Delinquent children are children in trouble. Times have changed since the famous Colorado juvenile-court law of 1903. Now delinquency is different both in quantity and quality. By virtue of these changes, it has become a virtually new social phenomenon. It has been reported that juvenile delinquency has increased about 20 per cent since I first spoke about crime comics in 1947. It is, however, not their number but the kind of juvenile delinquency that is the salient point.
Younger and younger children commit more and more serious and violent acts. Even psychotic children did not act like this fifteen years ago. Here are some random samples of what today's juvenile delinquents actually do. A great deal that has been written and said about juvenile delinquency is invalid because the writers are obviously not familiar with today's cases:
1) Three boys, six to eight years old, took a boy of seven, hanged him nude from a tree, his hands tied behind him, then burned him with matches. Probation officers investigating found that they were re-enacting a comic-book plot.
2) A girl of eight, her six-year-old brother and a boy of thirteen threw a rock at the face of a three-year-old boy and beat him with a stick. Among other injuries the boy had "cuts inside his month."
3) A boy of eleven killed a woman in a holdup. When arrested, he was found surrounded by comic books. His twenty-year-old brother said, "If you want the cause of all this, here it is: It's those rotten comic books. Cut them out, and things like this wouldn't happen." (Of course, this brother was not an "expert"; he just knew the facts.)
4) An adolescent tortured a four-year-old boy, kicking him severely in the eye so that hospital treatment was necessary. Reason: "I just felt like doing it."
5) A seven-year-old girl broke into four homes and stole money, watches and jewelry.
6) A train was derailed by three boys, one of whom was eight, another ten.
7) A boy of thirteen committed a "lust murder" of a girl of six. After his arrest, in jail, he asked for comic books. "I refused, of course," said the sheriff.
8) A boy, who had participated when a group attacked and seriously stabbed another boy, was found with a knife which had a legend inked on the sheath: "KILL FOR THE LOVE OF KILLING."
9) A boy of twelve and his eight-year-old sister tried to kill a boy of six. They threatened to knock his teeth out, stabbed through his hands with a pocketknife, choked him, kicked him and jumped on him. The police captain said, "It is the worst beating I've ever seen, child or adult."
10) A ten-year-old boy hit a fourteen-month-old baby over the head with a brick, washed the blood off the brick and then threw the baby into the river.
11) A fourteen-year-old crime-comics addict killed a fourteen-year-old girl by stabbing her thirteen times with a knife. He did not know her.
12) Four boys, two of fourteen, one fifteen, one sixteen, carried out a comic-book classic. They beat the sixty-eight-year-old proprietor of a little candy store with a hammer and while he was lying on the floor one of the fourteen-year-olds drove a knife into his head with such force that the hilt was snapped off.
13) When a well-to-do surgeon received an extortion note demanding $50,00O and threatening harm to his young daughter, experts deduced from the note that it was the work of an "adult male psychopath under emotional strain." It turned out to be a fourteen-year-old girl.
14) There have been whole series of cases where children threw rocks and bolts and fired air rifles at passing trains, and automobiles. One eleven-year-old boy who informed the police about this got such severe comic-book torture-by-fire from a group of boys that he had to have twenty-three skin grafting operations and twenty-six blood transfusions.
15) At the age of eleven, one boy attacked another with a switchblade knife. Later he organized a "shakedown racket," demanding money from children at knife point. If a boy resisted, the miniature racketeers would knock him down and their chief would stab him several times in the chest and back. At fifteen this boy instigated an attack on another boy. "The victim lay on the ground, beaten to a bloody pulp, and died." When they found no money on him, they stripped clothing from his body, while he lay in his death agonies.
16) A boy of eight who led three other boys in nine safecracking expeditions had bought himself a new pair of sneakers after one job so the detectives could not trace his footprints.
17) Typical story: a fourteen-year-old boy shot a policeman with a shotgun.
18) While their parents were away, two boys, nine and eleven, hit their little sister (two years and eight months old) with a hoe handle and trampled her to death.
19) In one city within a few months there were five separate instances where very young children were tortured by boys from five to eight years old in comic-book fashion: a four-month-old had a rope tied around his neck and pulled tight until he was unconscious and his face was pierced with safety pins in several places; a little girl was found by a truck driver unconscious and bleeding, being poked with sticks and kicked by a group of young boys.
20) Two fourteen-year-old girls robbed a taxi driver while he was stopped for a traffic light. One of them pressed a knife into his back and demanded his money. Then the other grabbed the ignition key from the dashboard and both fled.
21) A boy of eleven poured kerosene over a boy of eight and a girl of twelve. He lighted the kerosene with a paper torch and burned the children to death.
22) A nine-year-old boy killed a five-year-old girl by stabbing her more than one hundred times.
Fred’s Been Talking In His Sleep Again
This story was written back in 1995, when virtual reality was just getting started. Almost 30 years later, we have roller coaster rides and more comfortable headsets.
Is any of this “enhanced reality” speculative nonsense even remotely feasible? Marleau’s wild ride could be taking place in the near future… or 30 years from now. The way things are going, only a fool would expect much in the way of innovation.
Currently, no curative evidence-based treatments for tinnitus exist.
Vagus nerve stimulation is approved by the FDA for refractory epilepsy and resistant depression.
Neuromodulation by VNS has emerged as a new treatment option for tinnitus. The underlying mechanism involves activating the nucleus of the solitary tract, which in turn can activate the locus coeruleus and nucleus basalis, which then release neuromodulators that have effects on plasticity regulation by modulating neurons in the cortex.
Situation Hopeless… Not Serious
This concludes our broadcast. (Don’t ask again.)
Fred’s Video Collection
In keeping with the theme of juvenile delinquency, I tried to find something in the Video Vault of Horror showcasing the nefarious antics of irredeemable teen thugs and thugettes. This Horror of Party Beach mash-up turned out to be a multi-layered audio experiment by Your Friendly Neighbourhood Psychotherapist using 7 tracks in total. (None of this audio is from the movie.)
Like most of my videos, this one received a grand total of zero likes and no traffic… but it’s actually a pretty competent editing job if I do say so myself (because nobody else will).