by The Register-Guard Staff
Editor’s Note: This story contains offensive language at the end. As a general rule, such language is considered unprintable at this newspaper, but we made an exception with this series. The intent is not to offend or gratuitously shock, but to allow readers to glimpse the kinds of extreme behavior manifested by violent children. Those extremes include cruel and hurtful words as well as violent deeds.
With Kip Kinkel jailed, the dead buried and the worst wounds beginning to heal, one question lingers six months after the Thurston High School tragedy. Why does a boy go so violent?
Investigators didn’t find the usual motives for killing: no robbery, no jealousy, no telling vendetta. The 15-year-old suspect seemed like an ordinary freshman. He came from a good, solid family. His parents were caring and interested in his welfare. He seemed an exception to every hip-pocket rule about troubled kids.
But we all may be looking in the wrong rule book.
Researchers have tracked large populations of kids and studied the few who go violent. Their discoveries have nudged us closer to understanding violence.
Hill Walker at the University of Oregon and Rolf Loeber at the University of Pittsburgh, for example, are figuring out how to recognize violence-bound kids before they hurt anybody, and the researchers are doing it without relying on the hazy cues of poverty, divorce or abuse.
They see a child’s violent future in his own behavior. Aggression begins early in a small number of boys, leading them fist-first through elementary school and bringing them to strong-arm robbery, rape or even murder when they’re teenagers or young adults.
Their behavior gathers momentum. Researchers call this a tragic arc or trajectory to violence.
The findings offer both hope and horror.
If researchers get good at identifying these kids early, they can hope to turn them from committing violent crimes. Their work became particularly urgent this year as six U.S. boys picked up firearms and killed 11 of their classmates.
The horror: Nobody knows for sure how to put a violent child back on the straight and narrow.
A couple of programs largely based on research done at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene offer the country’s best hope of altering a violent kid’s course, but even those programs come with no guarantees. Everything else has failed these kids and their victims.
“This is not,” said Rob Selven, a probation officer who oversees violent juveniles in Lane County, “for the faint of heart.”
Researchers know who does most violence: about 5 percent of all boys nationwide, according to Delbert Elliott, chairman of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.
Girls, by comparison, are much less likely to lash out. For instance, they’re responsible for only about 10 percent of all murders.
Researchers don’t know where the boys’ violent behavior starts, whether bad genes or bad parenting are to blame.
Author Judith Rich Harris wrote the latest remake of the age-old nature vs. nurture argument. In her just-published book, “The Nurture Assumption,” she asserts that genes and peers determine nearly everything a kid grows up to do. Parents have little influence.
She bases her ideas on twin studies, which show that identical twins reared apart are very alike in personality because of their identical genetic inheritance. Further, identical twins who are reared together are no more alike. Therefore, she concludes, nurture doesn’t make much difference.
She dismisses studies showing how parents influence kids by saying that those studies confuse cause with effect. “It’s not that good parenting produces good children,” she writes. “It’s that good children produce good parenting.” In reverse, bad kids produce bad parenting.
In other words, parents aren’t at fault for their kids’ violent, aggressive and out-of-control behavior. They’re only reacting to the horror of their offspring’s preprogrammed behavior.
Some medical researchers are brewing up their own case for genetically determined behavior. In the
past decade, they have announced a dozen connections between genes and how people act. They are zeroing in on brain chemicals, which they believe are controlled by a person’s genes. The chemicals influence the levels and effectiveness of serotonin in the brain.
Serotonin governs the basic human impulses for food, sex and flare-ups of anger. Biologists believe when serotonin is low or improperly metabolized, a person is vulnerable to impulse, including aggression. They’ve developed drugs that affect serotonin, such as Fen-Phen and Prozac, but no cure yet for violence.
They’re unlikely to find one, said John Reid, the executive director of the Oregon Social Learning Center. “They’re nuts,” he said. “Just because it is physical they figure it must be genetic.”
Reid is a self-described “rabid environmentalist,” which means he aligns himself with the nurture side of the debate. He believes a child’s future is heavily influenced by the environment, with the first and most critical environment being the family. The Oregon Social Learning Center pioneered the explanation for how aggression gets started in children. Researchers call it the “coercion model.”
As Reid explains it, coercion is “the dance of all evil,” and here’s how it commonly works: A mom takes her 2-year-old son to a grocery store. She’s stressed and aware that people in the store are watching her; he’s cranky and demands a Popsicle from the freezer case. She says no. He screams so loud and long that she gives in just to shut him up. Coercion, the boy learns, is an effective tool.
“If that cycle really gets going that’s bad news,” Reid said. “He does not know when to stop. He takes everything to the moon. That’s basically the prototype for the rest of his life.”
So between Reid and Harris, nature vs. nurture, the argument turns for another year. Nobody knows for sure why a kid goes violent. Fortunately, the impasse hasn’t deterred researchers from advancing our understanding of how a kid goes violent.
