The Equality Of Neglect
Severely psychopathic personalities do not suddenly emerge in otherwise normal people. A tendency to psychopathy is inbred, and develops as does the personality. Because sociopaths and psychopaths in particular are sorely missing some key personality elements through faulty DNA, above all the ability to empathize, to care, to form deep and meaningful emotional attachments they can become viciously destructive. Starting out at a relatively early age, experimenting on inflicting pain on animals, then graduating to other people.
How to diagnose and apprehend the developing extreme social and emotional dysfunction? No one, no parent, would eagerly admit any of their children could be categorized as severely dysfunctional to the point of constituting a threat to society. But clearly, those parents who have such children and who become aware of their harmful effect both within the family and in a wider social circle representing the community, and do nothing to try to discipline, teach and ameliorate anti-social tendencies are guilty of neglecting a double duty.
Psychologists often stress that psychopaths have a deep wish to control others, and that control extends to exerting physical harm and deliberate pain on others. They are unable to conceive of the pain their targets feel, so their conscience is not troubled, since they are without conscience, a constraint that warns normal-functioning people that they are harming others, and to desist. Those children, it is pointed out, who deliberately do harm to vulnerable creatures, will be those who as adults, do harm to other human beings.
A Newfoundland family is obviously grooming, through inaction and an obvious disinclination to guide their child with his obvious anti-social and psychotic tendencies, to his becoming a threat to society at large. Their 11-year-old son deliberately beat to death a defenceless little dog, a Pomeranian, not a breed that tends to viciousness, nor a size that would strike fear into any child. The little dog's owners who had ostensibly enjoyed its companionship for eight years, had left their pet out, tied to a clothesline in their yard overnight.
And this brings yet another issue into this macabre story. Why would any caring pet owners leave a small-breed dog - the type more accustomed to living its life in the protective confines of a home, and venturing out-of-doors on a leash, walking with its owners - out on its own, overnight? For one thing, small dogs are not equipped to protect themselves as are larger dogs. Most urban communities are vexed with the presence of urbanized raccoons, more than capable of doing harm to a small dog.
Other than raccoons, coyotes have become a problem of late in urban communities, accustoming themselves to easy garbage pickings. And then, of course, there is the issue of the possibility of a human being wishing ill to an animal. Which certainly proved to be the case in this instance. The owners of the little dog who decided to leave it out overnight, discovered its dead, mangled body in the morning and improbably assumed it to have died from natural causes. They saw the bloody barbecue fork the boy had used to kill it lying under the animal, but assumed nothing amiss.
They buried the small animal and were set to proceed with their lives. Until a neighbour informed the woman she had seen the boy whose violent behaviour toward others was well known in the community, jumping up and down in their yard, beating something with the fork that had been lying under the little dog. Didn't take a genius to re-think their assumption of death through natural causes.
A woman who is the manager of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Gander who heard of the atrocity, asked permission of the little dog's owners, Norman and Emma Hodder, to have an autopsy conducted, so the body was exhumed, and the cause of death verified as blunt force trauma. Whereupon Mr. Hodder had a confrontation with the boy's father. And the boy's father agreed to reimburse the original $500 price of the dog.
Which strikes one as rather despicably venal. As though the cost of the dog reimbursed wiped the slate clean. As for the boy's father, he appears fairly unconcerned that his child destroyed a living thing in such a horrible manner. "Yeah, it's not a very good thing for him to do. But the dog is dead, you can't bring him back", he has said. The parents of the boy are separated. The boy lives with his mother, along with two family dogs. His mother has no comment.
The community is both outraged and fearful. Since the boy's activities are well enough known, including his propensity to throw rocks at other kids in the neighbourhood. Because of his tender age, there will be no charges; no crime committed.
How to diagnose and apprehend the developing extreme social and emotional dysfunction? No one, no parent, would eagerly admit any of their children could be categorized as severely dysfunctional to the point of constituting a threat to society. But clearly, those parents who have such children and who become aware of their harmful effect both within the family and in a wider social circle representing the community, and do nothing to try to discipline, teach and ameliorate anti-social tendencies are guilty of neglecting a double duty.
Psychologists often stress that psychopaths have a deep wish to control others, and that control extends to exerting physical harm and deliberate pain on others. They are unable to conceive of the pain their targets feel, so their conscience is not troubled, since they are without conscience, a constraint that warns normal-functioning people that they are harming others, and to desist. Those children, it is pointed out, who deliberately do harm to vulnerable creatures, will be those who as adults, do harm to other human beings.
A Newfoundland family is obviously grooming, through inaction and an obvious disinclination to guide their child with his obvious anti-social and psychotic tendencies, to his becoming a threat to society at large. Their 11-year-old son deliberately beat to death a defenceless little dog, a Pomeranian, not a breed that tends to viciousness, nor a size that would strike fear into any child. The little dog's owners who had ostensibly enjoyed its companionship for eight years, had left their pet out, tied to a clothesline in their yard overnight.
And this brings yet another issue into this macabre story. Why would any caring pet owners leave a small-breed dog - the type more accustomed to living its life in the protective confines of a home, and venturing out-of-doors on a leash, walking with its owners - out on its own, overnight? For one thing, small dogs are not equipped to protect themselves as are larger dogs. Most urban communities are vexed with the presence of urbanized raccoons, more than capable of doing harm to a small dog.
Other than raccoons, coyotes have become a problem of late in urban communities, accustoming themselves to easy garbage pickings. And then, of course, there is the issue of the possibility of a human being wishing ill to an animal. Which certainly proved to be the case in this instance. The owners of the little dog who decided to leave it out overnight, discovered its dead, mangled body in the morning and improbably assumed it to have died from natural causes. They saw the bloody barbecue fork the boy had used to kill it lying under the animal, but assumed nothing amiss.
They buried the small animal and were set to proceed with their lives. Until a neighbour informed the woman she had seen the boy whose violent behaviour toward others was well known in the community, jumping up and down in their yard, beating something with the fork that had been lying under the little dog. Didn't take a genius to re-think their assumption of death through natural causes.
A woman who is the manager of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Gander who heard of the atrocity, asked permission of the little dog's owners, Norman and Emma Hodder, to have an autopsy conducted, so the body was exhumed, and the cause of death verified as blunt force trauma. Whereupon Mr. Hodder had a confrontation with the boy's father. And the boy's father agreed to reimburse the original $500 price of the dog.
Which strikes one as rather despicably venal. As though the cost of the dog reimbursed wiped the slate clean. As for the boy's father, he appears fairly unconcerned that his child destroyed a living thing in such a horrible manner. "Yeah, it's not a very good thing for him to do. But the dog is dead, you can't bring him back", he has said. The parents of the boy are separated. The boy lives with his mother, along with two family dogs. His mother has no comment.
The community is both outraged and fearful. Since the boy's activities are well enough known, including his propensity to throw rocks at other kids in the neighbourhood. Because of his tender age, there will be no charges; no crime committed.
Labels: Family, Social-Cultural Deviations, societal failures
posted by Pieface @ 5:55 PM
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