Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/02/youtube-star-austin-jones-face.html
U.S. attorney’s office to seek 11-year prison sentence for Jones, 26, on Friday May 3.
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Boo-fucking-hoo.
Damn near everyone has been abused, traumatized and/or neglected at some point… and yet many of us manage to avoid becoming opportunistic predators.
Unfuck him; put his ass under the jail.
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It is true that in the end, what people choose to do as adults is their own responsibility. It is also true that a fucked up childhood with years of sexual abuse and likely other violence will set you up to become a terrible person.
It’s not an inevitability, but I view it the same as I view for example perpetuated racism by children of racist parents. Of course you are always free to find your own way but it’s very hard to do when your whole world view, shaped by the people you love and trust for many years, tells you otherwise.
Although much more subtle and not criminal, I have rather late in my life recognised ways in which my parents have imbued me with some strange and distorted ideology and self-conception, which I always took as a normal way of thinking.
And I can see how, already at the age of two or three, some children we meet on the playground are showing crystal clear signs of internalised and externally exhibited aggressive behaviour as a result of parental neglect or abuse. I shudder to think what they will be like in ten or twenty years.
At that point it will be their responsibility how they deal with their past, but it will be their parent‘s fault as well if they fail to deal with it in an acceptable way.
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Came to say essentially the same thing. My childhood was a fucking mess. My goal as an adult is to not spread that misery to others.
If you choose the path you take, own up to that choice.
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Maybe it’s really not fair, but reading the accusations and then seeing that picture of him, my response was, “Yeah, that figures.”
I think it requires a certain degree of self-reflection and self-awareness that a lot of people don’t have - or aren’t smart enough to achieve. (This dude doesn’t seem to be big on self-awareness.)
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Adios scumbag. YouTube star? Not in prison…
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What a pedophilic piece of shit. He should have been using his platform for good, not to perpetuate similar abuse as he allegedly experienced. I’m afraid I have no sympathy for people who try to use the ‘but I was abused’ excuse for committing reprehensible acts. Be better than that.
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This genre of leniency pleading confuses me.
It’s basically an outright agreement(sometimes even theatrical exaggeration) with the notion that your client is a depraved character with extremely strong tendencies toward criminality and abuse of those around him.
Perhaps when comparing him with some abstract free-willed-decider that’s exculpatory; but when considering how long it would be wise to have him on the other side of a prison wall from society, whether he’s a parole candidate, what his odds of recidivism are, etc. it could hardly be more damning.
It seems like it’s just begging for a “OK, in light of the circumstances, it would be cruel to punish your client; but as you’ve so forcefully pointed out he’s a profoundly damaged menace to society, so we have no choice but to commit him to a secure ward for treatment of indefinite duration.”
i think there should definitely be something more after prison – mandatory halfway housing, mandatory counseling, job placement, and the like. it would cost a lot – but i can only imagine it’d be less than the cost of prison.
for people who are harming others because of their own harm – maybe for some people that can be fixed. but, prison alone doesn’t seem like it will fix anything except keep somebody off the streets for a few years.
for this guy – he should also probably be banned from youtube and any other revenue generating social media sites for life.
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