Brenda Harding apparently made a huge mistake. Instead of protecting a friend's 15 year old step son from harm, the 30 year-old Harding apparently led the boy down an adult path which ultimately ended in the teen losing his life. Tristen Hagen, the 15 year old, apparently took his own life after the the Canon City, Colo. woman terminated a sexual relationship with him. The tragic ending is that Hagan is dead and Harding is sentenced to 90 days in jail and 10 years to life on probation. In addition, Harding is now on the official sex offender registry and is not to have unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18. This presents a bit of a problem since Harding has herself two under aged children. KRDO.
How does such a relationship all start? Tristen Hagen's stepmother was apparently a friend of Harding. Westword. Harding at some point agreed to be Tristen's caregiver. Somehow the relationship went a skew when Brenda allegedly began having sex with Tristen during a time in June of 2010 when Tristen was living in Brenda's care. When Tristen's father, Michael Hagen began to suspected an inappropriate relationship between his son and Harding, he asked her to stop. It is not clear when the sexual part of their relationship ended, but in April of 2011, Tristen Hagen apparently took his own life.
Tristen Hagen's autopsy revealed he had overdosed on a mix of painkillers and muscle relaxants. District Attorney Thom LeDoux told the court that the boy could not deal with the relationship ending and that is why such legal prohibitions exists. Perhaps this tragedy will make women think twice before they let a teen become infatuated based upon sexual pleasure which likely lasted but a few seconds.
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17 comments:
What was she thinking!
Young men think with their "unit." When she played with his unit, she controlled his mind. When she was done, so apparently was his life.
I can see why she looks so sad.
She got off light. If I were giving her the sentence it would be much longer. The media needs to stop glorifying such cases.
Disgusting
I can't believe this woman didn't realize what would happen when they "broke up."
A relationship is not a fairy tale. Real-life adult relationships have there ups and downs. Disagreements don’t signal the demise of your relationship. “There are always ways to resolve disputes and build a stronger bond. But with an adult and a teen, it is not an adult relationship. The teen does not have the brain development to deal with the downs of an adult relationship especially if the down is getting dumped.
May this poor boy rest in peace.
Was probably just horny
The tragedy is of course that the boy wasn't yet 18, at which point he would be permitted to commit suicide without a media circus surrounding the act.
Or I suppose that one of his false prior beliefs wasn't corrected soon enough: nobody told him that pump and dump is the modus operandi in America these days, and that women are not angels.
Exactly! But I also agree that the pump and dump mentality of women is completely foreign to a young teen. My bet he was blindsided that a woman might just want sex and then be done with it.
Such a shame this boy had his heart broken. When you're a teen a break up is like the end of the world. Shame on her for being so selfish. I hope not a day goes by that she doesn't think of him and how she was the reason he died.
This is a tragic, even criminal event. NO youth should ever be exploited by an adult. Harding was charged with four sex assault counts. She pleaded guilty to one of them and received her sentence: ninety days in jail, ten years to life on probation, and no contact with anyone under age eighteen until the completion of a risk-assessment analysis.
Harding also expressed her remorse:
"I'm sorry for what has happened, not only because his life is gone," Harding told the court. "He was a friend of mine, and it went beyond that."
Consider that it may be that the current laws do not reflect the maturity level of 17 year old men. A seventeen year old man should be able to choose who he sleeps with. In fact, most laws allow him to so choose provided that the person is not significantly older than the teen. Why is it okay for him to choose to sleep with a 16 year old girl but not a 36 year old woman? While 16 maybe too young to make such decisions, for many 17 year olds, the decision is an informed choice.
Society has been slow to recognize that there is an increasing number of these cases because modern women desire younger men who can fulfill their physical needs. In the past, such romances (summer-spring relationships) also occurred; however, back then it was a red badge of courage for the young man. Now, such relationships are portrayed by the media and treated by the legal system as a "crime." I realize that this case ended in tragedy; however, the same result may have happened if a 16 year old girl had ended the relationship.
Are such relationships really a crime if they are consensual and provide benefit to each participant? Is it time to consider whether a change in laws is in order?
Here the victim was only 15 when all this started.
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