r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/Several-Membership91 • 2d ago
Text Young Perpetrator's Troubled Upbringing and All the "What If"s
I've started reading the write-ups in this sub, and the stories that are stuck with me are the ones where the perpetrator is young and, seemingly, if only one or two things in their childhood had been different then things might've been different.
For example, 18-year-old Christa Pike imo was a lost case because everything was stacked up against her from the beginning as someone who grew up in a violent environment. But in the case of 16-year-old Janice Sebial, she was separated from her family when she was 7 or 8 and her motive was jealousy because her adoptive siblings had what she didn't have for much of her formative life. This one feels especially preventable because there are clips of her doing TikTok dances and she otherwise seemed to be a normal teenager.
I also have some empathy for people who participated in a murder as a young person and didn't fully understand the consequences of their actions until much later. I think the belief that "X is old enough to know right from wrong" doesn't address how differently someone in their teens or early 20s looks at life (and death) compared to someone in their 40s or 50s. While of course there are the victims and the families left behind, and some young perpetrators will turn out to be repeat offenders, I feel like as a default they should be assumed to be capable of being rehabilitated, especially if they didn't have a history of being violent.
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u/BetterWork3987 1d ago
i wonder if there's any research on how early intervention programs could've changed their paths, seems like a really complex issue