Two young girls cut off a younger playmate's hair. In court, 7th District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen offered to reduce the 13 year old perp's sentence if her mother chopped off her own locks in court, while her 11-year-old coconspirator was ordered to a salon to have "her hair cut as short as his." Hands above the bench at all times, if you please, Judge. [Geoff Liesik at Deseret News]

  • glenn gass

    Whats the Hands comment about? 

    • benher

      I think it’s up to us to … judge.

    • Hobozombie

      I think it’s implied masturbation. 

      Not sure why.

      • That_Anonymous_Coward

        Not helped when the Judge is quoted as telling her to cut the hair a little at a time and keep moving up slowly.

        • Hobozombie

          Well, according to the source you were quoting, that isn’t true is it? 

          According to your post and the news story you were quoting from, “The mother of the “victim” jumped up and complained that it wasn’t enough hair and the judge then asked for it to be cut higher.”

          So I’m not sure where you got “to cut the hair a little at a time and keep moving up slowly.”

          In the linked news piece the judge tells the mother doing the cutting  ”Take a little bit at a time,” in response to the mother complaining that the scissors provided were not up to the job.So… yeah. Weird implication.

          • That_Anonymous_Coward

            Which is how it was reported on other news sites, and as I have continued looking into the case I discovered other reporting that wasn’t done in the Faux News style.

          • That_Anonymous_Coward

            Working as intended, there is a cap to keep the page from becoming 8 screens long of single letter per line responses…

          • Hobozombie

            Your timeline doesn’t seem to match up. See you made the comment about “a little at a time” after posting two links that I assume you read that clarified the story.

            So I’m not really sure where the whole cut her hair slowly thing came from. Certainly not from any article linked here. Even the Daily mail didn’t say it, and they will say ANYTHING.

            Not like it matters though. 

            Edited for spelling. Sort of.

          • That_Anonymous_Coward

            My timeline was a bit fractured as I was doing 4 things at once and read many more articles than I actually linked to. 
            I fell for the Faux News approach from one article and not until several articles later did they mention she was asked by the judge, but it was portrayed differently in different publications.
            I was incorrect.

        • http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

          Not helped when the case is from the home of the sister wives and the kid is just about the right age to be married off to polygamists. 

      • http://benjscott.com thunderhammer

        When I was in middle school there was this running joke where, when the teacher turned the lights off so we could watch some educational video, someone would yell “hands above your desk!” or “lets see those hands!” implying that if your hands were below the desk, you were masturbating.   Someone would definitely yell this if something vaguely titillating was on the screen, or something that would be an especially disturbing source of stimulation, such as a mother baboon nursing her baby.

  • Daneel

    Not to get all cut up about it, but that’s shear madness.

    • Ashley Yakeley

       Fringe cases make bad law.

      • rezme

        But this judge is clearly a cut above the rest…

  • chgoliz

    “I guess I should have went into the courtroom knowing my rights, because I felt very intimidated,” she told the Deseret News. “An eye for an eye, that’s not how you teach kids right from wrong.”

    In Utah.

    Yup, you read that right.

    $50 says she has no idea where the phrase came from.

    • Erik Osterholm

      From the Code of Hammurabi? Why is that relevant to Utah?

    • http://twitter.com/beep54orama B E Pratt

       Eh, apparently most Xtians don’t realize that Jewish scholars tend to interpret ‘an eye for an eye’ as applying to tort law, NOT literally.

  • That_Anonymous_Coward

    Gee because threatening to do something then offering them less if they do something else as well…. huh…

    So this is where the Copyright trolls learned it… threaten people with $150,000 and telling the world they watch porn or they can pay you a couple thousand and make it all go away.

    This behavior does not belong behind the bench.

    “When the 13-year-old faced Johansen for a hearing in May, he ordered she serve 30 days in detention and to perform 276 hours of community service, but he also offered to take 150 hours of community service off the sentence if her mother cut her ponytail in his courtroom.”  The mother of the “victim” jumped up and complained that it wasn’t enough hair and the judge then asked for it to be cut higher.

    “Under state law, judges are given discretion in coming up with sanctions for youth that will change their behavior in a positive way.”

    2 girls 13,11 “cut off” a 3 yr olds hair.  They also bothered another girl via phone.
    30 days in detention and around a month of community service…
    And the 11 yr old has to come back to court to model her hair for the Judge to make sure it meets his approval.

