Games Made My Son Kill

[FantasyGhost]

THE parents of Britain's most violent teenage murderer has revealed how computer games dripping with bloodlust and death turned their son into a twisted killer.

Stuart Harling — who'd seemed a normal loving boy — got life for stabbing nurse Cheryl Moss to death while she was on a cigarette break.

In a sickening random attack the 18-year-old trainee accountant slashed and hacked her 72 times — just like he'd PRACTISED on the PlayStation in his bedroom.

Now, two weeks after he was convicted at the Old Bailey, heartbroken mum Lorraine Harling has confessed she and husband David had NO IDEA of the well of savagery that had quietly built up in their son.

School attendance officer Lorraine said: "Stuart never gave us any reason to think he was violent at all. He was a very normal boy—quiet and reserved. I used to call him ‘my little professor'.

"I knew he was playing the video games but we didn't really know what went on in them, how brutal and graphic they were."

Her words will resonate with anxious parents all over Britain. For the most chilling fact about Harling—who was grooming himself as a serial killer—is how ORDINARY he was.

The mild-mannered schoolboy gained 10 good GCSEs, excelled at maths, led a scout troop and had a bright future.

But every night he would retreat into his darkened bedroom at home in Rainham, Essex, and enter a grisly virtual world that revelled in sadism, ritual blood-letting and death. Just like millions of other youngsters.

One of baby-faced Harling's favourite games was the notorious Manhunt, where players SLASH and SLICE their victims with meat CLEAVERS, cheese WIRE and CHAINSAWS, or suffocate them with plastic bags.

It was banned in New Zealand in 2004 but allowed onto the UK market uncensored.

Lorraine, 45, said: "I know these games are played by kids across the world, but some are truly horrific.

"And if they can cause a trigger to be pulled in someone's head they should be banned.

"Now I feel like people are looking at me, as if I should have read the signs. But I had no idea."

It was on April 6 last year that Harling's dark fantasy life became terrifyingly real. With his parents on holiday in Spain, he donned a long dark wig, sunglasses and jacket from the ‘killing kit' he had spent 10 months amassing on eBay. He then headed out with a large hunting knife.

At 10.30am, he spotted 33-year-old nurse Cheryl, having a smoke in the grounds of St George's Hospital, in nearby Hornchurch, and pounced — plunging the blade repeatedly into her back, neck, face, chest and skull.

Police soon captured Harling after he dumped the ‘kit', which had his address on the mail-order packaging. In Spain his stunned parents could not believe the news.

"I thought there'd been a mistake," said Lorraine.

"For an hour David and I didn't move. We sat there in shock. When we got back and saw him in his cell it was like talking to a stranger. He looked straight through us and gave one-word yes and no answers.

"When I cuddled him, he hardly responded and didn't kiss me. I still didn't want to believe he'd done it, but I think I was trying to kid myself. He was just so cold."

The couple then did not see their son for over a year — until his trial last month. Lorraine said: "He looked the same old Stuart, only he had a beard.

"But the way he was acting wasn't Stuart. I think there are two Stuarts — the one I knew before all this happened, and the one that's there now.

"They're two different people. He's not the Stuart I know."

The trial was told how police discovered that, before the murder, Harling spent days on the internet talking to paedophiles and researching serial killers such as the infamous Dennis Nielsen.

But none of this was known by his parents. They never suspected a thing. Throughout the trial Harling misbehaved. He snarled at the prosecutor: "I'm going to cut your f***ing head off and s*** down your neck!"

Harling had learned the foul threat from a computer game. Lorraine said: "Stuart was 11 or 12 when I bought him the PlayStation. For a long time I didn't even realise games had age limits on them. We'd just buy him the game that all the other kids had.

"I didn't really know what they were about. I think most parents are the same. But Stuart wasn't in his room on the PlayStation all the time. He was a normal boy. He wasn't that outgoing, but he had friends. He never did anything that made us worry.

"I was his mother, but I'd no idea what was happening."http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news4.shtml

[Fats]

There we have it then.

