Posted on 11/27/2005 2:24:55 PM PST by madprof98
It's easier than ever for youths to keep secrets, and a slaying case highlights parents' worst fears.
Perfect parents. Perfect home. Perfect kids. Or so it seemed.
Then, unbelievably, two families in agony. A community in shock.
The double-murder case in Lititz - 18-year-old David Ludwig charged with shooting the parents of his secret girlfriend, Kara Beth Borden, a 14-year-old he met in their Christian homeschooling network - has provoked more than speculation about the Nov. 13 incident itself.
It has caused a wave of anxiety among many parents in the region, who wonder if anything ever truly is what it seems with their children.
"It's so frightening," said Kathy Roth, of Lititz, mother of an 18-year-old daughter who has graduated from high school and lives at home.
You monitor them, you stay observant, you lead by example, "but what if it's not enough?" Roth asked. "I guess you just never know. That's the scary part."
The Bordens and Ludwigs were, by all accounts, involved in their children's lives.
Zach Acox, who went to school with the oldest of the five Borden children and has set up a trust fund for the family, said the Bordens were loving, supportive, and "devoted" to their children.
Michael Borden, who worked at a scientific publisher in Ephrata, was an elder and a popular Sunday school teacher at his evangelical Plymouth Brethren church. Cathryn was educating the family's three school-age children, including Kara Beth, who baby-sat, was a fan of Christian rock bands, and loved to play soccer. The parents had laid down the law regarding Kara Beth dating Ludwig, whom they considered too old.
Like the Bordens, the Ludwigs - commercial pilot Gregory and teacher-homemaker Jane - were involved in their church. Their son David, who lived at home, was into dirt-biking, had recently trained as an emergency medical technician, and worked at the local Circuit City, where a coworker said he joked around and read his Bible during breaks.
Hunting, popular in Lancaster County, was a family affair. On Ludwig's Web log, photos labeled "Hunting 2004" showed him proudly standing next to his kill and smiling adults eating dinner in a rustic kitchen.
But what else was going on in Kara Beth Borden's and David Ludwig's lives? As evidence in the Lititz case mounts, disquieting details have surfaced.
Borden, known to Internet buddies as KareBear, was sneaking out at night to engage in a sexual relationship with Ludwig. And Ludwig had access to an extensive array of guns. Police confiscated 54 from his parents' home after the Bordens were slain.
There were disturbing postings on Web logs. On Ludwig's computer, police said they found images of Borden "in various stages of undress" and a video of Ludwig and a friend as they planned an armed raid on an unidentified residence.
If their parents had no idea, neither did lots of Borden's and Ludwig's peers. Many of the pair's associates say they had no inkling of the dark currents in their friends' lives. Others had hints - an online confidante warned Borden, "things are getting out of hand" - but didn't tell any adults.
Therein lies one of the problems related to youth violence, said James Garbarino, a psychology professor at Loyola University Chicago who investigated the Columbine killings.
Ask youths individually if they would tell an adult whether they knew of a serious problem, and they might say yes.
"Things get around," said Sara Williams, 18, a senior at Warwick High School in Lititz, and someone would probably tell "eventually."
Statistics, however, don't bear that out. Garbarino cited a national post-Columbine survey that asked teens whether they would alert anyone if an acquaintance said he was going to commit a murder. Sixty percent said no.
Teenagers don't even tell on themselves. At Cornell University, where he was head of the Family Life Development Center, Garabarino did a study of female students and found that one-third had been so depressed in high school that they had considered suicide. To his astonishment, he said, 80 percent of the girls said their parents had no idea.
Kids keeping secrets "is one of the biggest ingredients here," Garbarino said. "Until we make progress on that, we're not going to make a dent" in youth violence.
Why don't they tell? Some worry "their parents can't deal with it," Garbarino said.
Every child has a hidden life. It's a normal part of establishing identity, experts say.
"You just hope," said psychologist Roni Cohen-Sandler, author of Stressed-Out Girls, that "whatever they keep secret is benign enough that it's not going to be hurtful."
Kids learn to obfuscate early in life, Garbarino said. Mom goes downstairs to check the laundry, the child feeds the tuna sandwich he doesn't like to the dog, and Mom never knows.
"It dawns on the kid, 'Wow, they can't look inside my brain.' "
The way to have a "self-disclosing" child, Garbarino said, is to convince the child early on that "nothing you could do or say or think would make me stop loving you."
