I have previously and repeatedly written against the use of shaming and novel sentencing by judges around the country (here and here and here). Judges often thrill the public by imposing their own forms of justices — departing from conventional criminal sentences to force people to clean courtroom with toothbrushes, wear demeaning placards, or carry out publicly humiliating tasks. Now, Utah District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen has joined this circus of judicial Caesars after giving a mother the choice to cut off his daughter’s ponytail in front of him or accept a longer sentence. The mother, Valerie Bruno, relented and cut off Kaytlen Lopan, 13,in the courtroom.
The minor was found to have cut the hair of a toddler in a restaurant. Johansen gave Valerie Bruno a pair of scissors in the courtroom and a choice: either cut off her daughter Kaytlen’s hair or have the teen spend an extra 150 hours in detention. The judge then watched the reluctant mother grab her daughter and instructed “take it off clear up to the rubber band.”
The mother of the 3-year-old victim loved the decision, insisting that her daughter’s hair had never been cut and was once down to her back but was cut short by the teen. The teen had spoken to the girl with an 11-year-old friend at a McDonald’s and went to buy scissors to do the act.
The mother rejects that she relented but said that she felt intimated by the judge. Bruno has now filed a complaint against the judge.
None of this excuses the act of the teen, who appears to have had other disciplinary problems. However, I do not see how the judge acting like a thoughtless 13-year-old child teaches this girl a moral lesson.
Source: Deseret News
The judge did exactly the right thing! If it was my child I’d do the same, but I never had to because my children wouldn’t have done such a thing!
Don’t eat any worms, Bettykath — I was just trying to figure out what you meant and I began to think, “Huh? Have I lost it or what?” I was trying to figure out how I misled you!
I think it’s hilarious that it was Anon rather than ME! He’s off on the misandry thing again — well, now that you mention HAIR — oops, a bad mother and then a bad woman and then…
A pediatrician, Richard Todhunder, MD, back in the early 1980s, was testifying in a deposition in Maryland about why his ex-wife was a bad mother and he should therefore get custody of their son even though she was the stay-home mom and he had always been at work in his pediatrics practice while she raised the boy. He testified that there were three main things that made her a bad mother and therefore, by default, made him the “psychological parent”: (a) His son was wearing a torn sweatshirt once on a visit; (b) his son had climbed a tree and fallen out, breaking his arm, while he was with his mother; and (c) his son arrived at his house with a bad haircut.
The case settled without trial; the mother let him have custody rather than continue the battle. Then the second wife took over raising the boy, together with her (and Todhunter’s) younger child. THEN the second wife divorced Todhunter and guess what? He left the older boy, who was not the second wife’s son, WITH the second wife, but didn’t return custody to the first wife. So the second wife ended up bringing up her and the first wife’s sons. And he wrote a boo-hoo letter to the boy (available in the file for all to see) saying he wouldn’t visit because it would hurt both of them too much.
Well, hair has a lot to do with how bad some of these mothers can be.
oops. I’m responding to anon, not Malisha.
I’ve had a hard time typing what I mean with wrong words jumping in. Now I’m not even reading correctly. Time to go eat worms or something.
Malisha,
“If the judge had made the mother agree to that, I believe the mother would have responded ‘Why should I be punished too?'”
And there we have the crux of the problem. Mom should have taken this action at the get-go as part of her job of being Mom.
Whoops, linky here: http://www.hawkesbaytoday.co.nz/news/woman-confesses-to-false-rape-claim/1416957/
New Zealand woman pleads guilty to false rape accusations, sentenced to 80 hours community service.
From which we can estimate:
Cutting 3 year old’s ponytail is about 4 times worse than making a false rape accusation.
Cutting a 13 year old’s ponytail is about twice as bad as making a false rape accusations.
#misandry
Professor, it does NOT teach the child a moral lesson. It teaches the child a PRACTICAL lesson: Don’t end up in court, for any reason on earth, ever, because once you’re in court, nothing is safe. This is perhaps a good lesson for this girl to learn. In a sense, I wish I had learned that at age 13.
bettykath, I almost entirely agree, but I also think the crux of it is here:
“What you did was serious and it hurt her. I want you to think about it. In the meantime, you’re grounded for a week. That means you come right home after school and do your homework. No TV, no texting, no phone, no computer. You’ll have lots of time on your hands so you can help me with more chores around the house. You can start by setting the table for dinner. After dinner you can pick up your room.””
This sounds like punishment to me, more than “community service” does.
If the judge had made the mother agree to that, I believe the mother would have responded “Why should I be punished too?”
Granted, apart from Lohan and a few other celebs, I truly have no idea what happens in community service.
But I think the active part here is telling the teen their behavior was wrong, asking the teen to empathize, and then punishing the teen and giving them time to think about it.
By the way, how long does 300 hours of community service take for a teenager? I suspect it’s going to be met with resentment and trying to get out of it, or perhaps worse, as a new place to hang out and socialize. I think 300 hours of it is mainly yet another passive aggressive way we (almost literally) enslave our population and tell them the government is master.
Anon, I think the idea is help children feel compassion. It has to start when they are very young and continue. Getting them to imagine themselves being wronged. They don’t have to actually BE wronged, they just need to imagine how they would feel. And then help them to transfer that feeling to those they’ve hurt so they understand.
“Ouch, that pinch really hurt me. It hurt me so much I might cry.” Pinching starts around two, I think. It’s a good place to start. And it will require repetition.
