Today I was on Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell talking about Wayne Treacy, the 15 year old boy who was arrested for beating 15 year old Josie Ratley to near death. Both teens attend Deerfield Beach Middle School, the same school where former classmate Matthew Bent and four of his friends were charged with attempted murder for dousing a classmate with alcohol and setting him on fire.

According to The National School Safety and Security Services the number of nationwide school related violent deaths have decreased from 33 in 1999-2000 to 13 in 2008-2009. But experts are reporting that when crimes are committed by kids they are increasingly violent.

It appears that we have the perfect storm of events. We have increasingly stressful home environments with a bad economy, children bombarded with violent images on television and in video games, a lack of face to face relationship with children increasingly relying on text messaging and email to communicate with friends and family, poor development of empathy skills among children combined with the impulsive underdeveloped teen brain. No wonder things are getting dangerous.

It is crucial that schools work to identify troubled students early and provide counseling. In the case of Wayne Treacy he has a father who has reportedly been arrested 43 times, a brother who committed suicide on his birthday, and the same day that he beat Josie Ratley unconscious, his girlfriend broke up with him. In retrospect it is clear that this kid was a time bomb waiting to go off.

In light of the revelation about Jesse James allegedly cheating on Sandra Bullock, I have been getting asked a lot of questions about cheating. Why do men cheat? Why would a man cheat on a beautiful movie star like Sandra Bullock? If people like Sandra Bullock, Uma Thurman, and Halle Berry can’t “keep their man” what hope do the rest of us have?

The statistics on men and cheating vary tremendously according to an American Sexual Behavior study, 22 percent of married men cheat. Yet infidelity researcher and author of The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It Gary Neuman found in his research that 1 in 2.7 men cheat.

Historically we have been lead to believe that men cheat primarily because they seek variety in their sexual partners. But Neuman’s work debunks that myth. Ninety-two percent of men in his study said the affair was not primarily about the sex. “The majority said it was an emotional disconnection, specifically a sense of feeling underappreciated. A lack of thoughtful gestures,” says Neuman.

Further supporting the idea that affairs are not really about sex is Neuman’s other finding that 88 percent of the men surveyed said the other women were no better looking or in no better shape than their own wives which supports the idea that you don’t have to be a supermodel to “keep your man.”

Between Tiger Woods’ many affairs, former presidential candidate John Edwards denying being the baby daddy to his mistresses’ two year old child, Charlie Sheen’s alleged domestic violence and Governor Mark Sanford’s highly publicized tryst in Buenos Aires, people have been asking me a lot about forgiveness.

While marital infidelity is never acceptable, there is a big difference between an impulsive, one time, drunken mistake and an ongoing, lengthy affair that involves ongoing lies and deceit. It was not surprising that Jenny Sanford filed for divorce last month given the level and frequency of deception in this case which was off the charts and from which it would have been nearly impossible to recover.

 Thinking about forgiving someone who has harmed you? Here are the four “R’s” I recommend you examine before deciding whether or not to forgive:

1. Take responsibility. Has the person taken responsibility for their actions or are they still blaming, accusing or making excesses?
2. Show remorse. Does the person seem genuinely sorry for what they have done or are they just paying you lip service? Do they seem to genuinely understand why what they did was wrong and how it has harmed others?
3. Take steps to avoid repeating the same kind of mistake. What is being done to assure the same mistake is not going to happen again? Has the person started therapy or religious counseling? Has s/he agreed to stop spending time with someone with whom they have experienced temptation? Has s/he agreed to be open and candid with information, emails, cell phone information or remove him/herself from social networking sites?
4. Work to repair the damage. A commitment to the relationship and working to repair the damage caused are important parts of moving forward. It takes time to heal broken trust.

 There is one exception to all of this and that is domestic violence. Domestic violence is a deal breaker. Regardless of promises, it is likely to escalate and can end in murder. According to the FBI, one third of all murder victims are killed by an intimate partner. If you are experiencing domestic violence you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE (7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224 for help.

Today I was on Issues with Jane Velez-Mitchell  discussing the Michael Brewer case. According to police reports 15-year-old Brewer owed Matthew Bent $40 for a video game, so Bent tried to steal Brewer’s dad’s bike as compensation. Brewer’s family had Bent arrested. The next day, Michael was approached by five 15-and-13 year-old boys, including Bent.

1. Denver Colorado Jarvis, age 15;
2. Jeremy Jarvis (Denver’s brother), age 13;
3. Steven Shelton, age 15
4. Jesus Mendez, age 15
5. Mathew Bent, age 15

Bent allegedly called Brewer a “rat,” surrounded him with the other boys, ordered rubbing alcohol to be poured on him, which the 13-year-old did, and then set him on fire resulting in severe burns over more than 65 percent of his body. According to Dr. Nicholas Namias, the head of the burn unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital because of the extensive burns Brewer is at a risk for infection and is expected to experience organ failures. They believe it will be hard to conduct skin grafts to repair damaged areas, since grafting best succeeds when the patient’s own skin is used and Brewer does not have enough available healthy skin left. Deputies report that the only boy to show remorse after the incident was Jesus Mendez, who was the one who actually set Brewer on fire. The rest- including Jarvis- were reportedly heard laughing about the assault after their arrests.

On the show Jeremy Jarvis’ attorney Stephen Melnick claimed that the attack was not planned. How many 15 year old boys do you know who carry around rubbing alcohol and matches? I don’t know any. 

Some argue that these boys didn’t know what they were doing, that they were too young to understand. As I said on the show, these were not 5-year-old boys who had no understanding of what they were doing. These teenagers, a few years from being adults, clearly understood that when you light someone on fire, they burn, it hurts them and it can kill them. We have to hold them responsible.

Criminal Defense Attorney Mark Eiglarsh  pointed out that the frontal lobe, the portion of the brain that governs reasoning, is not fully developed yet in children so they make “stupid, even horrific, tragic decisions …like this.” I completely disagree; they make immature mistakes like riding a bike without a helmet, jumping off a tall tree, drinking too much beer at a party, or practicing unsafe sex. They don’t douse their friends with alcohol and light them on fire. To conduct an act like that takes such a complete lack of a conscience that is falls into a completely different category that is deeply pathological.

Unfortunately, I think we are going to see more heartless crimes like this committed by children. There seems to be a huge disconnect. Most kids today spend more time text messaging, watching television, playing video games, listening to music on an MP3 player, using Facebook or playing on the internet than having meaningful face to face connections with people, including their parents. All those technologies and media formats are terrific and they even have a place in a teenager’s life but not at the expense of relationships and connection.

Click here for transcripts of the show.