Have you heard of SlenderMan?
Me neither but apparently he’s pretty big on the Internet. Two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, from Waukesha, Wisconsin plotted since December, lured and almost carried out the vicious stabbing and murder of a classmate the day after her birthday just to see if they could earn entrance into the mythical realm of the Slender Man. The assailants read about Slender Man online and wanted to join the cult of the Slender Man. To gain entrance, you must kill someone.
The girls invited the victim to their home for a sleepover and then lured her into a nearby park under the guise of a game of hide-and-seek, as children do. All of the people involved in this scenario are 12-year-old children, mind you. Once they had the victim alone in the woods, one held her down as the other stabbed her 19 times, very nearly fatally injuring her.
As a mother, as a human being, I am afraid for this world. I am afraid for my children. I am afraid for all of us that there are children out there who are not only so easily swayed and influenced but have the fortitude and deviousness to carry something like this out. I walk around in a state of fear because I love my children so much and the world has gone mad. I want to encase them in a bubble and shield them from all the crazies of the world; the Morgan Geysers and Anissa Weiers, the Elliot Rodgers and the Adam Lanzas but then I think about the mothers of these children, the murderers.
These mothers who have to live with the loss of their children. Who have to suffer the humiliation and sadness of knowing what their child did to the world. The guilt of living with the what ifs. How do you separate the love for your child, your baby, from the hatred of the crime they have committed? I don’t think any of us could just stop loving our children, no matter how heinous their behavior was. A parent’s love is unconditional and never ending, in my experience. How do they go on, once their child has forsaken humanity in such a vial way?
Then again, maybe these girls are just evil enough to be using all of this as a bullshit reason. Maybe they don’t believe in Slender Man? Maybe they are not as young and impressionable as we might think and would kill for a meme? Maybe they tried and failed and now they are saying and doing whatever it takes to get out of trouble. Either way, three girls lives have been changed forever. The course of their existence is altered. Three sets of parents have to learn to live with what has been done and we all have to face, once again, that no matter how we might try, we cannot truly protect our children from the evils of this world.
3 comments
this is incredibly frightening. I don’t know what to think but I know I will be hugging my daughter tighter tonight.
This is the reason that I thought twice about having children. Other trying to hurt or kill other children makes me sick. I am terrified for my children.
People are being very nasty to their parents saying it’s their fault, for sure they should have monitored their internet activity and keep their daughter away from their passion for dark stuff but I do feel very sad for the parents. It seems they might have, at least Morgan Geyser, some deep mental health issues. And what does the future hold for these parents? Prison visits or mental health facility visits for years and years, they will no longer share a meal with their daughter, she will no longer open presents under the Christmas tree, they will no longer proudly share their pics, they won’t graduate normally, they won’t bring boyfriends at their house, they won’t go to prom… This is so sad.