Kerre Woodham: Easy to despair over bad kids

There are so many good kids, it seems a shame to focus on the bad. But yet again, it's the bad kids who are commanding the headlines this week.

A 16-year-old is in custody in this country, after allegedly stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death outside a hip hop for Christ concert at Avondale College on Labour Weekend.

There are reports from Britain that the youth justice system is at crisis point with so many teens being locked away, justifiably, as a result of their dreadful crimes.

But the piece de resistance was from Australia. A group of Melbourne 16-year-olds is being questioned by police after they filmed themselves performing inhumane and despicably cruel acts and then sold the DVD to their classmates for five bucks a pop.

Incredibly, when confronted over their abuse of a developmentally delayed girl which involved forcing her to perform oral sex, stripping her, setting her alight and then urinating on her, they described their actions as "a bit of fun". A bit of a laugh. What sort of people would find torturing a naïve, defenceless girl fun?

Parents of three of the boys have handed their sons over to police and I can't even imagine what it must be like to know you've spawned a monster. How could you love a child who had committed such a cruel, heartless, evil crime?

And all over the Western world, there are parents facing up to the fact that their kids are failures as humans. Not even under NCEA's easy system would you pass these kids as civilised, fully functioning human beings.

And so the soul-searching continues as we try to understand what motivates a child to take another's life, or to torture a living creature, be it human or mammal, for their own enjoyment.

Do we need a war involving citizen armies every couple of generations or so to legitimise the violence? Do we just accept that sociopaths are a part of every community? Do we throw up our hands at the fallout from our permissive society and demand a return to the time when family, church and state moulded citizens into a one-size-fits-all uniform model?

It would be a shame to go back to the future when so many young people are thriving in a society where diversity, creativity and individualism allow them to reach their potential.

And besides, the 50s weren't just a time of hard-working husbands, stay-at-home wives and biddable children. It was also the era of the Hulme-Parker matricide and the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents after a public outcry over the behaviour of young people in Lower Hutt.

Every era has its monsters but certainly the monsters seem to be growing in number. I don't know what the answer is. I don't know bad kids. I only know interesting, hard-working, fun-loving achievers. Of course they party, but they don't drive drunk, they don't hurt one another, and they don't let their fun interfere with their plans for the future.

If you were in despair, as I was this week, reading of the atrocities committed by the gang of Melbourne youths, google Young Achievers New Zealand and read about all the amazing kids in this country who don't get nearly enough recognition.

We have talented, gifted kids achieving in every sphere, both nationally and internationally, and it would be great to think that one day they'll be getting the headlines, not the aberrant freaks who are featuring now.