When five supposedly good kids said to sodomize, injure a schoolmate, what lessons can we learn?

    In the Disturbing Beyond Belief department, five Hopkinsville, Ky., young adults and teens have been arrested and charged with sodomy and other crimes in relation to an attack on a passed-out 15-year-old boy at a party. The boy may or may not have been drugged.
    The boy was seriously injured. His intestines were punctured and he nearly died; he currently has a colostomy bag; I don't know if this is permanent. The sexual attack, committed with various objects -- one kicked into the boy's rectum -- was filmed and perhaps placed on social media.
    An attack of this kind is troubling in every case, but this boy was a family friend to two of his alleged attackers and a cousin to one. These kids knew each other well. They were supposedly friends, or at least associated with the same friends.
    And by the way, before you start thinking about Kentucky jokes, Hopkinsville is in Western Kentucky, between Nashville and Paducah. Demographically it's a bit like Tate County with slightly lower income and more college degrees.
    The five who were arrested weren't rough thugs -- just the opposite. They were mostly middle-class, college-track kids. One of the oldest, Dayton Ross Jones, was on the Arkansas State University golf team. Another has a Facebook page that says he attends or attended the University of Kentucky.
    The Facebook page for one of the juveniles, a high school senior, displays photos of a tall, athletic teen posing with lots of attractive girls and other attractive high school kids. In fact all of the kids had Facebook pages that made them appear to be well-liked, successful, decent guys. It's sad to look at these photos: a first deer, first turkey, first car, first prom date, and then realize the next photo in the series needs to be the first felony mug shot.
    These five guys didn't intend to seriously injure this boy; they wanted to humiliate him. What started off as fairly mild humiliation escalated as the attackers tried to outdo the others in viciousness. Oddly enough, many people apparently don't believe that it is a sexual assault if one's purpose is merely to humiliate someone they know.
    Whenever I read a story like this I bring it to the attention of my children, because there are so many life lessons to be learned from the mistakes and tragedies of others. Among them:
    ❑ Good people sometimes do terrible things. Try not to be one of them. Learn from the mistakes of others.
    ❑ If you get drunk or otherwise pass out there are people who will take advantage of you or try to humiliate you, often for no reason. Sometimes they will harm you. Sometimes these people will be those who are supposed to be your friends. Avoid drinking to the point of passing out. Be aware that there are those who get their jollies out of drugging drinks.
    ❑ When a group of guys get drunk enough they will do inexplicably stupid things, often urged on by a single instigator. Guys will often attempt to outdo each other in viciousness. Avoid associating with instigators; avoid associating with those who often do stupid things; avoid associating with those who act in a vicious manner; avoid drinking to the point of seriously impaired judgment.
    ❑ Recognize that it's not always easy to do what's right. If just one of these five boys had somehow found the courage to stand up to his friends he would have saved an entire community a world of sorrow. Doing the right thing often seems impossibly difficult at the moment, but if kids could just imagine themselves 24 hours in the future looking backward it would be easy.
    Under the right circumstances every child or young adult has the potential to be a victim or a victimizer. As a parent I hope I can educate my children to these dangers without sounding like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons.