When a child is deemed an adult

[anysia]

Girl, 13, charged with shooting father to death

BUENA VISTA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- A 13-year-old girl used a shotgun to fatally shoot her father in the head early Monday in a home overrun with animals and filth, police said.

The girl told investigators she used a 12-gauge shotgun to shoot 34-year-old Matthew Booth in the face while he was in bed, according to a police affidavit.

A police complaint did not identify a motive in the killing, but her mother, Michelle Fazek, who was separated from Booth, said she had complained several times to county child welfare officials that her daughter and her brother, 14, were living in squalor and that her daughter had been abused.

The girl appeared in municipal court late Monday wearing a maroon county jail uniform, her hands and ankles cuffed, where she was charged as an adult with criminal homicide and ordered held without bail.

This part bothers me... the blatant double standard of the laws. If a 13 yr old child engages in sexual activity, she is deemed a child, but if she commits act of violence, she is consider and charged as an adult? Why is that?

Also the mother made several complaints, and child protective services did nothing? Drop the ball there much?

Comments

[japester.livejournal.com]

There is also evidence which strongly suggests that treating adolescents like adults is categorically mistaken. They are going through weird hormonal changes and their brain chemistry is also quite fluid and are genuinely not thinking like an adult does, with a set of solid thought mechanisms.