I still don't get how, if he was essentially (mostly?) pardoned because his parents were unfit and coddling idiots, are they not being held accountable? And the mother went on the run with him after, with four people dead and how many more hurting for a long time.
I still don't get how, if he was essentially (mostly?) pardoned because his parents were unfit and coddling idiots, are they not being held accountable? And the mother went on the run with him after, with four people dead and how many more hurting for a long time.
Assholes.
The parents essentially were held accountable via their pocketbook. Most of the accident victims' families sued the parents. Because Couch was driving a truck that belonged to his dad's business, they were able to sue the business too.
A few months ago a co-worker shared an article with me that give me a lot more insight into this crazy family. "Dysfunctional" doesn't even begin to describe these people. Here's the article from D Magazine: http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2015/may/affluenza-the-worst-parents-ever-ethan-couch?single=1 It's too long for me to quote here but it's a very good read. The reporter researched it well. It includes a photo of the flipped over pickup that Couch was driving.
Among many of the people interviewed for the article is the psychologist who used the term "affluenza." He very much regrets using it, since it was seized on and regularly misconstrued and quoted out of context. It was not meant as a justification for Couch's actions but a description of behavior that is common throughout the U.S.--well-to-do teens who have plenty of money, access to drugs and alcohol, and are used to doing as they please without any real consequences. What makes this case stand out is the number of deaths and severe injuries.
I still don't get how, if he was essentially (mostly?) pardoned because his parents were unfit and coddling idiots, are they not being held accountable? And the mother went on the run with him after, with four people dead and how many more hurting for a long time.
Assholes.
The parents essentially were held accountable via their pocketbook. Most of the accident victims' families sued the parents. Because Couch was driving a truck that belonged to his dad's business, they were able to sue the business too.
A few months ago a co-worker shared an article with me that give me a lot more insight into this crazy family. "Dysfunctional" doesn't even begin to describe these people. Here's the article from D Magazine: http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2015/may/affluenza-the-worst-parents-ever-ethan-couch?single=1 It's too long for me to quote here but it's a very good read. The reporter researched it well. It includes a photo of the flipped over pickup that Couch was driving.
Among many of the people interviewed for the article is the psychologist who used the term "affluenza." He very much regrets using it, since it was seized on and regularly misconstrued and quoted out of context. It was not meant as a justification for Couch's actions but a description of behavior that is common throughout the U.S.--well-to-do teens who have plenty of money, access to drugs and alcohol, and are used to doing as they please without any real consequences. What makes this case stand out is the number of deaths and severe injuries.
I thought that was called "priveledge"?!?
I only just recently found out about this case. Kids going to do prison time. His delusional mother is too.
What I'm curious about is if this kid is so out of touch and sheltered that his mom HAD to be with him in Mexico.
Also this kids life is full of pore decisions, I hope he makes better ones along the way.
That D magazine article is amazing. Upsetting. But great. Why can't the "parents" be put in prison? Forever?
(Fred is the father in the article, Ethan is doing well at this private school.)
"One day, when Ethan was 13, Anderson noticed that he’d driven himself to school. She was concerned and talked to Fred about it. The father didn’t react well. “He told me that Ethan was the best driver he knew,” she says. “He was adamant that Ethan was going to drive to school. He believed his son was better. His son was more talented. He was the golden boy.”
Fred told her that Ethan didn’t need college anyway, that he’d take over the family business soon. According to court documents, his response to the confrontation was something along the lines of: “I’ll buy the school.” In the end, Fred pulled Ethan out and enrolled him in a homeschool co-op program in Watauga. But by the time he was 15, he was done with that, too."
I don't think it matters if you call it privilege, entitlement, affluenza, or just spoiled rich kids. I agree, that's not a new phenomenon. What's different in probably the last 2 generations is that there is a much greater percentage of these kids. In high school, most of us probably knew of a handful of kids like this. Now there are huge clusters of them in affluent suburbs. What is also different is that these kids have more access to vehicles, money, drugs, and alcohol than previous generations, which allows them to wreak more havoc. That's what the psychologist at the trial was trying to talk about--not using it as a justification for committing the crimes but describing it as part of a pattern of behavior.