    Hell if they had knocked someone over on the playground they would be headed to the big house in his courtroom I fear.

    The quotes come from the article.

    • mikekstar

      What bothers me more is the fact these pre-teens essentially assaulted a 3 year old child.

      There’s something seriously wrong with those girls.

      While a haircut might make for some good frontier justice, what those girls really need is some psychological counseling.

      • That_Anonymous_Coward

        What bothers me is we do not know how much hair they cut, which would alter the perception of the event.

        They cut off her hair!!!!  vs They cut out a piece of gum vs held down shaved bald vs any other possibility

        Not having all of those details it seems a little soon to label the girls as evil doers who plotted to assault a child.

        • Ambiguity

          What bothers me is that this made it to the courts. In previous times the parents would have worked this out amongst themselves.

          Perhaps the fact that they didn’t/couldn’t gives us some clue as to why this happened in the first place.

          • That_Anonymous_Coward

            The mother of the 3 yr old contacted the police, who decided it was assault and the system worked from there.
            There are pictures of the 3 yr olds hair from before the incident and after it was professionally cut, but not of what it looked like right after the incident.
            The 3 yr old ended up with her hair in what appeared to be a bob cut to the neck, but it didn’t seem to have many thin parts.
            It is possible the girls only cut off a small portion from the bottom and her mother was so distraught it went from there.
            Never going to excuse they 11 and 13 yr old for what they did, but what the response was was well over the top.

      • KMc Stu

        That is the FIRST thing that came to my mind.  Cutting her hair is nothing—I think she needs serious therapy.

        Maybe next time she won’t be cutting a 3 year old childs hair but CUTTING a 3 year old.

        More details:
        11 year old did not know the 3 year old victim before the McDonald’s incident, but befriended her that day before hacking off her hair.

        11 year old also has a history of making eight months of harassing phone calls to a Colorado teenager. The phone calls included threats of mutilation and rape.

        This is obviously a cry for attention and or help.

        • That_Anonymous_Coward

           no the 13 yr old who got cut int he courtroom had the phone calls not the 11 yr old.
          This is why the 13 yr old got strip searched and taken into custody and the 11 yr old got sent home.

  • Nimdae

     Honestly, if I was the parent of the children that committed the act, I would have probably considered the wig chop on my own before going to a courtroom. If kids don’t know there are consequences for their actions, they will not only commit them once, but potentially numerous times knowing they can get away with it.

    As for the hands comment…really?

  • Digilante

     I dunno, sounds right to me. Eye for an eye is the only language that kids understand these days. Pity this had to go to court though – in the old days one parent would call the other, and appropriate punishment would be meted out.

    • That_Anonymous_Coward

      Not having the full background no one knows what lead to the events and what happened afterwards.  The fact the 3 yr old’s mother was quick to leap to her feet in court and complain that the 13 yr old’s hair wasn’t cut enough might explain how they ended up there.
      Courtrooms aren’t like on Judge Judy where you jump up and start complaining.
      It could be the 13 yr olds mom was trying to find a way to appease someone who was unappeaseable.
      Or something else… because we have merely a snippet of the whole case.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Eye for an eye is the only language that kids understand these days.

      Well, given that adults like you make comments like this, what else would they understand?

      • Digilante

         Hence I have no kids.

  • http://twitter.com/RaggleFock Raggle Fock

    I have no disagreements with the sentencing, and have a hard time understanding those who are mustering outrage.

    • http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

      It’s because the punishment is infantile eye-for-eye emotional abuse that will do nothing whatsoever to reform the offender or instil in her a genuine sense of empathy for her victim.

      • absimiliard

        I’m unconvinced one can “instill” empathy.

        -abs can’t prove it though

        • Antinous / Moderator

          When your child does something mean, garner their full attention and ask them how they would feel if someone did that to them. Rinse and repeat. There may be an inborn component to feeling empathy, but training is more important.

      • http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com The Chemist

        I’m not convinced legalized slavery (read: community service, which is labor extracted under threat of violence) is somehow intrinsically more humane than a forced haircut. You can argue both would be misapplied in this case, but if it WAS just community service, there would be no outcry period.

  • danimagoo

    I don’t get the anger at the sentence from some of the comments. What these girls did is bullying. Don’t we want to stop that behavior before it escalates? The punishment seems appropriate to me.

