commentary by Patrick H. Moore
I’m sure that most of us have been “caught between the devil and the deep blue sea” at one time or another. It’s not a comfortable place and the fear is that if you are trapped in this unwieldy position, you just might make the wrong choice. This is precisely what happened to a troubled 15-year-old suburban Detroit girl who became so enraptured with her wretched 23-year-old boyfriend — whom of course she met online — that she decided to kill her entire loving family in order to be with this criminal.
And if you think I’m being too hard of the boyfriend, whose name happens to be Michael Rivera, you’ll probably change your mind after hearing the details of this story.
Corey Williams of the AP reports that the 15-year-old “girl and her two younger siblings (had been adopted) from Poland when she was 4½ years old. (S)he had been receiving treatment for depression and ADHD.”
“They came from a very, very, very bad background,” said the girl’s defense attorney Leslie Posner. “They were locked in closets. They were beaten.”
So you see, this girl had problems stemming from her early childhood; it is well-known that children adopted from Eastern Europe sometimes manifest a whole array of behavioral problems which probably stem from abuse in their early formative years.
The girl’s parents said she and Rivera were in a sexual relationship. The Associated Press isn’t naming the girl or her family members because prosecutors said they may file sex charges against Rivera, since the girl is a minor.
The parents said the girl met Rivera earlier this year through social media. They said they first learned about the relationship after their daughter ran away from home this summer.
“I think it was a big secret. I didn’t know about him,” her mother said.
Now just consider the dismay this girl’s parents must have felt when they discovered that not only had their daughter run away, but that her object of desire was 23 years old and had either encouraged her to leave home, or at the very least, had acquiesced to her desire to leave home to be with him.
(This is why I’m so thankful that my daughter didn’t do anything really dangerous and crazy during her high school years.)
It’s unclear how or why the 15-year-old returned home, but return home she did, which ultimately brought things to a head in such dramatic fashion that no one in this beleaguered family is ever going to be quite the same.
During the days leading up to THE CRISIS, which occurred last Friday, the child and her adult companion apparently decided that the only way to ensure that their “true love” could proceed in a smooth and unruffled manner would be for her to KILL her entire family. To that end, on Friday (with, according to the prosecutors, the BF outside the family’s Plymouth Township home sending her text messages), the child allegedly “stabbed her brother in the throat and tried to stab her younger sister. The boy was treated at a hospital.”
(It’s unclear exactly how the teen was subdued after stabbing her brother.)
“He was using her to do his dirty work. She was under this man’s spell,” the girl’s mother told reporters after the hearing. “She’s never been violent in the past. We had no clue this was going to happen. She’s getting psychiatric counseling. She’s on medications. We’ve done everything in our power to help her.”
The girl is naturally facing adult charges and they are very serious: assault with intent to murder and conspiracy to commit murder, to be precise. At her hearing on Thursday, she wore a red jail jumpsuit. Her parents were in attendance and she reportedly “made eye contact with her parents several times during the hearing.”
The girl’s parents said they are supporting their daughter despite the charges. Her mother addressed the court saying: “Your honor, we have a very strong bond with our daughter.”
Bond was set at $1 million, an issue that will probably be addressed at the child’s prelim which is scheduled for Oct. 31st. The judge did say that if she is released on bond, she will not be allowed to have any contact with her siblings and must wear a GPS monitor at all times.
Michael Rivera’s bond was also set at $1 million. He faces the same charges as the girl, plus a felonious assault charge and possibly an additional charge for having sex with an under-aged girl.
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It’s natural to feel some sympathy for the girl considering the fact that she reportedly suffered severe abuse at the hands of her biological parents in Poland. On the other hand, the fact that she made at least an initial gesture toward killing her entire family, starting with her brother, does not cast her in a positive light. Still, to try this obviously troubled child as an adult is absurd.
The fact that her parents are standing by her is very encouraging and hopefully will have real impact as her case proceeds.
Just as I suggested earlier that we consider the dismay her parents felt when she ran away to her “adult” companion, I also invite you to consider the conflict the child must have felt being “stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea” – the “devil” being the boyfriend and the “deep blue sea” being her life at home with her parents and siblings but without Michael Rivera.
It’s a curious fact of human existence that conflict seems to rear its ugly head over and over again as we struggle through life. In fact, it seems in many ways to be the essence of our existence. Crime — in its appalling darkness — is an extreme manifestation of this conflict.