I browsed through Kansas headlines on google and found a BBC article about Overland Park…the BBC writing about the Sunflower State? Amazing.
But after reading this story…I felt so bad for everyone involved.
An Asian teenager from Overland Park got into an argument with her mom – it got violent and Esmie Tseng stabbed her mom to death. In March, she pleaded guilty to an adult charge of manslaughter. This week, the court sentenced her to more than 8 years in prison.
She’s seventeen years old and she will be the youngest prisoner in an adult correctional facility in Topeka.
According to the BBC and the Kansas City Star – Esmie Tseng had a difficult time with her demanding parents.
“Esmie had for years been wrestling with her feelings for her parents, Chinese immigrants who, she said, held her to impossibly high standards.
They had threatened to sell her piano if she did not win a state-wide competition, she wrote.
She said they had grounded her for scoring only 96% in an exam.
And, when she disappointed them, she said they had forced her to stand naked in a corner.”
(BBC)
I knew grew-up with kids who had demanding parents. In skating, there were times when parents crossed the line between being agressively supportive of their skater and being agressively abusive. One girl in Costa Mesa ended up living with her coach because her mother couldn’t control her temper. And there were other skaters who were not afraid to yell back. How can their parents understand how hard it was to get up and go through another 4 minute program for the third time in the session? How could they understand how hard it was to convince muscles, arms and legs to toss the body into another double axel with the foresight that the skater has a 85 percent chance of falling on the same damn bruise? How could they know what it’s like to be a skater?
I don’t know any family that has devolved into what happend to Tseng and her mother. But I could see how it’s possible.
According to the DA – she’s still a danger to society: “”Hacking somebody to death with a butcher knife is about as serious as it gets. Even though everybody agrees she had been cruelly treated by her mother, it does not remotely excuse the level of violence.”” (BBC)
The prosecutors were determined to try her as an adult, even though she hasn’t finished being a teenager. She’s had a clean record until now. Her family life makes it clear she needs some serious psych help and instead, the DA’s answer is to toss her into an adult prison.
Sounds about typical for Midwestern (or maybe I’m lumping KS with TX) “justice”. If that case were in CA, she’d be in psychiatric facilities instead.