A few months ago, Kaytlen Lopan, 13, and her 11-year-old friend walked into a local fast food restaurant, found an unsuspecting 3-year-old girl, and cut off chunks of her hair for entertainment.
For that crime, Kaytlen was sentenced to 30 days in detention -- in addition to a $350 fine and 276 hours of community service. The judge offered to reduce Kaytlen's community service by 150 hours, however, if her mother cut Kaytlen's ponytail off, right there in the court room -- in front of everyone.
Her mom did it.
And now, Kaytlen’s mother, Valerie Bruno, is filing a formal complaint.
Apparently, Kaytlen's mother regrets scalping her daughter in the middle of the courtroom. I imagine it was quite humiliating for the teen. But honestly, cry baby Mommy dearest, you were given an option to refuse. I'm detecting a little buyers remorse. No worries, mama, the hair will grow back. It wasn’t like Kaytlen was held down and taken advantage of, which is more likely what happened to her tiny victim.
Would I cut my kids hair off to reduce her sentence for a crime she committed? Probably not. I’d offer my kid the choice: You can either receive the same courtesy that you gave the 3-year-old or you can do the community service. But there would be consequences to that sort of unsavory behavior. You do the crime, you do the time.
Do I think Kaytlen deserved punishment? Hell, yes. She is old enough to know that she was being an asshole by cutting the little girl’s hair off but she chose to do it anyway. She made a choice and she needs to learn to be accountable for her choices. I think her community service should be spent learning to be more tolerant of small children.
It is completely ridiculous that Ms. Bruno is filing a complaint. She should have refused to cut her daughter’s hair if she didn’t want to do it. Maybe if she were doing a better job of parenting her own daughter, Kaytlen would have never had the opportunity to do such a heinous thing to this small child.
In my personal opinion, Kaytlen is a menace and dangerous. What kind of teenager patrols a local fast-food restaurant until they find a smaller, weaker child to hurt? Ms. Bruno should be thanking Judge Johansen because it seems to me that young Kaytlen may be one haircut away from killing small animals and then making the leap to full on sociopath.
Do you think that cutting off Kaytlen’s ponytail was excessively humiliating?
Image via Esparta/Flickr
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Comments 216
Just another parent who seeks to put blame on someone else, instead of accepting the fact that she needs to be a better parent. She is just like these othe people, who have to file lawsuits, instead of accepting responsibility.
I hope her complaint is LAUGHED out of the courtroom. She had a choice. Now she should live with it.
Or maybe they could apologize and say "youre right, it was wrong to ask you to do tat. Now your daughter needs to fullfil her ENTIRE sentence, since the terms of the plea deal did not meet your expectations"
And if ANYONE touched my 3 year olds hair, they better have a damn good lawyer, Id seek MAXIMUM penalty.
Kaytlen sounds like a young woman that needed more tiime in juvenile detention for her horrible behavior. What she did was reprehensible and I am not sorry for her in the least.
It's called "personal responsibility". Apparently, Valerie Bruno has never heard of it and doesn't feel the need to teach it to her child. Awesome.
The teen has no respect for other people, their bodies or right to be left alone, and the mother lacks integrity by flip flopping on this issue. This isn't a violent, physically painful assault, so I think it's a perfect punishment. It shows her how violated that 3 year old felt. It was also kind of the judge towards the mother to offer any way to get a reduction of hours, since the community service will be a huge burden on the girl and her family. more the family since they have to arrange it and transport her to and from community service.
It would have been more appropriate for the toddler to cut the teenagers hair. Eye for an eye :)
I completely agree with Beth. I saw the original interview on KSL and the mother was pathetic. She needs to except responsibility for her child and actually parent this kid. The teen has issues and the mom isn't doing her any favors by showing her you can do whatever you want as long as you file a sue to get out of.
I think the girl should be put in DT for a while.