VIRGINIA: ONE KID'S STORY

Troubled youths deserve attention

We don't pay attention to young black males such as Sean Guerrant until it's too late.

Today, Sean, 16, sits in lockdown facing up to 40 years in prison convicted of a group beat-down that left a 41-year-old man dead. On top of the pure senselessness of the crime add the outrageousness of its motive: The victim owed one of his young terrorizers $5. Sean said he didn't take part in the attack; he was just there. But in Virginia, just being there makes him just as guilty.

I don't know Sean. Not personally. But he embodies the dire reality of large pools of young black males. Boys in search of an identity and looking, usually among the wrong people, for a place to fit in. Understandably, if a teenager is at the scene of such a vicious crime -- whether he threw a punch or not -- the public isn't going to shed any tears for him.

Yet, if we as a community have any hope of reducing youth violence, of keeping our neighborhoods safe, of saving boys like Sean, we must reach them long before they land where he sits now. "We need strong women, strong parents, strong leadership," said Carl Taylor, a youth violence expert at Michigan State University. "We need to stop being spectators in this nonsense. We're afraid of kids." Most kids don't just wake up one day and decide to kill somebody. Most don't wind up in a group that beats a person to death.

What happened to Sean? He was born to a father who didn't know he existed. The father, Jessie Calloway, said he was in prison serving time on a drug charge. Sean's mother is in prison. The boy spent his early years with his elderly maternal grandmother.

After leaving prison, Calloway said he decided to turn his life around. He cut lawns for a while and now is a machine operator. Calloway said be brought Sean to live with him when the boy was in grade school. He attended Roanoke Academy for Math and Sciences. Sean didn't like school and wanted to stay home. Although he would act out in school, his father remembered one teacher with whom his son connected. Calloway couldn't remember her name. "She really helped Sean out a lot. She understood Sean."

As the boy got older, he started skipping school. Calloway worked second or third shift. When the father confronted his son about his truancy, "he wouldn't say nothing," Calloway recounted. "He didn't want to listen to nobody. He just didn't want to be there." About three years ago, Sean's aimlessness led him to a group of boys, his father said. "They just corrupted him."

Last September, Sean was convicted for reckless handling of a firearm. A month later, he was convicted for cocaine possession. In November, Sean was charged in the death of Kevin Henderson. Last week, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. Calloway said that at different times, he went to authorities and social services to get counseling for his son, but to no avail.

Last fall, the week before Sean was involved in the beating, Calloway said he again sought help. "Sometimes," he said, "the system needs to listen to parents." Taylor, the youth violence expert, said the services and programs meant to help kids like Sean "have been cut to the bone." But changing these kids' skewed values demands more than government input. It requires a community that cares about kids long before they get to the point of no return. Those adult saviors used to be in the form of what Taylor called "the middle person."

Now, too often, "There is no middle person," he said. "We used to have an older brother, a neighbor, somebody in the church." That person would steer a child straight if he or she wasn't listening to parents or wasn't getting good advice at home. That middle position has been assumed by the neighborhood drug dealer or thug. "There's no sense of moral outrage," Taylor said, adding that no one is telling kids, "Beating people up is stupid. More important, morally, look at what you're doing to another human being.' " One life ended -- and another is changed forever -- all over a lousy five bucks. We need to start paying attention before it's too late. For the Sean Guerrants of the world.

For all of us.

Shanna Flowers
14 June 2007

http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/flowers/wb/120577

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