It appears that the “Slender Man” attack trial is all but concluded now and the two young girls who stabbed one of their classmates 19 times, nearly killing her, will not spend another night behind bars.

The plea deal which has been worked out is going to see the two girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, both indefinitely committed on an involuntary basis to a mental hospital. That may bring the legal portion of the proceedings to a close, but the nation is left weighing many questions about how the situation spun so badly out of control and if this result truly represents justice. (Associated Press)

One of two Wisconsin girls who stabbed a classmate to impress horror character Slender Man is due in court to finalize a plea deal aimed at sparing her prison time.

Fifteen-year-old Morgan Geyser will plead guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the 2014 attack. Prosecutors and Geyser’s attorneys agreed to the plea last week, but it is being finalized during a court hearing Thursday in Waukesha County court…

Geyser’s co-defendant, Anissa Weier (ah-NEE’-sah WY’-ur), pleaded guilty to a reduced charge last month and faces at least three years in a mental hospital.

If you go back and read the full story as the police understand the events of May 31, 2014 in a wooded area outside of Waukesha, Wisconsin, it’s awful from beginning to end. All the girls were 12 years old at the time and had been at a sleepover party at the home of one of the two attackers. On the pretense of playing hide and seek in the woods, Geyser and Weier lured their victim into the trees, pinned her down and one of them repeatedly stabbed her, puncturing her diaphragm, several organs and almost cutting a major artery which would have killed her in moments. It took two years of recovery before the child could return to school.

And it was all done because they allegedly believed in a fictional, evil character called Slender Man. In one version of their story, they wanted to be disciples of the character and go live as his servants in a mansion somewhere. In another version they claimed they tried to kill their classmate because Slender Man would come after their families if they didn’t.

The court has found both of the girls to be mentally incompetent, with at least one of them being pronounced as suffering from schizophrenia. I’ll admit that anyone who does something this horrible certainly sounds crazy, but were they really unaware of the consequences of their actions? At least one of them confessed that she knew what she was doing was wrong, but it was necessary to save themselves from their fictional anti-hero.

Both of the assailants are white girls from middle class families. I saw more than a few comments on social media claiming that if these had been two black male children of the same age who stabbed a girl that many times they would already be doing life behind bars. I understand that we always get into these sorts of discussions whenever we drag race and SJW complaints into a criminal justice debate, but in this case I can’t help but think that’s correct.

So, with all of that as said, did these girls get off too easy? They may both wind up doing three more years in a mental hospital and then, if they are “miraculously recovered” they could wind up going free. Is that justice considering the magnitude of the crime? Blaming “the internet” for the worst behavior in juveniles is always an easy excuse, but how far gone do children have to be to actually start believing that these video game or chat room creatures of fiction are literally walking the Earth?

It just seems as if somebody needed to be held to a greater degree of responsibility for this barbaric attack. If it’s not the girls then perhaps we should have been looking at the parents more closely. But either way, three years in a mental ward doesn’t sound like a fair balance for a 12 year old girl dragging herself to a ditch by the road and begging for help as she bled out to within an inch of her life.