  • cholten99

    The judge is a moron. This is the very definition of “unusual punishment” and as such could have immediately lead to a retrial (at taxpayers expense of course).

    There’s a reason why “punishment fits the crime” sentencing is no longer applied.

  • http://www.facebook.com/peter.rafferty.988 Peter Rafferty

    What gets me about this is that I can view what they did as perfectly normal behaviour for young girls.  Who’s to say they all got together and decided to play hairdresser, then when the Mom saw the 3 year old’s hair she went nuts?  I think that sounds quite likely. 

    • That_Anonymous_Coward

      Sadly it appears this was not the case, I posted links to more coverage of this further down.
      Everyone wants to jump on they did this horrible thing they must be evil miscreants and ignore any other possibilities.

      And the 3 yr olds mom seems a bit… off…

      • Antinous / Moderator

        It sounds like they’re unclear on the boundary between fantasy and reality. Too many makeover shows. It doesn’t sound malicious so much as just really weird.

    • s2redux

      Where have I heard that normal-for-their-age line before? Oh right, when Mitt Romney was studying bushwhack barbering at Cranbrook.

      • That_Anonymous_Coward

        From the details at the top of the story it could have been a peer group the same age playing and one mom went nuts at the results.

        The 3 yr old was not held down and attacked like Romney did to his victims.  Different situations and circumstances.

  • jahxman

    I dunno, I find the 30 days detention more severe than the forced haircut… haircut seems less traumatic to me for a child. All together seems like an appropriate sentence though – this is a significant violation on a small child, and probably would escalate if no consequences occurred.

    I find the mother’s outrage interesting – I wonder what if anything she did on her own before this went in front of a judge?  

    That she falls back on the excuse of “intimidation” instead of taking responsibility for her own decision – because it was her decision to cut her daughter’s hair in court – gives some hint of the problem here. The alternative for her to the public humiliation of cutting her daughter’s hair was a couple more weeks of community service for the kid – big deal.  

    No doubt a lot happens to her and her family that is someone else’s fault. Way to stay on the wheel, baby…

    • benher

      “ haircut seems less traumatic to me for a child. ”

      Take it you have never had a forced haircut? It’s more traumatic than you may realize.

      • That_Anonymous_Coward

        And that trauma might be helped along by a mother completely over reacting.
        People want to think the 3 yr old was held down and made bald… the pictures tell a different story.
        Mind you not excusing cutting someone elses hair, but I think the parents and judge have turned something that could have been settled as something rational into a huge snowball none of them can stop.

      • chgoliz

        I think there’s another facet to this as well: in Utah, at least among Mormons (the majority), women are supposed to have long, uncut hair.  Long hair has significant meaning to them, culturally and religiously.

        In effect, the adolescent girl has been biblically shorn.

        It’s actually a very appropriate punishment within the local community.

        • That_Anonymous_Coward

          So if the local community believes adulterers should be stoned to death its okay?

          This was a court room not the local community passing judgement.

        • Ryan Gregson

           This is not true.  One look at the mormon tabernacle choir should be enough evidence of that. http://www.lds.org/bc/content/church/news/images/mormon-tabernacle-choir-application-article-large.jpg

          • chgoliz

            Dude, I didn’t say every female in the state has long hair.  I just said it’s a cultural norm in the state that people from other parts of the country (or world) might not know about.

      • jahxman

        Fair point, although I could argue that some of the haircuts I received as a child from my mother were forced – I didn’t want them, she did, she won. If they had occurred in front of a courtroom full of strangers, that would have really sucked.

        Anyways, my point was not that the haircut was not traumatic – I think it most likely was – however 30 days detention away from my family in a juvenile correction facility where no one loves me seems more traumatic to me. Perhaps you disagree, as you well might. Ok then.

  • That_Anonymous_Coward

    Let the link fiesta begin!

    Source of the story –
    http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865557954/Judge-orders-Price-woman-to-cut-off-daughters-ponytail-in-court.html?pg=1

    The UK they get pictures –
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2163723/Judge-orders-mom-chop-daughters-hair-punish-girl-hacking-chunks-toddlers-locks.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

    Ordering/Offering cutting the 13 and the 11 yr olds hair is stupid.

    The mother of the 3 yr old has ignored something really curious… how the hell was her child at McDonalds when a 13 and 11 yr old had time to leave, purchase scissors, return, take turns cutting the hair without an adult noticing?  Could some of her anger be misplaced from herself for not watching her own child?