Most researchers leave the argument like this: Genes may predispose a kid to aggression, but the environment influences how genes are expressed.
Armed with federal grants, they’re conducting large-scale studies on generations of children in places such as Dunedin, New Zealand; Pittsburgh and Eugene. They watch as a small number of kids in their samples, about 5 percent, go from bright-eyed toddlers in preschool to hollow-eyed young men behind prison bars. They study the pattern of their lives.
The problems emerge as early as age 2, when the violence-bound kids hit or bite or otherwise force other kids to go their way.
One caution: It’s foolhardy to say every aggressive 2-year-old boy is on the road to murder. Ninety-five percent of them find peaceable ways to get what they want. The difference between normal kids and the troubled few at this age is subtle. One sign: People tend to comment that the troubled boy’s behavior “crosses the line” or goes “over the top.”
Kip Kinkel, for instance, was wild as a little boy, family friends said. At times, he clung to his mother demanding attention. He defied his father in front of his father’s friends. One time Bill Kinkel had to wade into his tennis club pool because Kip refused to get out.
When Kip was still a small child, the Kinkels spent a year in Spain, and Kip refused initially to try the language, bedeviling his parents who were both language teachers. “If he thought his parents wanted him to do something, he would not do it,” a friend said. “The pattern was already well-established.”
Another Lane County boy, 15-year-old S.J. who lives in Junction City, appears to be on the trajectory to violence as well. He and his mother agreed to tell their story on the condition that the boy’s name not be revealed. They hope he’ll change the course of his life.
When S.J. was 3, his mother was afraid to leave him alone in a room with another child because of what he might do. He would bite or kick other kids or would tear into whatever was within his reach. S.J.’s mother was so worried she took him to a pediatrician. “Oh, he’s just a boy,” the doctor said.
S.J. was suspended from kindergarten for disrupting the class and hurting other kids; Kip had to repeat first grade because of his behavior.
Kids on the pathway to violence have early troubles at school, Reid said. In a kindergarten classroom, they disrupt, driving the teacher crazy.
“Nothing is fun anymore because she has to deal with this kid,” Reid said. “The teacher would prefer to get him the hell out of the classroom.”
These kids may be slow learners or they may be academically gifted, either way it doesn’t matter: They lag in their schoolwork because their behavior gets in the way, studies show. In the early grades, teachers hope that the passing months will bring these youngsters enough maturity to catch on and catch up. By third grade, they call in the school psychologist.
That’s when kids typically get a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which is associated with poor thinking skills, opposition to parent and teacher requests, and an acceleration of aggressive behaviors, according to Loeber, the Pittsburgh researcher and a leader in the national effort to identify the course of a violent life. Other special education labels the kids pick up include oppositional-defiant disorder, conduct disorder and serious emotional disturbance.
S.J. was diagnosed as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in third grade and received Ritalin. Within months, his reading shot up three grade levels to put him on par with his classmates. Kip Kinkel didn’t get Ritalin until middle school, and it may be because his parents were educators and would have considered reliance on drugs a defeat, a friend said.
The next stop on the trajectory of violence is schoolyard bully. These kids threaten and intimidate to get their way. Peer rejection begins as early as first grade, ad is decisive by the end of fifth grade.
“Kids don’t like these kids,” Reid said.
So, in middle school, aggressive kids gravitate to kids just like themselves, and then the real trouble begins, research shows. The kids share their interests, which range from fist fights to guns and bombs. Toughness and power are attractive, and so is sex. The kids pool their know-how about renting X- rated videos, signing on to explicit World Wide Web sites and running up hundreds of dollars in 900-number calls before parents can catch on.
“The details of antisocial and other deviant exploits become the main topic of conversation,” said Thomas Dishion, another researcher with the Oregon Social Learning Center, “and discussion of such topics tends to receive high rates of reinforcement from other group members. It is this process we have dubbed ‘deviancy training.'”
In the teen years, researchers are increasingly confident in their ability to predict who will become violent, as long as they have an accurate picture of a kid’s lifelong patterns. By then the teens have rounded the top of the trajectory and begin the fall.
When Kip Kinkel attended Thurston Middle School he had a circle of friends with a lively interest in bomb building, some of his friends said. By eighth grade, he acquired a fascination with guns. As a high school freshman, he liked to show off the firearms he purchased both with and without his parents’ permission. He told friends, classmates and bus riders all about this. He even wove his knowledge of guns, bombs and killing into his school work.
S.J. got so interested in guns that he rented a hunting video and watched it over and over, his mother said. He admired an older brother whose ambition is to join the military to be a sniper. He made a couple of pipe bombs in his room, although he didn’t have a chance to arm them before his mom discovered them.
She explicitly banned all weaponry from the house. She made a list: no guns, no knives, no bombs, no handcuffs, which she hung on the refrigerator next to the family chores list. She routinely searched S.J.’s bedroom and says she’ll continue until she ceases to find another scrap of contraband.
