I cut out the following Dear Abby column from a newspaper in April 1984, thought I would share it with all of you.
DEAR ABBY: Recently a 17 year old Florida boy pleaded guilty to possessing hallucinogenic drugs. He also had been charge with violence toward a Miami Beach police officer.
Judge Alfonso Sepe senteced the youth to one year in the county stockade and four years probation. Te comments of the judge so impressed me that I ordered the transcript from the court reporter so that I may read it to my own children.
DEAR MRS. CATES: Rarely do I devote an entire column to one letter, but I agree, this is worth it:
Judge Sepe spoke directly to the youth and said, "Do you know who is going to serve that year? Not you; your mother and father will serve that year.
"That is what's wrong. They get sentenced. They get sentenced for a lifetime. You serve a year, Your body is in the stockade for a year, but their souls are tormented for a lifetime. Why? Because you are a selfish, spoiled boy, that's why.
"There is no punishment in the world that I could inflict upon you that could in any way compensate for what you are doing to your mother and father. I have not spent 5 cents raising you. I didn't know you from Adam. But your mother and father have put their lives, their hearts, their sweat, their money and everything else they have into bringing you up. And now they have to sit in this courtroom and listen to a total stranger who had nothing to do with your upbringing scold you and put you in jail.
"This is at a time when phony kids your age are yelling, 'You adults have your alcohol, we want our drugs; you have polluted this and that,' and all the rest of the garbage that comes out of your mouths.
"If you are sick, a doctor will treat you and he won't be on drugs. The lawyer who represents you won't be high on drugs, and the people in whose custody you'll be won't be on drugs.
"Your astronauts are not on drugs, and your president is not, and your legislators are not. And your engineers who build the bridges that you drive across and the tunnels that you drive through are not on drugs, and those who build the planes that your in and the cars that you drive are not.
"Neither are those who build the bathrooms that you stink up with your lousy, rotten drugs. None of them have been on drugs, and this is because of people like your mother and father.
"But in the world of the future, the same may not be true. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, legislators --- products of the new drug-oriented generation --- may well be high as kites.
"You won't know whom to send your child to, or whom to trust you r life to." Sepe sighed and closed the case file.
"Let's see what kind of world you leave to your children," he said, "before you talk about the world that we left to ours."
My note: I was Barely 18 and a new mom when this article appeared in the paper, it made an impact on me (I'd barely been clean a year) But did you notice that the only one the judge blamed was the kid? Not the media, not the rock groups, not even the parents? He was forcing the kid to take responsibility for his own actions. I always wondered what happened to this guy, did he stay clean, did he get it figured out? Or did he just stay the same?
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