“I know how much time you spend getting your hair to look to look so nice. How would you feel if someone cut your hair like you did that little girl? What you did was serious and it hurt her. I want you to think about it. In the meantime, you’re grounded for a week. That means you come right home after school and do your homework. No TV, no texting, no phone, no computer. You’ll have lots of time on your hands so you can help me with more chores around the house. You can start by setting the table for dinner. After dinner you can pick up your room.”
At the end of the week, or maybe sooner, there is another discussion about how she feels about what she did.
Other chores for a 13 year old – helping with the laundry, vacuuming, dusting, keeping her own room picked up, helping to fix meals, taking out the trash, weeding the flower garden, cutting flowers and arranging as a centerpiece, cleaning out the refrigerator, etc. Also have a supply of good books for a 13 year old. The school or the library can help with that.
What is it with 13 year olds going after the young and the old?
“For a 13 year old girl, cutting her hair in this manner is shaming, attacking her essence.”
I’ve heard this quite frequently recently, not about girls, but about teenagers in general, usually dealing with why adults can’t get some teenager to do X or otherwise punish them.
I’m not sure I understand it.
It often involves behaviors that would be unacceptable and corrected in an pre-adolescent. And unacceptable (and perhaps even jailable) in a twenty year old.
I’m not clear about this, but I think it mainly comes down to willingness to use force and probably just as wrong to do to the younger kids except we know we’re bigger and can use force on them.
And I honestly don’t know what the answer is, but temporary shaming seems a good alternative to that age group then force.
“Let’s try that one sentence again.
Feeling ashamed is when you understand that you have done something wrong and you are truly sorry for it.”
Sure, and I could be very wrong about this, but I am not sure it is an emotion/feeling that isn’t taught, and taught socially.
So if Mom and Dad haven’t taught this girl how to feel ashamed, or know not to assault 3 year olds, it’s just not clear to me that that means society has no role in teaching her that. I honestly think it might cripple her and that perhaps the judge by shaming her is teaching her appropriately.
This isn’t stocks, bilboes, pillory, brank, ducking-stool or jougs, http://historyreadings.com/ne/punish/002.html this is in loco parentis of a girl that not only assaults a 3 year old but has a past history of abusive phone calls that included threats of rape and humiliation.
Like I said, sometimes what kids need (and adults too), is a good firm, undeniable, “No” and the message they did wrong.
Let’s try that one sentence again.
Feeling ashamed is when you understand that you have done something wrong and you are truly sorry for it.
anon, “If you act like a jackass you are supposed to feel ashamed.”
There is a difference between feeling ashamed and being shamed.
Feeling ashamed is a you understand you have done something wrong and you are truly sorry for it.
Being shamed is when others attack who you are, your essence. For a 13 year old girl, cutting her hair in this manner is shaming, attacking her essence.
I don’t know enough about the girl to suggest what is appropriate to get her to the point where she feels ashamed of what she did. Shaming her won’t do it.
From the phone calls she made, she clearly needs to learn about boundaries.
Unfortunately, we have so few judges in this country with the wisdom of Solomon.
“Community service can actually be very effective if properly monitored. It can teach responsibility, sharing, teamwork and compassion, traits that are usually lacking in kids who get in legal troubles”
I will take your word on that Mike, and am happy to know that’s the case.
At 13 the girl probably thinks the punishment was unjust. THAT is what will stay with her, not what she did. Cutting her hair shamed her. The 3 year old is more likely to take it stride, unlike her mother. Unless, of course, her mother repeatedly tell her or others in her hearing how she was “ruined” by the haircut.
I find that teaching kids to not pinch by pinching them back, or hitting them because they hit a sibling, doesn’t work nearly as well as invoking compassion.
300 hours of detention. What does that mean? Juvenile detention as in incarceration? That’s 12.5 days. I think the 150 hours might be enough to teach her a lesson.
Still finding it odd that somehow shame is now a bad thing as far as punishment goes.
Goodbye sitting in the corner at school, goodbye billboards with sex offenders, or “deadbeats”. Goodbye any negative connotation of pleading guilty. Goodbye announcing corporate tax abusers.
I think we’re not supposed to shame girls because of … they are girls. Or something. Cutting her hair is probably seem to be like calling her a slut.
Giving her anything other than a medal is probably a form of shaming.
What you did dearie wasn’t really bad. If it was really bad, you’d be punished. Instead we want you to sweep a hospital and most likely be given some award and some punch and cookies at then end of your “service”.
Would we be so worried about shaming a male?
If you act like a jackass you are supposed to feel ashamed.
Actually, I convoluted the phone calls and the hair cut. The detention time was more for the phone calls.
The hair cut should have been resolved with a lecture to the 3 year old’s mother as well as the 13 year old.
The detention should have been considered for the phone bullying. And why was that allowed to go on for 8 months?
Community service can actually be very effective if properly monitored. It can teach responsibility, sharing, teamwork and compassion, traits that are usually lacking in kids who get in legal troubles.
At 13 the girl probably thinks the punishment was unjust. THAT is what will stay with her, not what she did. Cutting her hair shamed her. The 3 year old is more likely to take it stride, unlike her mother. Unless, of course, her mother repeatedly tell her or others in her hearing how she was “ruined” by the haircut.
I find that teaching kids to not pinch by pinching them back, or hitting them because they hit a sibling, doesn’t work nearly as well as invoking compassion.
300 hours of detention. What does that mean? Juvenile detention as in incarceration? That’s 12.5 days. I think the 150 hours might be enough to teach her a lesson.