Slenderman Stabbing Research Paper

The Media Coverage of the Slenderman Stabbing
Imagine getting a call that your 12-year-old daughter and a friend tried to stab a girl to death to summon a fictional character. Two mothers in Waukesha, Wisconsin, got that call in May of 2014. The girls plotted how and when they would murder their ‘friend’ Payton Leutner, but they did not get the ending they were hoping for. Instead of living with Slender Man in his mansion, they are now both on trial for attempted murder. The media seemed to struggle between if the girls should be tried as adults or not.
The information that made the media question how the girls should be convicted was the prolonged premeditation on the attempted murder. Both of the girls described how they planned it out months before the actual attempted murder. They told authorities that they did it to catch the attention of Slenderman (Gabler). Slenderman is ¨a demon-like character they had read about in online horror stories. They believed the tall, faceless man lived in the nearby Nicolet National Forest, and they planned to flee to his mansion after the slaying and live with him as his servants” (Wagner). The girls had planned to walk to the forest after the murder took place. It took a while for any information about the attempted murder to be published about due to the age of the people involved.
Through the trial, the media got to hear both girls’ sides of
As of now, they are still being tried as adults, according to Wisconsin law. Their trials are still going on, even though the attempted murder happened in 2013. Their next court date has not been announced. The victim was discharged from the hospital and went back to school. The girls planned to live with slenderman as his servants after the murder, but now they are looking at up to 40 years in prison. This story shows how impressionable the Internet is on the minds of children and