Youngsters Mourn the Hero They Never Knew

Joshua said he’d had enough of the televised O.J. Simpson preliminary hearing by the time it reached closing arguments, but the frowning face of the famous defendant was still on Joshua’s mind when he hit the beach that afternoon.

“I feel sorry for him,” said the tanned 10-year-old, dragging his body board through the sand near the Huntington Beach Pier.

“He looks so sad. . . . He’s in big trouble.”

Added his 9-year-old buddy, Brian, also of Huntington Beach: “He’s a nice guy. He’s on TV. They wouldn’t let him be on TV if he killed someone.”

Just as adult America has been obsessed with the Simpson affair, so has young America been fixated--in their case on a sports hero they never saw play.

They have been largely overlooked in the media rush to interview anybody with an opinion on the case. Yet today’s kids are every bit as opinionated, passionate and conflicted as their parents and older siblings about the case.

The hordes of news crews have left the courthouse for now, but legal experts aren’t the only ones raising questions since Simpson was arrested in the double-homicide of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Experts say the confusion felt by youth is more pronounced because they are the part of our population most affected by violence, yet they lack the tools of maturity to sort it out.

“If he did do it, he wasn’t himself,” declared 14-year-old Angie del la Torre. “He just lost it. . . . Something’s wrong; he was possessed.”

Angie and her friends were still reeling from the preliminary hearing, every minute of which they say they watched with interest.

“Everybody’s watching it,” said 13-year-old Lisa Long. “My mom taped the whole thing.”

The boys said they knew Simpson from trading sports cards, while the girls knew him as “the Hertz guy” and from the “Naked Gun” movies.

“You wish he didn’t do it,” said Ryan Myers, 13. “Yeah,” added Joey Maletic, also 13, “he was like a sports hero.”

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While kids like Angie and her friends are able to weigh the facts in the case, younger children have a tougher time, Brea psychotherapist Toni Aquino says.

The confusion, fueled by unrelenting media coverage and gavel-to-gavel broadcast of the courtroom events, has children weighing such factors as celebrity and consequence, gaping wounds and bloodstains--true-life topics far more graphic than your basic schoolyard discussions of right versus wrong.

Aquino and other experts in child psychology agree that because the double slaying and the high-profile circumstances surrounding it have dominated adult conversation, kids naturally soak it in.

“My concern is that it’s not just how they take it in, it’s that we are presenting children with a plethora of violence, day in and day out, and it’s taking on the tenor of normalcy,” she said. “The far-ranging ramification of it is yet to be known.”

Home environment and the way parents present the events surrounding the Simpson case also play a big part in its lasting effect on America’s children, Aquino said.

“They are affected by it in terms of how their parents deal with it,” Aquino said. She added that children from stable families tend to be left more confused by the possibility of a likable personality such as Simpson committing such a heinous crime, while children in a violent environment are more cynical and simply become even less trusting of adults.

Peg, a telephone counselor at the Hotline Help Center in Orange, said she advises any parent faced with troubling questions to hear their children out and focus on their feelings.

“My biggest advice is to listen and reflect on how sad the whole situation is,” she said. “I would ask the child what (he was) feeling and respond to those feelings. I would tell them that the facts aren’t important, that it’s in the court. No one knows what happened, but I would reflect on the pain of not only O.J., but also of his kids, and the families of Nicole and of Ron Goldman.”

Aquino agreed, adding that parents should reassure their children, reinforcing that it won’t happen to them, and that they are loved and secure in their homes.

“They need to know that their world is safe,” she said.

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Youth minister Jim Burns said he witnessed firsthand how emotionally affected even 17-year-olds have been with the situation from its unpredictable start.

Arriving at a scheduled graduation speech at the Crystal Cathedral on June 17, he expected to be greeted with smiles and laughter. What he didn’t expect was the nearly hysterical cluster of teen-age girls that met him before his address.

“He’s going to kill himself,” one of them sobbed. “And it’s going to ruin my graduation.”

It was their day, but, unfortunately, they were competing with history in the making. The group of Valley Christian High School graduates had just traveled the same freeway as the infamous Ford Bronco that chauffeured Simpson on the low-speed pursuit that had scores of millions transfixed to the tube.

Modifying his speech for the uneasy crowd gathered at the Crystal Cathedral, Burns began: “This is a day you’ll never forget--for several reasons.”

Burns, president of the San Clemente-based National Institute of Youth Ministry, said the kids he’s talked to don’t have the same understanding of the case, noting that they don’t really know the same O.J. grown-ups do. Just as the theories and judgments vary, the name “O.J. Simpson” seems to have changed with time.

“I was with a group of kids, and they had to explain to one girl who he was,” Burns said. “And she still had a blank look.”

The touchdowns that brought the young athlete to glory were never witnessed firsthand by today’s youth, nor do they know much of his rags-to-riches tale. Yet because everyone else is obsessed, they also talk at the beach, in malls and summer school classrooms of the defendant they’ve always known as “the Juice,” the part-time actor who dashed through airports and acted as commentator for NFL games on NBC.

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Recent statements from children on the Simpson case range from confused to judgmental. Playing a true-life game of Clue, some had theories, some had questions, some even made angry declarations of the Juice’s innocence.

“He was framed,” said Jordan Turner, 13, of Lake Forest. “It bothers me that they’re not asking if anybody else murdered them.”

Raymond Lieber, of Huntington Beach, had a similar reaction.

“I feel sorry for him because of all he’s had to go through,” said the blond and freckled 11-year-old. “And he’s innocent.”

Lieber, chomping on popcorn with his father in the Westminster Mall, says he’s gotten into arguments with at least one friend about the case, adding that “the news (media) has made up everything they can” to make Simpson look guilty. He added, however, that he had only tuned in “a couple of times” to the preliminary hearing.

“Maybe someone’s trying to get revenge on him for something he did a long time ago,” Lieber said, “but he didn’t do it.”

Raymond’s father, James Lieber, said he’s concerned not only with the Simpson case, but also with the excessive violence in general that saturates the childhoods of today’s youth.

“I think it rips at their innocence, being exposed to these violent episodes,” he said. “And it seems to come up on a regular basis.”