“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”

My friend EdWonk likes to post the occassional "wanker of the day" story, but since he is on vacation, I hope he doesn't mind if I borrow his little descriptor for this story. Of course, "wanker" implies that he just participates in "self-abuse," but THIS piece of sludge-- he deserves to be thrashed.

You have to read this to believe it. The bastard.

A Hazelwood man who injected his teenage sons with heroin and cocaine in 2005 was sentenced Thursday in St. Louis County Circuit Court to 10 years in prison.

The father, Stephen Pickle, 39, of Hazelwood, said he gave his children the drugs so they would understand how he felt when he did the drugs himself, according to court records. His youngest son also contracted hepatitis C as a result of the injections. His sons were ages 12 and 16 at the time.

Pickle pleaded guilty April 26 of five felony counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of possessing drug paraphernalia.

Pickle stood emotionless Thursday alongside his attorney, Joel Schwartz, while Judge Emmett M. O'Brien handed down the sentence.

Prosecutor Teresa Bomkamp delivered harsh words to Pickle, who showed no remorse.

She called Pickle's conduct "cruel, thoughtless and completely incomprehensible." Bomkamp said Pickle "destroyed the childhood of both his sons. The oldest is now a drug addict; the youngest is with his mom" trying to get his life back together.

Pickles' oldest son, Douglas Pickle, was first injected with drugs in 2005. Bomkamp said Douglas Pickle's whereabouts are now unknown. The younger son, Ryan, and his mother have moved to outstate Missouri.

Stephen Pickle also injected his daughter with drugs in 2005, Bomkamp said, but he was not charged with that because the daughter was 18.

Four of the criminal counts involve Ryan and say he was injected with drugs between March and Oct. 21, 2005. The incidents took place at Ryan's grandmother's home in north St. Louis County, at a location at Washington Street and Interstate 270 in Florissant and at Stephen Pickle's apartment on Elm Grove Court in Hazelwood.

The fifth count involved drug injections of Douglas at Stephen Pickle's apartment in June 2005.

After Ryan Pickle told his mother and then police in the fall of 2005, Hazelwood police searched Stephen Pickle's apartment and found drug paraphernalia such as vials and syringes, authorities said.

Stephen Pickle, a postal employee for 14 years before his dismissal last year, refused to talk to Hazelwood police when they confronted him about the allegations.

In the interview with Luzette Wood, a caseworker at the Childrens Advocacy Center of St. Louis, Ryan Pickle told her that he was told by his father, "If he allowed his dad to inject him, Ryan might understand what it was like to be him."

His dad introduced him to heroin injections "as a way to come down without coming down," he told Wood.

Ryan said they washed the needles several times between injections but apparently not enough because his dad had hepatitis C and Ryan now has it as well, Wood reported.

Stephen and Lisa Pickle divorced in 1992, Family Court records show. Lisa Pickle got physical custody, but both parents got joint custody. Stephen Pickle was ordered to pay child support of $904 a month.

In September 2005, Ryan Pickle had disagreements with his mother and moved in with his father, court records indicated. He returned home in late October and later reported the drug use to his mother.

In court filings, Bomkamp said she had given the defense 294 pages of medical records involving Ryan from St. John's Mercy Medical Center, and listed the boys' sister as a witness along with James Barton, a friend of Stephen Pickle's.

Bomkamp said in an interview Thursday that Barton was present when Stephen Pickle injected his children.

Bomkamp told O'Brien at the sentencing that Pickle "was a drug addict who dragged these little boys down with him."

"Boys that age are supposed to be throwing a football or going fishing with their dad or doing the things sons do with their fathers," Bomkamp said. "He had a duty and obligation to protect them. Instead, he decided to take them down with him."

Hmm. One child with Hepatitis C. One child an addict and missing. Nearly all the time, I don't buy that whole "I am a victim of addiction" thing, because the person making that claim CHOSE to take the substance to which they then became addicted. But these two boys? No. When I think of wonderful people I know who can't have children, and then I think about this piece of putrescent possum-droppings..... And what idiot judge gave him joint custody?

This guy? Prison's too good for him.

2007 Blog Against Sexism Day

She kept coming to school with bruises, a black eye, scratches on her arms. She was sixteen years old-- and she was being beaten by her boyfriend. Her seventeen year old boyfriend.

They were both students of mine at one time or another. I had known him first-- he was a little bitty guy, a good breeze would have blown him over. In fact, at one point, the counselor had asked me to keep an eye on him for an eating disorder. His clothes were your typical dark, baggy, studded affair-- sk8r boy stuff. He liked to wisecrack, didn't like to do classwork, and was often late after making moon eyes in the hallway at this girl whom I didn't know. He was basically harmless. I would see her in the hallway and say, "Hello, reason-why-Sk8ter-Boi-is-always-late!" and she would grin and wave.

LSS, he got his F and moved on. Then, the next year, she was my student. She was very intelligent, but wasn't in any honors classes, which I found odd, but when I asked her about it, she just shrugged and said she didn't have time. At the beginning and end of class, there was Sk8r Boi. I kept wondering how he could get there so quickly, so he could escort her to class and from class. I later discovered that he did it often by skipping his class that hour, so his principal asked me to detain him one day. After he served his time in on-site suspension, I noticed that she would just hang around and chat until he got there. Then, about mid-October, he suddenly disappeared, and she told me he had dropped out.