    The phone calls, I got nothing on.  Not having a transcript of them lord only knows what was actually said and how it rates vs what you hear on reality TV.  Kids say plenty of awful things but so do adults.  Remember if you’ve ever muttered I could kill that SOB in court that would be characterized as making Death Threats.

    There does seem to be something off about the 13 yr old, but cutting her hair isn’t going to solve the problem.  Sticking her in detention and making her go out on a work crew isn’t going to fix it.

  • That_Anonymous_Coward

    Curiouser and Curiouser 
    http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/kaytlen-lopan-jailed-30-days-strip-searched-hair-cutting-prank

    “Judge Johansen sentenced the other little girl to have her hair cut as well, but she was allowed to get it cut at a local salon and was not removed from parental custody. Bruno believes Lopan got a harsher sentence because had done a prank phone before with a friend.Bruno said: “Kaytlen did not cut her hair. She did not do it. The probation officer talked her into saying she did because she was ‘guilty by association.’ She told her, even if you were just there, you’re just as guilty.””

    So 2 girls both point the finger at each other, both have to get haircuts… but 1 is done in a salon the other in the middle of a court room with random scissors.
    One ends up in custody the other left with parents.

    This really is one of those cases where more detail is needed, but tit for tat is not how law is supposed to work.

    • chgoliz

      I think age may have had something to do with it, too.  From a developmental point, 13 is actually quite different from 11, especially in girls.  And legally, the 11-year-old is considered a juvenile and therefore has more protection from public scrutiny, and also cannot be taken from her parents’ custody without cause.  You’ll notice the 11-year-old’s name is keep private, whereas we’re allowed to know Lopan’s full name.

      I also wonder if the fact that we’re not hearing any complaints from the 11-year-old’s family suggests that they have recognized the seriousness of the situation and have been complying dutifully with the court all the way through the process.

      Although I certainly know that a younger child can egg on an older child, my guess (as the mother of a few girls myself) is that the 13-year-old was probably the instigator and the 11-year-old simply went along with it because that’s what you do when an older child deigns to allow you to hang with them….with good parenting, the 11-year-old can learn from this and change for the better, whereas the 13-year-old seems to have a few more obstacles in her way (such as her mother).

      • That_Anonymous_Coward

        Lopan’s name might only be out there because of her mother.

        The 11 yr old and the 13 yr old both pointed fingers at the other as being the “mastermind”.  The entire “plot” seems to have been bored kids doing something stupid and not thinking it through, and then it began to snowball.

        I’m not trying to call what happened something that is perfectly okay.  But the sentence of hair cutting seems downright batty.

        Does anyone think that having the 13 yr old strip searched, taken into custody, and put on a work crew is going to solve any problems the girl might have?  Stuffing a problem into the “prison” system hasn’t got the best track record of doing much of anything to “fix” people.

        • chgoliz

          I will certainly agree with you there!

          Personally, I think in this case cutting the hair and providing a written apology would have made more sense than putting her on a work detail at all, unless the work detail was other young teens only, no adults.

          And professional family counseling, definitely.

  • Aeron

    This is such a sensible punishment, of course everyone’s looking for something to hate about it…

  • jayson
  • jayson

    Corporal punishment is the infliction of pain, not haircuts.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      So it’s public humiliation. The Puritans instead of the Taliban.

    • Guest

      deleted

  • jimh

    So, since this is from Utah, I feel obliged to invoke the Mitt Romney hair-cutting episode. Maybe a judge would have done him good to sentence him to no haircuts for a year after that?

    • chgoliz

      Excellent point.  And congratulations: you’re the first in a long thread to make that connection.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Or impalement.

  • SoItBegins

    All right, everyone, sing it with me!

    “My object all sublime /
    I shall reveal in time /
    To let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime…”

    • Felton / Moderator

      “And make each prisoner pent
      Unwillingly represent
      A source of innocent merriment,
      Of innocent merriment!”

  • Christopher Houser

    Did anyone else notice this awful part?

    “At a May 28 hearing, Lopan entered admissions in the assault case, as well as another case stemming from eight months of phone calls she made to another teen in Colorado that included threats of rape and mutilation, according to an audio recording of the hearing provided to the Deseret News by Bruno.”