Proof that Videogames DO kill people.

*goes outside, kicks a ball...*

[Applefiend]

News of the world is a famous UK trash newspaper. "News of the Screws" they used to call it, as it was mainly concerned with which celebrity was screwing whom.

Mostly concerned with kiddy fiddlers these days though.

[Coded-Dude]

"I knew he was playing the video games but we didn't really know what went on in them, how brutal and graphic they were."
DUMB $*@&#!

Its your fault for not parenting your child.....maybe next time you'll pay attention.

"And if they can cause a trigger to be pulled in someone's head they should be banned."
Bad driving triggers rage in me, should we ban driving, I may kill somebody one day!

[SuperLuigiBros]

This is really sad, but:
But every night he would retreat into his darkened bedroom at home in Rainham, Essex, and enter a grisly virtual world that revelled in sadism, ritual blood-letting and death. Just like millions of other youngsters.
How come all those other millions of youngsters (us) aren't murdering people? Its because this one kid was messed in the head, despite seeming like a normal boy.

I believe people who do these things are going to end up doing it no matter what, its just that they play video games and its easy to blame them completely when its a bunch of other stuff that sends the kid over the edge. For example, lets say this boy never played games, then it couldve been a movie that sent him over the edge, or reading a story like it in the news paper. Hell, he was researching that other killer. Mabye he was always interested in doing something like this and just played the violent games because they remind him of the act.

Or something.

[masonite]

lol, news of the world.... the fact that such a story was published in such a paper says a lot about the kind of people who believe this type of thing.

IMO the whole "games make people kill" argument just lost its last fetid shred of credibility.



*reads on about george bush being a lizard, and the woman who fell in love with an alien*

;)

[Coded-Dude]

BIN CHEATIN': Osama's Brit daughter-in-law in sex shock =-o

[Phoenix]

"I knew he was playing the video games but we didn't really know what went on in them, how brutal and graphic they were."

Shut up, woman. You failed, not video games.

Sickening slant too, that article had.

[Coded-Dude]

visit the link

pic of victim
pic of killer - "6 years old, before he killed!"
pic of killer - "Twisted Killer......"
pic of monster - "Brutal game characters"

[Khaos]

"Games Made My Son Kill" should become an Internet-wide wordfilter to "I'm a horrible parent, please rape my face"

[Phoenix]

Games made me rape bad parents' faces.

[masonite]

hehehe, this is wierd... my name is stuart too.... and i got a playstation when i was 11 or 12....and i recently looked up serial killers on wikipedia.....does....does this mean..... i'm......

auughhh......can't..... take....it....


my....my mind..... everything.....

red.....



*snap*


AUAUGGHAHGUUGHGUHUGUUHUG!!!!!! KILLKILLKIOLKILLIILL



IM GOING TO STAB SOMEONE IN THEIR NECK, BACK, FACE, SKULL, etc.

IM GOING TO SWEAR AT A PROSECUTOR!!!! AUAUAGUGUHGHGHG

IM GOING TO GROW A BEARD!!!! AUGHAUUHAUHAHGUU

IM GOING TO GIVE ONE WORD ANSWERS!!! (much to everyone's delight, i'm sure ;) JAGAGHAGHGAHGAHAGHAHGHG



The mild-mannered schoolboy gained 10 good GCSEs, excelled at maths, led a scout troop and had a bright future.


I'M... oh.. hang on....thats not me...


*ahem*


*walks away, whistling*


*eats a golden gaytime*





he donned a long dark wig, sunglasses and jacket from the ‘killing kit' he had spent 10 months amassing on eBay

LOL! it took him 10 months to find a wig, sunglasses and a jacket on ebay?!? he really does have problems ;)



I used to call him ‘my little professor' I'd stab someone too if my mum called me her little professor.

[Phoenix]

hehehe, this is wierd... my name is stuart too.... and i got a playstation when i was 11 or 12....and i recently looked up serial killers on wikipedia.....does....does this mean..... i'm......

auughhh......can't..... take....it....


my....my mind..... everything.....

red.....=-o

You're Kira, aren't you?

