Canada - Homeless Man, Ken Lee, Stabbed to Death by 8 Teen Girls in "Swarming Attack", Toronto, Dec 2022

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whiterhino said:
Young offenders can be tried as adults in Ontario. I believe sentencing/probation/parole is different as young offenders cannot be placed into corrections alongside adults. It's the same for youth in the mental health system. Once they reach 18 they're either transferred to an adult institution or the province essentially washes their hands of it.

The systems are overburdened, understaffed and ill equipped to handle the volume of cases. Not to mention those who are working through rehabilitation or are seeking support of their own volition. Even then, there are all kinds of poorly trained, uneducated people working within these systems (some simply there to exploit). Their inability to provide support undermines anything being done by their peers. It's a one step forward, two steps back kind of setup :confused:
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They can be tried as adults IF they are 14 years of age. Not the 13-year-olds.

Being tried as an adult - FREE Legal Information | Legal Line

Although normally a young person’s trial is held in Youth Court, under certain circumstances, a young person can be tried as an adult in adult court. Being tried in adult court means that a young person will face serious penalties under the Criminal Code, instead of those penalties under the...
www.legalline.ca www.legalline.ca


When can a young person be tried as an adult?​

Only certain young persons can be transferred to the adult courts. If you have been charged with a serious offence and you are at least 14 years old, your trial could be moved to adult court depending on the circumstances of your particular case. If you are 16 or 17 years old and you have been charged with murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, or aggravated sexual assault, your trial will automatically be moved to adult court unless your lawyer can convince the judge to keep the trial in the Youth Court.

Before a young person is transferred to adult court, a hearing will be held where the Crown prosecutor and the lawyer for the young person are given a chance to be heard by the judge. The judge will consider several factors when deciding whether to transfer a young person to adult court, such as the seriousness of the offence, public safety, and the need to help the young person.
 
By Lucas Casaletto
Posted Jan 19, 2023

CityNews

toronto.citynews.ca toronto.citynews.ca
''One teen girl is set to appear in court for a bail hearing on Jan. 20, two others on Jan. 25, and another on Jan. 27. Another girl has already been released on bail.

On Thursday, Lee’s family said the current criminal justice system protects the young suspects but does very little to help the victims or members of the public.

“For serious crimes, these perpetrators should not have any privacy rights or bail,” Lee’s family wrote in the statement.

“The public should be aware of who these individuals are to protect themselves. The perpetrators must be named in order to bring forth more victims, witnesses and evidence.”

Lee’s family questioned the intention of the YCJA, noting that if the suspects aren’t identified and later released on bail, it’s a detriment to the community.

“As a parent, my question to the lawmakers who wrote the Youth Criminal Justice Act is, how are you protecting my child if the perpetrator cannot be named and she could be in my child’s school or class?”
 
Day in court

https://twitter.com/x/status/1616580166477664257


Excerpt

The suspects include three 13-year-olds, three 14-year-olds, and two 16-year-olds. All are facing second-degree murder charges following the death of Ken Lee, a 59-year-old man who was experiencing homelessness at the time of this death.
 
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torontosun.com

MANDEL: Girls accused in swarming murder yawn and snicker in juvenile court

Some of the girls smirked; some of them yawned. Some looked tense; some looked like this was all an amusing lark.
torontosun.com torontosun.com
''Some of the girls smirked; some of them yawned. Some looked tense; some looked like this was all an amusing lark.
But none of them looked ashamed.''

''If they are found to have committed the crimes they are accused of, then there’s still time to save them — and still time to save us from them.''
 
I wonder where they are being held.

torontosun.com

MANDEL: Girls accused in swarming murder yawn and snicker in juvenile court

Some of the girls smirked; some of them yawned. Some looked tense; some looked like this was all an amusing lark.
torontosun.com torontosun.com


All dressed in either grey or black sweatsuits from their detention centre, the teens filled the prisoner’s box and the bench alongside it. In a more normal situation, these girls could be lined up in a gym class awaiting the start of a volleyball game.
 
Youth detention centres for females in Ontario while awaiting trial

Account Suspended

www.cefso.ca


Young Offenders​

These two secure custody facilities, operated by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, have units for young women:

Bluewater Youth Centre
Highway 21 South
Goderich, ON N7A 3Y8
Telephone: (519) 524-2107		Roy McMertry
8500 McLaughlin Road South
Brampton, ON L6Y 0N6
Telephone: (905) 459-
 
I do get conflicted when I hear about crimes like this. If a group of 18 years old set fire to a homeless person I have no qualms about them being charged and convicted to serve their sentence. But when I hear it's a child I do sometimes question whether or not there are extenuating circumstances that puts pressure on some kids to follow the crowd. Especially, when the crime involves a group; the dynamic becomes an important part of motive.

