Beating casts spotlight on parenting, too

Who hasn't heard, or seen, it by now?

Six teenage girls repeatedly punched, kneed, and slapped 16-year-old Victoria "Tori" Lindsay from Lakeland, Florida, for at least 30 minutes and refused to let her leave the home in which the felonious assault took place.

They also video taped the attack, but I dare not replay the savage beating on iAMrj.com.

Watching or even thnking about this "animalistic attack" moves me to tears and stirs deep within me the kind of indignation and concern that only a loving parent can truly feel.

What if one of my daughters was attacked like that?

And, yes, what if one or more of my daughters partipated in such a crime!

There's no way I can watch the ghastly video without contemplating both scenarios. Our world is in deep trouble, not only because "it could happen to you and yours," but also because sometimes the culprits are mine and ours.

The mother of one of the accused said the victim deserves some blame because of something she wrote online.

"I just don't see why she would do that, if she didn't have the nerve to back it up," said mother Christina Garcia.

Blame MySpace, modern technology, popular music, and the movies, if you will. But this kind of callous parenting also victimizes and desensitizes children as much as anything else.

It's an indictment of our nation's priorities that so many children stand to be charged as adults and have never seen one in their homes.

iAMrj * richard jones

Written on behalf of all loving fathers

Dear Daughters of Men,

Like a loving mother, a loving father's heart's desire and prayer to God is that each of his children will remain perfectly healthy while growing in love, gaining in wisdom, and living life to the fullest. In other words, we not only want the best for our children, but the absolute best for them in all aspects and dimensions of life.

Yet, we know that this isn't a perfect world. So, you are bound to meet your fair share of challenges, adversity, trials, and tribulations. Thus, we also pray that, regardless of what comes your way, you will always maintain your dignity and self-respect, be empathetic and just in your dealings with others, strive to be a positive presence in our world, rise far above self-pity, self-loathing, and self-destruction, and not settle for anything less than honesty, genuine friendship, and mutual adoration and passion in your most intimate relationships.

We also want you to always remember that, not only is "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," but it's more important that you behold your own beauty regardless of what others' eyes may see. So-called standards of beauty are subject to shift with the winds of social change; and, even worst, these specious standards are constantly used to bludgeon masses of human beings into objectifying the bodies, hating themselves, and emptying their bank accounts.

Indeed, it's such an ugly thing that's done with beauty in our world that the only way you can consistently maintain your self-confidence and self-respect is through unyielding self-acceptance. Love yourself and you will have taken the first step, indeed the greatest step, to experiencing true love to fullest extent humanly possible.

Sincerely,

iAMrj * richard jones
"The proudest father in the whole wide world!"