The story was scary. But its aftermath is nearly as troubling. A 15-year-old Highlands Ranch girl told Douglas County deputies that two men kidnapped her Wednesday and drove her around for four hours before she escaped.
Thursday, sheriff’s investigators got her to admit that she made up the story.
Friday, they recommended to the district attorney that she be charged with lying to law enforcement, said Douglas County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Alan Stanton.
The sheriff’s department did not identify the girl because of her age. But Wednesday they did release details about her fictitious abductors: two Hispanic guys driving a beat-up car.
It’s hard to tell whether to laugh or cry at this pathetic ruse. It seems equal parts stereotyping and self-loathing.
While Stanton could not give the 15-year-old’s name, he did reveal her ethnicity. She’s Latina.
How incredibly depressing. A young woman from a minority group gropes for the most believable description of fake criminals and comes up with the same thing a racist would.
“This is a tragedy,” said Debora Ortega, who teaches in the University of Denver’s graduate school of social work and directs DU’s Latino Center. “Society sculpts how we view the world.
“You know your own family is good. But society has told you your people aren’t good.”
Overcoming that doubt isn’t easy, said Ortega. “I grew up in Los Angeles. The police pulled my brother over all the time. The people who were supposed to be good (the police) treated my brother like he was bad.”
What happened in Highlands Ranch is obviously much less serious than the now-infamous case of the white man in Boston who murdered his wife, then tried to cover up by saying she had been car-jacked by a couple of black guys. But assumptions about the most believable made-up criminals overlap.
The three teenagers with whom the 15-year-old actually went joy riding Wednesday bear no resemblance to the kidnappers she described, Stanton said. Nor was the car she rode in an “older model four-door, gray or white, dented, rusted, with purple-tinted windows.”
Everything, said Stanton, “was totally made up.”
That’s a panicked-kid thing. The girl stayed home from school supposedly because she was sick. She cruised instead with three boys she met only that day, investigators said. So she cried “Wolf” in the way she thought everyone would most easily accept the call.
“I’m not surprised,” said Ortega. “People of color get messages both ways.”
For instance, one thing Mexican-Americans pride themselves on is their hard-work ethic. But with the current immigration debate, Ortega said, hard workers are reduced to nothing more than criminals if they are undocumented.
For an adolescent, the pressure to fit in is strong, Ortega added. “You’re still trying to figure out what your identity is, and cool is the best identity.”
The dilemma is how to prove to kids like the girl in Highlands Ranch that racism and stereotyping are anything but cool. If they are to have any chance at overcoming what he calls “facile discrimination against themselves,” minority kids must learn the complexity of ethnic cultures in school, said Metro State College professor Luis Torres. That, he said, means class as well as race.
“This little girl picked on someone society might naturally expect to be criminal,” said Torres, who teaches Chicana and Chicano studies. That includes “upper middle class Hispanics who treat lower class Mexican-Americans like second-class citizens.”
Given her story, it’s probably safe to assume that the 15-year-old is no hardened delinquent. On the other hand, she earned the Class 3 misdemeanor charge Douglas County slapped on her.
It is the kind of case where juvenile judges often withhold a finding of guilt for a year. If the defendant stays out of trouble and maybe does some community service, the charge disappears from her or his record.
But as Torres points out, holding this child legally accountable for her lies still misses the point that the girl doesn’t appreciate the value of her own ethnic culture. Presumed connections between minority groups and criminal behavior are always ugly. But they are ugliest when minorities themselves buy into the stereotypes.
That shows a lack of understanding courts will never be able to deal with.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com