[masonite]

lol, kira?!? nope...

[Boggy700]

Not only is it wrong that the a lot of people and the media blame violent videogames for when a teenager kills, but also that so many other people (videogame sympathizers) place the blame solely on the parents.
Yes it is the parent's fault that their child is playing the videogames in the first place, but it is the child's fault that they choose to kill people.
The killings are only the parent's fault if the videogames actually do cause people to kill.
Otherwise, the killings are the fault of the individual killer alone.

Nobody held a knife to this kid's throat and forced him to stab that person.
(Although that would've been somewhat ironic.)

When will people stop blaming outside causes and accept that people have the free will to make their own decisions for themselves.
Unless, of course, they have some serious psychological impairment that prevents them from doing so.

[VG Aficionado]

Anything to place the blame on others. Sucks.

[Applefiend]

So.... It's not the stress of studying for all those exams that made him snap. Ban school books! :)

[Coded-Dude]

I don't blame the parents for the murder, that is solely the responsibility of the murderer.
But if the parents want to blame video games, I blame them for not being competent enough to "parent" their child.

Anything can trigger such action.....go watch Falling Down.

[Phoenix]

Not only is it wrong that the a lot of people and the media blame violent videogames for when a teenager kills, but also that so many other people (videogame sympathizers) place the blame solely on the parents.
Yes it is the parent's fault that their child is playing the videogames in the first place, but it is the child's fault that they choose to kill people.
The killings are only the parent's fault if the videogames actually do cause people to kill.
Otherwise, the killings are the fault of the individual killer alone.

Nobody held a knife to this kid's throat and forced him to stab that person.
(Although that would've been somewhat ironic.)

When will people stop blaming outside causes and accept that people have the free will to make their own decisions for themselves.
Unless, of course, they have some serious psychological impairment that prevents them from doing so.This is true to an extent, but much of how people react is based on how they were raised. If someone is not fully grown and not entirely thinking acting for themselves, if they do something stupid, the parents are more to blame the younger they are. If a 6-year-old did something like this, the parents deserve pretty much all of the blame, but if it's an 18-year-old, they both deserve about equal blame.

[Viper]

I went to the site itself.

I can't believe sites like this don't come with a disclaimer for the common idiot that reads it. You knows kinds of disclaimers on everything else to keep idiots from being idiots (they apparently don't work too well though). Like caution: Coffee might be hot.

This one should say, "Caution: Article might be full of shit"

[Phoenix]

Caution: Grammar may not be used.

[Pluto]

But every night he would retreat into his darkened bedroom at home in Rainham, Essex, and enter a grisly virtual world that revelled in sadism, ritual blood-letting and death. Just like millions of other youngsters.

...Are you kidding me?

[Xer0]

=-o

You're Kira, aren't you?

Lol, i got that reference. anyway.....

This article is so biased and slanted that its hard to read with a straight face. Its not news, its preaching, yet in the end it only shows that the parents are useless people. Bah

[koten]

This thread title should be changed to

"Bad Parenting made My Son Kill"

[Pro A.]

Lol, i got that reference. anyway.....

This article is so biased and slanted that its hard to read with a straight face. Its not news, its preaching, yet in the end it only shows that the parents are useless people. Bah

Hear hear.

This kid... words can't even describe it. Must have been seriously neglected by his parents to begin the ugly mess that occurred.

[Gummy]

I stole coins because Mario told me to.

[masonite]

well i still don't get the kira reference... care to elaborate phoenix? :)



BIN CHEATIN': Osama's Brit daughter-in-law in sex shock =-o

lol, i thought that was a joke headline until i went to the site...

[Khaos]

Don't worry guys, I'm contacting Al Gore about that Internet-wide wordfilter.

[Boggy700]

Here comes a longish post, feel free to ignore it.


