I don’t know whether readers have picked up the tragic story of two-year-old Milagros Belizan.
Milagros was a two-year-old child, living in the shanty-town Almirante Brown neighborhood of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
Two brothers, age 7 and 9, told psychiatrists they slowly, coldly tortured a 2-year-old girl to death, a revelation that has reopened a debate in Argentina over how to punish juvenile delinquents.
Judge Marta Pascual said Tuesday the children confessed to slaying Milagros Belizan, their neighbor in a poor shantytown south of the capital city. But Argentine law prohibits the prosecution of anyone under 18 years old.
“They understood her pain but it did not move them,” said Pascual, a youth judge for Buenos Aires’ Lomas de Zomara district, after meeting with psychiatrists who examined the boys. “In some form it gave them pleasure,”
Belizan disappeared from her home in the Almirante Brown neighborhood on Sunday and her family later found her body in a vacant lot 10 blocks away.
She had been stripped naked, beaten and strangled with telephone cord that was left around her neck. The discovery prompted neighbors to attack an adult suspected of the crime — until the two boys confessed.
It’s very easy, in one’s loathing and stomach-turning horror at such a crime, to get vindictive and say that the two boys should be locked away for the rest of their lives . . . but that misses the point.
How is it that they were allowed to grow to that age, either not knowing right from wrong, or allowed to think that it didn’t matter?
Where were their parents?
Authorities have not released the identities of the boys who confessed, but said the two were neighbors of the Belizan family.
The newspaper Clarin reported that neighbors said the boys were frequently beaten by their mother and had been out of school for two years. They were often seen throwing stones at other children and cars passing through the neighborhood’s dirt streets, neighbors said.
I honestly don’t know what to do about the boys. I certainly believe they need to be taken away from their parents. Whether confining them in a youth institution until they turn 18 would do any good, I don’t know. I suspect whatever moral damage they’ve suffered during their upbringing thus far may already be irreversible.
However, I have no doubt that their parents should be prosecuted as accessories to this crime. If they did nothing to bring their kids up the right way, they must surely share responsibility for their actions.
May Almighty God have mercy on the soul of Milagros Belizan . . . and on those two boys. Whether they have a future of any value, or not, can’t be determined right now: but this will almost certainly haunt them for the rest of their lives.
It should.
And it should haunt us as well.
Right now, in any state in America, kids are growing up with the same lack of parental control, the same lack of moral guidance, the same lack of understanding of right and wrong. I know. In my work as a prison chaplain, I saw them a few years later, when the consequences of such lack came home to roost. They were morally damaged almost beyond repair (some of them far beyond repair).
If you’re nauseated, disgusted, horrified, sickened by what those two boys did . . . think about this.
There are children like that living near you right now.
What to do about it? If you have the answer – a practical answer, one that will work in the real world – you’re a wiser person than I.
Peter
The newspaper Clarin reported that neighbors said the boys were frequently beaten by their mother and had been out of school for two years. They were often seen throwing stones at other children and cars passing through the neighborhood’s dirt streets, neighbors said.
Two years? They let their bad behavior go unchecked for TWO years? They knew these kids were being beaten, and did nothing? At what point does the community need to get involved? I wonder if this had occured in the States whether the local community and/or school system would have intervened? Even so, your point about the children suffering irreversible damage is agreeable. Sometimes it is difficult to make tough decisions when children are involved. I’m with you on this one, I’m at a loss.
If those two little psychopaths can’t be brought to trial, they should be put down, just like you would a vicious dog. They aren’t going to get better, only worse.
What has human society become?????
How did they grow to that age, without being taught better?
They were probably born that way. Birth defect or genetic defect, some people are born sociopaths, they don’t have the capacity for empathy. They can’t be taught it any more than the blind can be taught to see.
There is nothing you can do, but find them early, and isolate them forever.
I agree with Anonymous. These two can no longer be considered human and should be destroyed like any other rabid or diseased animals. Put them down in a humane manner, cremate them and dump the ashes in the sewer. The same fate should await predatory rapists and child molesters. Preferably in an empty lot behind the courthouse five minutes after conviction. There are certain actions that should result in an immediate, absolute revocation of your lease on life. I submit that torturing a child to death is definitely one of them.