Because he was sentenced in juvenile court. In Texas, juveniles sentenced under the juvenile justice system remain in it through age 18 unless they are transferred to the adult system. The motion to transfer him to adult services had already been filed before any of these recent events happened. He will turn 19 in April and is subject to juvenile justice restrictions until then. Which means that he can only go to jail until his 19th birthday--4 months.
If he's transferred to the adult system, his probation will continue, most likely with restrictions like wearing a monitor but it will be almost as if his sentence is starting over again. If he can't maintain the requirements of his probation until 2024, he can then be sent to prison.
What's weird to me is that if he isn't transferred to adult probation by the time he turns 19, the remainder of his sentence in juvenile court becomes moot because of his age. It wouldn't matter that he'd been sentenced to 10 years probation. He couldn't remain under the juvenile courts because of his age. No one expected him to remain on the straight and narrow for 10 years. It seems clear there was always the expectation that he'd be transferred to the adult system.
The Sad Lessons of the “Affluenza” Teen By Rebecca Mead
In considering the lamentable chronicle of the “affluenza” teen Ethan Couch—which was positioned to be this year’s final tabloid preoccupation until Bill Cosby was charged with sexual assault—it’s been hard to know where to let one’s sense of appalled fascination come to rest. Should it be with Ethan himself, who, in the late spring of 2013, two months past his sixteenth birthday, plowed the truck he was drunkenly driving off a residential road in Burleston, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, and into a knot of people, killing four and injuring nine? Or with Fred Couch, Ethan’s father, a sheet-metal millionaire who raised his son to believe that only little people are required to obey rules, and who reportedly responded to a dispute with the administration at Ethan’s private school by suggesting that he would resolve matters by buying the institution?
Or should it be with Couch’s defense team, who, at his trial, two years ago, invoked the memorable if specious disorder of “affluenza” to characterize Couch’s lack of culpability for his own actions, arguing that his moral compass had been catastrophically deranged by his parents’ permissiveness? Or perhaps it should lie with Judge Jean Boyd, who, upon Ethan’s conviction for a crime that carried a possible sentence of twenty years, sent him not to prison, as the survivors of the carnage he caused had hoped, but to what struck many as an offensively light punishment of a stint at a residential rehab facility, and ten years’ probation?
Or, wait—should it once again fall to Ethan, whose attendance at a beer pong gathering, in apparent violation of the terms of his probation, was captured on video and posted to Twitter earlier this month, prompting him to flee the country? Or should the preponderance of disapprobation be reserved for Tonya Couch, Ethan’s mother, with whom he was apparently living in recent months, and who, after hosting a farewell gathering for Ethan and friends, spirited him off to the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta, where, despite cunning efforts at disguise—Ethan’s fair hair and scrappy beard were dyed dark brown—both were arrested after an ill-conceived pizza-delivery order tipped off the police to their whereabouts?
One needn’t be a mother to find oneself unable to look away from Tonya Couch and to wonder about her actions on Ethan’s behalf. Tonya’s behavior is a delusional distortion of a tendency toward self-sacrifice, a tendency that is usually socially celebrated and culturally approved: that of the mother who would do anything, go to any lengths for her child. Meanwhile, the notion of mother and man-child together on the lam is a grotesque exaggeration of maternal solicitude. (What were the conversations in those rented condominium rooms? What kind of future did this misbegotten pair imagine for themselves, separately or apart?) At a moment when the term “helicopter parenting” has become a familiar critique of those who are reluctant to allow their children to play on the monkey bars without support or fill out their college applications without surveillance, Tonya’s behavior is not so much a watchful hovering but a full-on Black Hawk rescue mission, the Special Forces of maternal instinct fast-roping down to whisk her errant offspring out of the reach of justice.
