Wisconsin Teens Claim They Stabbed Friend To Please Slenderman: Update

[Karloff]

Wisconsin Teens Claim They Stabbed Friend To Please Slenderman: Update

Update: The Creepypasta community has started a fundraiser in aid of the stabbing victim.

"We, as the Creepypasta Community wish to save this girl's life and prove that the community is made up of strong, sane individuals and not those depicted from the suspects," says Creepypasta in an official statement. "All proceeds will go directly to the family for medical expenses, and court expenses."

The fundraiser is backed by CNN, Inside Edition, YouCaring, and the Waukesha PD. Further details can be found at YouCaring [http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/waukesha-creepypasta-bring-her-back/186588].

"The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live," one of the girls allege.

Two teenage girls from Wisconsin claim they stabbed a friend 19 times on May 31st in order to please the fictional horror icon Slenderman. According to their statement the crime had been planned for months, and the two hoped to become Slenderman proxies, or helpers, as a result. The two struggled to decide who would carry out the deed, and according to detectives expressed some regret for what they had done.

"The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live," said one, as they described what took place. They decided to kill her at a local park [http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/12-year-wisconsin-girls-stab-friend-19-times-23959855], in one of the bathrooms so the blood would go down the drain, but when the moment arrived neither could bring themselves to stab their friend. The actual attack took place some time later, out in the woods; one held the victim down, and both stabbed her and left her to die.

The victim later crawled away and was rescued by a cyclist who found her on the sidewalk. Of her 19 wounds in her chest, arms and legs, one - close to her heart - was a millimeter away from fatality. Her attackers have been charged as adults with first degree attempted Homicide which, if convicted, could mean each spends up to 65 years in prison.

The two would-be proxies became aware of Slenderman through the Creepypasta wiki. According to the statement of one of the attackers [http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/waukesha-police-2-12-year-old-girls-plotted-for-months-to-kill-friend-b99282655z1-261534171.html], they hoped that by becoming proxies they would show that Slenderman really existed. The other attacker seems to have believed that, if they didn't go through with it, "he" - presumably Slenderman - would kill her family.

Creepypasta site admin Sloshedtrain [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sloshedtrain/Fiction,_Reality,_and_You] describes this as an isolated incident, which does not represent the Creepypasta community as a whole. "Our hearts go out to the families affected by this crime," he posts, and reiterates that all works presented on the wiki, including Slenderman, are fictional creations.

"Something like this was bound to happen, considering the size of the Creepypasta community," claims Sloshedtrain. "All it takes is one person to do something insane and radical in the name of someone or something."

Source: Wired [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/two-girls-say-they-stabbed-a-third-in-the-name-of-slenderman/]


Permalink

 

[Renegade-pizza]

As a sterotipycal black man would say: "These girls be cray-cray".

As the middle-class, 21-year old, white male that I am would say: [see above]

Either they're batshit crazy or have less mental capacity than a jellyfish. I'm no fan of horror or the like, but I'm happy that the community manager defended the community.

 

[RJ 17]

Heard about this yesterday from a friend. I'll just file this away under my ever-growing file of "The Human Race Has Collectively Gone Insane" evidence.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Can we take a good hard look at the American healthcare and education systems? Please?

If they won't for children getting gunned down, they certainly won't do it for this. Maybe if her parents were rich...

OT; They have a confession of pre-meditated murder. They're going away.

 

[webkilla]

The fun facts as I've come to understand it:

The girls planned this for almost a year...

They (the parents) allowed 11 to 12yr olds unsupervised access to the internet - and clearly unsupervised access to an internet browser that had no child-safety restrictions on - because I can't imagine any digi-nanny program letting kids near stuff with Slenderman or creepypasta

 

[Stu35]

Seriously, though. Can we take a good hard look at the American healthcare and education systems? Please?

The NRA would argue that if the victim had a gun she'd have been fine, and that spending tax money on healthcare and education is a communist plot which would only lead to more of this kind of thing.



Seriously though, I get very pissed off when people blame their crimes on fiction, it gives the sort of people who want to censor that fiction ammunition to scare the mumsnet brigade into action.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Wow. She survived. That is the only positive from this. Perhaps a good revenge story could come of this. I would happily help!

The slenderman connection is irrelivant, the 2 girls may have had a concious or subconcious real reason to target that girl. One of them most probably is more strong willed than the other, imposing their strange choice of thinking as the way young people do. Without the existance of slenderman, their dubious state of mind would have found a different idol to excuse their release of anger and hate.

Is there actually lore to slenderman at all? I assumed otherwise. I just don't get what the exact details of the girl's thought processes were supposed to be.

 

[gigastar]

So two young girls have basicaly condemned themselves to a lifetime in prison over something that was (to my understanding) not supposed to be taken seriously.

Only in 'murica, right?

Well probably not, last year in London we had an African family torture and execute one of thier daughters because the mother thought she was a witch.

 

[Legion]

Wow. She survived. That is the only positive from this.

Agreed. Hopefully she will make a full recovery both physically and mentally. It's got to be even worse considering they were her "friends". That's quite likely going to make it hard for her to trust people again.

 

[Michael Tabbut]

Seriously, though. Can we take a good hard look at the American healthcare and education systems? Please?

The NRA would argue that if the victim had a gun she'd have been fine, and that spending tax money on healthcare and education is a communist plot which would only lead to more of this kind of thing.



Seriously though, I get very pissed off when people blame their crimes on fiction, it gives the sort of people who want to censor that fiction ammunition to scare the mumsnet brigade into action.

