This is just another story about Esmie Tseng's plea but I finally get to hear what kind of abuse Esmie went through...
In Esmie Tsengâ??s world, a test score of 96 might have gotten the 16-year-old grounded.
Her mother expected more. Always more. And when the Overland Park girl fell short, she often was punished in â??unfair and cruelâ?? ways, Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison said Monday.
Sometimes, he said, Esmieâ??s mother tried to teach her a lesson by humiliating her: She made her daughter take off all her clothes.
But Esmie also was under a lot of pressure, primarily from her mother, to perform at unrealistically high levels, Morrison said. Slight transgressions often resulted in punishments such as not being able to go outside for extended periods of time, he said, or not being able to do the kinds of things that teens like to do.
â??She lived in a highly structured environment,â?? Morrison said.
â??It was not uncommon for her to be ordered to take her clothes off as a way to humiliate her, if that gives you a flavorâ?? of what was going on.
I feel bad for Esmie. I really do. That's not sarcasm. Mental abuse like that form a parent is one of the worst tortures that a teenager can go through. However that abuse did not warrant the violent response that Esmie gave...
Assistant District Attorney John Fritz said that Esmie had stabbed her mother with a knife. When her mother took away the knife, Esmie grabbed another and stabbed her multiple times. Esmie did not call for help, he said.
The way Esmie's mother treated her would have been grounds to call social services not a multiple stabbing with two different knives.
Also, did Esmie's father know that this treatment was going on?
Now that I know a little more about the events leading up to the murder of Shu Yi Zhang I can offer an opinion on the sentencing. I think the suggested eight years and four months is very reasonable for the offense and what led up to it. Like I said, I feel bad for Esmie, but stabbing her mother to death was a severe over-reaction and she needs to be punished. She will still have much of her life ahead of her when she gets out.
Lets hope the prisoners don't fuck her up more
I find it strange, actually, that her mother reacted in such a calm manner....
According to the news and what I've been reading about this case, her mother took the first knive that Esmie stabbed her with away from her... Apparently after the stabbings were over with, her mother called her husband at work...
Is it just me.. or is that behavior just not normal?
On another point, her father probably knew what was going on, but as is typical in Asian families, turned a blind eye to his daughter's internal stress.
I hope everyone in this world will see things as these in a more panorama view. I wish people in my school can... since I am living with those anti-foreign facists...
Sorry Sorry, this isn't about me. But yeah, I really wish that the next half of a decade for her would be easier, she's already been through so much. 8 years doesn't seem fair...
Ed, shut the hell up
I always thought she was a very privelaged young lady
....until I visited her home.
Her mother was a waste of air. Some parents pressure children to do well........thats normal.....but what Emsie went through was horrific
Her mother had it coming
One less obstacle for emsie when she gets back
And Ed you deserve whats coming to you, you heartless prick
you arent funny.
But it can't be far from the truth.
As a sixteen year old ABC, I know first hand the experiences:
When my sister was ranked 20th in a prestigous school that was coming top in the state every year, Dad got mad at her, forced her to stay at home and not go out with her friends, and made her study (he even spent countless nights studying with her, yes actually re-learning things from her textbook, as a motivation for her to study - a game called "See Who Can Memorize This Passage/Equation/Theory the First"). And it worked. She was ranked first in her school and got into Havard. Now she earns over $100 000 a year and lol, my Dad still reckons that isn't enough.
See what parents would do to give their kids the best future possible? Do you honestly think my Dad likes punishing his kids! No he loves us and it is because of this that saw him getting only 5 hours of sleep every night going over some stupid exercises and memorising pointless crap, but he did it in order for my sister to succeed.
Another example: Dad burnt all my precious novels one night in a huge bonfire. Why? Not because he hated the books - it probably pained him as much as me to see those expensive timeless classics turn to ash coz he loves reading as much as me - but because,he wanted me to dedicate my time to my studies, endure a tiny bit of hardship now so when I am older, I would not have to endure greater hardships, such as poverty, and instead have a brighter future.
I could go on and on, but I guess that point I am trying to make is that underneath it all, Asian parents really do love their children, in ways more substantial than any other cultures. They are beyond fufilling our short-term desires, eg. letting us go out with friends, buy us that cool new dress, letting us play video games up to 1am, but they want our long-term lives to be prosperous and better than the rest. It doesn't take Einstein to work out that if you graduate from a good university with a good course, you would earn more money then say the garbage collector. Dad jokingly said that if me, my brother and sister don't become millionaires by the age of 30, then we aren't his kids.
It's a pity that Esmie failed to understand that, too intoxicated by her hate and drug abuse.
