Julie's Web Journal

Honestly, I'm surprised this sort of thing hasn't happened sooner.

A couple has filed suit against one of several children accused of bullying their child. If half of what they said on Today was true (watch the video), then I'm firmly on their side. The segment includes two tapes of the boy being beaten. One incident, on a school bus, shows the boy's head being slammed into a window by another passenger who attacked him.

The school has apparently not done enough. They "may" have have issued some punishment to perpetrators, but apparently it hasn't been enough to stop the bullying. No assault charges have been filed. Yes, they "may" have done something. You see, privacy laws allow the school to not report the punishment those kids received - even to the parents of the victim.

I've been through this before with my own son. What's the response? Essentially, "boys will be boys." Oh, yes. It gets better. A child who defends himself (or comes in accidental contact with his attacker while trying to get away or protect himself) can get slapped with a suspension.

WTF?

Why haven't the parents filed assault charges on their own? Have they tried? After one particularly nasty incident involving my son I spoke with the campus officer, who encouraged me to file assault charges. We declined, but held the option to go ahead and file charges if the boys didn't back off. And I had no problem with them informing the parents of the boys that we reserved that option. For us, that turned out to be a good decision. He and one of the boys seemed to make amends down the road. It was a better ending than we would have had if we had pursued charges. I know that bullying stories do not all end that well.

One other thing the officer told us was if the boys came back to school and went after Chris because "he got them suspended," then they could be charged with retaliation. He gave me the impression that retaliaion was a serious charge indeed.

Doesn't Arkansas have assault laws? I do wonder if the parents have tried to file charges. They certainly appear to have plenty of evidence.

The parents are also talking about filing suit against the school district. If the school bus tape I saw was any indication, I can't blame them. The driver had to have been aware that a fight was going on. The school district has evidence of an assault on their property on tape, and apparently nothing was done about it?

Yeah, we're lawsuit happy. Of course, if the parents really have tried all other avenues open to them, what's next? On the other hand, it's better than seeing yet another bullied kid take a weapon to school. This kid doesn't seem to be that type, fortunately.

One of the problems with "zero tolerance" is that school districts have a strict set of rules. If A happens, then you issue punishment 1. If B happens, then punishment 2. There is often little distinction between the kid who started the fight and the kid who was defending himself. It's one thing to defend yourself, but it's quite another to turn around and try to beat the crap out of the other kid. Our school cop was very puzzled by this policy. He told us that legally, self-defense isn't punishable, unless it does turn to an intent to harm. If I hit an intruder with a baseball bat (we have a "castle law" in Texas), or if I hurt a rapist while fending him off, I'd be in the clear. But a school child on school property doesn't have that basic right. It could be argued, I suppose, that school children (especially younger ones) don't always know the nuances between self-defense and intent to harm. Yet, how can it be that the mere act of pushing an attacker away gets a victim in trouble?

Perhaps this is why the parents had to resort to a lawsuit. Their son has no recourse if the school won't adequately punish the attackers. If he's on school property, he probably has to sit there and take it or possibly risk a suspension himself. What is wrong with that picture?

How do I know all this? In the incident above, my son put an arm in front of him as he ran away. (I think he may have been reaching for a door.) The arm came in contact with his attacker, who moved in to block his exit. Therefore, my son "hit" his attacker. For trying to protect himself and run away from a fight he earned a day off from school. The campus officer told us if that same incident had happened off campus, then my son's actions would have been considered self-defense.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm repeating what I was told by a police officer and the administrator in charge of "discipline management." I think that's what it was called. She showed me a very thick handbook of rules that they have to follow. I should mention that this incident took place around the same time that the high school honor student got kicked out of school because he had a bread knife in his car. He'd helped his grandmother move the weekend before and he didn't notice that it had fallen out. A bread knife is not an illegal knife under Texas law, yet they nearly ruined this kid's academic career for a simple mistake. Fortunately for him his family (as I recall) hired an attorney who pointed out that there was no provision for suspension if the knife wasn't illegal. Oops.

It all boils down to this: Zero tolerance = zero brains. Punishment fits the flow chart rather than the crime. In the name of protecting our children, school districts allow bullies to get by with a slap on the wrist and kids who don't break the law to get tossed out of school. What is wrong with this picture?

Tags: Bullying