Couch’s original “affluenza” defense certainly provided an opportunity for outrage: as Time magazine noted in debunking it as pseudo-science, “This is perhaps the first time having too easy a life has been considered a mitigating circumstance.” But a closer look at the history of the Couch family—which the reporter Michael J. Mooney provided earlier this year in his excellent, densely reported cover article for D magazine—reveals its insufficiency even as a way of characterizing the conditions of Ethan’s upbringing. As Mooney shows, Ethan Couch was far from indulged or pampered as a child, despite living in a four-thousand-square-foot house equipped with a pool and playground. Rather, he experienced a combination of neglect and abuse from parents so inadequate to the task of raising him—so unable to set boundaries, or instill morals—that even Roald Dahl might have had a hard time imagining their failings.
A social worker assigned to evaluate Ethan during his parents’ divorce, which occurred when he was nine, noted that “both parents have ‘adultified’ Ethan and have allowed him to become overly involved in adult issues and decisions.” Fred told the social worker that Tonya was addicted to pain medication, and had given Ethan Vicodin. Tonya told the social worker that Fred was verbally and physically abusive to her. The police were called to the home on multiple occasions. Ethan missed fifty days of school in kindergarten, and forty in second grade. After their divorce, Fred and Tonya sometimes screamed at each other in the parking lot of Ethan’s school; on one occasion, the altercation was sufficiently inflamed for the police to be called.
Fred permitted Ethan to drive himself to school at the age of thirteen. Both turned a blind eye to their child’s drinking, and to his driving while drinking. By the time Ethan was sixteen, Tonya and Fred had reunited and moved in together to a newer, larger home, leaving Ethan to spend many nights alone at his childhood home, with only a couch, a bed, an X-Box, and a large-screen TV for company. Police found Ethan urinating in a parking lot late one night; in the truck he was driving, his mom’s, they discovered open containers of beer and vodka, and a naked fourteen-year-old girl. Tonya picked him up, paid the fines he received—for possessing and consuming alcohol—and explained away his failure to complete the community service that was required of him by saying she had misread the instructions. Four months later, Ethan crashed his father’s truck fatally into the lives of Breanna Mitchell, twenty-four, Brian Jennings, forty-one, Hollie Boyles, fifty-two, and Boyles’s daughter Shelby, twenty-one.
G. Dick Miller, the psychologist who used the term “affluenza” in court, has said that he regrets the expression, and has instead resorted to the vernacular: “We used to call these people spoiled brats,” he told Anderson Cooper. The outrageousness of the phrase has had another unhelpful effect, which was to detract from the defense’s more reasonable argument: that Ethan, at sixteen, was not irremediably damaged by his parents, and was still young enough to benefit from therapy. His rehabilitation into a functional, even productive, member of society might be set in motion by his removal from their supervision, rather than by locking him up. Such, at least, seems to have been the motivation of the judge in issuing a sentence that saw Ethan’s ruinous behavior through the prism of his parents’ delinquency.
Having been convicted as a juvenile, Ethan’s punishment for violating the terms of his parole can only be a relatively mild one: he may be imprisoned in a juvenile facility until his nineteenth birthday, in April. But it looks likely that Ethan’s flight to Mexico will have the effect of bringing about the separation from his mother, at least, which was sought at his sentencing, although not in the way the court anticipated. Having attempted to place her son beyond the reach of the law, Tonya Couch is to be charged with “hindering apprehension,” for which she faces up to ten years in prison. “There’s just no chance that she will ever think he needs to be punished or held accountable,” Dee Anderson, the sheriff of Tarrant County, told the Times after the Couches were picked up in Mexico. With her blinkered effort to shield her son from responsibility, Tonya may have performed the ultimate maternal sacrifice, that of taking her child’s burden as her own. It is an outcome that has a strange and sad kind of justice, a terrible termination to the compounded tragedy of Ethan’s pathetic life and his devastating deeds.
