What is up with those girls from Florida? It seems like a question a lot of people are asking, at least rhetorically. I put a blog post up about Victoria ‘Tori’ Lindsey yesterday, and it’s already been viewed at least 500 times. Now for a megablog, that isn’t a big thing. They get 500 views in the blink of an eye. But, on my humble little blog, that’s a lot. So, what is the story of Tori and the other girls? It seems like there must be more to the story.

I wrote something similar as I tried to understand Erin Markes, the 19 year old mother from Florida who has been accused of neglecting her 4 year old son. As with that case, I don’t have any more details than anyone else searching the Internet could come up with, but I do have one thing different, a desire to try and understand what is going on in other people’s minds, a desire to get a broader perspective.

Is that what people who came to my previous post about Tori are looking for? Is that what people who are reading this post are looking for? How do we understand this in our own contexts?

So, I’ve spent a bit of time surfing around. I’m not sure I have any great insights into what went on, what is going on with our country, or what people are looking for online, but let me take a shot at some of this.

Mostly, what I am reading is horror and disgust. I read about the parents of the attackers receiving death threats, and I find phone numbers and addresses of the girls. I kicked around calling people to see if anyone would comment. But the parents, I am sure, have been harassed enough, and the girls are under a gag order.

One headline I saw asked, ‘Could your teen be next?’ Yeah. That is a fear that I suspect every parent has. You hear about a beating like that, you hear about a gunman shooting up a school, and you worry about if your teen could be next. Typically, the worry is about one’s kid being a victim. Yet another worry, that I wish more parents would worry about, is if their kid could be an attacker.

I don’t know what the situation was with Tori and her parents, or any of the other girls and their parents, but a recurring theme is, “What was wrong with those parents?” “Why didn’t those parents teach their kids right from wrong?”

I hope and believe none of my daughters would ever be caught in either side of a situation like Tori’s. I hope and believe they know that I love them, and will do whatever I can to help them through difficult times, but also that there are behaviors that are simply not tolerated. I wish more parents had these kinds of hopes and beliefs. I do know how hard it can be to raise teenage girls. I have two of them which present special challenges to me.

I read other comments. A law enforcement officials’ blog, where they compare notes of teens they’ve had to deal with and share their thoughts about the case.

I read news reports with the standard lines where the parents and friends of the attackers talk about how they were good kids and they just didn’t understand how this could have happened. I remember hearing one journalism professor talking about how this has become a cliché and it reflects sloppy journalism.

As I read comments like this, Tom Petty’s Free Fallin comes to mind

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus, and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses, and her boyfriend too

It goes on to talk about “And the good girls are home with broken hearts”. Was this part of it? Some reports I’ve read indicate that it started over stuff being said on a MySpace page about a boy, and suggested that there was some sort of love triangle going on.

I don’t know if its true, but it sure fits a familiar narrative. Perhaps there is even a little bit about conflict between cliques, you know, a little Montague and Capulet action going on. “There’s a place for us…” People forget that Romeo and Juliet are cast at around that age, and the great remake, West Side Story is all about high school.

It is a trying time, love, emotions that seem overwhelming and out of control. The group of close friends, BFF. And then, the imagined invulnerability. Sure, you can put a video on the Internet of you severely beating up another person and not land in jail, just like you drink until you can’t stand, and still be able to drive home safely.

So, the newspaper articles talk about the defendants. Some hid behind their long hair. Some started to tear up. Others looked angrily at photographers. Still others smiled or even laughed.

As I read the comments, people are looking for a teachable moment. They want these kids thrown behind bars and the keys thrown away. They want the harshest possible punishment, to let other kids know that this isn’t acceptable behavior. If I thought that would prevent something like this from happening again, I might agree. But I just don’t think it would be an effective deterrent.

Instead, I hope that these kids have the best lawyers possible. I’m not talking about lawyers that can help the kids avoid responsibility for what they have done. No, I hope that they have lawyers that say something like,

“I don’t know if you really understand how serious this is. You could go to jail for life, and you would not be very safe there.” I hope that the lawyers would continue on with something like, “Showing remorse is not going to be good enough. There are people that want to give you a beating a hundred times worse than you gave Tori.” Then, the discussion would move to how to make real reparations.

These reparations would probably start off with some serious psychotherapy, getting the kids to understand what they did, why they did it and why some many people want the harshest possible retribution. Beyond that, how do you make real reparations?

Perhaps, a good starting point would be for them to learn about their actions taken to the extreme, when one group of people attempts to deliberately and systematically destroy another group of people; genocide. The slaughter of Armenians during World War I, the Assyrians massacred in Iraq in 1933, the holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur.

Perhaps, if one of these kids could become a leading spokesperson against all kinds of bullying, from the scuffle in the schoolyard playground to the genocidal killing fields around the world, then, perhaps, just perhaps, there can be real reparations, and meaning can be salvaged from a horrid meaningless crime.

No, I don’t understand Tori, what was going on with her parents, her friends, any sort of romantic interests or even with herself. Nor do I understand what was going on with the kids that participated in the beating. Likewise, I do not understand how genocide can happen, and how countries can stand idly by, sponsoring athletic games, while at the same time sponsoring companies in countries that practice genocide.

There is a lot I don’t understand, but maybe that is the problem for all of us. Maybe none of us really understand the people around us as well as we should. Maybe we take the easy way out, by reading the stories and expressing our frustration, and not trying to understand.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. Perhaps we can all work together to seek greater understanding.