5 years probation for a Gang Rape---Man this is fucked up!

[H2O Man]

104. Unreal.

I find the report in the OP, as well as a few of the responses here, to be troubling.

First, rape is a serious crime. It is an assault on one's person-hood: body and mind. It damages the victim, their family and friends, the fabric of their community.

The young man in question didn't simply make a small mistake or do something stupid -- and it really is a teenager's job to make mistakes, and do stupid things, from time to time. Were it otherwise, what challenges could parents and school teachers look forward to? The teens' ability to mix insight and intelligence, with a few cup fulls of stupidity, never ceases to amaze me.

I've raised my children -- two boys and two girls -- who are all above average intelligence. To various extents, each provided me with some mighty complex challenges. Lots of nieces and nephews. In social work, I dealt with hundreds of kids.

In that experience, I've never met a kid who did not know right from wrong, especially in the context of damaging another person. Rape and gang rape are not things that one makes an honest mistake in doing.

I don't know how many times I've heard a kid attempt to justify, for example, stealing a car for an afternoon by saying, "Yeah, I knew it was wrong. But it seemed like a fun idea, and besides, no one got hurt."

We know that the part of the brain most closely connected with grasping future consequences doesn't fully develop, until around age 24. But that part that knows right from wrong surely has.

In my opinion, that sentence is terrible. What's more, the same type of thinking that the court used in reaching it, can be found in some of the responses to the OP. That's a shame.