Locking up a kid for life who was only fifteen years old when he DID cry for help and was failed repeatedly by adults with legal, ethical, moral, and parental obligations to do so fucking much better IS NOT JUSTICE.
What his parents did and did not do. Then treating this kid like an adult. Putting all that responsibility entirely on a neglected child’s shoulders.
It’s insane, the irrational contradictory standards applied to kids this age. When they are treated as mentally incompetent vulnerable totally-immature victims (video games! obscene song lyrics or pictures!) versus when they are blamed, not given help when they plead for it, or held responsible completely and FOREVER for fucking up (or even protecting themselves when everyone else who SHOULD fails to) when their brains are literally not fully formed and will actually change dramatically over the first dozen years of their PUNISHMENT.
It seems like this kid believes he is better off locked up for life. That may even be true. But that he should bear the entire weight if PUNISHMENT for the crimes? No. Absolutely not. Absurd AF.
The way we make kids suffer and beg for help when they often do not even have the tools to know how to ask or find it, then IGNORE THEM, tell them they’re liars, tell them to go ask someone else … and make them shoulder all of the blame.
Every fucking asshole who finds time to regulate porn, invent tragedy porn around trafficking, etc. needs to have their heads screwed around to address alllllllllll of the REAL ways (or even just one!) kids need help and rescuing.
The system and parents need to be regulated to appropriately apply protection when it is actually needed and asked for instead of brutalizing kids with irrational out-of-control punishment, and inflicting penalties and punishment on imaginary villains.
The system is the villain. The parents are the villains. This kid? Is their victim.