This may be stating the obvious, but kids are more than just “stupid” and “immature”. They, like all of us, are in a particular developmental stage depending on their age. So when people say, “the girls should have known better or they are going to learn their lesson,” this doesn’t fully make sense based on that range of development. If anything, the older man, who some have said has PTSD, may have now left the young girl with trauma and a potential PTSD diagnosis of her own. Do we really think she’s going to take anything from this in incident, other than the idea that big, white men are scary? Or will this reinforce the notion for her that men are violent and women have to protect themselves?

So many different ways that this situation could have been handled that might have actually helped the girl/s learn her/their lesson…if there was indeed a lesson that needed to be learned.