Seems that they were indeed charge with a hate crime.
Heard that on NPR earlier.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
I read disgusting things in the news every week. Articles that make me question why I even read the news because they are so horrific. I don't know how my Mom could allow us to be gone all day and have no idea where the hell me and my brother were while I'm afraid to let my daughter out of my sight because I read about kids getting snatched off their front porch and raped and murdered. Attempted kidnappings in Walmart when the child was one aisle over from the parent. And so many more sickening things. I don't know what to think about humans. I've seen their worst and their best.
(01-05-2017, 09:49 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: All making light of this and pushing political agendas aside, this is horrific. From the looks of it, it's a hate crime. As a human being it's reprehensible, but it's particularly upsetting as a Special Education teacher. Students with disabilities are especially susceptible to abuse, often not knowing who to trust and who not to trust. One of these criminals was a classmate and pretended to be his friend, luring him there. Stuff like this makes me worry about some of my kids when they leave the safety net.
They need to run a mental health check on the perpetrators.
My immediate reaction to this was "bunch of degenerates", but it takes a special type of person to plan to do something like this. The victim's outlook towards people might be irreversibly damaged.
Edit: They recorded it on Facebook AND were smoking pot? Dumbasses.
Of course, no mention of a racial hate crime on CBS news.
(01-05-2017, 12:01 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: CBS Chicago at least mentions that the police are undecided if it'd be kidnapping or a hate crime, bringing up the possibility.
But you still have to watch the video in order to find out it's four black people laughing while torturing a special needs white kid.
Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? It wouldn't be so hard to find information about this.
Whole thing disgusts me. How can you do that to another human being while laughing? I don't understand how someone is capable of that.
(01-05-2017, 01:12 AM)bfine32 Wrote: Waiting for POTUS to say if he had a son he'd look like......
A 19-year-old white man accused of kicking a coat hanger up the rectum of a mentally disabled black teammate received no jail time at his sentencing on Friday.
Former high school football player John R. K. Howard entered a so-called "Alford plea," meaning he maintains his innocence while admitting a judge or jury would likely find him guilty. He was sentenced to probation and community service, and his conviction might be entirely dismissed at a later date.
The Twin Falls Times-Newswrites that supporters of the black player see the sentencing as "a slap on the wrist for a privileged white teen who preyed on a disabled teammate from the only black family in town."
Howard, who pleaded guilty to felony injury of a child, had originally been charged with sexual assault. But prosecutors later decided that, while they were confident they could prove Howard kicked the coat hanger into his teammate's rectum, the act did not constitute a sex crime. District Judge Randy Stoker agreed, and approved the plea deal for a lesser charge in December.
On Friday, as he issued the final sentencing, he also discounted testimony of racist remarks toward the black player and concluded that the assault was not racially motivated.
Two other members of the football team were also charged in connection with the attack.
The Idaho Statesman reports that the outcomes of their cases are sealed in juvenile court.
In addition to the criminal cases at the state level, the mentally disabled young man's parents are also pursuing a federal civil case, which is still ongoing. "The truth will come out," the family's attorney in that case said, according to The Guardian.
The case has been explosive in the tiny town of Dietrich, Idaho, a community of about 330 people. Last May, The Washington Postdescribed a town "torn apart" when Tim and Shelly McDaniel accused three football players of a monthslong campaign of racist bullying of their adopted son, culminating in the assault.
The couple says they reported the bullying but the school did nothing — Howard was a football star with "ties to a prominent Dietrich family," the Post wrote, and Shelly McDaniel said she was "just shunned" when she went to administrators for help. Then, after the assault, the couple took legal action.
The Guardian has more on the specific allegation of assault, which began with an invitation for a hug:
Quote:"The young man said that one of his friends motioned for him to come over and hugged him while another player shoved a hanger into his anus. Then, the victim said, Howard kicked the hanger, which pushed it further into his rectum.
" 'Pain that I have never felt took over my body,' he said during the April hearing, according to the transcript obtained by the Guardian. 'I screamed, but afterwards, I kept it to myself.' "
We should note that the mentally disabled young man has referred to his teammates as his "friends" throughout the case, even while testifying about racist comments and physical abuse. Howard's defense attorney didn't deny that this incident occurred. Instead he argued that the football star kicked at his black teammate while the hanger was between his buttocks, but did not intentionally kick at the hanger itself, the Times-News reports. The attorney also argued that Howard may not have known the hanger, which was inserted by another player, was there. The victim has also testified that Howard repeatedly called him the n-word and taught him a KKK-glorifying song that called for the lynching of black people, and that other members of the football team called him "fried chicken," "watermelon," "Kool-Aid" and "grape soda," the Times-Newsreports. (Stoker said during sentencing that "nobody" thinks those are racial slurs, despite the fact that the terms have a long history of being used as racist insults, as Alex Riggins of the Times-Newsexplained.)
But the most unexpected and hotly contested part of the sentencing hearing on Friday was a May 2016 audio tape of the mentally disabled young man saying his parents pressured him into testifying, for the sake of the $10 million civil suit, and that he lied under oath when he made his allegations.
