It’s Not right, Part 3
by sarabeth at 4:46 pm on June 9th, 2007 in GeneralEven though it’s proper and fitting to start this post with “Mom, Mom!”, and even though it is (sort of) about unduly harsh prison terms, Matt can heave a sigh of relief and put his pink-slip pad back wherever he keeps it. This post is not about Paris Hilton.
Though I may as well start by wondering what Paris might think about the harshness or otherwise of this sentence:
Ryan Kenty, 20, and his brother Brandon, still a sophomore in high school, plan to drive their mother to jail Monday morning before heading back to her rented apartment to move the rest of her belongings into storage.
Their mom, Elisa Kelly, and her ex-husband, George Robinson, are paying the price for hosting Ryan’s 16th birthday party — more than two years in jail each. Ryan had asked his mother to buy his friends some beer and wine, as long as they all spent the night.
Brandon, left, and Ryan Kenty will drive their mother, Elisa Kelly, to jail Monday, when she is to start a 27-month sentence for providing alcohol at Ryan’s 16th birthday party in 2002.
I think this is one of our more screwed-up social attitudes: the zero tolerance we have towards parentally-approved teenage drinking. Let me start by making it clear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying I think it’s a good idea for parents to sponsor drinking parties for their kids and their friends. What I’m saying is I think it is thoroughly stupid to criminalize behavior that I regard as the duty of a parent really.
Many kids, if not most, are going to experiment with alcohol in their teens. Simply a fact of life. Whether we think that’s good or bad is totally irrelevant. The strict social and legal sanctions we have put in place against teenage drinking mean that most kids are forced to experiment with alcohol in a wholly unsupervised environment. I would very much prefer that I was allowed to supervise my son’s introduction to alcohol, to teach him how to drink responsibly, and that I was allowed to do this at whatever age it turns out to be necessary.
Most countries have a legal drinking age. Most of these countries have a more enlightened attitude to parentally-supervised teenage drinking than the U.S. For example, in Austria the legal drinking age is 16, but parentally-supervised drinking is legal at 14. In France, “Anyone under the age of 16 can drink alcohol as long as the child is with the parent/guardian”. The law encourages teenagers’ introduction to alcohol to be supervised by their parents. If they’re going to do it anyway, we get to teach them how to do it right. That isn’t more important than teaching them to drive? How much drinking and driving happens because we only teach them to drive, we don’t teach them how to drink?
Coming back to Elisa Kelly and George Robinson, though:
“No one left the party,” said Kelly, 42, who collected car keys that night almost five years ago to prevent anyone from leaving. “No one was hurt. No one drove anywhere. I really don’t think I deserve to go to jail for this long.”
About 30 kids were at the Robinson property on remote Bleak House Road in Earlysville, Va., when police arrived about 11 p.m. after receiving a call about underage drinking. Many of the kids scattered into the nearby woods after one of them yelled, “Cops!”
The couple initially were charged with 16 misdemeanor counts, but seven of the partygoers had no alcohol in their systems. Of the nine who did, all were below the legal limit for intoxication…
If my son is going to drink anyway, this is how I would want him to be drinking.
Yes, they provided alcohol to minors. (Our society does a pretty good job of that too, doesn’t it? We stand on the sidelines and wet our free-market pants cheering as alcohol manufacturers glamorize the consumption of alcohol, and market it to our kids.)
But they seem to have provided a safe environment for responsible drinking. I have to agree with Kelly. I really don’t think they deserve to go to jail for 27 effing months.
And I think Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney James L. Camblos III, who prosecuted the parents and said it was “the worst case of underage drinking he has had to deal with in 15 years”, ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. If there’s any justice in this world, he will never be elected to any public office he may aspire to.
What a pity that most TV networks will never broadcast the story of Elisa Kelly and George Robinson (and certainly not sympathetically). What a pity that most Americans will never hear their story. What a pity that most Americans will never be exposed to this debate.
Certainly not the way we were exposed to the debate about whether a billionaire heiress convicted of drunk driving and then found repeatedly driving without a valid license should or should not have been sentenced to jail for 45 days.
jopy wrote:
I think these kids should start a website so people can contribute to their well-being. If you ask me, the sick persons here are the prosecutor and judge. Unbelievable.
Posted 11 Jun 2007 at 6:34 am ¶
C. Jensen wrote:
In Denmark teenagers aged 16 can go to the city hall and obtain and ID-card, which enables them to buy any kind of alcohol on their own.
And we have no lower alcohol consumption limit, which actually means that children aged down to about 10 years have been sighted in parks and at the beaches drinking alcohol.
The large amount of teens, who are drinking, has not resulted in a massive number of alcohol-related deaths.
The 16 year limit was in fact introduced in an effort to reduce the number of DUI-incidents and it have worked. Because teenagers know how to drink before they obtain a drivers licence they are not surprised by the effect of alcohol.
Our limit regarding DUI is now 0.05 for all people. It was lowered a couple of years ago because we began to import work labor from Sweden where alcohol is hard to obtain at all and having people driving without knowledge of alcohol during their upbringing would result in an increase of deaths on our highways.
The danish roads are safer than ever and the primary cause is the our new drivers know that drinking and driving can not go together.
Posted 12 Jun 2007 at 10:50 am ¶
David Chapa wrote:
I really think this is horrible. Is there anywhere we can write the family and boys and offer at least some financial assistance if not some moral support?
