Last year I posted the story of Katelyn Kampf. Her parents kidnapped her in an attempt to force her to have an abortion. The parents were upset that Katelyn, who is white, was going to have give birth to a child whose father was black.
According to media reports, Katelyn is unhappy with the relatively light sentence that they received for the kidnapping. Fortunately, Stephanie has been keeping up with the story, or I would have never seen it. Unfortunately, the family is still torn apart by the terrible actions of the Kampf parents:
In a plea agreement with the district attorney’s office, reached over Katelyn Kampf’s objections, her parents pled guilty to misdemeanor assault charges and disorderly conduct. Felony kidnapping charges were dropped, and the Kampfs will not serve any jail time.
In court, her father Nicholas Kampf said, “The whole experience has been a sad ordeal. We as a family have lost so much … I am sorry.”
Lola Kampf also read from a prepared statement: “We have all made some bad choices in the past, and we will have to live with them. But we must believe with our hearts and soul that time will heal the wounds they have caused.”
But there was little evidence of any healing today. Neither one of the Kampf parents looked at their daughter or new grandson during the hour-long hearing. And Katelyn Kampf left the courtroom, crying, shortly after her parents arrived. She returned but then broke down and buried her face in her hands as she listened to her mother speak.
After the hearing, she explained her reaction, saying, “Even though she had done so many horrible things to me, I always looked up to her. I mean, she was my mom, you know.”
It’s hard not to have sympathy for Katelyn Kampf and her child. Not only does she have horrible parents, but she doesn’t have much help from the her child’s father. He is facing deportation to South Africa because he is an immigrant with a felony conviction. Furthermore, part of the conditions of the parent’s sentence is that they have counseling with their daughter. She still doesn’t want to be in the same room with them and who can blame her.
It is really sad to see cases like this where parents hatred of another race is stronger than their love for their own children. Sounds like another high profile case from last week.
Man. I wonder why they dropped the charges that had teeth? Seems pretty open and shut to me. And how clueless is the judge to order the parents into counseling with their victim?
Because, as we saw in the “Woman receives no punishment for nonconsensually piercing her 13-year-old daughter’s genitals” story, sometimes if you go with the greater charges, you lose it all.
Which actually points to the larger issue you mention: “And how clueless is the judge to order the parents into counseling with their victim?”
Pretty fucking clueless.
I think the hugely overarching issue is that for some people, some judges, some juries, they’re all too willing to accept openly, criminally, abusive behavior as long as it’s from a parent and directed at their child.
—Myca
Yeah, it’s a typical plea bargain which is done involvingmany felony cases. Instead of taking the felonies to trial where they might be won or lost, the prosecutors try to persuade them to plead to misdemeanor counts of lessor charges. These charges lead to much less and sometimes no incustody time in addition to any that might have been served and most often probation.
Thanks for the update.
Anyone know how Maine normally handles first offenders?
So, what happens if the victim refuses to attend therapy with her parents? Is she legally required to do so?
It’s hard to impose serious charges against family members. Without even being prompted by defense counsel, most jury members empathize with those involved in family disputes, not that they agree with their actions, they just instinctively understand the power of strong emotions to drive otherwise rational people to do stupid things. Even when there is lasting injury or death, they can return verdicts that would be inconceivable were the defendants not related to the victim.
Hi,
The spin out here is that the parents did not want to have the child because the daughter was irresponsible and that the father was even worse. Mayhaps the grands were loath to raise yet another child in their later years as mom was unfit. Race may be less of a reason than mom feeds the kids Wild Turkey or Everclear.
The fact that a judge has interceded with counseling would indicate a dysfunctional family all around.
The spin out here is that the parents did not want to have the child because the daughter was irresponsible and that the father was even worse.
Is there any actual evidence of that? Ok, so a woman who was raised by parents who think that kidnapping her to force her to have an abortion is a reasonable response to an unplanned pregnancy probably has some issues left over from childhood and the guy is someone she picked, but is the “Everclear in the bottle” claim anything more than slander?
Maine, the setting for this tale, is known for poverty and eccentric behavior.
Again, is there any evidence about this family’s socioeconomic status or history of mental illness in either the grandparents (apart from the obvious), mother, or child? North Yarmouth, where the Kampfs are from, has a median family income of over 60K and fewer than 1% of families below the poverty line, according to wiki Next excuse, please.
