13-year-old Kayla Manson, the Florida youth being charged as an accomplice to attempted murder after a boy she was friends with brutally beat her best friend over a series of menacing text messages, appeared on The Today Show, Thursday, June 10. Much of the controversy in the news surrounding Manson’s appearance centers on the inappropriate language she used during the interview with Meredith Veira.
In answer to one of Veira’s questions about the text that sent her friend, Wayne Treacy, over the edge, Manson said, “the one where she calls him a rapist, and she calls him a c*nt, I mean the one where he calls her a c*nt.”
Manson claimed she did not think Treacy was capable of the things he did to her best friend, Josie Ratley. In footage from The Today Show, Treacy is seen talking with his mother after the incident. She asks him why he did what he did, and Treacy told her it was the things Ratley said about his brother Mike, who committed suicide a year earlier. There is also some indication Ratley did not approve of her best friend’s relationship with Treacy.
After a series of texts got Treacy riled up, he rode his bike to the middle school and asked Manson to point Ratley out. Manson got on the bus and headed home, and Treacy proceeded to beat Ratley, pounding her head into the pavement and stomping on it with steel toed boots.
Ratley spent months in the hospital, having suffered serious brain trauma, and was only recently allowed to go home so she could begin relearning simple, every day tasks.
Manson said she was sorry this happened, and she was sad she could not longer see her best friend. She never expected what happened, but the legal system would like to see Manson tried as an adult, an accessory to attempted murder.
Three lives ruined over text messages that should have never been sent, words that should never have been said. Perhaps we need to start thinking of ways to educate our children again on not just manners, but appropriate communications skills. Or maybe it’s time we develop new rules for communication now that everything has changed due to texting and Internet communications.
What do you think? Is Manson equally responsible in this crime? Or is she just an innocent bystander?
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Comments
Katrina Robinson
June 11th, 2010 - 6:26:00 AM
This is freaking out of control. I'm totally shocked. I honestly feel bad for all of these kids (least of all Wayne--he just seems like a totally effed up kid).
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Nicole
June 11th, 2010 - 6:34:02 AM
There is something seriously wrong in today's society where children feel it's okay to hurt another like that. It makes me so mad and angry. This is a situation that could have been prevented. Now at least one life is forever changed. Who gave these children the right to behave like that? I swear, these stories are getting out of control.
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Kelly Turner
June 11th, 2010 - 12:28:34 PM
This makes my stomach churn. How can you physically, literally stomp on someone's head? The thought of it makes me want to throw up
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Reader
November 5th, 2011 - 11:56:56 AM
. IMO Kayla Manson IS THE PERSON who borrowed the cell phone of her "best friend" (Josie Ratley); used the phone to send offensive texts to Wayne Treacy; & then (even after Wayne noted to Kayla and others that he planned to beat Josie, someone he never met, to death over the texts)-- Kayla Manson even chose to point poor Josie out to Wayne at the girl's school. Kayla Manson is, IMO, a SOCIO-PATH; a drama queen; an attention-seeking liar; a co-attempted murderer -- & she likes to 'play innocent' about everything. It's SO OBVIOUS, IMO, THAT KAYLA MANSON (not Josie Ratley) is, more than likely, the one who SENT THE TEXT MESSAGES. KAYLA's behavior seems to be extremely akin to that of a SOCIOPATH who WILL DO ANYTHING TO GET 'ATTENTION'! KAYLA MANSON is known for being a drama queen who will do anything to anyone or say anything about anyone -- in order to become the center of attention & scandal and she exploited her mentally-ill 'boyfriend' and had him attack her completely-innocent "best friend" -- just for the all of the 'drama' that she know it would create around (and about) her. Just look at all the TV shows KAYLA ran to the very minute her parents set bail for her. When on the TV shows she: 1) displays no concern for her "best friend" (& spends most of the time describing the phone messages and the attack); 2) she "innocently slips" & uses foul language (like it's the way she speaks everyday); and 3) she spends more time on these shows trying to give the "alibi" of "look at my innocent face ... how could 'I' ever be in the middle of this scandal" (a scandal SHE arranged). Josie (the injured 15 year old) was, more than likely, NOT the one who actually sent the text from her phone. Kayla (the conniving 13 year old) most likely borrowed Josie's phone and used it in order to send the text to Wayne. Josie had NEVER even met Wayne (and she knew NOTHING about him OR the intimate details of his family). Kayla Manson was / is Wayne Treacy’s girlfriend; she knew EVERYTHING about Wayne (and his family): she knew what "buttons" to push; and she is known for being an attention-seeker and drama-queen who is willing to watch (and even arrange for) anyone's injury so that attention can be drawn back to her. JOSIE RATLEY clearly DID NOT even KNOW what was going on (behind the scenes) or that (the innocent-faced person who she viewed as being her "best friend") KAYLA MANSON WAS borrowing / had borrowed her phone in order to SET HER UP to get attacked. Nor would poor Josie Ratley have ever even once had suspected that baby-faced Kayla Manson connived all of this wrong -- simply for the ‘drama’ that Kayla had hoped that would then focus around herself (while also creating an opportunity to also make herself into the center of 'attention' all while (falsely) looking like she was "an 'innocent" co-victim' of the entire and horrific series of events). Society had better 'keep an eye' on (the rather silently-sociopathic) Kayla Manson -- just as much as it plans to 'keep an eye' on (the very obviously-sociopathic) Wayne Treacy -- or we can expect even worse tragedies in the future. .
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