Some EXCELLENT news about my niece's alcohol poisoning encounter!

[thewayne]

Apparently the police are taking this quite seriously! The kid whose house the party was at has been in jail since the incident with something like 15 felony counts! His parents are/were in Mexico and he was "with" his aunt and uncle, but apparently had been continuously raising hell. When the police contacted his aunt and uncle, they said to cart him off!


My niece is still fine and fully recovered, I guess. My sister and her hubby apparently have been giving my two older nieces fairly free reign, probably because my sister thinks that our folks were far too strict on her. Well, as Debora said, karma can be a bitch and they are reigning in some of those liberties.

Comments

[quasar273.livejournal.com]

BLAAAT. You have hit one of my hot buttons. The correct form for these common metaphors is "free rein" and "reining in." It's about horses, not about kings. Please correct this error immediately.

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that your niece is better, AND that the twat is getting what he deserves. Seriously, this is one of the things that is able to turn me into bloody killer wug, spiking drinks...

And on that note, I don't quite understand her parents now. I do understand they are worried and want to protect her daughter, but a spiked drink isn't something you take voluntarily. So I don't see how reining in her liberties is making sense here, a good advice of how to prevent you drink spiked, AND PRESSING CHARGES, seems more in order.

Maybe I'm still too much on the daughter side myself. ^^'

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

This is strictly my opinion, but I think it's more of a not trusting her judgement for some things. It's sort of a Catch-22 situation (a book that I HIGHLY recommend). Like the people who won't date because they got their heart broke once. Guess what? That's a risk you've got to take if you want to meet your mate. Same thing with friends, you pretty much end up trusting them until they cross the line, and that line can end up being drugs and death.

Ridiculous that people can act like that. Know someone for eight years, presumably trust them, and have them either participate in, or actually instigate, drugging someone.

I don't have enough direct contact with my sister to know exactly what is going on. I wish that I had more info, sadly I do not.

As far as restricting liberties, it's a fine line that parents straddle between too few and too much. My sister had a very poor relationship with my parents when she was a teen, she felt persecuted, and I can assure you that she wasn't (I'm eight years older and I was living in the same house at the time, so I can bring a somewhat more perspective to bear). So she probably gave them some very liberal freedoms because of her perceived injustices, especially considering today's climate (the envinronment of 'she gets to stay out till 1am on the weekend, why can't I?' sort of thing). The problem is, when you're young (and this will probably catch you because it is a broad, sweeping statement) and still in your late teens/early 20's, you probably don't have the best judgment and perspective on people and life. Heck, I don't need to give you examples, I'm sure you can pull plenty out of what you've seen in your friend's behavior around you.

People are frequently stupid and uncaring. But heck, the young don't hold a monopoly on that behavior.

The point is, that parents should restrict their children to allow them to build up what you hope is good judgment. Sadly, our environment is such that you are not really required to take responsibility for your action, someone else is always the responsible party. But when those actions can lead to tremendous harm or even death, there may not be anything the parents can do to further protect the child. "He's just a bad kid." Heaven forfend the parents actually taught him anything resembling reasonable judgment and morals!


Anyway, I'm rambling. Just got up, need to get some breakfast into me. Too many hot button topics in this for me, especially since it was my niece that was a victim.

[askshana.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad she's doing better and that the police are taking this seriously.

Did they ever figure out exactly what happened? I mean did she actually wind up drinking more than the one alcoholic drink (because of the spiking?) Or was it something about the spiking ingredient that gave her alcohol poisoning?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I have no further details. Apparently she continued drinking after the drug hit her, and since there was only a little over an hour between when she arrived at the party and was taken to the ER, she had to have been drinking hard liquor. She also reportedly was stumbling into things, my sister said she had a big lump on the side of her head from falling or stumbling into something.

[donkey-hokey.livejournal.com]

I'm glad she's OK, and I'm glad the slimebag is sitting in jail. My guess is, based on the aunt and uncle's reaction, it's not the first time he's done nasty things. There's no easy answers, but at least he won't be preying on any more girls for a while.

I hope there's lessons learned for everybody, and at the same time I hope the lessons learned don't result in overcompensation to avoid future trouble.