The "Slenderman Stabbing"

My hometown has made national news.  And not for anything good either.  In fact, it makes me rather sad.

You may have read the story, after all it is national news.  I wonder if will make world news.

My hometown is Waukesha, Wisconsin (pronounced, "wah-keh-shah").  It is a suburb of Milwaukee, about 30 minutes west or so (with good traffic).

This Saturday, two 12 year old girls decided that they were going to stab and kill their other 12 year old friend.  They had a sleepover at the one girl's house but chickened out about stabbing her while she slept.  The next day they went to the park (which is just down the street from where I worked at K-Mart) and they were going to kill her in the bathroom but chickened out so they went to play hide and seek.  During this game in the small wooded area near the park, one girl pinned the victim down while the other one stabbed her 19 times.  They left her for dead but the girl managed to crawl out of the woods, flagged down a passing bicyclist and is now in stable condition in the hospital.

The reason?

The reason the girls gave the police for the murder was because they wanted to become proxies of Slenderman and to prove that Slenderman is real.

So, who is Slenderman?

There's this website called CreepyPasta.  I actually knew about this website before the incident because my stepdaughter reads stories off the site (of course, she knows that the stories are just fiction but she did not start reading the site until she was older than age 12).  It is basically a collection of horror stories written by different people.  One of the main characters is Slenderman.  Em told me he is oober creepy and she cannot understand why anyone would want to be his "proxy."  The website has issued their condolences and stressed to the readers of the site that it is a collection of stories and non of it is real.

I don't blame CreepyPasta for what has happened.  I do think that parents need to know what their kids are watching and reading.  I also think you need to keep checking to make sure your children know the difference between fantasy and reality.  This applies to TV, movies, video games, the internet and books.  Just because something sounds factual does not make it factual so we also need to help children to understand how to verify if something is real or not.

Anyway, as of right now, the two girls are going to be tried as adults on attempted first degree intentional homicide.  My prayers are with the victim and her family and I wish her a speedy recovery.  I also hope that the two girls responsible get the help and correction that they need.  If there was a mental health issue involved, I hope that it is diagnosed and treated.  I also hope that they come to understand that what they did was wrong and make amends for their behavior (at their time of sentencing, neither showed remorse).

Here's the story: http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/waukesha-police-2-12-year-old-girls-plotted-for-months-to-kill-friend-b99282655z1-261534171.html