This is true to an extent, but much of how people react is based on how they were raised. If someone is not fully grown and not entirely thinking acting for themselves, if they do something stupid, the parents are more to blame the younger they are. If a 6-year-old did something like this, the parents deserve pretty much all of the blame, but if it's an 18-year-old, they both deserve about equal blame.
Well without getting into the whole 'nature vs. nurture' discussion that I am always too eager to bring up, the way a parent raises their child does determine, to a large extent, the way they act, but I am sure that we do not have any significant idea regarding the upbringing of this specific person, and as such, we are in no position to pass judgment on his parents. All we know is that they were unaware of the videogames their son was playing. Whos parents actually are, or were, when they were a teenager. Which teenager even wanted their parents to know all about the videogames they play? I think it's safe to say that most teenagers want a certain amount of distance between them and their parents at times. This is why teenagers might rebel against their parents. Perhaps this kid was raised in a loving family, and it is this that he is rebelling against. On the other hand, perhaps he was raised in a cruel and uncaring environment by his parents and this skewed his perception of right and wrong and what is real and what is not. As I said before, the parents' unawareness of the videogames their son played is only at fault if it is a fact that these videogames led him to commit this murderous act. From my time here on this forum, and around videogamers in general, most of us, if not all of us, do not believe this to be true at all.

I am as unclear about the upbringing this child has had as anyone who knows nothing but what is written here, but in my opinion he chose to murder that woman by his own free will as opposed to any specific psychological disposition. Although perhaps the parents are to blame for raising a child with his own free will? Of course not. My point is that we can find a way to blame nearly everything for the murder, but only one thing makes sense in a situation such as this.
Blame the murderer for the murder.




A side note here is that I happened to stumble upon this recurrence today.

Asperger syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome) is a condition on the autistic spectrum. It manifests in individual ways and can have both positive and negative effects on a person's life. Like other forms of autism, Asperger's includes repetitive behavior patterns and impairment in social interaction. However, Asperger's differs from 'classic' autism in that non-social aspects of intellectual development generally proceed at a normal or accelerated rate."
"Dr. Asperger described his young patients as "little professors."

While the mother of the murderer stated:

"Stuart never gave us any reason to think he was violent at all. He was a very normal boy—quiet and reserved. I used to call him ‘my little professor'.

[Applefiend]

http://ps3.qj.net/Teen-stabs-brother-to-death-over-videogame-dispute/pg/49/aid/97734

It's a sad state of affairs when something so trivial as a mere argument over a videogame can degenerate into something much, much worse. Unfortunately, this is the case with 16-year-old Antwan Ricks, the young man dying of a single stab wound to the chest inflicted by his younger brother, 13-year-old Jahmir Ricks, in what appears to be a dispute over who gets to play next, last Sunday.

So what really happened? As it turns out, Jahmir had beaten his older brother in a videogame, and the latter refused to pass the controller to someone else - thus breaking a house rule of giving someone else a chance to play after you've lost in a match.

Things got real ugly real fast, with the dispute turning into a heated argument, then into a full-on brawl - and then into murder, as Jahmir stabbed his older brother in the chest with a steak knife.

The police were called in immediately after the incident, arriving a few minutes before 1 p.m. Jahmir was immediately apprehended, cuffed and put in the back of a police car - and it's to note that there was no struggle reported. It also seemed that Jahmir was fully aware of what he had done, saying "I just stabbed my brother," to the policemen who arrived. His brother, Antwan, was pronounced dead at the Delaware County Memorial Hospital, 20 minutes after the arrest was made, with the cause of death being a single stab wound in the chest.

Charged with first degree murder, third-degree murder, aggravated and simple assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and possession of instruments of crime - Jahmir is now being held in the county prison without bail, waiting on a pending hearing Magisterial District Judge John J. Perfetti.

Truly a very shocking incident, from a county that's relatively peaceful - as Antwan's death marks the borough's first homicide for 2007, and putting Delaware's toll to 25. Updates as we get them.


His life could have been saved by a co-op mode....

[Phoenix]

Wait, first-degree murder? I may have my definitions wrong, but that has second-degree murder written all over it.

[TheGreenElf]

I'm sick of this. People not wanting to admit that their child had some illness or hey...even bad parenting.