The word affluenza traces back as far as 1954, but it was first popularized in the late 1990s with the release of “The Golden Ghetto,” a book by Jessie H. O’Neill, the granddaughter of a General Motors president, on the hollowness of the pursuit of wealth, and by a popular PBS special titled “Affluenza,” which explored the social and environmental costs of materialism.
Since then, the word has found broad use among scholars, environmentalists and some psychologists, although not without skepticism. It is not recognized as a real mental disorder.
“I think it accurately does describe the kid,” said John de Graaf, a co-producer of the PBS show and an author of a book on affluenza, referring to Mr. Couch. “To point the finger at that kid because he’s the most egregious and crazy example of this allows us in some ways to avoid the fact that this is much, much bigger within our society as a whole.”
G. Dick Miller, the psychologist who testified for the defense in the case, later expressed regret over his choice of words to describe the plight of Mr. Couch, whose recklessness left four people dead.
“I wish I hadn’t used that term. Everyone seems to have hooked onto it,” Mr. Miller told CNN. “We used to call these people spoiled brats.”
Great stuff, WP. Reading the New Yorker piece made me think of the Anders Breivik book, One of Us, about the Norway man who killed 77 people. He didn't come from privilege or have a mother who doted on him, but there were red flags when he was growing up. Major red flags. And nothing was done.
You almost feel sorry for Ethan Couch. But then you think about those 4 innocent dead people...
Great stuff, WP. Reading the New Yorker piece made me think of the Anders Breivik book, One of Us, about the Norway man who killed 77 people. He didn't come from privilege or have a mother who doted on him, but there were red flags when he was growing up. Major red flags. And nothing was done.
You almost feel sorry for Ethan Couch. But then you think about those 4 innocent dead people...
Living in the community where it happened, I can tell you that the outrage has been tremendous from the day it happened and only increased after his sentencing. And yes, after learning more about his upbringing, I could almost feel sorry for him because of the waste of his young life. It makes me wonder what he might have become. I don't know if there's anything there worth salvaging now. He is going to be vilified for the rest of his life unless he finds a way to show genuine remorse and make some kind of amends. Somehow, I don't see those things happening.
Like you, I can't get past the lives destroyed by him. Their losses are heartbreaking.
"I slipped and fell into her vagina" That was his actual defense And it worked.
Excuse me I'm going to go jump out the window now.
You know what? I bet that happens a lot!
A self admitted frail guy leaned over a girl to check on her ( or something like that?) and lost his balance. Then, falling, his boner might have bounced up at the perfect angle and slipped in there a bit by accident.
Yah. Yes... for sure that could happen.
Members of the jury should wake up and slap themselves daily for the rest of their lives. Or they should move in proximity to Chadwick and line up on his doorstep each morning. When Chadwick rolls out of bed and gets around to it... he could open the door, apply the slap to each of the idiots, and then get on with his day.
"I slipped and fell into her vagina" That was his actual defense And it worked.
Excuse me I'm going to go jump out the window now.
Well it's certainly more plausible than a virgin birth.
I'm not sure why you're bringing up virgin births right now tbh. Although now that you mention it, wouldnt a virgin birth be entirely possible via artificial insemination nowadays?
But I'm with Thirty. Let's get the slapdown line going.
"I slipped and fell into her vagina" That was his actual defense And it worked.
Excuse me I'm going to go jump out the window now.
Well it's certainly more plausible than a virgin birth.
I'm not sure why you're bringing up virgin births right now tbh. Although now that you mention it, wouldnt a virgin birth be entirely possible via artificial insemination nowadays?
But I'm with Thirty. Let's get the slapdown line going.
I was trying to make a point that if a ridiculous defense like that won over the jurors then I am quite certain that a majority of them are braindead zombies who also believe in the virgin birth. (which back then I am also quite certain artificial insemination didn't exist)
"I slipped and fell into her vagina" That was his actual defense And it worked.