I didn't really notice anything seriously odd until a couple of weeks later, when she came to school with a serious black eye. Luckily, I had a student teacher, so I asked him to take over the class. The second she stepped into class, I steered her right back out into the hallway, sat her down in a desk that I keep there, folded my arms, and waited. She looked everywhere but at me, and then finally, in a rush, it all came out. If she didn't do everything just as he said, he'd pull her hair, punch her repeatedly in the arm, pinch and twist her tricep. It had started out playfully, of course, and she didn't think too much about it, but soon the pokes got painful, the hair pulling actually caused dozens of strands of hair to come out. The night before, they had been in her car, although he was driving, and got into an argument. He had pulled her seatbelt tight and pummeled her head up against the window over and over again. He may have been a little runt that most adults could have broken in half, but he knew where to hit to inflict the most damage. She halfheartedly asked me not to tell anyone. It was a pro forma request, because I am not known for just sitting around and letting stuff like this happen, and she knew it.

So down we went to see the police officer stationed on campus, and got her counselor and her principal involved, as well. She had turned her cell phone off, and the cop told her to turn it on. There were eleven messages from him in voicemail, and he called while she was still in the cop's office, although she didn't answer. The messages were pleading with her to call him and saying how much he loved her, at first. The last messages proclaimed that she was an ugly, ignorant bitch and she'd better call or else, because she was NOT going to ignore him.

Her parents were called in-- of course they had had no idea. She had always been a clumsy child, so the little scuffs and bruises they had seen until then hadn't drawn attention, and they hadn't seen her go to school that morning. They were stunned, to say the least. They were urged to press charges, and agreed. The police left school and went to his house to talk to him, but he wasn't there, and his parents claimed he didn't live there any more. He was seen in her neighborhood later that night and arrested. His parents immediately bailed him out.

I'd like to say that was the end, but she forgave him, and began dating him again as the weeks went by. She kept talking to me, though, and I kept trying to make her see that she could never change him, that she wan't responsible for him, that he would never stop hurting her whil he thought he could get away with it-- and I made sure she understood that I knew what I was talking about, as my parents had had an abusive marriage. "You can only control yourself," I told her. "You can't make other people treat you right, or really love you. But you can control whether you allow yourself to be in a situation where you could be hurt-- or even killed."

Finally, he broke her cheeckbone and a couple of her ribs. This time he left town, and no one could find him. But no matter what, since he wasn't there, she was safer. He still tried to call her, and left messages saying he was in Boise, or Denver, or Seattle. I didn't care, as long as he wasn't here.

She is now trying to rebuild her life. She's struggled a bit in school, nothing serious, but has eventually gotten her feet back under her, and last semester she posted her best GPA ever. She wants to go to college at a small school in New York state where she has an aunt.

As I became more aware of this problem, I realized this is far from an isolated incident. Girls at the beginning of their dating years are most likely to be victims of this kind of abuse. I am now much more aware of suspicious absences and cuts and bruises.

It would be nice to think that teens could be innocent of this kind of abuse in their own fledgling romantic lives. But even by the age of fifteen or sixteen, some young men (and young women) have learned how to use words and physical force to try to exert complete control over another human being. We, the adults in their schools, who often see them the most in their lives, have to wake up to this potential problem.

Don't be hatin' if you're perpetratin'.

"The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.”-- Horace

Every year you get at least one. A parent or, even better, a set of parents, who are on a teacher like stink on a skunk any time the teacher says anything at all to their Beloved Offspring. Personally, I approach things from the other side-- if one of my kids' teachers has to say something to my kids, I will be quick to spring to action, alright-- to reinforce my disapproval of my kids' action which drew said ire. But que sera, sera-- it takes all kinds of parents to really force a kid to seek therapy later in life.

But this set of parents were not your garden-variety ki-yipers. They would sound perfectly reasonable-- until you actually prevented their kid from doing whatever she wanted to do. Then suddenly, the tone on the phone would turn subarctic and you would be informed that they "really don't appreciate you doing/ saying/ expecting/ refusing permission" to Pweshus, and then they would tell you what you were going to do: "I expect you to take that work/ I expect you to stay after school every day in case Pweshus decides she needs help/ I expect you to email me any time you mark an answer wrong on her homework/ I expect you not to ask her to participate in class/ I expect you to never take any consequences if her phone goes off in class, because it's probably me calling, but even if it's not, we've instructed Pweshus to leave her phone on" blahblahblahblah.

I would always just express my regret that they felt that way and reiterate that I was going to follow my policy. They would continually push, I would pleasantly refuse to engage and visualize martial arts kata in my head to keep from getting annoyed.

They would usually bid me a regal good-bye-- and immediately call the principal and scream at him over what a complete tyrant/idiot/harpy I am. Last month, after we were having one of these cheery little confabs, the mother called the principal and loudly complained that it was obvious I was taking notes during our conversation, and that therefore I must have some nefarious ulterior (pronounced "inferior") motive. Now, if you're hung around here for a while, you will know that I recommend keeping notes of conversations with parents as a bit of posterior coverage which has stood me in good stead numerous times in my career. So yep, guilty. The principal thought that this complaint was particularly hilarious-- after his ear stopped smoking.

And apparently these people were more polite to me than to anyone else who came into even casual contact with Pweshus. The poor principal has been getting daily doses of invective drilled through his eardrum for months now. Always, always, there were excuses as to why Pweshus couldn't do her homework/come to school on time/come for tutoring/get off her damn cellphone/stay awake/manage to be in school any time there was a test.

So during a few tirades, a few kernels of information dropped out that made us wonder: why so paranoid about me taking notes when asking about why Pweshus couldn't get to school on time? Why is it Pweshus never took the bus if her parents couldn't get her here? After all, her address was fifteen minutes' walk away from school.

So some discreet investigation was done, and-- guess what? Pweshus doen't live in our school district-- not even close. No one would have probably ever known if her parents hadn't shown their asses so much. If they'd just been reasonable, no one would have ever realized that two plus two equals several thousand dollars in lost tuition payments charged to non-resident students.

So what is the moral to this story? Don't be hatin' if you're perpetratin'.