[Boggy700]

I'm sick of this. People not wanting to admit that their child had some illness or hey...even bad parenting.
Well it must be an extraordinarily hard time for the parents to come to terms with the fact that their son is a murderer.
I'm sure they don't want to admit that there is any truth to this situation.
They, as would any parent, probably wish it was all an elaborate hoax, at the end of which everything is returned to normal.
I doubt there are many parents out there that actually want to admit that their child had a murder-inciting psychological illness, or that they were bad parents, or that videogames were to blame, or that any outside force drove their child to kill, or that their child made such a conscious decision of their own accord.
No parent wants to admit that the human life they created and raised for eighteen years, someone they had dedicated a very large portion of their own life to, sharing joy and sorrow with, taking pride in as one would a work of art, that this symbol of two parents love for each other, and for their baby-through-young adult, can commit an act of such vile hatred.
From the time they saw him after he killed to the time of the trial they were separate for over a year, and I can almost guarantee that not a day went by when the parents weren't questioning every single day of the eighteen years they had spent raising him.
If the parents do in fact blame videogames, and the journalist isn't just editing the article down into an easy-to-swallow answer so as to spoon feed the ignorant general public, then they surely blame themselves also.
They blame themselves for allowing their son to be exposed to what they believe the root of the problem is.
They probably couldn't feel more remorseful unless they had bought him the actual murder weapon.
I strongly doubt that any loving parent could attribute their child's murderous behavior to a single source and be done with it.
As I have said before, if the videogame is at fault, then so are the parents who allow it to be played.
I am quite sure these parents recognize that.



I still don't yet see how it's anybodies fault but the murderer himself.
Seriously. It's as though the phrase, "the 'killing kit' he had spent 10 months amassing" isn't a huge clue.
Not only that, but if it isn't his fault alone, then the cause is probably far too specific or widespread to correct so a to prevent more murders from happening in the future.



I think it's interesting to note that the father's point of view is absent.
It could be that they couldn't or didn't interview him, or that they edited his parts out.
Why I find this curious is because being that a mother probably has a stronger emotional bond to their child than the father might, this journalist possibly purposefully decided to avoid including his contribution.
Of course this is just baseless and inconclusive speculation on my part, but it's ever-so-slightly odd that the only male presence is the murderer and the murderer he was researching, Dennis Nielsen.



I've been pondering over this post for too long now.

[Generosity of God]

School attendance officer Lorraine said: "Stuart never gave us any reason to think he was violent at all. He was a very normal boy—quiet and reserved. I used to call him ‘my little professor'.


hello first sign right there. we may think "its just a personality trait" but it's not a healthy one and shouldnt be ignored. who do loners socialise with? it usually tends to be themselves and that can lead to really bad things.

[Sephiroth_VII]

=-o

You're Kira, aren't you?

Nah, can't be, because I am Kira :D

"ahem"
Anyway, this is another case of stupid sensationalism, case closed.

[Boggy700]

School attendance officer Lorraine said: "Stuart never gave us any reason to think he was violent at all. He was a very normal boy—quiet and reserved. I used to call him ‘my little professor'.
hello first sign right there. we may think "its just a personality trait" but it's not a healthy one and shouldnt be ignored. who do loners socialise with? it usually tends to be themselves and that can lead to really bad things.
First of all, he wasn't a loner.
He was a normal boy. He wasn't that outgoing, but he had friends.

Secondly, I too am "quiet and reserved", and yet I am healthy.
Are monks who take a vow of silence unhealthy?
Is reading a book not the ultimate act of being quiet and reserved?
On the other hand, what about all the loud outgoing people in the world?
Are there no unhealthy people among them?
This world isn't divided into Jack Torrance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Torrance)s and Raoul Duke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Duke)s.

Thirdly, yes, socialisation with one's self can lead to bad outcomes, just as socialisation with others can.
If we are to discuss all the possible outcomes of either, we will be here 'till the end of time.
To discuss the outcomes of both, twice as long.



Now Coded Dude's to which I had so far neglected a response.

