By: Virginia Fee

Virginia Fee — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:24:18 +0000

GO CARI, GO! *YOU* ROCK. WHAT ABOUT THIS 8 YEAR OLD IN THE NEWS…FIRST ARTICLE I READ, HIS ATTORNEY MENTIONED A *CONFESSION* HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO GET A CONFESSION OUT OF AN 8 YEAR OLD?

By: John Paul Osborn

John Paul Osborn — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:40:15 +0000

Like Cari, I too have become very close to Tyler and cannot express my joy at his exoneration a few weeks ago. But Cari makes the important point that Tyler is just one of THOUSANDS of children who suffer because of the draconian change in laws affecting children and crime. Tyler managed to survive prison because he is a great kid who respects authority and did what he was told to do while he was locked in his cage. But what about children with learning or behavioral disabilities, those who are mentally ill or have been abused. THOSE are the children who, more often than not, end up in prisons. We fail as a nation when we fail children, even when those children fall from grace. “No child left behind” is a joke, because children locked in our country’s prisons ARE left behind in every sad aspect of their lives. They are left with substandard schooling, poor psycological help, little counselling efforts and are subjected to physical and sexual assault by both guards and older inmates, they have higher instances of suicide. For those children serving life sentences without possibility of parole (and there are thousands of them in the US), prisons have no incentive to give them ANYTHING and the children have no incentive to try because they live with the hopelessness of knowing they were sent to prison to die. God help us as a nation if we cannot even find hope for a child who makes one terrible mistake. We, as a nation, advocate for human rights and yet we violate those international laws governing the imprisonment of children every day. Tyler Edmonds is but one example of children who’s lives are destroyed by the justice system, rather than changed and uplifted.

Comments on: More compassionate thoughts on Tyler Edmonds

By: Virginia Fee

By: John Paul Osborn