On Brian Osborne and Sharon Tate

by Whabby

When I was a kid, growing up in a small town, there was a certain amount of bullying that went on, and one incident I remember quite vividly. Some friends and myself trapped a younger boy, Brian Osborne, in a field, and basically terrorized him for about half an hour… preventing him from going home, basically. By the time we let him go, he was scared and crying.

I look back on this incident with strong feelings of shame, revulsion, and guilt. If I were ever to come across Brian today, I would apologize profusely. Maybe, if I were lucky, he wouldn’t remember the incident at all. But if he did, I think the most important thing I’d want to say to him is how strongly I repudiate my actions of that long-ago day, and how they have nothing in common with the values and behavior of the adult that I eventually became.

At about the same time that I made life miserable, albeit briefly, for Brian Osborne, a group of Manson followers were committing far worse crimes against Sharon Tate, those who were unfortunate enough to be in the house she was renting that night, and then Rosemary and Leno Labianca. The perpetrators of those horrors are all incarcerated, and none have yet been successful in their requests for parole.

I have always been struck by interviews I saw several years ago on 60 Minutes with two members of the Manson family, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houghton. Some of you probably saw them too. In essence, Van Houten and Krenwinkel echoed my own feelings about what I did to Brian Osborne, when it came to their role in the Tate-Labianca murders, repudiating and rejecting their old actions completely.

Now, I have no illusions as to the enormous gap that exists between my behavior toward Brian and what the Manson family perpetrated. The gap is large enough that there is really no rational basis for comparing the two events at all.

Nevertheless, compare I do. Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houton, both now in their early 60’s, keep having their prison sentence extended for their crimes. My gut reaction is to support those extensions, in large part because of the appalling nature of what they did.

But my gut reaction is accompanied by some doubts. I, as a mature adult, am not the person who bullied Brian Osborne 40 years ago, and would not feel like I would deserve to be punished for those actions today. If Leslie and Patricia really feel the same way about what they did, when they were much younger versions of themselves, do they deserve to continue to be incarcerated?

What do you think, Owls? Looking back on your youth, I’m sure you were involved in some situations, or acted toward other people, in ways that are completely inconsistent with your beliefs and actions today. Do you think you continue to bear some responsibility for those actions? Does that responsibility last throughout your life?