The Nine Little Dears from Robert Poole Middle School accused in the attack on Sarah Kreager and others aboard a Maryland Transit Administration bus in early December were arraigned in juvenile court yesterday.
Now before lawyers for any of the Nine Little Dears start protesting, I have to make it clear that not one defense attorney used the term "little dear." They did maintain that their clients are innocent - as they well might be - and that the students should be released from home monitoring. The defense attorneys also said they had problems with additional charges being filed against their clients.
In short, the defense attorneys acted like, well, defense attorneys. You can't fault them for that.
So the term "Nine Little Dears" didn't come from any of them. It's my term, and it doesn't just apply to the accused in the Sarah Kreager case. We have in Baltimore what might be called a "little dear" approach to juvenile justice.
There are no "bad" kids in Baltimore, just misunderstood and misguided poor little dears. The little dears are not to be punished for their offenses, no matter how serious. They're to be rehabilitated.
There was nothing in the language used yesterday in Judge David W. Young's courtroom on the third floor of the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center to indicate that we have anything other than a "poor little dear" approach to juvenile justice in this town.
The accused in juvenile courts are not called "defendants." They're referred to as "respondents."
Their lawyers don't enter pleas of "not guilty" for them. They entered pleas of "general denial." A poor little dear can never, never, never be found guilty in a Baltimore juvenile court. "Guilty" is such an ugly word, carrying all kinds of stigma and opprobrium. Such a word is not fitting of one of Baltimore's poor little dears.
So when a juvenile offender is found to have committed a crime - like, say, beating and kicking a woman senseless, and severely enough to break the bones in her eye sockets - we don't say he or she is guilty.
We say the facts were sustained.
Yesterday, most of the defense attorneys were in poor-little-dear mode, with some even insisting that the media refrain from mentioning their clients' names.
"I want to remind the press that juvenile hearings are confidential," Young said after the request. He ordered any reporters present not to print the names of the juvenile defendants. Oops, my bad.