Does anyone remember Mary Bell? She was an 11 year old girl in northern England who murdered two toddlers in separate crimes. She committed those crimes with the help of another girl nearly 3 years older than her who was considered of low intelligence. She held one of the toddlers down while MB strangled him. The accomplice was acquitted while MB was sentenced to 11 years for manslaughter. MB is still alive, has used several aliases after being granted anonymity for the rest of her natural life. She has a daughter who was provided the same benefit of anonymity. Neither MB or her daughter have been involved in any other crime.
 
branmuffin said:
Children who are left to their own devices do have a tendency to get into trouble. A lot of those kids are from low income homes where perhaps there is only on parent who works long hours to make ends meet. So many of these kids are vulnerable to influences outside the home due to peer pressure, the lure of drug dealing for money, and theft rings. Unfortunately, low income is usually twinned with minority groups so it's a double whammy for those folks dealing with societal judgements who try their damnedest to dig themselves out of that downward spiral.
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Snipped for focus

My experience is that it is easy to pin troublemaking on a constellation of low-income-unsupervised kids-stressed parents-vulnerable-peer pressure-drugs-minorities when that may not be the reality. This way, I think, we risk turning whole demographics into "other". I don't believe the kind of violence in this case stems from lack of supervision, stressed parents syndrome, minority status, or low income, and to point fingers at that constellation, in my opinion, easily thrusts it into the world of "other".

I believe as a truth, we all have potential for crazed violence, rich, poor, stressed, supervised, unsupervised, this demographic, that demographic. But few act on it. The question is, why don't they? Or even, "Why do we think they don't?"

IMO violence is in all of us, and these young people didn't have the wherewithal to turn it off.

Also, what role does being a young woman play in all of this?

This whole thing is so TABOO...I don't believe with think of male gang activity in quite the same way.

This event actually reminds me of Euripides' the Bacchae, if anyone had to read that for a college class. A group of townswomen (maenads, worshippers of Dionysus), gangs up, goes feral, wilding, crazed, assaultive, and rips apart Pentheus who has forbidden their behavior. With a thousand corollary details that I don't have space for (the role of alcohol being one).... And if you ever had the chance to have an acting gig as a maenad in that play, what did it do for you? I can tell you, it's VERY powerful. The young women I remember years ago were so taken with being maenads in the play, they'd run around campus like that in a gang, barefoot, waving long sticks entwined with ivy, long hair streaming out, wearing messy peplums and floral crowns on their heads. SCREAMING. They weren't assaulting anyone, but they were GLORIOUSLY wild. Because they could be, and they LOVED it. And I so ENVIED them for doing that.

Bonding is an important aspect in this kind of behavior that maybe guys don't have.... a specifically female kind of bonding? We recently saw another case like this, with a random guy being killed by a group of girls with a traffic cone.

The whole impetus of this kind of crime is the bonding and not exactly a goal of killing?

At any rate, I don't think we should rush to place violence like this in the realm of the "other". I think maybe we should work at figuring it out in ourselves. And this is one heck of a challenge for true crime fans, including me, who are generally in the realm of "someone not me did it".

My opinion only....
 
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dotr said:
''Some of the girls smirked; some of them yawned. Some looked tense; some looked like this was all an amusing lark.
But none of them looked ashamed.''
Click to expand...
Snipped for focus

I'm throwing a spanner in the works, I know....

The bonding with the other girls might be more central (significant?) for all of them than the deed.....
 
I'm curious about how the girls interacted and spoke with each other while they were committing these assaults. What were they communicating with each other? Would we understand their conversation or was it "group speak"? Was it wild, too? Disorganized? Cheerleader-ish? How were they egging each other on? Or was it all non-verbal, with some kind of esp between them?

The more I think about it, the more I think bonding was primary. I otherwise have trouble explaining their behavior. Their lingo would tell us alot, I believe.
 
IMO the different bail decisions for the girls in the sourcees ^^^ might signal that it will be very complicated to come up with a verdict that is a consensus. Even if no trial, the community (or the system) might be very divided about how to look at this.

After a couple of weeks' break from this case, I still think, for the girls, bonding was the crux of what happened, and not the murder. They do seem to have been getting pleasure out of it, but that doesn't mean the pleasure was in the kill; it could easily signify their pleasure in doing something together was what drove them.

In the Bacchae (a play which I cited above), the maenads ran around chanting in chorus.They were a unit, with maybe a lead member (I forget). I always thought this was quite spooky. I keep wondering what the girls in the Toronto case were saying to each other as this murder evolved. Were they razzing each other up? Did they sound not-quite-human? Were they like cheerleaders? Were they egging each other on? Did they have a member "leading the chant"? Did they even speak English, or was it a made-up language, where the intent was gathered from the sound? We have sounds like that in songs, though with benign intent (think: "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la la la la la...", where the sound is jolly, we're all a team, and we can all join in on the fa la la part). But what would be the murderous equivalent to fa la la?

I'm sure we'll never get answers to some of these questions, but I'm quite fascinated about the mechanisms that powered these youngsters and sustained them through a heinous deed.

I trust they separate these girls during the times when they're locked up, or there could be another murderous event. Bonding with a background of powerlessness (as in jail) might have been exactly what got them there in the first place.
 
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