Unruly schoolboys or sex offenders?

The Oregonian ^ | July 22, 2007 | SUSAN GOLDSMITH

[hiho hiho]

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.

Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?

[Old Professer]

Sometimes you have to step out of line to get a clear view and a breath of fresh air.

[Old Professer]

I think you spend too much time sleeping with Armadillos.

[Old Professer]

In the 40s, you would have been living with Grandma while Mommy went to work at the factory, Daddy would be freezing his butt off somewhere overseas and Grandpa would spend long hours trying to stretch his few dollars and hoping the ration stamps lasted as long as the money.

You’d be pulling all the blinds, closing the curtains eating dinner and maybe playing cards while your Papaw and Mamaw whispered in the kitchen and rolled out that lardy-looking stuff with the little red button inside until it turned yellow so they could put in the leaky icebox until morning so maybe you could have some toast and half a glass of milk.

And you’d be scared.

[wardaddy]

I used to snap bra straps when I was in school.

hell...I still do

when are we gonna let women grow up?

seriously....i grew up in a neighborhood with hundreds of middle class kids from toddlers to those going off to Indochina (some not coming back sadly).....shoot...when we were early adolescent and girls were sprouting boobies and getting a little bottom to them we played wrestling and pinching and goosing....all that stuff....just a few years before we did all that and it was nothing....then all of a sudden it's that warm and fuzzy feeling....man I can remember some of that like yesterday.....it wasn't horrible or demeaning and young girls like young men noticing them..........there are limits of course but this is just "frog in the pocket" horseplay......course many sexless ugly sour women today and their little men enablers don't have those feelings so what do they know?

I have two daughters who guys look at a lot ...and probably goosed them a few years ago...it's just how it is........until it gets disrespectful it's natural.....guys like to swat a girls butt when they can....I sure do

maybe I am living in the wrong era now

[BfloGuy]

No but 5 days in jail will do the punks good

If this is all there is to the story, then your reaction is incredibly overwrought. But I guess there are enough people like you out there that this zero-tolerance insanity is allowed to continue.

Imagine, a sex-offender record and five days in jail for swatting girls on the butt. I'd have never expected to live to see that.

[Old Professer]

Name your gulag, please.

[John Leland 1789]

I certainly don’t want my daughters in the halls of any school where students, in general, have come to accept swatting the posterior as just a form of greeting. It matters not to me who is swatting whose posterior.

Now, let’s say that some Christian (or otherwise morally strict) parents, for whatever reason, still have their children in the public school system? How would those parents be assured that boys tearing down the halls wouldn’t “greet” their daughters in such a fashion?

[Old Professer]

They never are, only that which will elicit interest; the media has to sell soap to stay in business.

[John Leland 1789]

“So you think a Jr. High boy slapping a girl’s bottom is worthy of 10 years in jail and a lifetime on a sex offender’s registry?”

---

It’s either that, or submitting the boy to the father of the girl for a good caning.

[Old Professer]

I see how you got your name.

[John Leland 1789]

“The police should have told the school administration to piss-off...”

You seem not to have thought of the parents of the girls in this matter. What if such handling of their daughters is offensive to the moral bearing and family dignity of the girls.

My counsel to the parents of the girls would be to remove their daughters from such an educational system where boys are allowed to “greet” females in such ways. But if, for some reason, parents have no alternative, how would they be protected from such boys?

[Politicalmom]

Hitting women or girls is NOT “casual contact”.

I bet you’d be protesting if one of these girls turned around and kicked one of these punks in the groin.

[processing please hold]

If these boys were homosexual, and were swatting other boys bottoms, the school wouldn’t have dared touch them.

Someone needs to put that theory to the test. It would be interesting to find out.

[Politicalmom]

I think a personal apology to the girls should be included, but I pretty much agree with you.

I question how hard they hit these girls, though, if they were running.

[processing please hold]

Surely some kids had a good childhood at that time.

and rolled out that lardy-looking stuff with the little red button inside until it turned yellow so they could put in the leaky icebox until morning

What is that?

And you’d be scared.

Probably so.

[Hazwaste]

“What if such handling of their daughters is offensive to the moral bearing and family dignity of the girls.”

The point, I think, that they were trying to make was that bringing in the police was going too far. This was something that the school could have handled, along with the parents.

[John Leland 1789]

“One day in after-school detention would’ve been enough.”

---

It wouldn’t be enough if my daughters were walking from one class to another and boys came running from behind them slapping them on the posterior, or touching them deliberately in any fashion. I would be going after those boys. I would be insisting on meetings with their parents. If I could not see intensive discipline enacted by the parents (some good bruises inflicted by the father of the boy would be in order) might be a good start), I would have them in a law court.

Now, we pre-empt these things by home schooling (since 1982), and we instruct our children from the time they can walk as to what kinds of friends to make. Our children, by the time they are 12 years old, can cite verses from the Scriptures regarding the principles for friendship; how to choose friends, what makes a “friend,” how to identify and avoid people who will tend to pervert their judgment in spiritual and moral matters.

But we realize that their are Christian (or otherwise moral) parents who, for whatever reasons, must have their children in the public education system. What measures are in affect to prevent girls from being handled by boys in ways unacceptable to the moral upbringing of the girls and their families?

I would see nothing wrong with the state, once a boy is found guilty of such violations, turning the boy over to the girls father for a sound beating with the rod (cane, if you will).

[Politicalmom]

They may not have committed a sexual crime, but they did commit battery.

[NCLaw441]

While striking someone in the butt at age 13 may not be sexual assault, it may still be a simple battery, which, in most jurisdictions, any unwelcome touching...
Check, but maybe not checkmate.

[John Leland 1789]

It seems we’ve come to the place where parents won’t correct their children, much less think first, train first. And it seems that EXTREME measures are needed for the protection of others.