Mother Says Son Attacked As 'Jesus Hater'

KIROTV.com ^ | September 28, 2004

[Horatio Gates]

Woman Says Boy Targeted Because She Is A Witch

TACOMA, Wash. -- Police are investigating an attack on a middle school student as a possible hate crime because the child's mother says she is a witch, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported.

The 11-year-old boy was walking home from Jason Lee Middle School in Tacoma on Monday when a group of children allegedly called him a "Jesus hater", threw rotten apples at him and shouted profanities, said Kathie McKnight, the boy's mother.

McKnight, who said she is a practicing Wiccan, said her faith made her son the target of a hate crime.

"He was calling my son 'Jesus hater' and saying all witches should be burned right before the apples were thrown at him," she said. "So it was very much based on religion."

A Tacoma police spokesman told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News the case is being handled by the department's hate crime specialists

[Horatio Gates]

Do yourself a favor -- make yourself a mug of chamomile tea, then go down to Costcos warehouse and buy yourself a crate of hankies.

LOL I'll pass on the hankies but thanks for the suggestion! I hate the lines at Costco. What I'm getting at is this kid's "mom" is creating problems for her kid. So much for a normal childhood. This kid is doomed for this kind of stuff

[P-Marlowe]

VILLAGER #1:

We have found a witch. May we burn her?

CROWD:

Burn her! Burn! Burn her! Burn her!

BEDEVERE:

How do you know she is a witch?

VILLAGER #2:

She looks like one.

CROWD:

Right! Yeah! Yeah!

BEDEVERE:

Bring her forward.

WITCH:

I'm not a witch. I'm not a witch.

BEDEVERE:

Uh, but you are dressed as one.

WITCH:

They dressed me up like this.

CROWD:

Augh, we didn't! We didn't...

WITCH:

And this isn't my nose. It's a false one.

BEDEVERE:

Well?

VILLAGER #1:

Well, we did do the nose.

BEDEVERE:

The nose?

VILLAGER #1:

And the hat, but she is a witch!

VILLAGER #2:

Yeah!

CROWD:

We burn her! Right! Yeaaah! Yeaah!

BEDEVERE:

Did you dress her up like this?

VILLAGER #1:

No!

VILLAGER #2 and 3:

No. No.

VILLAGER #2:

No.

VILLAGER #1:

No.

VILLAGERS #2 and #3:

No.

VILLAGER #1:

Yes.

VILLAGER #2:

Yes.

VILLAGER #1:

Yes. Yeah, a bit.

VILLAGER #3:

A bit.

VILLAGERS #1 and #2:

A bit.

VILLAGER #3:

A bit.

VILLAGER #1:

She has got a wart.

RANDOM:

[cough]

BEDEVERE:

What makes you think she is a witch?

VILLAGER #3:

Well, she turned me into a newt.

BEDEVERE:

A newt?

VILLAGER #3:

I got better.

[Boiler Plate]

"It's a fair cop"

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"Buring at the stake was a European tradition."

But think how much closer we'll get to old Europe if we adopt their traditions. Maybe Chirac, Schroeder, et al will love us then.

[Indrid Cold]

"Any erudite wiccan conservatives out there care to set me straight?"

Most of us have already deserted this forum.

The kids probably knew about it because Mom was shouting it from the rooftops--typical for someone just coming out of the broom closet.

Wicca is a religion, albeit a self-made one, in many cases. There are "denominations", you might say, which follow traditions and use common rituals, but a large percentage of us take Wicca to be a "some assembly required" religion, and fine-tune it to suit ourselves.

I guess I would consider an alternative lifestyle to be something which a person would be drawn to out of curiosity, be that S&M or joining a biker gang. Wiccan rituals, OTOH, give a religious "high", and a sense of communing with the divine. Even a sense of a higher purpose, and a moral code, of sorts.

Not like there aren't Wiccan nutbags. There are plenty. Just like there are plenty of Christian nutbags.

Indrid Cold
Pawnbroker. Gun Dealer. Wiccan.

[BBT]

And here in the Seattlestan area, we send out the CBS news team and try to turn them into victims.

[Delta 21]

What makes you think she is a witch?

[Levy78]

You're cool!.... seriously!

[Capriole]

I agree. Kids don't call each other things like "Jesus hater." At this age they call each other far more obscene things. They do harass each other on the way home from school--my ten-year-old regularly gets into it with other kids--but religious differences aren't an issue because frankly, at that age, kids hardly know the difference between Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, American Indian, Hindu, and Shintoist, all of which they have at our multiculti neighborhood school. Anyway, what kid is going to have rotten apples in his lunch? And where would rotten apples come from at this time of year, when apples are just ripening? The whole story is fishy.

I think this is a lot of self-dramatization on the part of the boy's mother or the boy himself. Kids make things up, too. I'll bet the kid got into a fight due to some perfectly ordinary personality conflict and they've blown it up into a hate crime.

I'm going to think up some new religion I can belong to so I can claim victim status and file suit every time somebody looks at me the wrong way. Might make some money.

[DugMac]

Maybe they should move to Salem

[Horatio Gates]

Thank you for your candor. My experience w/ wiccans has been limited to rebelious teenagers. Your 4th paragraph wasn't exactly what I had in mind re: alternative ( a bit extreme) but would it be fair to call it non-traditional religion?

[Feiny]

Pawnbroker. Gun Dealer. Wiccan.


You don't read that sign off every day.

[festus]

I was just trying to "reach out" to our european allies..... ;-)

[Indrid Cold]

"...but would it be fair to call it non-traditional religion?"

According to some, Wicca was invented in about 1957 by an English perv/occultist named Gerald Gardner. According to others, it has existed in an unbroken line since Europe's pagan days. Then there are the Heathens, who usually bitterly resent being lumped in with Wiccans and pagans, who research ancient texts and try to recreate our ancestral religions as they were 1,000 years ago or more. I tend to believe the Gardnerian-invention theory.

Nevertheless, it does work (if "work" is defined as "giving people something to believe in and providing a moral code" or "asking your gods for something and they give it to you".

Believe me. I'm as tired of meeting high-level magicians that work in the video store as you are.

[Horatio Gates]

"Hate crime" is a ridiculous concept

I agree. I hate to be cliche, but your singing to the choir :) The motive is the basis for adjudication not the actual crime.

[Gargantua]

It is indeed a (false) religion, and one of many tools of Satan, used for seducing the lost from the one true path to salvation in the Blood of Jesus Christ.

;-/

[Indrid Cold]

"You don't read that sign off every day."

I've led an interesting life.

You also don't read it every day because this is the first time I've posted on FR in 9 months or so. I've been irritating people at LP lately.

Just give me a windmill--I'll joust it! I swear I will!

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Has anyone suggested that Momma Witch beat the boy herself, and then came up with this story to garner publicity?

I too smell a rat. I'm not buying it.

[hosepipe]

ADV: For Sale... Aswip 2000 Flying broom.. w/ viberator
call: (666)345-6789

[It's me]

Hey, here in America we hang our witches. Buring at the stake was a European tradition.

Hey, I thought we drowned them.

You know tie them up and throw them in the river. If they survived, they were a witch. If they didn't, then ooops, they weren't a witch.

A little skewed in thinking but, hey we're talking 1600's here.