Family Sued Over HPMS Novel Responds
A few months back, a novel featuring the drugging and date-rape of student in Highland Park made the rounds in the Park Cities, and eventually led to a lawsuit regarding its use of real names and real people.
Claire St. Amant wrote about it for us, and my good friend Mike Mooney wrote about it for D. Anyway, the sued family has filed for a summary judgment in the case. Mooney has the details over on FrontBurner.
The motion for summary judgment is no surprise. The judge will decide whether all the facts alleged by the plaintiff, assuming they are true, could amount to the causes of action. Maybe defamation won’t survive and infliction of emotional distress will. We’ll see.
Nevertheless, I cannot imagine parents reading that book and seeing the violent content, as well as the real names, and then thinking it was a good idea to pay to have it published. Nor can I imagine the alternative, that they paid to have their kid’s book published without even reading it. If my middle school kid wrote that story, I’d pay for counseling, not publishing.
I feel for the girl and the teacher and the others named. The author and his parents have wronged them. And I feel for the author. His parents failed at their most important job, parenting him. They should never have made that book public. He’s only a child; they are the adults.
DemBones is absolutely right. Just because something may not be illegal doesn’t make it right.
Well said. As we sadly follow developments in the Penn State tragedy, it is worth observing how ALL of us tend to focus on the culpability of adults instead of the harm caused the young people involved. Maybe it is so painful contemplating it happening to our own families, we skip to directly into “retribution mode”.