According to this Dakota County Criminal Complaint, an Eagan man beat his son repeatedly with a belt across several parts of his body before the son ran away in the middle of the night after the son was found chatting online with a female friend in a way which his father found unacceptable.
From the complaint:
Duane Robbins, hereinafter defendant, told police he had taken his belt to his thirteen year old son after learning the child had been expressing his love and talking in a sexual manner via email to a fellow classmate. He explained he had folded the belt over into a strap and struck the child at least a dozen times around the chest and arms. He said he did this because he had reached his breaking point. He said, “I put some marks on him because I was hitting him with a belt.”
Police eventually made contact with the thirteen year old child. The child admitted that after he was punished by defendant, he left in the middle of the night. He said he had been punished because he had been online the previous evening talking to a female friend. He indicated that defendant punished him the previous evening by whipping him with a belt. He said he was struck multiple times on both arms, his legs, and his chest. The child sustained several marks on his arm and chest reportedly as a result of being struck by the belt.
Do you think this was the first time the father beat the son with this belt or was this simply the first time the child ran away prompting police involvement? The complaint doesn’t say but where would the kid go in the middle of the night when it was in the 40s and raining? What would you do to your 13 year old had you found them having an inappropriate discussion with another teen online? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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October 30th, 2012 at 3:01 pm
First beating? No way, just the first time the kid finally said enough. At a minimum a closer look needs to be taken on that family.
The content of the sexual chat would need to be reviewed to get a sense of what action to take. At that age, and if both the kids are at that age, I wouldn’t be particularly upset, it would be more of what type of frank discussion needs to happen. i.e. you know that everything you and your friend say over the internet might be around forever, do you even understand what you were talking about, and do you want to be a daddy in 9 months?
Assuming the same age, my gut says the girl may be playing around with the boy a bit. At 13, guys are pretty stupid when it comes to women, and women tend to be a couple years ahead (in maturity).
Another question might be, if you catch your son having such a conversation with a girl, would you bring this to the attention of the girls parents? Would you want the parents of a boy to tell you about the conversation your daughter was having with their son?
Either way, making a big stink out of it is almost certainly the wrong way to deal with it. No need to make another set of adults with screwed up sexuality issues.
October 30th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
The father is clearly a moron who is incapable/nondeserving of raising a child.
October 31st, 2012 at 8:05 am
devil’s advocate….it might be as simple and clear as an abusive father. However, what if the boy was sexually harrassing or threatening the girl? Maybe that doesn’t give the father the right to beat the boy, but we don’t know the whole story here. We want to assume it was a nice, sweet 13 year old boy with a crush (might have been!), but it could have been something completely 100% different than that and a father trying to stop something horrible from progressing?
October 31st, 2012 at 8:07 am
Sal,
That could be, however, would physically assaulting the son really stop that from progressing? Devil’s advocate here on your DA: wouldn’t that teach the boy that physical violence against another is acceptable when you don’t get your way? You know, “teach that bitch a lesson,” type mentality?
October 31st, 2012 at 8:19 am
I agree, Bill. It was not the right way to handle it no matter what happened. I should have left out the word “MAYBE” from my comment. But just saying we don’t know the whole story, or if the boy was doing something innocent and dad is a freak, or if the boy was doing something truly horrible and dad made a very bad judgement call in how to handle it.
October 31st, 2012 at 4:15 pm
We know the dad was wrong. We don’t have enough info to judge the boy.
November 1st, 2012 at 8:12 am
Sandy, I agree, and not judging the boy. The multiple recent news stories of teen boys raping/murdering little girls had led to a very long conversation with someone about a week ago about what parents could (or could not) do when they see early signs of problems at home with their sons and violence and/or inappropriate sexual behavior or even observation of inappropriate things via internet. We talked about the warnings Ted Bundy gave before he was executed about boys being exposed to violent pornography during puberty and how it effected him, etc. Very hard questions, very disturbing stories. Then I see this story, and certainly on the surface it seems like an abusive father, plain and simple. But (probably WRONGLY on my part) it made me wonder if maybe, just MAYBE the dad found something bad going on and was trying to find a way to stop it (in the WRONG way). Children’s access to very inappropriate things on the internet is a big problem as a parent. So, don’t take it the wrong way, not judging the boy, just wondering more about the “bigger picture”. Mikeh’s comments about creating another adult with screwed up sexuality issues is very valid, but how does that stop? The selling and glamorization of sex and the way we try to hide sex from the kids makes it even harder to figure out, it just makes them go to their every day source of information for answers, which is, of course, the internet. So, not judging, just bringing up more questions….
November 1st, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Sal, you’re right; the kid could be heading down a very dark path, or he could have been innocently sucked into some naughty talk by a more mature girl who was out to catch a boyfriend. Or maybe the dad has some sort of twisted religious belief about boys and girls talking at all, and the kid’s communications were just a simple friendship thing that went against a fanatic’s weird rules.
Point remains, we don’t know enough about the situation. I just hope the kid gets what he needs to be successful in life.
November 1st, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Agreed. Sad story either way, isn’t it? It’s a timely topic that led to some discussion in my household. It was a constant struggle trying to figure out how much restriction to put on our child (now 20) about internet, myspace, facebook, etc.