How much are parents responsible for the bad things their children do?

On the 25th anniversary of the school shooting at Columbine High School in the Denver suburbs, we’re still asking if the parents of the two shooters could have and should have done more to prevent the massacre.

In light of the recent judgment in Michigan that for the first time put the parents of a mass shooter in jail for the actions of their child, that question has gained renewed urgency for all mass shootings executed by children.

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James and Jennifer Crumbley were each convicted in February of four counts of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for not doing more to prevent their son from gunning down four classmates at Oxford High School in Detroit.

The Crumbleys bought their 15-year-old son, Ethan, a 9-mm handgun as an early Christmas present four days before he used it to kill, and were accused of not securing the gun at home.

They also had been warned of his deteriorating mental health.

At a meeting at the school the morning of the shooting, school officials had confronted the parents with a chilling drawing of Ethan’s that showed images of a gun, a bullet and a wounded man, accompanied by phrases like: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. Blood everywhere. My life is useless.”

But Jennifer Crumbley maintained in testimony that she wouldn’t have done anything differently with her son in the days and weeks before the shooting. She said “this could be any parent up here in my shoes. Ethan could be your child, your grandchild.”

“The prosecution is trying to mold us into the type of parents society wants to believe are so horrible, only a school or mass shooter” could result, Jennifer Crumbley said. “… We were good parents. We were the average family. We weren’t perfect, but we loved our son and each other tremendously.”

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At sentencing, the judge rejected the idea the Crumbleys were convicted for bad parenting, instead saying they missed repeated opportunities to prevent the slaughter.

“Opportunity knocked over and over again and was ignored,” said Oakland County (Mich.) Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews. “No one answered.”

Twenty-five years ago, America similarly wondered how the parents of the Columbine killers didn’t see it coming. Didn’t they look through their children’s violence-infused diaries, and inspect their rooms, one of which had a sawed-off shotgun in it? Weren’t they worried about their kids’ obsession with explosives and guns, which they knew about? Didn’t their kids’ trench coats on the day of the killings concern them?

Lakewood Officer Rollie Inskeep spoke with Dylan Klebold’s parents when police swarmed the Klebold and Harris houses after the mass shooting.

“When asked about guns or explosives, she (Susan Klebold) stated that Dylan has always been fascinated by explosives and guns,” Inskeep wrote in his report. “She stated that Dylan wore combat-looking boots and that he liked the look that he had established.” But her story changed later. “She then recanted her previous statement,” Inskeep added, “and stated that Dylan did not really talk about explosives and guns but he just likes to have the look of the trench coat and boots.”

In shooter Eric Harris’ home, investigators found bomb-making materials, Nazi literature and a diary that described how the massacre would be carried out. And the sawed-off barrel of a shotgun was lying on a dresser in Harris’ bedroom.

Shortly after the attack, Sheriff John Stone wondered how the young men’s activities could have gone unnoticed and said: “I think parents should be accountable for their kids’ actions.”

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“There was lots of talk of parental responsibility back then, but I don’t remember any serious discussion of criminal charges against the parents,” author and journalist Mark Obmascik told me. Mark was a lead reporter on The Denver Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of Columbine

“Like Michigan, the case against the Columbine parents would hinge on what they knew at the time and how, or whether, they acted on it,” Obmascik said in an email. “Gotta believe Jeffco law enforcement looked at making a case at that time, but decided against it based on evidence.”

The parents were sued by the families of more than 30 victims for not doing more to prevent the tragedy, and that case was settled for $2,538,000. In civil court at least, the parents were seen as sharing culpability.

Given the precedent set in Michigan, I can’t help but wonder if the parents of the Columbine killers might have faced criminal charges if the shooting had happened today.

The carnage triggered by Columbine — there have been 404 school shootings in the U.S. since — certainly laid the groundwork for the decision in Michigan. After 25 years, the circle of responsibility for youth gun violence is finally widening to include adults.

“Columbine was such a cultural litmus test for what was going on in society at that time — so many people had really personal theories on what went wrong. School bullying, jock culture, easy access to guns, violent video games, stripping religion from schools, suburban conformity, teens on psychotropic drugs, and, yes, absentee parenting, were all blamed,” notes Obmascik.

“Columbine came before social media and our modern political divisions, but the roots were all present in the aftermath of the 1999 mass killing.”

But the Michigan case has now set a precedent for other parents to be held criminally accountable for their kids’ action.

Ignoring signs of mental illness, of deranged and threatening social media posts and disturbing antisocial behavior at school may be considered criminally negligent now.

David Griem, a former federal prosecutor and Detroit defense attorney, told the Detroit News people “are tired of this type of shooting case.” 

“Parents all over now may be asking themselves, “What am I doing with my kid? Am I checking their emails as much as I should? Am I paying attention to their mood swings? Am I listening to their concerns?” Anjali Prasad, a criminal defense attorney and a former assistant prosecutor in Oakland County, Mich., told reporters for The Detroit News.

I would argue it’s not just parents who need to step up their vigilance to stop the violence by and against our children. It’s not just parents who should be held liable if they don’t.

Teachers should be, lawmakers should be, principals should be, school boards should be, whole communities should be.

After the meeting at the school between the parents of Ethan Crumbley and school officials, why wasn’t Ethan sent home, for instance?

We all need to contribute to improving our culture in America. A former colleague at The Washington Post said it best after the Crumbley verdict: “It takes a village to stop mass shooters.”

The chairman of the media company that owns The Gazette, Ryan McKibben, recently visited Tokyo, a city of 37 million, and was struck by how spotless and violence-free the metropolis was.

Japan has 127 million people but rarely sees more than 10 gun deaths a year.

In 2020, there were 231 reported drug-related cases in Tokyo. In the United States, 1.16 million Americans are arrested annually for the sale, manufacture or possession of drugs.

Japan has a zero percent homeless rate, the lowest in the world.

How many school shootings has Japan experienced?

Zero.

This is all about culture.

Japan is not a clamped-down authoritarian country with the heavy hand of government demanding conformity. Japan is a democracy where the people enforce their own culture, a culture that insists on much more respect for authority and for each other than the United States does. Yet it was the United States, after World War II, that helped build Japan back from one of the world’s most violent, warmongering cultures into one of the most peaceful, law-abiding countries in the world today.

When do we build back ourselves?