It is outragous what these parents tried to do. As a black man, I do take offense to this being a claim of racism. Is there any evidence other than what the limo and cocktail party crowd, that pontificate over how best to “help” those poor black people, have speculated? I’m tired of hearing that whenever someone does something bad and there is a black or hispanic man involved it must be racism. As crazy as their actions were, don’t you think that they would act the same way if the father was a polish illegal immigrant convicted of a felony? I think they would and race was less an issue than the fact that he was a convicted felon and an illegal immigrant with the potential of deportation. I have girls and I wonder what I would think if my daughter came home with a loser like that. What is with that . . .
I agree with boseman. Every race has its share of losers who would drive any set of parents insane.
Parents are still responsible for their actions, no matter what, but there is more than one plausible scenario:
Parents were motivated by racism alone.
Daughter chose boyfriend because she knew it would drive her racist parents insane.
Parents don’t like boyfriend for combination of factors including race (or not).
What’s the chance that parents and daughter have diametrically opposite views on race? What’s the chance that daughter was using unpopular boyfriend (for any reason) as a way of asserting independence from controlling parents?
And so she ends up independent, with a baby, with neither father nor grandparents assisting (the latter by her own, reasonable, choice).
Maybe the evidence of racism is stronger than daughter’s say so, but that’s all I’ve ever heard. Maybe the assertion of racism helps the daughter live with her own bad choices. I don’t know, but it’s likely to be a bit more complicated than “just race.”
The evidence is Katelyns report to police. I havent seen any instances where her parents have denied this.
As for Barbara’s suggestion that Katelyn provoked the attack by her parents–i guess pregnant ladies are *always* doing that! Must be the hormones…
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02530.pdf
This is a really good point. The sentence for the parents turns into a sentence for the victim.
I doubt that the therapy order has a lot of binding authority on the victim, seeing as this was a criminal case in which the victim was not on trial and seeing as she was not represented by counsel. I could be wrong but I suspect this is not really an issue.
What Barbara actually said:
Parents are still responsible for their actions, no matter what, but there is more than one plausible scenario.
That is, a scenario that posits that their attack was motivated by something other than (or in addition to) racism, not that the victim “provoked” the attack. Something tells me you don’t have children, or at least teenage children.
Parents likely were instructed by lawyers to STFU, so who knows what their side of the story is. I am suggesting that it would not surprise me that she blames here parents’ racism, real or imagined, because she does not want to see her boyfriend as a bad guy. It doesn’t mean that her parents were right to kidnap her, but they might have been right that her choice in BF was poor, and it might be extremely difficult to admit that.
I love how there is a deep seated need to find disagreements even among those predisposed to agree with you.
I guess I’m just suspicious because despite the fact that racism is the only explanation for which there is something other than a totally speculative basis, many commentors felt the need to offer alternative explanations for which there is no basis.
As for the idea that she may have picked a black boyfriend to piss her racist parents off, i agree that is a possible scenario, among many possible scenarios. I’m not sure, though, how that would would make the situation more “complicated.” Its a totally hypothetical suggestion meant to elicit empathy for the parents.
I have empathy for parents who are frustrated with their teen childrens’ spotty decision-making. But I have more sympathy for poor decision making among young, inexperienced people than for the atrocious awful decision-making skills clearly exhibited by these parents.
Once you get away from the LL Bean coastline, the life is hard and bleak. Appalachian is the word, I believe.
Oh hai, I was raised in Kentucky. Most of my friends are from Kentucky, and some are even from Eastern Kentucky, land of mountains and meth addiction. And yet, none of our parents have ever kidnapped any of us and tried to force us to have abortions. I find it somewhat insulting to suggest that an *understandable* result of having a difficult life in an “Appalachian” setting would be to force someone into an unwanted abortion. The poor woman’s parents are racist and sexist assholes, and that isn’t a geograhic trait.
Maybe I can envision the alternative scenarios because, as a teenager, I watched my sister fight repeatedly with my mother over her less than gleeful reception to a long string of boyfriends. According to my sister, my mother was an intellectual snob with distorted values who would rather that she date a well-educated chump than a prince of a drop out. And so on. It was never that the guys in question didn’t finish high school, had spotty employment, abused drugs and alcohol, already had children with other girlfriends, pressured my sister to have sex without using birth control, or anything LIKE THAT. It just feels familiar.
Is racism really the only non-speculative issue? Didn’t the parents know that the dude was a felon? I suppose you could brand parental dislike of a felon as a potential inlaw as “speculative”, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Now, clearly the parents are batshit crazy. Kidnapping your own daughter? Please. And I have no problem seeing this as containing a lot of racism in it.