I don't blame the parents for the murder, that is solely the responsibility of the murderer.
But if the parents want to blame video games, I blame them for not being competent enough to "parent" their child.
As was my immediate reaction, although by my way of thinking, to do so is to acknowledge that violent videogames do cause violent tendancies in people.

Kinda like if someone says,
"You put your penis inside men."
You could retort,
"You didn't seem mind it last night."
Thus damaging both party's reputations as swingin' heterosexual bachelors.


...uhh.


*ahem*


Anything can trigger such action.....go watch Falling Down.
I remember watching that movie several years ago with my parents.
I couldn't have been much older than fourteen.
I liked it.


Finally, a tangent!

About a week ago I watched an old video on YouTube where Quentin Tarantino was saying that young teenagers would probably really enjoy Kill Bill, and the interviewer started getting oh so high-and-mighty about why he makes such violent films,
("BECAUSE IT'S SO MUCH FUN, JAN!!")
...etcetera.
But watching it brought up some conflicted thoughts of my own, regarding the fact that, while I agree to a certain extent with Tarantino's stance on younger audiences watching more maturely themed films, I couldn't help but feel ever-so-slightly perturbed that he would suggest it to a mass audience.
In retrospect, I'm not sure why, seeing as how:
A) I don't really care about society, much less societally imposed boundaries.
B) Because I really didn't want to share even a fraction of the stance the interviewer took, due to her immensely arrogant personality, and that she shouted over Quentin Tarantino.
and C) As I partly mentioned before, I would probably let my own children, were I to have any, watch films before they are "old enough", but after I have explained to them and am sure they understand the difference between fiction and reality, and why it's not okay to do a lot of things that are in movies.
(Although as I understand, having children does mind-bending things to a person.)

Ultimately I forgot where I was going with that, but
Speaking of Quentin Tarantino and Kill Bill, and the one degree of separation to Robert Rodriguez...
As I was coming home from a movie a few nights ago, my taxi driver and I started talking about El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Sin City and independent films in general.
Coolest cab driver I've ever had!

[TheGreenElf]

I agree with Boggy that a quiet person is usually a bs reason. I doubt that has anything to do with it. I am often quiet and reserved, as are a lot of people I know. It means nothing.

[TimmyJ]

he donned a long dark wig, sunglasses and jacket from the ‘killing kit' he had spent 10 months amassing on eBay.

Because that's what we gamers do...

[Khaos]

Hey guys, I just need to win this auction (http://cgi.ebay.com/26-Machete-Wood-Handle-Sharp-Blade-Ninja-Sword_W0QQitemZ230153703665QQihZ013QQcategoryZ4333 7QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) and I'll be all set! :thumbl:

[Derrick Barra]

I think you still need a fake mustache, Neo Style Shades, and a desire to play Rockstar games.




"...every night he would retreat into his darkened bedroom..."
Doesn't he know that it's harmful to you eyes to play games in a poorly light room? :shocked:

[Applefiend]

I actually have samurai swords bought online, a desire to play Rockstar games and yet don't want to kill real people.

Perhaps it's because I've seen this card...

http://www.bhprojects.com/Media/fatherted.jpg

[masonite]

hahahahaha, father ted, awesome...

[koten]

I own lots of swords, many of them sharp, and play video games very often.

Do I go killing people? Nope.

[Viper]

I wonder why the other 99.99999% of gamers aren't out there killing people yet?

I wonder what they'll blame the other 99.999999% of non gaming related killings on?




Oh, wait, I get it now. Cain killed Abel because Abel was squatting at the spawn point.

[Applefiend]

^^^ I like that, that's very good. :)

[RzrWire]

Otherwise, the killings are the fault of the individual killer alone.

Nobody held a knife to this kid's throat and forced him to stab that person.
(Although that would've been somewhat ironic.)

I knew Boggy played Manhunt! That would explain the strange smell coming from his backyard...

I wonder why the other 99.99999% of gamers aren't out there killing people yet?

The other 99.99% of us are just better at hiding the bodies and the evidence.