Three weeks ago, I wrote about a woman who sued two teenage girls for delivery cookies. As I mentioned in that post, I was skeptical and felt that the woman in question, Renea Young, did not have a chance to tell her side of the story. Well, she has just given her side of the story.

Young said her home is in an extremely rural area, and the girls had to climb over two fences, walk through a pasture filled with livestock and crawl across an open ditch to get to her home. Once there, Young said the girls went to a secluded back door and banged on her door at 10:30 p.m. and ran away. "They banged on the door so hard, we were certain someone was trying to break in," said Young.

While the girls and their families said they promptly apologized to Young and offered to pay her medical bills, Young said that is not the case. She said that the controversy could have been avoided had the girls simply acknowledged their mistake immediately. "Do you really believe if these people gave me the $890, I would go through the process of going to court to ask for $890?" said Young. "There was never any money presented. I tried four different times to communicate with the Ostergaards, and all four times they had no desire to settle the matter, right up to the time we presented this to court."

Since the story initially became public, Young has been the target of hate mail, harassing phone calls and even death threats. If you were participating (or condoning) the harassing of Young (and if what Young says is true), then you would have been persecuting an innocent victim.

This is why I always recommend hearing all sides of the story before deciding to "punish" someone.