But just as people are posing the issue as “they probably wouldn’t have done this to her if he was white,” it doesn’t seem so far off to wonder “would they have done this if he wasn’t a felon scheduled for deportation?”
I admit I’m imposing some of my own values here, but I don’t really imagine caring about the race of people who my kids date… their felonious status, OTOH, would be a pretty big deal.
I admit I’m imposing some of my own values here, but I don’t really imagine caring about the race of people who my kids date
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I would speculate that you also wouldn’t kidnap your daughter to try to force her to have an abortion, regardless of how little you liked the man who begot the fetus. When you’re talking about people who think that that sort of behavior is reasonable, I don’t think that you can assume that their motives for hating the boyfriend are at all similar to yours. It is entirely possible that Katelyn Kampf misconstrued her parents’ motives, but any speculation as to other motives the parents might have had is completely unfounded speculation–no one, including, as far as I know, the parents themselves, have suggested any other motives besides racism. And, frankly, I don’t think that their motives matter all that much. Does it make it ok to attempt to force your daughter to have an abortion if you are doing it for “good” reasons?
Note after reading all the links and background: The sherriff is said to have stated that race was a motive. No information on how he came to that conclusion, but it is the only motive offered by anyone.
I am so not going to argue with that. heh. Who really knows what would go through the minds of people like that?
of course we dont know what their motivations are, and they may have been multiple; I think the evidence points to racism as the likeliest primary motive. I jumped on alternative explanations mainly because they seemed to be supportive responses to boseman’s suggestion that racism was *not* a likely motive.
I don’t think the boyfriends criminal history tells us very much about the parents’ motivation, in that it doesn’t as easily explain why these parents were willing to go to such extremes to force their daughter to abort. A child of a felon is not a felon in the way that a child of a black man is black.
By Assuming that the parents were motived by the potential father’s criminal record we would be assuming that their motive wast to prevent the continuation of her relationship to this man via the abortion, because they were concerned that he was a threat to her. In other words, doing so,assumes these parents felt protective of their daughter.
That may of course be the case, but actual treatment of her suggests otherwise, in my opinion.
Racism, predicated on sexist assumptions of the right to control women’s reproduction, is the simplest explanation, in my book.
I wonder what pro-lifers who think parents have the right to prevent thier daughters from getting an abortion would say about this? It seems to met hat if their position is that parents have that right, as long as abortion is legal, parents should also logically be able to force either parenthood or abortion on their children.
curiousgyrl mused:
I don’t think the usual “pro-life” position implies that. Several states have laws that [I think reasonably] say that minors can only get tattoos or body piercings with parental consent. That doesn’t mean parents can compel their kid to get a piercing. *
The pro-lifers want parental consent, not because they support the idea of parents bossing around daughters per se, but because they want “keep the baby” enshrined in law as the default. They don’t hinge their argument on parents’ absolute control of the kid’s body. Their argument is based on the assumption that minors are morely likely to get an abortion in a sudden panic than to keep the kid in a panic, and that parents should have a chance to resist that.
I don’t think that argument is conclusive, and I don’t intend to defend it here. I mention it only to explain why I think the pro-life position doesn’t imply any sort of tolerance for the sort of abuse that Ms. Kampf was subjected to.
I don’t think that there’s any serious person in the country who supports coerced abortion under any circumstances.
-A
—-
*Someone is going to mention that mother in Florida who did have her daughter’s genitals pierced. That was discussed here, and the consensus was that she was almost certainly guilty of child abuse, but not necessarily the more severe crime of aggravated abuse which the jury acquitted her on.
I was not saying that race was not a factor. What I was saying is that it was probably less of a factor than the fact that the father would more than likely not be there for the raising and support of his black kid.
As a felon and an illegal alien, he has already shown a penchant for absconding from the law whether it be immigration law or feloneous violation of criminal statues. These are much greater factors for failure than the fact he was black. Now of course, the parents could be racist and in that case would not mention his objectionable behavior because it is expected that black men be both a felon and an illegal aliens (if you are an East Coaster you will see more black illegal aliens than Central American Indians).
From the report linked to by curiousgyrl:
“CDC reported that, while additional research is needed in this area, current study findings suggest that for most abused women, the risk of physical violence does not seem to increase during pregnancy.”
The writers of that report ought to manage a hedge fund.
Mold at No9:
To older grands with few resources, an abortion could be the least evil choice.
I can’t believe I;m reading this. Listen, I’m pro choice. I’m not going to moralise at any woman about her decision to have an abortion or not to have an abortion. Choice is her right. So is access to a safe legal abortion if she wants one.