Posted 12 Jun 2007 at 10:56 am ¶
sarabeth wrote:
Elisa Kelly is in this jail:
Albemarle Charlottesville Nelson Regional Jail
160 Peregory Lane
Charlottesville, VA 22902
I’m sure you can write to her there, and offer both financial assistance and moral suport.
Posted 12 Jun 2007 at 11:59 am ¶
Jimbo Jones wrote:
I’m baffled !!!
In the US it seems you can enlist, carry weapons and fight wars from age 17 but you are not allowed to drink until you’re 21 – did anyone ever suggest a change in antiquated laws..?
Posted 12 Jun 2007 at 1:00 pm ¶
Heamish McBeth wrote:
This is totally outrageous…
Parents getting 2 years in jail for PREVENTING young kids driving while intoxicated while a stuck up cow (I will not mention any names, but initials are PH) get 45 days (or was it 3 or 23..?) for actually driving while intoxicated…
The guilty ones are the judge and prosecutors – NOT the parents who acted responsibly…
Yet another example of draconian laws not fitting the crime(s)..
Posted 12 Jun 2007 at 1:21 pm ¶
T. Widmer wrote:
Is this story really true? I can hardly believe it, even if I know that there are some strange laws in the USA. In Switzerland it’s allowed drinking beer from the age of 16. The biggest problem we have is that the shop assistants are selling alcohol without asking for the kids age, but that isn’t punished very hard.
Posted 13 Jun 2007 at 4:15 am ¶
David Pritchard wrote:
The comparison with PH is not relevant because it’s a different state, different laws. Don’t forget, the US is not a single jurisdiction with a single set of laws. It’s like comparing sentences passed in Poland to other passed in Denmark.
On the other hand, it’s an insane sentence really, but it’s much more about puritan social attitudes than the prosecutors. They merely reflect society at large.
Posted 13 Jun 2007 at 6:01 am ¶
Mark C wrote:
In other news articles, there is a better reason to understand the sentence. The woman bought $340 worth of alcohol for the party. Quite a bit for 20-30 kids. She lied to other parents and said no alcohol was being served. She’s lucky noone died of alcohol poisoning. 2 years? Sounds about right.
Posted 15 Jun 2007 at 8:43 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
so ugly intolerance now has a face. or at least a screen name.
you clean missed the part where only 9 out of 30 kids were drinking, and “all were below the legal limit for intoxication”, huh?
(ugly intolerance is usually based on ignorance)
it’s preposterous that Kelly could have laid out $340 for alcohol for 9 kids. so maybe $340 included all the food too? (in my experience, a little common sense goes a long way. not just in reading blogs, but in life too.)
Posted 16 Jun 2007 at 5:15 am ¶
Aron Zaltz wrote:
I beleive this is a heinous injustice. Puritanical arbitration has stolen a responsible mother away from her family. How does one create a petition?
Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 11:32 am ¶
sac wrote:
Hey, I missed this one!
The sentence is harsh, but she should be prosecuted. She apparently lied to the other parents and provided substances which were illegal for 16 year-olds to consume. I have a very relaxed attitude towards alcohol consumption, but if I sent my kid to a party where adults were ostensibly chaperoning, I would have a different mindset than if I knew my kid was at a house party where no adults were present. If I found out later that I had been lied to about the environment I was dropping my kid into, I’d fucking sue.
Now, if they had been up front about it and I knew these people, I’d most likely let my kid go to the party.
Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 12:27 pm ¶
sarabeth wrote:
BBC featured this story today on the World News program today.
Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 3:21 pm ¶
C. Overgaard wrote:
I do not understand your laws.
In Denmark we have no lower limit for alcohol consumption and a 16 year limit for alcohol purchase. Our youth has to go to the city hall once they turn 16 in order to obtain an ID-card, which confirms the age in shops. We are talking of access to al kind of alcohol, not only beer and wine.
Why do we have such laws? Because we wanted to lower the number of DUI conviction and not least the number of people killed on our roads. Our strategy is an success if you count 73 people killed due to alcohol related accidents during the entire year of 2006 an success and we are talking of a population of 5,000,000 people.
When does the Danish teens start to drink? According to a study about 20 percent of teens under 15 have been drunk several times before sobering up when they find out what good things in life they miss because they are unable to attend the activities because they are too drunk. In the summer groups of teens aged down to 12 are seen drinking in groups at parks and beaches always with a concerned parent in somewhat distance. Please notice. They are drinking with parental approval because if the parents buy, they can adjust the amount and they can address problems more freely because the teenagers does not have to hide their intake.
That is properly why we also avoid problems like teenage pregnancies and some of the violence. Violence does exist, but the majority of the convicted are people who can not drink due to religious reasons and therefore enjoy social interaction. They become marginalized and angry. Teenage pregnancies are so rare (The average age of a mother, who is giving birth is now late in the 20’s, which cause other problems.) that we even have TV-series about the few.
Our only problem is that we are aware of is the pub-crawling journeys, who are sold all over Europe to Bulgaria. In the future we will inform our youth better, so they know that it is safer to avoid drinking and social interaction, while being on Holiday in another country. Just the last 14 days one Dane aged 17 have been killed because the drug the ice-cubes in the drinks so people are fooled to drink more than there health can take and 4 Danish women had been raped.
I think that your country should see to Europe for strategies and especially give the youth access to alcohol, which is a dangerous product. So dangerous in fact that adjusting to it is something that teenagers should use years to learn about before they can buy it on their own. We have saved 200 lives per year by learning our teenagers of the dangers. Just try to calculate how many lives you could save.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 at 11:54 am ¶