Muslim boys will be muslim boys.
Girl's rape part of U.S. trend
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Child suspects in sex crimes
Friday, August 14, 1998
BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The victim is barely old enough to read, and she's too young to understand what happened to her.
All she can tell police is that six little boys took her into the woods, pulled down her panties and touched her where they shouldn't have.
The Westwood girl is 7, and her mother told police her attackers weren't much older. Four suspects in the Wednesday night attack in Westwood are 10, one is 11, and the other is 6. No charges have been filed because police are still investigating.
"It just seems that the victims are getting younger and younger," said Lt. Stephen Luebbe, commander of the Cincinnati Police Division's personal crimes unit. "And the perpetrators are getting younger and younger."
One suspect's brother said the assault comes as a jolt to the families but not as a surprise to the neighborhood.
"The only people I've seen really shocked are my parents and the other parents involved," said the teen, who wanted to be identified only as Robert to protect his brother's identity.
"I think it's a terrible thing," he said. "But you can't expect nothing better from a community like this. People in this community are capable of doing something like this."
The boys allegedly took the girl into the woods, pulled down her shorts and underwear and sexually assaulted her. Police say some of the boys may have just watched.
The crime comes just days after two little boys in Chicago -- ages 7 and 8 -- were accused of killing and sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl for her bike.
Police say those boys knocked Ryan Harris off her bike by hitting her in the head with a rock and later stuck her panties in her mouth and stuffed leaves up her nose. Her body was found July 28.
After the death, one boy went to his grandmother's to play with a puppy and the other went home to watch cartoons.
A group dynamic is at play in these kinds of crimes, said James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Boston's Northeastern University, who is nationally known for his research on juvenile crime.
"Kids in groups will often commit crimes that they would never do on their own," he said.
Hamilton County -- the most populous county in the area -- tops the Tristate in the number of children charged in sex crimes.
But the number of rape and rape attempts committed by juveniles has fallen from 62 in the first half of last year to 51 this year. And most of those are one-on-one crimes, said James Ray, Hamilton County Juvenile Court administrator.
Nationwide, experts say they are seeing more violent crime more often by younger and younger suspects.
"Our experience with this type of crime is dramatically increasing," said Jay Howell, a former Florida state prosecutor who helped launch the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"Professionals are alarmed by the decreasing ages of perpetrators," he said.
Professional speculation is that the increase has something to do with the availability of violent and sexually explicit material on television, the Internet and in movies, he said. "The general tenor of violence has dramatically changed in this country in the last 50 years."
Mr. Howell says the juvenile justice system is set up to deal with minor crimes instead of increasingly violent ones.
In Ohio, for example, children younger than 12 cannot be sentenced to the Department of Youth Services. The options left are schools such as Hillcrest, probation, counseling and residential treatment programs. Suspects must be 14 to be bound over to adult court.
Even if the suspects in Wednesday's sexual assault are charged, they likely will be turned over to their parents because they are so young.
Buckeye boys will be buckeye boys!
Besides aren't Kosovan the newest warm and fuzzy victims of the evil Serbians? Aren't they protected from any criticism?