From my knowledge only a handful of US States do not seal a juvenile record. Those that make them stick and act like they are adult charges better have a nice explaination why they do not.
It would make a good case study for a legal scholar to study the effects of juvenile convictions and the efforts to stop them being used against a person years later. It would make a good academic read.
Since when had we as a nation made it impossible to seal juvenile records or make it such a way that any future employer or citizen or goverment critter uses it to discriminate, ostracize or hurt another person faces criminal and/or civil penalties. We as a nation are supposed to be a free nation. We are supposed to be forgiving of youthful indiscretions. What law made it not that way? I like to know so I can find the person who passed it and protest on his or her front lawn. Whoever passed these laws should be the oness bullied, pilloried, boycotted, run out of town on a rail. Show me any examples of people who years later cannot have a life because of something that they did at nine or ten or seventeen. I like to know, so we can fight back at the cretins and their stupid laws. A pox on them and their houses!
We must know where and for what crimes we can be "scarlet lettered" for.
In this boy's fate, I assume it will not ruin him for life. I cannot say the same for the bullies or the adults on his mom's side of the family. He should get his lawyer next court date to insert in his record that the charges must be sealed upon majority or accused will take legal remedies". Living a clean record and not seeing the mother again, along with counselling will prove to those bozos in Tacoma that their law structure is just plain wrong.
BTW the charge was nothing like murder one or rape for crying out loud! The little girl is still alive. In bad shape, but alive. (Washington does have such laws for sealing of records.) Since the boy is only nine, chances are he will not commit anything else of this serious caliber again, as long as he is not abused or around his drug addled mom ever again. He has not prior arrests as far as I know. Statistics prove that the majority of kids charged with this type of crime go on not commit any more if they are not maltreated by the system or their family.
The girl's family better sue the bullies' families and the mom and boyfriend, not the boy. He is no little criminal in the making. Just because he is no Senator's son does not make him any different.