But it's just like what Dad said to me once,
"I don't care if you are going to hate me for the rest of your life. You can write shit in your diary all about me and how you have had a crap father and how you loathe me. I don't care if after 18, you are going to leave home and never acknowledge me as your father again. I can live with that. But I can't live with the thought of my daughter living in poverty or living like the rest of the ordinary people, when I know she has the potential to achieve so much more. I place all my aspirations on you and I want to see you succeed in life, so I am going to do I that I can to make sure that your future would be a bright one. Who else would cry and be hurt for you if you become penniless and unemployed? Your teacher won't, your friends won't, but I will. Because you are my daughter and I love you."
And here is Dad's infamous quote:
"I can catch a fish and feed you for one night, or I can teach you to fish and feed you forever."
And so that in essence, is what all Asian parents want to do to their children - out of love, they want to ensure their children has the best possible future. Criticisms just disguise the fact that they are really pleased about you and reckon what you achieved is so big that if they openly praised you for it, it will get into your head and your ego would skyrocket, lol. Criticims are the most subtle yet strongest declaration of love a parent can give to their child because no body else would love them that much to want to improve their flaws.
In fact, Dad was prepared to risk my own love for him in order to give me a successful life. And that in my opinion, is a pretty big sacrifice.
Dad had hit me in the past, he burnt my books, he prevented me from seeing my friends, going over to sleepovers, he took materialistic things in my life that were once dear to me away from me...
But I don't want to kill him.
I don't even hate him.
In fact, I would do the opposite; if it was inevitable that someone should want to kill him, I would walk over to them, position myself in front of the gun and say,
"Kill me. Take me instead of my Dad."
I'm willing to die for my parents because I love them so much for what they have done to me.
Are you?
And another thing--on the day of her apprehension, Esmie's toxicology report was clean, so she clearly wasn't under the influence of drugs at the time of the murder.
Esmie was a teenager. Yeah, duh, I know, I'm getting to my point: these are the years when a person is searching for a sense of independence, but mostly identity. Things are changing, one is entering the real world and learning how it operates. You need a certain amount of independence to learn how to handle your own life and make your own decisions, and if you make the wrong ones, then you learn by the consequences and pick yourself back up.
You're defining yourself by the choices you make, and learning who you really are. You're choosing your own friends and trying to figure out your future. Esmie's parents didn't give her the slightest bit of freedom and instead subjugated her to abuse that she didn't want to take anymore. Instead of giving her a few well-placed opportunities for her to earn their trust and make the right decisions, they shut her off from the world of which she was trying to be a part. By preventing her from avoiding or learning from potential mistakes, her parents drove her to make one huge mistake--one that will influence her entire life.
I'm not blaming her parents for her actions (not entirely), because it was Esmie who did the stabbing, Esmie who made this decision to erase what was bring down the hurt.
But you HAVE to take into account her reasoning. She felt trapped, oppressed--corner a cat and you will get scratched.
Parents NEED to have a certain amount of compassion, they need to be understanding and reasonable, not--to put it crudely--total bitches.
Sure, discipline is necessary--but you can't use it indiscriminately because then it becomes abuse, and the chain of events that follows can be quite nasty for both child and parent, as it did in the case of Esmie.
--It's your own fault that you are killed! Huh?
Even abuse does not merit a murder.
This is a total human tragedy.
Cornered.
That's how many teenagers in America feel right now. But that, my friends DOES NOT warrant the right to kill someone who is trapping you, especially if that person is your mother. I understand that in today's society, we live comfortably where opinions can be expressed, where we are free to do as we will. Esmie may have been a good girl before, but clearly these actions she's done prove otherwise. However badly someone treats you, you should never use violence especially leading to death as the answer. Especially seeing that this was her mother! We're all confused, as someone who is Asian and who has these kind of expectations pushed on me, I can tell you first hand, it is hard as hell to keep your head above the water but when you do it's all the more worth it. So, I understand some of her anger. However, what she did was willed, it wasn't out of drug induced rage, it was out of hate. Extreme hate garnered by a child who obviously needed help and should have seeked it. We know that now, but it's a little too late.
It's easy to see judgment from the outside looking in, but truly this is a tragic and sad case. As much as I feel bad for Esmie and the decision that's going to cost her potential...what she did was horrific and inexcusable. No matter how badly treated she was by her mother, there is no way you can excuse violence of this sort as an ends to the means. I just wish she could've held on a bit longer.
And to the ones, blindly claiming that her mother "had it coming", I will go ahead and assume that you believe that capital punishment is given to people who "have it coming". How incredibly disgusting and horrible of you to say and I hope you don't actually believe that.