Some wonder whether the Internet and cell phones give children more places to hide. A family acquaintance said the Bordens took away Kara Beth's Internet service when they discovered her relationship with Ludwig months ago. Apparently it had been restored. Friends of Borden's and Ludwig's said the couple stayed in touch via cell-phone text messages and computer instant messages, both difficult to monitor.
"If kids are determined to be secret,... they are able to do so much better than previous generations," said Cohen-Sandler, who maintains a practice in Connecticut. "Parents used to answer the home phone and they knew who their kids were talking to."
Sites such as Xanga, where Borden, Ludwig, and many of their friends spilled their thoughts, present a weird contradiction: The place for private musings is a public forum, yet many parents are unaware their children are participating or lack the passwords to remain vigilant.
Dan Alban, the youth pastor at Hope Community Church in Willow Grove, said members of his youth group have blogs on Xanga, and they "know I read them. It's a window into their minds and what's going on in their lives."
At the same time, "there's stuff they can post that I can't see."
Garbarino attributes children's alternate universes not so much to technology as to popular culture - violent imagery on TV and in movies, an "extremely explicit" level of sexuality, an erosion in adult authority, and more. The norm has become so extreme, he said, that it's hard to know what behavior is an indicator of trouble.
Some see a warning signal in the very existence of a relationship between a 14-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man. And not just experts.
Asked whether he would ever date a 14-year-old, Warwick senior Matthew Hachey, 18, looked baffled. Finally, he offered, "it's kind of odd. That's a pretty big gap."
But Alban thinks it happens more often than it once did. Girls may relate better to older boys because their less mature male peers "are still into cooties," he said.
For an 18-year-old guy, dating a younger girl would be "an ego thing," Alban said. "You've got this girl who adores you and looks up to you."
Cohen-Sandler, however, sees a more sinister motive. Among the reasons for an 18-year-old man being interested in a 14-year-old: "Being able to control someone? Thinking, and correctly so, that he's going to be with a girl who's not going to be able to say no?"
It "sounds very predatory, and I think it is," Cohen-Sandler said. "That's why it's illegal."
Such a relationship, she said, is a sign that the girl "really craves attention... . A girl who feels good, who knows herself, who feels accepted by her peers, doesn't have a need to subject herself to an older boy."
Even parents who say they have good kids worry.
They get to know the families of their children's friends and call parents to verify supervision at parties. They limit Internet time, they listen, they watch.
For Rob Allen, father of 17-year-old Keara, a senior at Manheim Center High in Lancaster County, the Borden-Ludwig case reinforced "that you need to continually monitor what they're doing, continually know who their friends are, and continually pay attention to what's going on."
Meg Knudson of Skippack, mother of a 14-year-old girl, tries to find the "balance between how you teach them and how you restrict them. Teach them so they can make an informed decision."
Sharon Yezdimir of Horsham Township, who homeschooled two daughters and has a 16-year-old in public school, stresses moral fundamentals. The Lititz case, she said, is "causing me to do a little assessment. What needs to be shored up?"
The case also reminds her that she needs to "be available and really hear" her daughter. "I'm an observer," Yezdimir said. "It wears on her at times. I observe and listen to the nonverbal."
Time and again, the message from the children themselves is clear: Talk to us.
"I definitely think they should start early on," said Keara Allen, not "all of a sudden barge in on their teenager's life. Something as simple as asking about how their day was would be a good idea."
As for her, "I tell my dad a lot," she said. "I talk about my boyfriend with him. He gives good advice."
Despite the popular image of teenagers as wannabe adults, many see the logic of their parents' vigilance.
Jeremy Hopkins, 17, of Dresher, a senior at St. Joseph's Preparatory School, has some privacy. But the fact that they ask where he's going, who he'll be with, and still call other parents from time to time to check is OK, he said.
"It's good to keep me safe. I can't really argue with it," Hopkins said. "It shows they love me and try to look out for me."
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Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 610-701-7635 or sbauers@phillynews.com.
Organized religion is an easy way to fool yourself if you're not careful.
Religious groups are constantly going astray, losing their original purpose and turning into social clubs or business organizations. Many would say that the sort of religion practiced today is hopelessly superficial, without any kind of sound theological underpinning.
But once you invite the mass of humanity to join you, these kinds of things happen. Priests and rabbis are regularly exposed and arrested, congregations argue over finances, groups split off and start new sects. It's just like real life....in fact it is.
That's why, in all times and in all places, except this time and our place, sexual behavior has been subject to both social and legal regulation.
