Dr. Drew Pinsky expressed sorrow for the four suspects charged with torturing and beating a Chicago-area mentally disabled white teen during a live broadcast on Facebook.
The former HLN host spoke to TMZ in an impromptu interview Sunday, Jan. 8 where he was asked about the recent racially charged incident. Pinksy told the interviewer that he had a strange reaction to the case, he “felt sorry for the kids who were perpetrating it” and that he believes our society failed the suspects.
“I really felt horrible for them,” he says. “Their lives are going to be over. We’ve failed them. We’ve failed them. They’re 18-year-olds who we’ve failed somehow. Not okay what they did. I’m not dismissing what they did. Nothing about it is okay, but it is a really sad indictment about what is going on today.”
The four Black youths, age 18-24, were charged with committing a hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, and other crimes. Last week, all were denied bond by Cook County Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil.
Pinsky said that parents have to be on top of their kids to prevent future acts of hate of this magnitude from happening again.
“But we don’t need to be aggressive with our kids,” Pinsky tells TMZ. “And I’m afraid that we’ve sort of lost track of that line and we end up getting aggressive with kids and we end up with aggressive kids. I mean, if we were aggressive with a dog and the dog ended up biting people, would we be surprised?”
