http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35378669/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

My response on the MSN Newsvine discussion forum is at the bottom of the 2nd page. There my username is Old Timer 882244. My response there may be ***Triggering*** to some.

http://world-news.newsvine.com/_news/201...p=25#discussion

Mark

The 5-year-old little girl he also shot and maimed for life was clearly an enabler and deserved it, I guess? Or no wait, I got it - if this horrible man who is clearly not denying the fact that he's an abuser (due to being dead) hadn't been abusing this boy, the little girl would never have gotten shot. So that's also the father's fault.

Good that you gavea plug for MS. A lot of people would not think about us for potential help.

Mel? I'm not understanding your statement. Could you please elaborate on that?

Mel,
We don't really know what happened, it could have been he was nervous and the girl was close to the father, maybe the girl was trying to protect the father. I believe it was probably an accident shooting the 5 year old. We are also finding out that the father was charged with domestic violence in 2006 but the wife dropped the charges and that the 12 year old boy called the police in 2008 while the parents were fighting.

http://www.whbf.com/Global/story.asp?S=11980245

There is more information coming out about Todd Peak, the stepfather from the grandmother and neighbors.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100212/NEWS/2120371/1001

My favorite (NOT) comment from neighbors is this one....

[quote]Meanwhile, the mother of one of Jacen Pearson's friends also said that the child confided to her son about Peek being mean and abusive. In addition, a Chariton man said Thursday that he witnessed Todd Peek verbally abusing his stepson "to such an extent I had to leave because it was making me angry.[\quote]

Gosh, so I see a child being verbally assaulted and I just have to walk away... WTF??????

I think you are assuming here. You don't know that she was intentionally shot. In fact that the boy was a boy and ostensibly acting out of and in a fearful state and that the girl was leg shot indicates to me it was a stray shot that hit her. The gun may have gone off as he raised it or the old man was starting in on her and that was the last straw for the boy as he shot him standing over her.

We just don't know. I don't understand your questioning the idea the man was abusive since multiple people reported seeing the mental portion of it at least.

Wait - I get it, this is intentional irony, right?



That's an interesting theory - here's another: the kid is psychotic and just decided to shoot everybody. After all, he's charged with the attempted murder of his mother too, and she wasn't ("accidentally") shot at all. You don't know that's not the way it happened, either. Hey, I even got another! Maybe the kid was specifically just aiming for his sister, and the father was trying to get her out of the way when he was shot and killed. Thoughts?

I for one don't buy your "accidental" theory. Men are tall, 5-year-old girls are incredibly short. A missed shot aimed at a grown man isn't going to hit a small child in the leg, that's ridiculous.



That's also funny, because in the first post a news article was linked that only says the grandmother ever complained of "abuse". Further, it's not very specific on what exactly that abuse entailed, so "the mental portion of it at least" is a very loaded statement.

And the information that has been posted since I made my post doesn't really salve my disquiet either. The guy sounds like a royal asshole who might easily have deserved to be sitting in a jail cell for a very long time. He did not deserve to die. I've seen nothing - NOTHING - to convince me yet that I should be dancing on this guy's grave.

I just really don't get the way people think sometimes. Some of you are so quick to make murder okay. It was easy in this case, because someone somewhere deep in the article said "abuse"; but even if that word had never been printed, there's some people who would simply assume that the kid was abused and therefore we should all celebrate the victim's death. Is this sort of thing the result of some people reveling in this kid's actions as a way of vicariously getting revenge on their abusers or something? Not putting it down if it is, just trying to understand it. I would, however, recommend not doing that kind of thing.

But never mind. I'm sure that a month from now it's going to come out that the stepfather was molesting his kids and then you can all pat yourselves on the back for being right. Or it won't, and you can all decide that he was molesting his kids, but that was just covered up by the prosecutors or whatever, and you can still pat yourselves on the back for being right.

I read this thread, the story and the Newsvine comments including Mark's.

It's a tragedy whatever the verdict, and the 12 year old's case is undermined by wounding his sister. He's only been arrested, we'll have to come back to this one at trial.

There is a lot more to be learned about this. I know that the adults in my life did a royal job and not finding out what had been done to me and my brother. For God's sake, a 10 minute physical would have revealed everything (a simple look at my butthole). The sheriff was well aware of enough details to charge for kidnapping but chose to do nothing. I am NOT confident in the police and prosecutors to get it right.

There are two sides, some kids are spoiled and think they are abused because they are being disciplined but then CSA and physical abuse can be hard to uncover.

There are certainly typical signs. A stepfather focusing on a particular stepchild. Subtle disclosure to friends and grandparents who were trying to remove him. While the only abuse disclosed publicly was yelling and some physical, it is hard to tell considering the taboos involved.