Horrific video of eight teens beating on a fellow classmate

Sam Hooper

Recently, a horrific video of eight teens beating on a fellow classmate appeared on YouTube. The Lakeland, Florida teens faced kidnapping and misdemeanor battery charges for the violent beating. The state attorney's office has said the six girls and two boys will be tried as adults. One of the accused, Mercedes Nichols, was bailed out by employees of the “Dr. Phil” television show over the weekend. The show admitted that they paid $30,000 to a Florida Court so they girl could appear on the show about the beatings. Is that necessary? Two of the eight teens still remain behind bars facing numerous charges. Dr. Phil bailed out an accused criminal. Most can say that Dr. Phil McGraw is usually in the hot seat about certain issues because he takes them TOO far. For instance, McGraw planned a show about troubled pop star, Britney Spears this year after he was criticized for confronting her at a Los Angeles hospital. So bailing a teen thug out of jail is not the first embarrassing incident for Dr. Phil.
McGraw was unable to interview the ringleader of the teen beaters because he violated the company’s policy but the girl wouldn’t have been able to do an interview with the show anyway, until the case was over. I don’t understand how producers from the Dr. Phil show would go out of their way and pay $30,000 to interview a teen criminal. There are so many other interesting people in the world that did now just get accused for almost beating a girl to death. Apparently, the teens beat their classmate until she was knocked out and then proceeded to beat her after she woke up and that was when they began filming. The victim, an honor student and cheerleader says a fight on MySpace lead to the beat down. Her father says she will never go back to public school, they will home school her instead. I don’t blame them. The girl was beating so bad she was knocked unconscious over a fight on MySpace. Two males -- one adult and one minor -- were also charged for allegedly acting as lookouts during the beating.
The sheriff's office said after the attack, three of the teens forced her into a vehicle and drove her to another location, where she was told she would be given a worse beating if she called police. I can’t believe that teenage girls would lower themselves because of so called “trash talk” that was posted on the cheerleaders MySpace.
The victims mother was reported saying, "It is disgusting that the attackers find it funny and want to post something on the Internet showing someone nearly beaten to death.”
"When they were in a holding cell, they were all laughing," Sherriff Grady Judd says. "One of the teens arrested, who is a cheerleader, asked, 'Does this mean I'm going to miss cheerleading practice tomorrow?' The others were cutting up and said, 'It looks like we won't be going to the beach this weekend.”
Violent hazing, violent bullying, domestic violence, peer group violence; all of these are things that are now discussed and analyzed in ways they never were before. It makes you wonder what kind of upbringing the teen beaters had. I have no sympathy for them. YouTube and MySpace have nothing do to with the vile act. These websites should be commended for the exposure of these young criminals.