Saturday, January 19, 2008

Brent Martin

I know this is really a fiber blog but something happened this morning that I need to blog about. It has nothing to do with knitting or yarn.



This morning I was reading my email. I was reading one of my emails, a digest of post from a Yahoo group, Stash Support, and there is blog links on the bottom of each message. I clicked on it, I like to play with yarn and I read knitting blogs, and I could never have guessed where I would have wound up.

After several clicks it was the blog Chewing the Fat. I sat here reading about something very horrible. Something I had not heard about. Something that made me sick. I read about Brent Martin. A young man that was punched in the head because he was different. Punched so many times that he died. Why? Because the 3 boys (16,17 and 21 I believe) had been taking boxing lessons and thought Brent would be perfect to try it out on, Why? Because Brent had and intellectual disability. Brent did not fight back he kept trying to shake their hands, kept asking for friendship, and the boy just kept punching him. After they were done they left him to die, alone. All for a 5 pound bet -thats around 10 dollars.

I work in a high school that is known for their special education program. Parents move from around the country so that their children can get the best education. There are also main stream kids in the school too. I know several of the children and they are very sweet and nice. I also see them get picked on. I see kids talking to this one child so their friends can take his wallet out of his bag. (Yes the kids were brought to the principles office)

I can tell you that there are many F-up people in this world.

I was raised to see people for who they are, not for the color of their skin, what they look like, who they want to be with or for any disability that they may have. I am trying my damnest to make sure that my children are raised like this too.

4 comments:

Jen said...

What a sad story, kind of makes me sick to my stomach. I don't have kids yet, but you can bet that when I do, they will be taught tolerance and a caring, giving attitude toward everyone. Thanks for posting this for all to see! Hope all else is going well!

Anonymous said...

As a parent of a child with special needs, this is very upsetting to me. I do worry about my child's future because of people like this. Thank you for posting about it.

Stimey said...

I hate hearing stories like this. I just don't get how people can be this cruel.

Anonymous said...

When people do things like that, they are attacking the humanity in every one of us. In our reactions, we get the comfort of knowing we are reclaiming ours.

They acted like a pack of animals. They will have the rest of their lives to individually think about what they did. What they need to be sentenced to is--individually and nowhere near each other--be required to serve people who are disabled like the kid they attacked. That's the only hope I see for rehabilitating people who could do such a thing. (Carefully supervised, though...)