An early arrest, no matter for what, is a clear sign that a boy is approaching violence, the studies show. Both Kip and S.J. were arrested for violent offenses at age 14. Kip was caught shoving a rock off a Central Oregon overpass onto a car; S.J. smashed a classmate in the face with his fist.
Another certain sign, according to the research: Kids on the trajectory usually get suspended or
expelled from school for carrying weapons or fighting. Of the 62 violent kids Rob Selven has helped in the 2-year-old Violent Offender Treatment and Rehabilitation program in Lane County, almost every one has a history of fighting at school. Eighty percent are boys.
By this stage, school officials are uneasy about keeping these kids in the classroom, even when their suspensions or expulsions have run out. They scramble for off-campus placements.
For 15 years, school districts from across Lane County have been sending about 40 of their hardest cases each year to west Eugene to attend the Lane School, which is operated by the Lane EducationService District. When the Lane School is full, the districts give kids home tutoring, usually for an hour a day. A one-on-one work session with a teacher is a boring prospect to many.
“They say, ‘I’m out of here’ and good riddance,” said Bruce Smolnisky, a top-level administrator for the Springfield School District. “We don’t go looking for them.” The district was part of a countywide group searching for a solution, but the group hasn’t found one yet.
By the time kids quit school and start hanging out, often on the downtown Eugene mall, they’re out of control and dangerous, said Michael George, who was the Lane School administrator until this fall when he took a similar post at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. They join like-minded friends and begin a succession of criminal acts. “You just hope to God they don’t kill somebody, or themselves, before they get caught,” he said.
Even at this point the kids don’t look like monsters. Like Kip and S.J., many wear their hair neatly trimmed. Like most middle and high school kids, they wear T-shirts, windbreakers and tennis shoes.
Under the right circumstances, they can be polite and even endearing.
Conan Wayne Hale, for instance, was a favorite student at Lane School. Then 14, he thrived under the school’s regimen for structure and affection.
Teacher Sandy Lesch said the staff admired the boy’s spirit and courage. At the time, Hale’s mother was a binge drinker who would hit the boy, so he avoided home for weeks at a time. “He lived under a bridge, but he still came to school every day,” Lesch remembered. “He wanted to learn very much.”
The Lane School staff eased him back into the mainstream at North Eugene High School. His Lane School teachers were pleased when he joined North Eugene’s football team. They had hopes for him until his temper flared, and they were afraid, said Geoff Colvin, who was the Lane School administrator of that era.
At Lane School, Hale’s trajectory was clear, Colvin said. Five years later when he was 19, Hale ended up at a remote log landing where he executed three Springfield teenagers: Kristal Bendele, Brandon Williams and Patrick Finley. Now at 22, he awaits his own death by lethal injection.
“He was a time bomb,” Colvin said. “We can tell these kids are dangerous but we don’t have any place to put them.”
Kip Kinkel appeared to be in an explosive state for at least six months before he opened fire in the Thurston High School cafeteria, killing two classmates and wounding 24 others. The evidence comes in bits and snatches of conversations his parents had with friends and others in the last months of their lives.
They were terrified about Kip getting his driver’s license. They were afraid he would purposely run somebody down. The Kinkels were wrong only about their son’s method, according to police. Officers say Kip shot his father and mother, and then drove himself to school the following morning without any trouble.
The news of the Thurston shooting sent a chilll through the people around S.J. When the bullets flew, S.J. was at home; he had been suspended from school for carrying a knife. People called the superintendent to complain that S.J.’s mom left the boy unsupervised while she taught. Her boyfriend confided fears for the family’s safety. Even S.J.’s mom grew uneasy.
S.J. had been on a bad streak. Besides carrying a knife, he had hit a classmate in the face so hard that he hurt his hand. He felt the violence was justified. He said the kids at school hated him. “They’d kick me around, and then I’d blow up and they’d wonder why,” he said. I didn’t touch anybody the whole year. I was tired of it.”
Within a few weeks, police arrested S.J. in the parking lot of a Junction City church. He had a stapler and a sheaf of handmade hate posters, covered with swastikas and words such as “die niggers, die jews, die gooks, die gays.”
A policeman told the story in his official report: S.J. was caught before he could hang the posters. The policeman sat him down and told him the words would have disturbed the town.
That would be a thrill, S.J. told him.
S.J. was having trouble at home, too. In the past year, he chocked one of his sisters during an argument. He exploded recently during a pillow flight with another sister.
She threw a pillow and accidently grazed his eye. He picked up a full can of soda pop and pitched it at her head. Cola flew all over the living room.
His anger was sudden, his mother said, and his lack of contrition complete. She never could get him to understand why throwing the soda might be wrong. S.J. continued to explain and justify: The pillow hit his eye. His sister made him mad.
“You took it 10 times too far,” his mother said.
“And so I’m evil?” he said, insolently.
“No, not evil,” she said.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1998, The Register-Guard, www.registerguard.com.