Excuse me I'm going to go jump out the window now.
Well it's certainly more plausible than a virgin birth.
I'm not sure why you're bringing up virgin births right now tbh. Although now that you mention it, wouldnt a virgin birth be entirely possible via artificial insemination nowadays?
But I'm with Thirty. Let's get the slapdown line going.
I was trying to make a point that if a ridiculous defense like that won over the jurors then I am quite certain that a majority of them are braindead zombies who also believe in the virgin birth. (which back then I am also quite certain artificial insemination didn't exist)
So to sum it up Affluenza is bullshit.
Ah Okay. I was not getting that you were referring to the jurors' potential religious beliefs. But yea you have to be either a special kind of stupid or paid off to have quitted this jackass.
I thought this thread was about the influenza kid, not bashing people's religious beliefs. Some people do believe in the virgin birth - doesn't make them braindead zombies.
Did anybody see the 20/20 special the other night about the kid and his parents? They showed all this video of them - wow. That kid never had a chance. Some serious bad genetic material.
I thought this thread was about the influenza kid, not bashing people's religious beliefs. Some people do believe in the virgin birth - doesn't make them braindead zombies.
Did anybody see the 20/20 special the other night about the kid and his parents? They showed all this video of them - wow. That kid never had a chance. Some serious bad genetic material.
It's not about bashing people's religious beliefs but sometimes on AMT you have to have balls and not cowardice to make your point. Is there a person that posts here that believes in the virgin birth? It is about the Affluenza kid and it is a made up syndrome just like religion.
I thought this thread was about the influenza kid, not bashing people's religious beliefs. Some people do believe in the virgin birth - doesn't make them braindead zombies.
Did anybody see the 20/20 special the other night about the kid and his parents? They showed all this video of them - wow. That kid never had a chance. Some serious bad genetic material.
It's not about bashing people's religious beliefs but sometimes on AMT you have to have balls and not cowardice to make your point. Is there a person that posts here that believes in the virgin birth? It is about the Affluenza kid and it is a made up syndrome just like religion.
I thought this thread was about the influenza kid, not bashing people's religious beliefs. Some people do believe in the virgin birth - doesn't make them braindead zombies.
Did anybody see the 20/20 special the other night about the kid and his parents? They showed all this video of them - wow. That kid never had a chance. Some serious bad genetic material.
It's not about bashing people's religious beliefs but sometimes on AMT you have to have balls and not cowardice to make your point. Is there a person that posts here that believes in the virgin birth? It is about the Affluenza kid and it is a made up syndrome just like religion.
Anything you lose from being honest You never really had to begin with.
Sometimes it's not the song that makes you emotional it's the people and things that come to your mind when you hear it.
P. S. I do think that there is someone who may believe in making their points by using just that. I find it odd behavior but it works for them. Could be a made up punctuation syndrome. Yet, I won't judge.
"I slipped and fell into her vagina" That was his actual defense And it worked.
Excuse me I'm going to go jump out the window now.
Well it's certainly more plausible than a virgin birth.
I'm not sure why you're bringing up virgin births right now tbh. Although now that you mention it, wouldnt a virgin birth be entirely possible via artificial insemination nowadays?
But I'm with Thirty. Let's get the slapdown line going.
I was trying to make a point that if a ridiculous defense like that won over the jurors then I am quite certain that a majority of them are braindead zombies who also believe in the virgin birth. (which back then I am also quite certain artificial insemination didn't exist)
So to sum it up Affluenza is bullshit.
Actually 'back then' you could still have a virgin birth without the medical way of artificial insemination. Because this is a family forum, I am unable to be graphic about it, though anybody that understands how babies are made can probably figure it out.
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
Comments
Assholes.
