What Else Can We Expect?

I came across this story at Maxed Out Mama's place. She points to the discussion at the Democratic Underground, and SC&A have also picked it up.

Basically, a disabled girl known to have speech problems and who is developmentally delayed was sexually assaulted by a group of boys in her high school auditorium in Columbus, Ohio. One of the kids videotaped what happened, and lots of people not only watched but also were shown the video. When this dispicable act came to the attention of school administrators, a hush-hush cover-up was tried, so as not to draw negative attention to the school.

Have we gone totally insane? Mark my words, soon we'll have folks trying to figure out the "root cause" - what could "make" these kids do what they did? I imagine we will begin to hear about the boys' deep-seated anger brought on by their circumstances - was it poverty? was it being victims themselves of bullying behavior?

Call me simplistic and narrow minded, but I absolutely do not understand how anyone can be confused about how such an awful, evil thing could happen. Of COURSE things like this will happen when a society becomes afraid to point to certain behaviors and say, unequivocally, "what you are doing is WRONG!" and, "That is BAD!" for fear of hurting someone's self-esteem or of being seen as "judgemental" and "intolerant."

Of COURSE it's going to happen when mothers and fathers abdicate their authority by choosing to be pals rather than parents. Of COURSE it's going to happen when those same parents refuse to teach their kids, by word, example, reward and punishment, that there are truly such things as GOOD and RIGHT and such things as BAD and WRONG. When parents say they don't want to "impose" their own values and morality on their kids, and say instead that they want their children to be free to develop their own understanding of morality, how can we expect anything other than exactly what we are seeing?

And, for the love of God, can anyone tell me - at what point did we forget how to raise children?