Terrible.

It's a rhetorical question--no need to answer. It's hard to even process this story. Damn.

This is a new definition of "friend" of which I was unaware.

They need extensive psychological counseling and then somehow reintroduced to society when they are 21.

I wonder if they are psychotic? My first reaction is if they would have to be.

I place some blame on the parents because they had to have been exposed to the idea of doing this on the internet.

Heinous as this crime was, they should no the tried as adults.

Waukesha County DA has to show the nation that they are tough on crime now. They always overcharge but now they're in the spotlight.

Commenters on the local news sites want them to get the dearth penalty (which does not exist here),

ugh.

They are kids caught up in what appears to be a fantasy. This is why we have juvenile courts. 12 years old.

There are just no words to describe how much so.

And trying them as adults is another cog in the machine of horror.

but I'm not certain anyone capable of com
Itting such an atrocity can be rehabilitated. The fact that their victim was not killed guarentees they will one day be released.

if they are budding psychopaths then counseling will make them worse. I hate to see the result at 21. Yeesh.

was a situation where a 13 year old killed an 8 year old neighbor and the pretended to help in the search. As I recall, hezwas sentenced to life as an adult.

I just don't understand how parents can raise children that will do these things. Why are 12 year old girls allowee unfettered access to the internet?

where a bunch of teens beat and drowned another teen. One girl...the 'leader', held the victim's head underwater with her foot while having a smoke. It's actually part of my social psychology course right now, the chapter on conformity. My personal opinion is that many kids are not taught empathy, or they are simply incapable of feeling it. And even if they DO feel empathy, peer pressure and the need to feel accepted or conversely, the fear they feel from the 'leader' of the pack makes them do unspeakable things. You know, Lord of the Flies. It's a powerful force.

But yeah, kids who are the 'leaders' in these instances, IMO, are likely total psychopaths and beyond help, IMO. The only way you can get through to kids like that is to convince them that behaving is in their own best interest, because that's all they really care about anyway.

When I think of the 12 year old girls I know, I just can't comprehend something like this happening.

where her two best girl friends decided to lure her out of the house and kill her. One of the girls said they killed her because they didn't want to be friends with her anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Skylar_Neese

At first, i thought this was the same story but the second one just happened. I never understood the Skylar case at all!

were in a lesbian relationship and that Skylar was going to out them. Of course, there were a lot of rumors surrounding that case, as often happens when teens are involved.

I guess she's expected to recover physically, but how can you ever get over "friends" literally trying to kill you?

Especially since stabbing is such a personal, intimate way to kill somebody. Not that using a gun would have been any better, but for a 12 year old to be that close to another human being and stab them 19 times is just beyond my comprehension.

The fact that they had actually planned this out ahead of time is even more sickening.

"Both suspects had a fascination with a fictitious character that often posted to a website that is a collection of small stories about death and horror," Jack said.

The criminal complaint refers to that online character as "Slenderman." One of the girls told police "It was the hope that [the victim] would die and they would see slender and know he exists."

Waukesha County is suburban Milwaukee, the bastion of conservatism in Wisconsin. Bet you dollars to donuts the DA is up for re-election this year. If he decided to try these kids as juveniles, he'd probably get primaried by a rabid teabagger.

So fortunate the victim survived this brutal attack.

...of two 12-year-old girls who killed one of the girls' mother, because the mother and father had decided to move, one reason being they wanted to split up the girls who lived in a very elaborate fantasy world. The movie based on it was called "Heavenly Creatures".

Criminologists recognize that some cases are best explained as "folie a deux" or the "folly of two", also there is a psychiatric term for it, namely, shared psychositic disorder. Anyway it is characterized by a strong emotional bond and a shared view of the world -- it can be strongly held political or religious beliefs, that form a bond and are twisted into criminal actions; or in the case of the young girls the shared view was a strongly held fantasy world, that led to criminal actions.

Anyway, who knows. But it sure seems to fit the bill.

Here's a good writeup on Shared Psychotic Disorder vis a vis criminal please -- although it discusses a case of folie a trois:

http://www.jaapl.org/content/34/4/511.full