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What is it with teens attacking younger kids?

Yesterday's story of a larger group of older teenagers attacking 12-13 year olds at a Hamilton movie theatre, while staff did nothing, horrifies me.

A group of 12- and 13-year-olds were left bloody, bruised and shaken after an unprovoked attack inside a Hastings cinema earlier this month.

A group of eight Hastings Intermediate children were at Reading Cinemas on Heretaunga St when about a dozen older teens, believed to be aged between 15 and 17, attacked them - breaking one girl's nose and leaving others with black eyes and bruised faces.

The cinema staff couldn't even keep the older teens from running off, as they were long gone by the time the police got there.

... security footage of the attack was "disturbing".

"One girl had been really badly punched and thrown on the ground and kicked and kicked.

"Then they left but actually ran back to kick her again," ...

I don't know what to say.

Related link: Girl's nose broken in cinema bashing

Comments

  1. I too found this really disturbing. It may not be the whole story but there is no discipline or self control enforced on youngsters today. I recently spoke to the truancy officer at my sons school, and he said there is literally nothing they can do if a kid decides he doesnt want to come to school, while in his day you would get 'six of the best' and that would be the end of it. And now our evil governments of the past 20 or so years have also succeeded in banning any kind of discipline in the home as well. God help us all, this country is out of ideas and ready to be plundered by any agressive ideology that turns its eyes upon us. And we will deserve it too.

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  2. JJ,

    It's as if there is a different world for children now. Situations that should be pretty safe are now potentially fraught with danger. Having been watching the news for a number of years now, I've noticed that teenage boys will get attacked if they are out late at night - but this, this is during the day in movie theatre!!!

    It makes me think that we as parents need to be there far more as protection in situations such as the above in a movie theatre with a largish group, where in the past this would have been considered a completely safe thing to do, to leave them in the theatre and pick them up afterwards.

    It's also not just lack of discipline, it's half a generation of children who are being brought up without their fathers being in their homes. From looking into it a number of years back, fatherless children tend to be very aggressive.

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  3. To me, it's a series of symptoms.

    The most recent one is the inability of police to defend those who defend the innocent and defenseless. How often does someone who stands up for a victim himself end up in court? Or failing that, the police decide not prosecute those who, when interrupted in the commissioning of a crime such as this one, attack the one who interrupted with even greater ferocity. We're told to "leave it to the police".

    So people do what they've been told and shown is the best thing for themselves, and leave the innocent and defenseless to fend for themselves. Better someone else being beaten up than risking one's own life.

    ReplyDelete

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