re: Fulmer Cup Prediction Thread

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Couple of clarifications. The sexual assault was perpetrated by the victim's boyfriend who was Hood's friend too. Hood also had heard the friend was in a gang and carried a firearm. He explained that his 13 year old brain feared that trying to stop the assault could get him, his cousin, and others in the house at the time shot.

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IIRC, he was able to make amends with his cousin as well. She never blamed him for what happened just the older teen (her then-boyfriend who was 17 and tried as an adult). At first glance, I would never have offered Hood a scholarship but first appearances can be deceiving. While the court documents reveal a situation and graphic acts that I don't care to recall in too great a detail, it's clear that he'd never have done anyone harm of his own initiative and had no foreknowledge or intention of even being a passive witness to rape or an accessory to rape. I don't know what went through his mind while it was happening but a 13 year old who thinks he's just helping with prank on his cousin the way others had been pranked who suddenly finds himself in a situation where things turn into what they did isn't likely to think rationally or even know how to respond. A lot of adults freeze or panic when things happen like that and a particularly immature 13 year old boy who is barely a teenager is more child than teenager and is going to think like one.

That said, given what social services and court evaluators said about his home life, him being removed from his family and sent away to a group home away from his home town, family, and friends was probably a blessing. The picture that was painted of his parents and the adults in his family was not pretty and definitely not an environment a kid should be left in. It's telling that he went from a particularly immature child who court evaluators thought was very much at risk of being extremely unlikely and/or impossible to rehabilitate (they did not have high hopes for him when they were evaluating him for the courts to put it lightly) to a young adult with an outstanding ACT score, high GPA, good behavior record and glowing reviews by his teachers and high school coaches after being removed from his home environment. He flourished once he was away from them.