Should parents literally have to pay for the mistakes of their children?
Sounds like a no-brainer. Your child breaks a person’s window with a baseball, you will have to pay for it. It’s been that way since the beginning of time. But what if the stakes are higher? Let’s say that instead of this being the neighbor’s broken window, he or she is responsible for taking someone’s life. Now that’s when blame game gets a little fuzzy.
Earlier this week, Yahoo News profiled the story of New Jersey dad Anthony Pasquale, who is suing Alonzo Robinson and Anita Saunders, the parents of 15-year-old Justin Robinson, who was convicted of murdering Pasquale’s 12-year-old daughter Autumn. The site reports that Pasquale claims the parents are partially responsible for his daughter’s murder (which was possibly over the girl’s bike) for not raising him right.
Speaking with Yahoo News, Pasquale says, “Parenting comes with responsibilities, and one of those is to raise your kids right, to pay attention and know when they’re a danger to someone else. That’s a parent’s job.”
In addition to the lawsuit, Pasquale has also started a Change.org petition to advocate for “Autumn’s Law,” which would punish bad parenting with prison. According to the story, his petition reads:
Parents who ignore the warning signs of their children’s propensity toward violence are direct contributors to their minor children’s murders,” his petition reads. “If the minor who murdered my daughter was properly treated, parented, disciplined and supervised my daughter would probably be alive today.
All I can say is that this suit is interesting. For one, I’m an aunt. And I can’t imagine the pain I would feel if something happened to any of my nieces or nephews. I certainly can’t imagine what it must feel like for a parent to lose their child, especially under such horrible circumstances. In no way, shape or form am I trying to minimize that. Not to mention, he might have a good case against the parents, considering that the Robinson household was reportedly filled with severe dysfunction. There were accusations of domestic abuse and a police log of visits to the household at around 700 pages for a 10-year period. Some of those calls to the house were based around accusations that Justin was bullying and stealing. And Alonzo reportedly admitted to being aware that his sons were known in the neighborhood for stealing bikes.
And a precedent has been set. As Yahoo notes, a series of well-publicized mass school shootings and killings resulted in lawsuits. That includes more than 30 lawsuits filed by the parents of those killed or injured during the Columbine shooting aimed at the families of those directly responsible for the massacre. In those instances, the families of the shooters ended up settling with the families of the victims for an estimated $2.53 million combined.
Not to mention that we kind of have these standards already in place in terms of other crimes and acts of negligence. If your dog kills my dog, I can hold both your dog responsible (by having him taken by animal control) and sue you for damages. It’s hard to think of a good reason why the standard of liability would be different here for a minor child. But even with the precedent as well as the history of violence within the Robinson household, Pasquale might have a difficult time proving that the parents were indirectly at fault. As noted by the Yahoo News article:
Public documents and accounts from people familiar with Anita’s story seem to show that Justin was struggling and that his mother and the Clayton school system were trying to help him. A report from a court-appointed psychologist submitted by his lawyers at his sentencing hearing described him as having a “low IQ” and having been diagnosed with “attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and somatic symptom disorder.”
Likewise, it was Justin’s mother, Anita, who first alerted police about some unsettling writings on his Facebook page, which implicated him in the crime. Those two points show that at least Justin’s mother did what she could to get her son help and hold him accountable for his actions.
Not to mention that in most instances, these families are not wealthy. As reported in the Yahoo piece, many of the previous lawsuits in which parents of killers were sued, the families of victims won judgments but rarely were able to fully collect on them. That means that there is literally nothing to gain here. Outside of rare exceptions, most parents are not intentionally trying to raise killers. And outside of a few sociopaths, I just don’t see how a parent wouldn’t be ravaged with enough guilt and shame to last them for the rest of their lives.
As horrible as it is to lose a child in such a way or through some other preventable act, it does seem rather unfair to hold parents even indirectly responsible for the acts of their offspring in such cases. I mean, even the best parents have children who make decisions that don’t reflect how they were raised – just as there are kids raised in hellish conditions who turn out to be perfectly decent and upstanding adults.
As you can see, there is no easy answer for this. But what say you? Is “Autumn’s Law” a good idea?
