Excerpt from an article in the May 12, 2006 on-line edition of the Arizona Daily Sun (Ken Bennett is Mitt Romney’s Arizona campaign co-chair):
PRESCOTT (AP) — A judge on Friday sentenced the son of Arizona Senate President Ken Bennett to 30 days in jail and his fellow counselor to 45 days for a series of hazings at a youth camp near Prescott last June.
Clifton Bennett, 18, and fellow counselor Kyle Wheeler, 19, admitted to abusing 18 boys ages 11 to 14 — who had been hand-picked for a weeklong leadership camp — by poking them in the rear end with broomsticks, a flashlight and a cane as a punishment or just because they were in a bad mood.
The boys wore underwear or swim trucks at the time of the "broomings," records show.
Records also show Wheeler choked many of the boys until they passed out as a game.
…
The sentence was handed down after an emotional day of testimony by victims' parents and the families of the defendants.
More than a dozen victims' parents spoke, calling the hazing sexual assault and molestation despite findings by state experts that there was no sexual intent behind the "broomings."
…
Bennett and Wheeler had each been charged with 18 counts of kidnapping and 18 counts of aggravated assault. Bennett was allowed to plead guilty to one assault charge while Wheeler pleaded guilty to two charges. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.
.....
Wheeler and Bennett apologized in court.
…
Dale Motcheck, [a victim's] father, said he had mixed feelings about the apologies.
"Wheeler was so sincere, I was moved by him," he said. "But Bennett sounded almost scripted and it didn't sound sincere. He was being told what to say and exactly how to say it. [emphasis added]"
…
When reporters caught up with them, the elder Bennett said his son had made an unfortunate decision. When asked how he felt about the sentence, Bennett said: "How would you feel if your son were going to jail?"
Gee, I don’t know, Ken –
how would you feel if your 11-year old was restrained, choked and assaulted by a camp counselor?
As every parent knows, if your child makes it to adulthood without a felony conviction, it’s likely due 90% to the grace of God and the child’s own good decisions. Your contribution as a parent is 10% around the margins, where maybe you helped the good decisions along a little bit by teaching accountability early on.
So when your three-year old pushes someone off the merry-go-round, and the victim shoves him into the dirt in retaliation, you don’t yell at the victim. You pick your little sinner up, dust him off, give him a hug, and suggest (in age-appropriate words) that if he doesn’t want to go through life getting the living crap beat out of him, maybe he should respect other people’s personal space.
And when your 10-year old gets an “F” for cheating on a test, you don’t sue the school. You take away her phone and her computer and affectionately let her know that if she ever wants to see them again, she’s going to be spending some quality alone-time studying for the next test.
And here’s what you don’t do – when your son brutally traumatizes a bunch of 11 to 14 year-olds, you don’t whine about the sentence. You are down on your hands and knees begging forgiveness from the victims, for maybe having failed to meet your obligations as a parent.
But the overlords of Happy Valley – whether it’s a college campus or the state of Arizona - never teach this kind of accountability to their children because they don’t face it themselves. Their money, their connections, their fame, their manipulation of the system mean never, ever having to say they’re sorry and actually mean it, let alone pay an appropriate price for what they do.
I don’t want these people anywhere in or near the White House. Because they are the kind of people who will steal your children’s clean water for their fracking profits. They will let your children go to bed hungry and come to school hungry, so they can get another $150,000 off their taxes. And they will send your children to die in Iraq, or Iran, or wherever the next trumped-up conflict is, so they can continue to profit from war.