We live in a society where you can f*ck whoever you want, whenever you want.
And the apparatus that we need to deal with that - psychiatrists, prisons, hotlines, a "domestic violence" industry - can't keep up.
Wow. This is scary, because they all sound like they were "good" kids.
You make a good point, bobbdobbs, it seems to be a very small percentage of kids who do such things, but what is more disturbing to me is the percent of kids who wouldn't go to an authority figure if they thought something was going on. I can see not wanting to be a snitch, but if peoples lives were at stake, that makes it very different.
How my parents raised five kids, four of them teenagers all at the same time, just amazes me!
We do not live far from Lititz and have mutual contacts within the homeschool community. Kara's older sister, for instance, was part of a mime group that some of the kids from the homeschool co-op where I taught for 4 years were also part of (Lancaster County has probably 20 differen homeschool co-ops and allied groups, that is really probably a low estimate). My daughter's boyfriend knows David Ludwig.
Our pastor preached today about David Ludwig. He said 4 months ago, he was at the Creation shindig praying for other kids. He said to take a look at our hearts and see if we "let the devil hang a nail".... he refenced this to a parable where an owner of a house sold the house to another but was allowed to keep a single nail in the middle of the house... the new owner was never able to sell it because of the single nail belonging to the original owner...
the point being, even a small but of hell is enough to ruin all the good one may have.
The way I see the situation, here are two American families-- very successful, above average income levels, living in a tony town. Lititz is definitely not the South Bronx. You have to have money and be sucessful to live there. It is one of the nicest towns in the area-- lovely old buildings, quaint shops, THe Wilbur Chocolate Factory and the Sturgis Pretzel place... anyway it is a really beautiful and EXPENSIVE town...
I saw pix of the Borden home. A very nice upper middle-class home. This girl had everything and then some-- a decent, responsible father, who provided everything for her; a mother who was home to raise, nurture and school her; a church-going family; exposure to CHristianity and the Bible; a beautiful home; all the material things the rest of the world can only dream of. I think when all is said and done, that this is acutally materialism-- having way too much, and nothing to really "do" in life.
This obviously does not happen in the majority of cases, but it seems there was a nail in the hearts of each of these young people. A big nail of materialsim, which punctured the heart and bled sex, selfishness, violence, and death.
If I'm not mistaken...I think all of these kids that do these sorts of things are on some kind of mind drugs...e.g...prozac.
I agree. I'd read a little about them, but I didn't know they were homeschoolers! I'm homeschooling our boys to minimize any "bad stuff" happening. This is really, really disturbing!
Excellent observation.
ping
Loved your opinion. Very well said.
My condolences to the families that are going through this, of course, but...
As far as my teen? He's too busy to kill me. He's in college and holding down a part-time job AND an apprenticeship in HVAC to pay for the bulk of it.
I've found the trick is in keeping them busy, busy, busy with school, church, community volunteering, part-time jobs from pre-teen on (babysitting siblings, friends and cousins, paper routes, raking leaves, shoveling snow, etc.), fixing cars and farm machinery with Grandpa, taking Grandma on Saturday errands...the more tired they are, the less apt they are to kill ya.
In fact, right now, Sonny's probably thinking "When can I go to sleep next?" LOL!
"I think when all is said and done, that this is acutally materialism-- having way too much, and nothing to really 'do' in life."
Loved your response, too. I totally agree. See my Post #11.
Thanks for the ping. Interesting article and comments; same with the other piece. It sounds like David Ludwig is a sociopath, and they're often very successful at fooling people.
You're welcome.
It always amazes me how they are so successful at fooling people, including themselves.
Of course. I would say that one short circuit a year from 40 million is pretty darn good. I am concerned that like other things in our daily lives, we regulate the many because of the actions of a VERY few. This is the concern.
My husband and I have done our best and leave the rest to God.
It's hard to know where to draw the line between being cautious about your children's associations, and being paranoid and freaked out.
Unfortunately, in hindsight, it looks like the Bordens were overly confident ... but who's really prepared for their 14-year-old to hook up with a total nutcase?
It might not be wise to give you kid a cell phone. Let them use the house phone and tap it if there's a problem.
...but wasn't there a ruling this year that listening in on your child's phone conversations was illegal?
"I can see not wanting to be a snitch, but if peoples lives were at stake, that makes it very different."
I've been the snitch a couple times. Never made a whit of difference. Parents don't want another parent EVER calling them about their children. I've come to think that it's a pride thing and that's more important than the welfare of the children.
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