Sunday, May. 24, 1998

Kids who kill often lack empathy, experts say

No one knows what turns children into killers.

Maybe it is simply rage, out-of- control anger breaking lose after years of suffering all kinds of heartache. Or easy access to weapons.

Perhaps violence at the movies, on television and in the home.

This week, two boys were arrested in connection with schoolyard shootings in Jonesboro, Ark., that left four students and a teacher dead.

The cause or motive of those shootings remains a mystery. The rampage in Jonesboro was at least the third fatal shooting in a school in the past five months.

When children are killers, in the end it is often because a sense of empathy is missing from their lives, experts say.

These episodes should serve as a wake-up call for a nation that comes down hard on children, said Myrna Shure, author of the book `Raising a Thinking Child.' Today there's a sense of zero tolerance in schools and authoritarian discipline in the home. In a country where a first-grader was suspended for kissing and there's little time to talk about emotions, it's no wonder that children feel as if adults are out to get them, she said.

"It's a mean society today," Shure said. "And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better."

Regardless of the children's motives in these killings, kids everywhere can benefit from developing a sense of compassion, experts said.

Children must learn how to empathize, express their feelings and solve people problems, every bit as much as they need to learn how to read and do math, said Shure, a psychologist at Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Philadelphia.

"If those kids cared about their own and other people's feelings, they couldn't possibly have done what they did," she said. "They certainly couldn't have felt the pain of their victims and do what they did."

There's plenty of research that links violence on television and in the movies with aggressive acting out by children, said Marsha Gabriel, director of the department of psychology at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth. When children see adults solve problems with weapons, it desensitizes them to violence, she said.

"We joke about Ozzie and Harriet and Beaver Cleaver, and there certainly are some negatives about those shows, but there wasn't that pervasive violence," Gabriel said. "Now violence often wins in the movies."

But it's not just violence in the media that can lead a child to turn to violence.

Without knowing the personal histories of the two boys accused in the Jonesboro incident, determining what could have led them to becoming so violent is impossible. But clearly they were angry youngsters, as were the two boys involved in school shootings in West Paducah, Ky., and Pearl, Miss., last year, mental health professionals said.

In all three incidents, the boys were described as outcasts. Michael Carneal, who is accused of opening fire on Kentucky schoolmates during a prayer group, was described as being alienated and unhappy, a computer nerd who dressed in grunge and once wore a Twister game mat as a cape.

Luke Woodham, who is accused of shooting nine students in Pearl, was described as a loner and social outcast who wrote in a five-page manifesto that he was not insane but angry.

In Jonesboro, Mitchell Johnson, 13, is described as a troubled boy who had recently begun bragging about involvement with a gang. The other boy, 11-year-old Andrew Golden, was described by one person as "evil-acting."

The desire to be accepted by others can motivate some children to do whatever it takes, experts said.

"This could have been a way to get even, a way to show others that `I am somebody, I exist,' " said Dr. Harvey Micklin, chairman of psychiatry at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.

Children, unable to comprehend why everyone is so mean to them, can end up feeling powerless until one day they lash out.

"It's like a pot of boiling water," Shure said. "Pretty soon the lid pops off."

Adolescents and teen-agers are particularly vulnerable to ridicule from their peers, Micklin said.

"But what makes a kid go out and kill as opposed to going home and crying?" he asked.

The answers are not clear.

Research does show that children who grow up around violence are more likely to act out the behavior they've seen, whether that is physical, sexual or emotional abuse. "We know in families where children are abused, built-up anger is horrible," said Suzanne Barnard, a social worker with the children's division of the American Humane Association.

Often kids abused early in life are likely to have behavior problems because at an early age that's what they saw modeled, Gabriel said

"It makes sense that they use those behaviors later on," she said.

There's no proof that children are born bad, the so-called bad-seed theory that chromosomal abnormalities create antisocial personalities, experts said.

Babies born addicted to drugs can grow into youngsters with serious behavior problems as well as poor impulse control, poor judgment and low frustration tolerance.

Nobody has a definitive answer when it comes to an incident like the shooting in Jonesboro, but there are signs that adults can watch for.

Adults should take children seriously when they appear angry or depressed, or make statements about wanting to hurt themselves or others, experts said. Children who act out in school might also have emotional problems.

Society as a whole needs to pay attention to these children and help them express their feelings openly, experts said.

"We are willing to put all kinds of money into technology and computers that just sit there," said Richard Clayton, director of the University of Kentucky's Center for Prevention Research. "But we have these kids with problems walking in the doors every day and we don't do a good enough job of assessing personality difficulties and the emotional baggage that kids bring to school."

This report includes material from The Associated Press.