Talk:Murder of Dennis Jurgens

Tone
The tone of this article seems to me to be non-neutral and excessively judgemental about Lois Jurgens. (Not that she didn't do truly horrible things, just that it's not really the place of an encyclopedia to be judgemental about it). I'll try to come back later to start tidying it up. --JennyRad 19:19, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I do not believe the words chosen are overly judgemental. The words mentioned were specific diagnosis by trained professionals that came out during the trial of Lois Jurgens. Considering the gravity of her crimes, I believe the descriptions are restrained if anything.

I concur. Given the abuse this woman perpetuated on a toddler, torturing him for two years until killing him in an agonizing death, I was surprised that contributors to wikipedia could maintain such a neutral tone. I have added a link showing his graves and pictures. If anyone knows how to upload Dennis's picture to wikipedia, please do so. The link is http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6465523&FLgrid=6465523& --Ahab --[Ahab1974] 01:45, 18 Dec 2006 (EST)

Religion
I took out 'non age-appropriate' from before the religious training. Leaving it in would assume that there is such a thing as age-appropriate religious indoctrination; and, hence biased towards religion. Any comments?

I would disagree, but not strongly enough to necessarily put it back in. The learing to say a Rosary and memorize prayer is a pretty standard part of the religious training of a mainstream Catholic child in America. What Lois Jurgens did however, is force it upon them through threats and torture at an age when most children can barely learn their ABCs (This would be akin to stating that a parent practiced "non age-appropriate" scholastic training on a 2nd grader that they forced to learn Algebra). And that is the point that was being made-approve of religion or not, learning parayer and parctice of it is a normal, acceptable part of raising children in many families when done appropriately; what Lois Jurgens did (including forcing them to kneel and pray on a broomstick) was Child Abuse.

Coerced
For the person who wanted to change "coerced" into "convinced" do some research before making that judgement call. She was blackmailed, threatened and forced by the authorities and fought to keep him.

Death of Lois Jurgens
For the person who keeps changing the article to indicate that Lois Jurgens is now dead: Until you can show some proof of this, I will continue changing it back. I referenced The Social Security Death Index and nothing turned up. There is also no obituary to be found online. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GrimGrinningGuest (talk • contribs) 19:51, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I accept the entry at Find a Grave as proof. They must have been careful to keep this out of the attention of the media in The Twin Cities at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GrimGrinningGuest (talk • contribs) 00:44, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that the article on the book A Death in White Bear Lake be merged with this article. Although the book merits a mention as it was well-written and received some reviews, most of the content currently in article on the book is actually about the Jurgens case and therefore duplicates the content found in this article.

To the extent the book's article specifically discusses the book, all its claims appear to be unsourced and frankly sound promotional or even possible copyvios. There was one such unsourced statement saying the book was considered a "classic" of the true crime genre, which I recently removed as unsourced. Still remaining are unsourced statements like this "...allow author Siegel to create a mosaic that makes A Death In White Bear Lake possibly the definitive text on the realities and weaknesses of child protection in America." Hello? Since when is a true crime book a "definitive text"? I would expect to see articles about professors and social workers all using the book to train their classes and personnel, if that were true. Further, text like this: "Siegel's research delves into the heart of small town America, and specifically the town of White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Through exhaustive interviews with witnesses to the abuse which Lois Jurgens had inflicted on Dennis (some of whom had held their silence for decades), the reader is led to understand how the abuse and murder of Dennis Jurgens was allowed to go unpunished for decades. Siegel places the case in the context of the development of child abuse law, and particularly the development of the use of battered child syndrome as a viable way to prove abuse in child murder cases" with no cites, sounds like either copyvio from some review page, or OR. You could simply expand the portion of the Murder of Dennis Jurgens article that already mentions the book with some statements from the published reviews, and citations to those reviews. I don't see the source support for this book to have an entire article of its own that basically repeats all the facts from the article on the case. TheBlinkster (talk) 02:00, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Dubious
Excerpt from WP:Reference desk/Language, which should later be found at WP:Reference desk/Archive/Language/2018 August 7:


 * I just read this sentence in the Wikipedia article Murder of Dennis Jurgens: "In the 1960s, the term child abuse had not yet been coined and no one, not even medical professionals and teachers, were required to report suspicions." (bold-face added by me to text). Is the bold-face word "were" correct?  Or should it be "was"?  Thanks.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 04:57, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The first and biggest problem is that the assertion that the term had not been coined by the 1960s is totally false. I'm seeing it in broad use in various entries in Newspapers.com at least as far back as the 1880s. As to the grammar part, "was" is probably better. But the fact is false. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:34, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

In fact the Oxford English Dictionary Online has examples of the phrase dated as early as 1827, so the claim is definitely wrong. However, I have no idea as to how familiar it was in 1960, so I don't know if there's a weaker statement that might be substituted for "not yet coined" (if there is, it should be cited) or if the claim should just be deleted. --76.69.47.228 (talk) 04:04, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Just want to get this convo going again — there are two "ask citations" in the last paragraph of that section, and both citations actually directly contradict the "fact" they're cited on. Should they just be deleted or what? Tyrnill (talk) 03:47, 21 November 2022 (UTC)