What is a Child?

Is a child a child only when he behaves? If a child makes a big mistake, does he lose the right to continue as a child? What happens when he grows up and realizes, in the light that maturation provides, the errors of his puerile ways? If he never has the chance to benefit from that growing up because he has already been stripped of his childhood, then what hope does that man have left?

I re-entered a courtroom for the first time in five years this last week...I was attending the trial of a 14 year old boy being prosecuted as an adult, direct filed into the adult system, facing life in prison.I was that child not so many years ago...sitting in that chair, the chair of the accused, legs and arms shackled to my waist. Deja vu. Now I was watching it repeat all over again.

And yet...the other child. The child for whom society, in its infinite wisdom, considers it justice to sacrifice this child's life in propitiation for the loss of his own. Lex Talionis (the law of the talon) is still alive and well in our hearts, it seems.

The challenge is not to let oneself be ruled by fear. Not to let oneself be ruled by distorted fearmongering. And to let oneself see the child in the child. To see that child in this child. This child in that child. Until we can achieve that level of imagination, of trans-empathy, of grace, we are lost, and because we are lost our children are lost, especially when they make devastating mistakes.

If anyone cares, here is a link to the most recent coverage of the trial:

http://independent.com/news/2007/aug/09/pathologist-describes-stabbing-juarez-prelim/