I accidently came across a very disturbing video of teen girls beating up on another teen girl on YouTube.

Another teen, this one a male, pointed out that the girls were charged as adults and challenged that.

The teen in the second video is struggling with the ethics behind this video and the proper response from the State. I completely empathize with the struggle this teen is facing. I am struggling too.

But, having been involved in public political blogging for awhile, and reading callous responses from people who dehumanize others in order to justify unjustifyable war, I can see these teens are taking their queues from adults.

What is the proper response from society? First teach that we must respect one another as human beings, and that there are boundries in our relationships with others; one of which is that we do not do violence to others.

Now my ethical quandry comes because I want to completely ensure that we're being just when charging teens as adults. First of all, I do not believe teens are adults and that they, even though generally rational, often make irrational choices that rational adults certainly do not make.

I remember a case when a girl who was severly abused by her father burned her family's house down, resulting in the death of several members of her family. She was charged and sentenced as an adult. I disagreed with that ruling and sentencing, and still do; I have inside information into how much she had already reached out for help from the State and from non-profit orgs claming to want to help her... to no avail. She was an abused teen who felt she had nowhere to turn for help, and so took matters into her own hands; though, certainly, her choice was wrong.

The teen girls, in this case, faced no such dilemma. They were girls who wanted to "dominate" and chose violence as the way to do it. I agree they should be charged as adults. The crime they committed was not only intentional, it was maliscious and evil.

Having said that, I still think our judicial system often makes wrong choices about whether to try juveniles as adults or as kids, as in the case I mentioned of the girl who was abused.

To the person who posted the second vlog I embedded, you know what these girls did was wrong and you're their age. If you know it was wrong, those girls who committed the assault know it was wrong. And this attack was a completely callous and maliscious crime. So... they should be tried as adults.