The McDaniels left the courtroom in fury after they were accused of fabricating the assault for financial gain, The Times-News reports.
"I don't think you guys should have to lose your farms," he told the coaches on the recording from last May, according to The Guardian. "It was never my intention. I was fed stuff, fed lies."
"I love those guys," the young man says of his alleged assailants, The Times-News reports.
"Those guys shouldn't be charged.
The defense argued that the tape showed the black player recanting his allegations. But the young man has since retracted his comments on that tape, the Times-News reports:
Quote:"The [May 2016] conversation was recorded by football coaches Mike Torgerson and Rick Astle just six days after they were named as defendants in the civil lawsuit. Several of the victim's friends and teammates were also present. Voices on the recording are repeatedly heard telling the victim how much they love him, and how he needs to tell the truth. ...
"But just last week, in a deposition taken Feb. 17, the victim takes back what he said in the recording and explains that he lied to his football coaches and friends. He told them what they wanted to hear because he wanted his friends back, he said.
" 'All that stuff, I just made up,' he said of the recording. 'I just started telling a bunch of just lies because I wanted my friends back.' "
The Guardian also notes that elsewhere on the tape, in a section not mentioned in court on Friday but disclosed in a civil case document, the mentally disabled player reiterates that the coat hanger assault happened. "I honestly don't know who did the hanger thing," he tells his coaches. "All I know is that it happened."
Stoker, as he sentenced Howard to community service and probation, was emphatic that the assault did not constitute a rape, the British newspaper reports.
"Whatever happened in that locker room was not sexual," he said. "In my view, this is not a case about racial bias," he also said.
"People from the east coast have no idea what this case is about," he said, according to the Guardian. "But I'm not going to impose a sentence that is not supported by the law."
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
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Dude.......why did you have go and use that song? Come on. I know what your trying to do and I get it. I do. But you didn't need to go and tie a Waylon song to the story. Just leave Waylon out of this.
Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female, Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent.
(02-28-2017, 10:38 AM)BengalHawk62 Wrote: Dude.......why did you have go and use that song? Come on. I know what your trying to do and I get it. I do. But you didn't need to go and tie a Waylon song to the story. Just leave Waylon out of this.
You're right...but once I had "just good ole' boys" in my head the song needed to be there.
Less to do with the South rising again than that phrase.
May he RIP.
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(02-28-2017, 10:49 AM)GMDino Wrote: You're right...but once I had "just good ole' boys" in my head the song needed to be there.
Less to do with the South rising again than that phrase.
May he RIP.
I love the pestering of the local republican conservatives as much as the next guy around these parts. I just think Waylon doesn't need to be involved is all.
Sorry. End rant.
Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female, Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent.
(02-28-2017, 11:03 AM)BengalHawk62 Wrote: I love the pestering of the local republican conservatives as much as the next guy around these parts. I just think Waylon doesn't need to be involved is all.
Sorry. End rant.
Dino is just a good ol' boy, never meanin' no harm.
Regardless of what story might be the truth, I feel sorry for that young man.
I do believe the initial charges though.
Kicking a coat hanger, up his anus ?
WTF ??
Where would a kid get an idea like this ?
Thoroughly disgusting !!
Kids with disabilities already face enough challenges, without this kind of crap.
I've had to stop my car and run off kids abusing a local disabled kid.
This kid (actually 24) walks the streets, every day and makes his rounds.
His mom drops him off downtown in the morning and picks him up in the evening, because his father cannot stand to have him around.
So sad....
(02-28-2017, 12:01 PM)Rotobeast Wrote: What a MESSED-UP story !
Regardless of what story might be the truth, I feel sorry for that young man.
I do believe the initial charges though.
Kicking a coat hanger, up his anus ?
WTF ??
Where would a kid get an idea like this ?
Thoroughly disgusting !!
Kids with disabilities already face enough challenges, without this kind of crap.
I've had to stop my car and run off kids abusing a local disabled kid.
This kid (actually 24) walks the streets, every day and makes his rounds.
His mom drops him off downtown in the morning and picks him up in the evening, because his father cannot stand to have him around.
So sad....
It is messed up, very much so. It also, sadly, falls under the umbrella of idiotic hazing/bullying that can occur in high school and college athletics. This kind of thing, will not commonplace, is not exactly rare either. I recalled one story, from over a decade ago, in which the older players sodomized the new players with pine cones and a broomstick.
In the incident above there was likely a racial component involved as well. Please note (not for you btw, for the less insightful among us) that I am not condoning or mitigating this story. What I am saying is that extreme hazing is not the same thing as kidnapping someone and torturing them on video because you hate their ethnicity.
UPDATE: The woman who recorded it all, and narrated it was only given probation.
Kidnapping a mentally disabled teen in a stolen vehicle, torturing him while shouting hate speech, and streaming it all live on the internet, and she got probation.
Apparently even when criminals are literally recording their crimes to the internet while they do them, they still get plea deals and cupcake sentences?
Chicago Kidnapping/Torture.... here we go...
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