Usually when a 15-year-old girl is so drunk she’s vomiting on the sidewalk, you wonder: Where are the grownups? But in the case of Rachel Canning, the 18-year-old who’s suing her parents to pay her college tuition and support her even after she ran away from home, it seems that many of the grownups were right there, enabling her bad behavior for the last three years.
The internationally notorious case of the suburban New Jersey family would be just another story of a rebellious teen driving her parents crazy, had not her friends’ parents stepped into the fray, dragging this sad situation into court.
The court documents tell a pretty compelling story. All the parties seem to agree that Rachel has problems, including an eating disorder. But after that it gets a little fuzzy. Rachel claims her parents were verbally abusive, that her dad drank with her and was too affectionate, by which she means he kissed her on the cheek repeatedly. But the Department of Youth and Family Services found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of her parents.
Meanwhile, the Cannings say their daughter (the oldest of three) has been out of control for some time now, drinking heavily, ignoring her curfew and cutting school with her boyfriend. They describe their parenting style until recently as pretty “liberal,” making sure that their daughters had high “self-esteem.”
But a few months ago, they finally had to lay down the law: Rachel had to drop the boyfriend and the drinking. If she wanted to live in their house and have them pay her private-school tuition, she had to live by their rules.
Parents of teens the nation over will recognize that lecture. It’s the next step where the Canning case took its crazy turn.
Instead of slamming doors and sulking that she was going to have to deal with her mean old mom and dad for a while longer, Rachel went to her boyfriend’s house. And his parents let her move in.
Jeffrey Kitzmiller, the boyfriend’s father, is apparently in high dudgeon that the Cannings think their son is a bad influence. Kitzmiller said of the Cannings: “Their only experience of [his son] is that he met the father long enough to shake hands.”
He also says that the Cannings have been critical of “every boyfriend she’s had.” Isn’t that what parents of teenage girls are supposed to do?
Weirder still, Kitzmiller insists, “We have been dragged into this.” Dragged? You let her move in.
But then came the real doozy. After a couple of days, Rachel moved in with the parents of another friend, the Inglesinos. And these parents actually fronted her the $12,000-plus to hire a lawyer and sue her parents. (The suit demands that the Cannings cover those legal fees as well as child support for the months Rachel has lived with the Inglesinos.)
John Inglesino, a lawyer and well-connected in New Jersey GOP politics, wrote, “Rachel is likeable, communicates exceptionally well and is highly motivated to attend and excel at a college appropriate for her … That is why my wife and I have decided to fund this lawsuit.” (So altruistic, right up until he asks the court to reimburse him.)
Finally, Inglesino accuses the Cannings of failing to fulfill their “legal obligations as parents.”
That’s rich, coming from a guy whose own wife allegedly served wine coolers to 15-year-olds in a limo. It was also at the Inglesinos’ home that Rachel’s father once found her outside throwing up in garbage cans.
Happily, the judge doesn’t seem to buy Rachel’s arguments. “What will the next step be? Are we going to open the gates to a 12-year-old suing for an Xbox?” he asked in a hearing last week.
It’s tempting to simply mock Rachel as a spoiled brat, especially in light of things like this post by her or a supporter on the “Education for Rachel” Facebook page: “I have been stunned by the financial greed of modern parents who are more concerned with retiring into some fantasy world rather than provide for their children’s college and young adult years.”
But she’s a high-school student whose really bad choices have been encouraged by people much older, who should know better.
Her parents’ authority has been undermined by the people they might least have expected — other parents.