Ten Years For Miranda, Life For Marysville

To follow up with some earlier posts on this site about Miranda Cain, the Marysville, Kansas teenage madam, it seems apropos to state that on Tuesday, Citizen Cain appeared in court, after pleading no contest to the charge lodged against her, and was sentenced to about ten years in prison. This is a bit sad, as the arrest took place within weeks of Citizen Cain's graduation from high school. But then, Cain trafficked an eighth grader, whom she met at school, for sex; this is the sentence one might expect.

This leaves some unanswered and very unsettling questions about the city of Marysville and Marshall County, Kansas. Marshall County has only about 10,000 people; Marysville has about 3,200. This makes Marshall County a very small community. Most of the small towns within Marshall County are not home to even as many people as were in attendance at both of the high schools attended by your ever-lovin' blogger; 1,500 students in one school, and 2,500 in the other. The school that had 1,500 students was considered a "small" school. There were students in both of these schools who drank, used recreational drugs, fought with each other, got pregnant, and skipped classes. No one was perfect. At the same time, however; yours truly was able to find friends at both schools who did not do any of the above mentioned things, but just went to class, did their homework, and otherwise led normal lives. The "problem children" were actually in the minority, not the majority. Most of them also had enough sense to straighten up and fly right by the time they graduated. At no time did yours truly ever encounter a teenage madam, pimping underclassmen! In fact, such a thing was unheard of! Keep in mind, these are schools in the suburbs of a major city on the East Coast, yet.......no teenage madams. It would not have been well received or accepted, and prosecution would have taken place without any expectation of favoritism. In the tiny city of Marysville, Kansas, there were some folks, arguing both in favor holding Cain accountable and against holding Cain accountable, who thought that Cain would not actually go to prison, because of "small town politics". Why would anyone think a thing like that, when human trafficking, prostitution, and trafficking a child for sex, are all against the law? It's almost as if..........some people have lived lives that are so isolated and removed from the real world that they think state and federal laws do not apply to them! That's a notion from which Marshall County should really try to recover. Kansas is in the very center of our great nation, and is not in a very good position to secede, in order to legalize teenage prostitution and all the other unlawful things a lot of Marshall County parents allow.

Back to those unlawful things Marshall County parents allow; a second question is brought up, here. It really seems extremely unlikely that a high school senior would wake up one morning and think to herself, "Hmm. I need money. I also enjoy taking risks and having fun. I wonder how many of the junior high kiddies would like to sell sexual favors to railroaders and others who travel and use local hotels?" Your blogger is of the opinion that an adult hand maneuvered in this whole situation, somewhere and somehow, giving Cain the idea and helping her "advertise" her services. While the sentence of ten years for Citizen Cain's role in this operation is appropriate, the fact that no one is asking about others involved, or even if others knew about it, is disturbing. She could not possibly have managed such a "business" alone. How could a high school student involved in very serious crime escape the notice of all of the adults with whom she came in contact? And who were the adults who knew about this? There must have been at least a few. Didn't this raise any eyebrows before the police put a stop to it?

Citizen Cain is not the only high school student in Marshall County, Kansas who has either committed or been involved in a serious crime. Frankfort High School, also in Marshall  County, had three arrests during the 2014-2015 school year, and three of its students and one of its alumni caused a serious accident by drinking while driving during the summer of 2014. In fact, the graduating class of Frankfort in 2015 had only one child, out of twelve or thirteen children, who did not drink alcohol or use recreational drugs. A child in that class would be literally unable to surround himself with children who are not involved in crime at one level or another. A community that is demographically as small as Marshall County, which has schools that have fewer then 150 students, in some cases, should not have any problems keeping control of the schools or the students. So, where are these students learning these behaviors, and why do they think that crime is "normal"? Has Marysville or Marshall County taken a look at itself? Miranda Cain grew up in Marshall County, for the most part. She is a product of the community. How did the community produce this situation? If Marshall County refuses to seek an answer to that question, the factors that created the elements of the question will only repeat themselves.