A Wisconsin woman accused of stabbing her classmate to please horror character Slender Man more than a decade ago asked a judge again Friday to release her from a psychiatric hospital.

Morgan Geyser, who is now 22 years old, filed a petition with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren seeking her release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. The petition marks the third time in the last two years she has asked Bohren to let her out of the facility.

She withdrew her first petition two months after filing it in 2022. Bohren denied her second request this past April, saying she remains a risk to the public.

  • youngalfred@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    So she was 12 when she did it, but is still a danger to others 10 years later if I’m reading correctly.
    Was the psychiatric hospital meant to rehabilitate her?

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Well, there’s concerns here. The mind was able to be convinced of the reality of a clearly fictional character. The mind concluded on murder, of all things, as a solution to something. The mind did this almost entirely on its own, despite what it’s been taught and witnessed of others.

      Because people can’t read minds, things observed of that mind will be very carefully assessed. Things like showing vivid imagination, unusual reaction, unusual phases of personality or empathy change, etc. And being so young, connections were likely shaped and formed in impressionable years and these are the hardest to undo; essentially things like personality are established by 12 and the core of it remains relatively unchanged for the entire life.

      She could be ready; she could’ve been ready a few years ago. But it is the job of experts to ensure that mind is extremely unlikely to do that again, and that it isn’t vulnerable to change when released. Get that wrong and the loss is much higher than what is currently occurring.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The point is specifically to get them to the point where they can stand trial.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    For all of you saying this girl is a lost cause, I suggest you look into the Parker-Hulme murder. It was turned into the film Heavenly Creatures.

    Two girls murdered one of the girls’ mothers. It was a premeditated murder. The mother was not some horribly abusive woman, the kids had developed an incredibly unhealthy fantasy life which was replacing reality for them and they got separated. There was queerphobia involved, but it was the 1950s so that’s not surprising, but the fantasy thing was a much bigger issue.

    During their relationship, the girls invented their own personal religion, with their own ideas on morality. They rejected Christianity and worshipped their own saints, envisioning a parallel dimension called The Fourth World, essentially their version of Heaven. The Fourth World was a place that they felt they were already able to enter occasionally, during moments of spiritual enlightenment. By Parker’s account, they had achieved this spiritual enlightenment because of their friendship.

    Anyway, they decided to murder Hulme’s mother so they could stay together and ended up both in prison. They were older than this woman was at the time they committed their murder.

    Both were released after a five years in prison.

    Neither murdered again.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker–Hulme_murder_case

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Also, America’s extreme sentence lengths have not been found to reduce recidivism. I don’t like prisons in general, but in particular I hate that we seem to not give half a shit if the harm we authorize them to do actually improves anything, especially before allowing them to do more harm. This is especially true when we’re talking about someone who successfully pled insanity, which is really fucking difficult actually

      I hope this woman gets the treatment she needs then is released and commits no more crime.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This is also why conservatives rail against things like Dungeons and Dragons.

    • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I mean yeah, but this isn’t a statistical sample, we should have meaningful data to give us recidivism rates for different crimes.

      Sometimes the damage is deep, sometimes it’s readily curable. Hard to tell which without work.

  • PineRune@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I remember when this happened. I think it’s wild that she is still being detained for it.

    • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      … really? It’s really crazy to you that someone who murdered attempted to murder a little girl and blamed a meme has been in a mental hospital for 10 years?

      Edit: meh. I’m at a “everyone sucks here” conclusion. The abusers suck, and the US prison / mental health “totally not prison” systems all suck.

    • drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It happens. I know a weird amount of people who stabbed someone as a kid. Two of them went to the same institution at different times and they both told told me about a girl was really tall, 6 foot at age 13, who had stabbed a few staffers with shanks and almost started a number of fires.

      Apparently the staff told them she would never have a moment of freedom in her life.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Did the staff tell her she would never have a moment of freedom in her life before the stabbing and the fires started? Because that might explain them.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          So many people like to ignore that mentally ill people are rarely acting out just to act out. Yes it happens, but often there’s a line of reasoning, including emotional disregulation and failure to appropriately escalate. Take someone with those traits, lock them up, and add distress to them (especially when you’re frustrated at their behavior) and they’re prone to do whatever they think they can.

  • guldukat@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    When I was 12 I got into the occult pretty hard. Ouiji boards, deities, etc. Not one fleeting thought in my head was murder. These girls are dangerous.

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      You probably didn’t have early-onset childhood schizophrenia. This girl was undiagnosed at the time and literally thought she was talking to Slender Man, as well as Severus Snape, unicorns, and ghosts. I’m not saying she should be released, but she’s been in treatment for a decade, and she’s requesting the court appoint an expert to evaluate her and make a recommendation about her release. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Wow, so you didn’t have schizophrenia, and you didn’t have the same problems as someone who did? Sounds about right, maybe you should understand what you’re talking about before you open your dumb mouth.