That’s I’;m not even going to get into whether anyone thinks the kid is going to have ADHD or whatever. It’s a big red herring.
This is NOT a question for the grandparents. The grandparents can make decisions about their own pregnancies, abortions or lives in general. What the hell right does anyone other than the mother have in this? Never mind whether the grandparents think its a less evil or more evil option. Never mind whether or not they are skint. It is not their body is it? It is Katelyn’s body.
For what its worth: kidnapping anyone, regarless of whether they are your daughter or not, with the intent of forcing an aboryion on them is clearly wrong. If it is motivated by racism it is more wrong, because racism is wrong. So you have kidnap with intent to commit serious bodily harm with racism as an aggravating factor.
But I am still gobsmacked that anyone things the “grands” should have any kind of say in the matter of how a woman deals with her own body. Ther are no “life is so hard, we are so worried” exceptions to the fact that a woman’s body is her own.
Yes, poorer women’s choices are constrained by lack of resources (whether that is lack of resources to get access to abortion or lack of resources to raise a child). But don’t make out this is one for the grandparents. There is no justification for their violent attenmpts to prevent Katelyn having her child, nor would there be any for them attempting to prevent her having an abortion if that had been what she wanted.
I wish Katelyn and her baby all the best for the future. I don’t care if her boyfriend is an illegal immigrant – I do not care to discriminate against people because of their immigration status. I hope that if Katelyn and her kid want to maintain their relationship with the father that they are given some support to do so given that this might be difficult if he is either in jail or facing deportation. Helping the new family would have been a damn sight better thing to think about than trying to make Katelynn – the victim – attend couselling with her racist, violent parents from hell.
Thankfully someone else has taken Mold up on the remarks about Appalachians. Otherwise I could kick off again on middle class snobbery….
Grr!
Well, at least they didn’t try to charge them with attempted murder.
ps sorry for the cut-n-paste
The “parents’ point of view” is that their daughter worked as a prostitute, so it was OK to kidnap her and force her to have an abortion lest she shame them with a non-white child? Is that your point, eric?
Mold: funny that you talk about the grandparents seeing abortion as the best “choice”. These parents apparently weren’t interested in their daughter’s “choice”. It’s not hard to see why she turned out that way.
just pointing to the parents’ state of mind. Get the racist crap out of this I never even considered that. PS read Mold/my comments and tell me where race is used as a reason for the parents actions. The point made was the parents’ possible frustration with her poor choices, and having a baby out of wedlock regardless of race is another bad choice.
Um, don’t the parents have a rather large incentive to “spin” this in their favor? Why should their side of the story be taken at face value, especially since they have the most to gain from changing it and their actions have damaged their credibility? Trust.. people that hold “controversial beliefs” know when to expose them, and when not to, especially when they get older and “wiser”. Take my mother, for instance… she didn’t want me moving into a dorm with a certain woman because she was a lesbian. She made no bones about it to me that her sexuality was the reason. She was so adamant about me not living with this woman, she called the residence hall director. But did she tell him that she didn’t want me to stay with a lesbian? Hells no… she made up some crock of bull. Why? Because she knew that it sounded bad… it was still her impetus, but she knew how it would sound. But go on, believe that kidnappers are above lying.
last note on this. I am not making excuses for the parents. They may have taken other considerations than racism and now sexism into account. Why do you fucking people have to drag race and sex into the conversation without knowing the impetus behind the parents’ actions? Do you have to project your own experiences onto another to somehow rectify your own experiences? Can’t you try to see another point of view without the certainty that is HAS to be just like you were unjustly treated? I would be extremely upset if either of my daughters had lives that led to this point. Perhaps skipping school/leading to drug use/possible prostitution/whatever else may be behind their actions…couldn’t you accept the cumulative effect without projecting your tired excuses for an irresponsible daughter? It MUST be race, it MUST be sexism. Jesus Christ, it MIGHT be parents who have dealt with a troubled child in the WRONG way because they thought (delusionally) that they had no other choice. Family counseling would likely have helped the family but they, like you and mythago, jumped to a conclusion without thinking. We’re not all racists you fools–these were parents pushed to the edge and they reacted COMPLETELY wrong. PS the son is a beautiful child and I hope he leads a full and rich life regardless of how (or WHY) his grandparents feel.
Eric, regarding comments like “you fucking people” and “you fools,” I suggest that you make this not only your “last note on this,” but also your last note on this blog. Thank you.