A few months ago a co-worker shared an article with me that give me a lot more insight into this crazy family. "Dysfunctional" doesn't even begin to describe these people. Here's the article from D Magazine: http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2015/may/affluenza-the-worst-parents-ever-ethan-couch?single=1 It's too long for me to quote here but it's a very good read. The reporter researched it well. It includes a photo of the flipped over pickup that Couch was driving.
Among many of the people interviewed for the article is the psychologist who used the term "affluenza." He very much regrets using it, since it was seized on and regularly misconstrued and quoted out of context. It was not meant as a justification for Couch's actions but a description of behavior that is common throughout the U.S.--well-to-do teens who have plenty of money, access to drugs and alcohol, and are used to doing as they please without any real consequences. What makes this case stand out is the number of deaths and severe injuries.
I only just recently found out about this case. Kids going to do prison time. His delusional mother is too.
What I'm curious about is if this kid is so out of touch and sheltered that his mom HAD to be with him in Mexico.
Also this kids life is full of pore decisions, I hope he makes better ones along the way.
How can he only do 4 month's?!?
(Fred is the father in the article, Ethan is doing well at this private school.)
"One day, when Ethan was 13, Anderson noticed that he’d driven himself to school. She was concerned and talked to Fred about it. The father didn’t react well. “He told me that Ethan was the best driver he knew,” she says. “He was adamant that Ethan was going to drive to school. He believed his son was better. His son was more talented. He was the golden boy.”
Fred told her that Ethan didn’t need college anyway, that he’d take over the family business soon. According to court documents, his response to the confrontation was something along the lines of: “I’ll buy the school.” In the end, Fred pulled Ethan out and enrolled him in a homeschool co-op program in Watauga. But by the time he was 15, he was done with that, too."
If he's transferred to the adult system, his probation will continue, most likely with restrictions like wearing a monitor but it will be almost as if his sentence is starting over again. If he can't maintain the requirements of his probation until 2024, he can then be sent to prison.
What's weird to me is that if he isn't transferred to adult probation by the time he turns 19, the remainder of his sentence in juvenile court becomes moot because of his age. It wouldn't matter that he'd been sentenced to 10 years probation. He couldn't remain under the juvenile courts because of his age. No one expected him to remain on the straight and narrow for 10 years. It seems clear there was always the expectation that he'd be transferred to the adult system.
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You almost feel sorry for Ethan Couch. But then you think about those 4 innocent dead people...
Like you, I can't get past the lives destroyed by him. Their losses are heartbreaking.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/british-man-cleared-rape-falling-top-teen-article-1.2467459
As for his excuse, I'm reminded of the Fusilli Jerry episode.
That was his actual defense
And it worked.
Excuse me I'm going to go jump out the window now.
LIVEFOOTSTEPS.ORG/USER/?USR=435
A self admitted frail guy leaned over a girl to check on her ( or something like that?) and lost his balance. Then, falling, his boner might have bounced up at the perfect angle and slipped in there a bit by accident.
Yah. Yes... for sure that could happen.
Members of the jury should wake up and slap themselves daily for the rest of their lives. Or they should move in proximity to Chadwick and line up on his doorstep each morning. When Chadwick rolls out of bed and gets around to it... he could open the door, apply the slap to each of the idiots, and then get on with his day.
But I'm with Thirty. Let's get the slapdown line going.
LIVEFOOTSTEPS.ORG/USER/?USR=435
So to sum it up Affluenza is bullshit.
LIVEFOOTSTEPS.ORG/USER/?USR=435
Did anybody see the 20/20 special the other night about the kid and his parents? They showed all this video of them - wow. That kid never had a chance. Some serious bad genetic material.
Is there a person that posts here that believes in the virgin birth?
It is about the Affluenza kid and it is a made up syndrome just like religion.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
You never really had to begin with.
Sometimes it's not the song that makes you emotional it's the people and things that come to your mind when you hear it.
2016: Lexington and Wrigley 1
- Christopher McCandless
I'm sure that was popular back then.