The story of "good children"

(QBĐT) - Not necessarily showing fear, remorse or regret, the children, who are still school-age, with immature faces, seem very calm and "innocent" when standing before the jury. Only their parents are truly startled by the testimony and actions of their beloved children.

1. After hearing the jury sentence their son to 18 years in prison, they were startled, then turned to me and asked repeatedly: “I know, with that crime, he will definitely go to prison. And I also know, he committed the crime when he was a minor, the sentence is only about 10 years in prison? How can that be?”

You are the parents of Dat, the youngest defendant among the 10 subjects who committed the crime of “Illegal drug trafficking”, with the amount of tens of thousands of drug pills that shocked public opinion recently. At the time of the crime, Dat was not yet 18 years old. To get the 4 million VND reward, Dat and another subject were the main characters in the case of transporting the above drugs. And Dat was also the one who continued to carry out the act of hiding and carrying the drugs to sell.

Listening to my parents, when they were still at home, many times they told their child: "Play whatever you want, but don't get involved in drugs and suffer." He just said yes, yes, then took his motorbike out to play. I don't know what he's like on the street, but at home he's still obedient and obedient. The old saying goes, the first child is often foolish. But who would have thought, he was so foolish that he listened to bad friends, became addicted to transporting and selling drugs, and ended up in this situation."

Dat was the eldest child and only son in the family, so he was spoiled from a young age. When he was born, Dat was often sick. When Dat was 5 years old, there was a big flood. While Dat and his wife were putting things up high, Dat fell into the floodwaters. They almost lost their child. From then on, they loved their son even more. When he grew up, Dat got whatever he wanted. Although the family was not well off, they did not want their son to be inferior to his friends.

She said: “A farmer’s life is to work hard all day, working hard, working hard, hoping to give his children a comfortable life. However, he doesn’t know or understand. In the past, there were times when he followed his friends to hang out and play around, and we always called him to warn him. But after a few days, he went out with his friends again. Well, he is still young, at the age of eating and playing. He only studied in 8th grade, and he said he couldn’t cram letters into his head. We also advised and persuaded him, and talked nonsense, but in the end he dropped out of school. I encouraged him that if he couldn’t study, he should try to find a job to make a living, but he said he preferred working to learning a trade. Then he went to the South to find a job. After working for a while, he returned.”

Illustration: Minh Quy — *Illustration:* **Minh Quy**

In the afternoon, someone reported that Dat had been arrested by the police and his house was searched. The couple was still half-believing, half-doubting. Because he had just left home that morning. When he heard the news on the phone, the husband was still angry and said, "If you can't teach him at home, go out and let them teach him." Let the police arrest him once, to teach him a lesson? "When you're angry, you say that, but what parent can abandon their child? I didn't expect everything to happen so quickly."

2. Looking at the 11th grade student bowing his head to testify before the jury, I thought he was a student who had not yet learned his lesson and was standing “reciting his lesson” in front of the teacher. During the entire trial that day, there was a woman sitting quite close to the row of defendants who just kept silent and cried. She said that the tall, white-skinned boy standing there answering was her son. He was in 11th grade. All the defendants sitting in the row of defendants were acquaintances in the village and commune. She knew everything, but she thought that her son was a student, still going to school, so he had no time to hang out, play around, or be lazy. Unexpectedly, now they were standing in court together.

Her son is also on the school sports team. He loves sports, so there is no way her son could use drugs. If he did, it would only be recently. But no, according to the jury, Long is the youngest person (born in 2007) in the case, but has the most active role, nature, and level of crime. Because, Long is the one who actively arranges and mobilizes money to buy drugs. During the process of buying and selling drugs, Long is also the one who decides who to sell to, in what quantity, and at what price.

Hearing this, she put her head down. “Ah, so before the incident happened, I didn’t see where the electric motorbike that my husband and I had saved up money to buy for our son was. I asked him several times, and he said he lent it to a friend.” Hearing his son say that, that was all she knew. Unexpectedly, Long had pawned the motorbike, took 2.5 million VND, to save money to buy drugs to use and sell for profit.

Long intended to redeem the car after selling all the drugs he had bought, Long told the jury. If everything went smoothly, everything would return to normal, no one would know, no one would know. Long was still a student who went to school every day and was still a good child in the eyes of his parents. And now, her "good child" was now serving a sentence of more than 6 years in prison. The sentence, she thought, was only a suspended sentence, because no one could bear to be so harsh with him because her child was a student.

After hearing the verdict, the children's faces were still expressionless. Their fathers and mothers were still bewildered, watching their children walk into the crowd of defendants and go to the convict escort vehicle.

Le Thy

* Names of characters in the article have been changed.

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