Which will lead to overzealous moral guardians and the oncoming moral panic to ensue.
In all seriousness this is really sad. I'm just surprised that they haven't blamed video game on this one (yet).

 

[Jupiter065]

Only in America would the thought "these young girls thought a fictional character was real" be followed by the though "lets try them as adults".

Kudos to the Escapist for not publishing the girls names, so many other rags seem to think it's ok to violate the privacy of children just because they're allowed to.

 

[Micah Weil]

Wow. She survived. That is the only positive from this.

Agreed. Hopefully she will make a full recovery both physically and mentally. It's got to be even worse considering they were her "friends". That's quite likely going to make it hard for her to trust people again.

Sincerely doubt that she'll ever make a full recovery on the mental side of things. Wounds heal, therapy helps with coping, but the little niggling thought in the back of her mind that's screaming "they did this because...?" is always going to be there.

That's the sort of confusion that'll linger.

 

[jackpipsam]

Normal 12 year olds can tell the difference between stories and real life.

Just browse around DeviantART and it's clear many tweens and young teens are into this stuff.
This crime isn't an issue of age, rather of mental illness.

 

[RJ 17]

The slenderman connection is irrelivant, the 2 girls may have had a concious or subconcious real reason to target that girl. One of them most probably is more strong willed than the other, imposing their strange choice of thinking as the way young people do. Without the existance of slenderman, their dubious state of mind would have found a different idol to excuse their release of anger and hate.

At this point that's just conjecture, not enough details are known about the situation to come to a conclusion like that. Personally, I just adhere to the belief that there are such things in this world known as "crazy people". People that cannot separate fantasy from reality. Is it a bit unfair to call kids "crazy" in that sense? Perhaps, but it doesn't change the fact that they couldn't separate fantasy from reality. And you know the crazy thing about crazy people? They tend to do crazy stuff...like believe they could become Slender Proxies by ritualistically sacrificing some when...

Is there actually lore to slenderman at all? I assumed otherwise. I just don't get what the exact details of the girl's thought processes were supposed to be.

Actually (to my knowledge) there really isn't much lore at all about Slenderman. The details are pretty general in nature. He's supposed to be a mysterious entity that chooses victims seemingly at random to stalk and torment them with visions and nightmares until they go completely insane. He then captures them and drags them off to the woods. What happens from there varies, some are just never seen again, some are eaten and the whole "stalk and torment" thing is apparently Slenderman's way of preparing them to be a meal, and with others he ends up disemboweling them and leaving their innards in sacks hanging from trees. That's...pretty much all there is to the original notion of Slenderman. Certainly nothing about becoming one of his servants by committing human sacrifice. But if one of the girls actually believed that she was being stalked by the creature and had to commit this murder or the Slenderman would kill her family, that just goes towards my notion of "can't separate fantasy from reality".

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Wow. She survived. That is the only positive from this.

Agreed. Hopefully she will make a full recovery both physically and mentally. It's got to be even worse considering they were her "friends". That's quite likely going to make it hard for her to trust people again.

Indeed. I truly feel for the poor girl. Trust is going to be very difficult to gain for a long time, let alone all the other issues that can come from such an attack at her age.
Even with the best therapist/psychologist, she will have a hard time ahead of her.

 

[Arkynomicon]

Wow. She survived. That is the only positive from this.

Agreed. Hopefully she will make a full recovery both physically and mentally. It's got to be even worse considering they were her "friends". That's quite likely going to make it hard for her to trust people again.

She probably wont make a full physical recovery but she might make it through life without too much problems. If anything those scars wont go away.

 

[VanQ]

The fact that she managed to crawl out of the woods after being stabbed is honestly miraculous. It's also really lucky that a passer by just happened to find her. It's sad that this will likely have a devastating effect on her mental state but at least she can live on and her attackers brought to justice.

The fun facts as I've come to understand it:

The girls planned this for almost a year...

They (the parents) allowed 11 to 12yr olds unsupervised access to the internet - and clearly unsupervised access to an internet browser that had no child-safety restrictions on - because I can't imagine any digi-nanny program letting kids near stuff with Slenderman or creepypasta

My 12yo sister has full, unrestricted access to the internet at her home because our parents, and myself, trust that she has a solid head on her shoulders and wouldn't ever pull shit like this. You can't always treat children like some beings of inherent purity that need to be sheltered, you need to treat them like smaller adults that don't have as much life experience as you do. That's how my parents treated me and my sister and I've certainly turned out to be a far more functional member of society than most, considering I'm now a scientist.

Restricting a person's access to the internet is restricting their access to the greatest pool of human knowledge and wisdom that has ever existed. Sure, there's bad stuff on the internet that a child shouldn't have to see, but that goes double for the real world. They usually won't find the really nasty stuff unless they go searching for it anyway.

 

[PirateRose]

See? This is what happens when you "empower" young women. #YesAllWomen

Glad the potential sacrifice lived. Probably wouldn't have happened if the attackers were male. /sexualdimorphism

;P

Seriously, though. Can we take a good hard look at the American healthcare and education systems? Please?

Empower? This is more like what happens when a whole community looks at girls as powerless and innocent. People, especially family and teachers, probably dismissed all the warning signs as just harmless, annoying PMS.

Either mental therapy or even hormonal therapy in the simple form of birth control pills could have prevented all this. But the latter is a whole host of other problems belonging to general social ignorance and attempts at controlling the female gender in a powerless position.

A better healthcare and educational system probably would have recognized the dangers these girls posed.