require lifelong support. Parents arent always to blame.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but parents who leave loaded guns around where their six-year-olds can have access to them are probably to blame.

[–] IrrationalAndroid@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why do you think that some kids are just plain evil? I'm reading several comments stating this thing and it just baffles me, to say the least.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Because my sibling was a psycho, and I doubt there is anything more my parents could have done. You have to get to know one (child or not) to understand that this exists not just in movies.

[–] IrrationalAndroid@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Sorry about your experience, I can imagine how terrifying this must be. I guess that there are many reasons why I (like others) am very skeptical about it being just nature, especially considering science doesn't have a definitive answer to this (as far as I know). I know that genetics play a role in predicting future diagnoses. It's just that having full blown personality disorders from childhood (especially when personality is something that you develop during childhood) sounds weird, and many people are labeled "bad" when it's really a dark childhood that is running the scene.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 4 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, I never met anyone else like that in my life. I assumed most people with bad behaviours had bad childhood, but I can't deny knowing at least one person with a troubling disorder.

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People say things like this, then years later find out their siblings/demon kids in their lives were abused (sexually or no) by parents friends/distant relatives etc.

I don’t think people become psychopaths or develop extreme BPD out of nowhere. Like never.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You don't believe in genetic mental illness? That one can be born with a sickness in the brain?

You don't have to believe everyone on the internet, I can only offer you my slice of experience. Nothing wrong happened to my sibling. It was a child who actively tried to hurt people and kill stuff barely after learning to walk. It scared everyone for a while but medication and therapy helped turn they into a stable and functional adult. My sibling is also pretty open about it, at least with me.

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

I do believe a lot of our issues are genetic. But we also know different people with identical genetical “problems” will and won’t develop mental illnesses based on their environments and traumatic events in their lives. Epigenetics and all. Like schizophrenia. It was first purely genetic, now we’re pretty sure it’s also environment and experience led.

[–] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

Because people aren't born as a blank slate, although people seem to like that idea. Genetics play a huge role in personality and character. Some people are born without remorse. They need help and therapy like every other type of disability. But people are just too hung up on the idea of free will and virtuous character values to accept that our brains are organs that can have broken parts.

When you happen to cross paths with someone like that you will know. A kid I know is like this. He would hurt his younger brother to get attention and use other manipulation tactics (at 8 years old!). He will lie straight to your face and it's just obvious he is very different from other children.

His mother had to stop working and basically 24/7 supervise this kid and the overall situation is nightmarish.

[–] Uranhjort@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because the world is so much easier to comprehend when you convince yourself some people are just naturally bad and thus undeserving of compassion. To some this is preferable to thinking that an impressionable child may be pushed to violence by their environment.

Never mind that the child was likely mimicking his father (who had attempted to murder his mother on several occasions) and was raised in the kind of environment where a loaded weapon was just left around for him to grab.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, no offence, but you can use that line of reasoning to explain away literally anything.

"Because the world is so much easier to comprehend when you convince yourself all people are just naturally good, and thus can always be saved."

I was born and raised with a psycho, I really wished for the longest time that my sibling was normal and just acting out. I guess having first-hand experience with a sick person will erase someone's doubts real quick.

[–] Uranhjort@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not explaining away anything, nor denying that dangerously violent or even psychotic children exist. I was specifically railing against the idea of condemning a real, life human child because you have decided that they were "born bad", in face of the plentiful evidence that they were raised in a violent environment.

For what it's worth I'm sorry you had to go through that, but you're not the only one who grew up with someone unstable and violent. I would not presume to speak to your experience, but in my case I was all too privy to the neglect and abuse they were put through and it's left me convinced that barring any actual inborn neurological damage the only way a child turns violent is if something is pushing them to act that way.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was not making a statement on the specific child in the article, I also mentioned that the environment is often the most important factor. I am just raising the fact that in some cases it can be a mental disorder, and it is not about deciding who is born bad, but assessing correctly every situation so you can do the greatest good, and protect yourself. I think we agree mostly, maybe my original comment could sound reductionist to some ears, but I tried my best to convey that I was pointing out a rare scenario, specifically to counter the arguments that you can't have this sort of mental disorder at the time of birth. It is important to point out, otherwise innocent parents will get harmed (not those in the article, obviously)

Nobody is trying to invalidate your experience, but we also can't take your story and assume it applies to a random child in the news that has nothing to do with your story.

[–] MonkRome@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Maybe not always, but nearly always. Which begs the question why people are so keen to blame a 6 year old kid here and not the parents? It feels to me like it's just easier for people to simplify matters by blaming the person involved because the alternative is messy and complicated.