Posted on 04/01/2008 5:00:37 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Family members first spoke to the Item Friday afternoon, alleging that 11-year-old Mathew Mumbauer was viciously attacked by bullies while he was in school, leaving him in intensive care at Massachusetts General Hospital, paralyzed from the chest down and suffering from a collapsed lung.
Mumbauer's cousin, Audrey Spencer, said Friday that the injuries were caused when he was pushed down a flight of stairs at the school, and resulted in Mumbauer being placed on a ventilator with a tracheotomy tube.
Spencer said the child's family is preparing to sue the School Department, and have organized the "Mission of Love for Mathew" fundraiser for Mumbauer set to take place April 12 at the First Congregational Church at 300 Central St.
According to Spencer and several additional unnamed sources, the student was able to finish the day at school after the alleged attack, including a trip to the nurse's office where he complained of a leg injury. When he woke up the next day, he was suffering from more serious symptoms and was transported to Mass. General where he has remained since.
It is unclear whether the student sought attention at another hospital before Mass. General. Family members say Mumbauer has been bullied throughout the school year, and it has become a persistent problem.
According to School Department officials, Mumbauer was last seen in school on March 10, the day of the alleged incident, however, his family did not inform the department of the situation until last week.
After speaking with the student's teachers and Brickett school officials, however, the School Department has questioned the validity of the accusations, and says there is no evidence of the incident taking place on school grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailyitemoflynn.com ...
Notice how the school is trying to weasel its way out of responsibility. The poor parents are now stuck with a big medical bill. Talk about adding insult to injury.
No standards, no accountability, no sympathy from the school prison indoctrination wardens.
Prayers for this child and his family. Only God could bring them the justice that this evil calls for.
I’m not so sure it’s bunk. This child—and he’s a child, not a man, by the way—this child could very well have been injured off campus. And where are the witnesses? There aren’t any. Could this simply be a deep pockets money grab?
This reminds me of a friend of mine from high school in West Virginia. A bunch of us were playing tackle football during lunch hour one day and my friend took a shot to the head. He got up and we helped him walk over to the hospital which is just across the parking lot. He sat down in a chair in the waiting room and has never walked again. Sometimes injuries that at first don’t seem serious can later become complicated.
Unfortunately, this evil happens to one degree or another in school after school.
and still his loving parents sent him into that day after day... i do not understand this... this is their child! what is more important than that? a job? a house? food? i blame the parents...
Do they have any witnesses of the event at the school? The injuries seem pretty serious and there surely would be bruises corresponding with hitting the stairs a number of times.
And they don’t report it for 21 days?
Are we sure this isn’t a coverup of child abuse? I’m not accusing anyone of anything but this story seems odd to me.
Soft tissue damage often shows up much later after an injury. It is possible that swelling or internal bleeding slowly caused the severe nature of the injury to present itself hours after the injury occurred.
Have you ever been rear ended? I was rear ended three times in three years. Each time I was in much worse shape the day after the accident than I was the day of the accident. One of the accidents was severe enough to require spinal surgery. It is a good thing we exchanged drivers license and insurance data.
I can imagine horiffic injuries from being pushed down a flight of stairs. The human body wasn’t built to do that. I hope the boy recovers.
“and still his loving parents sent him into that day after day... i do not understand this...”
Perhaps it’s because the parents and everyone else they’ve known attended public schools, as well, and can’t imagine that it can be done in any other way.
i believe you are correct about this... people are stuck in a box when it comes to their kids and public schools... i have heard too many parents say that they wish they would have taken their kids out of schoo... the problem is, this realization only comes after a bullying incident has gone too far... usually resulting in a poor child's death...
It either happened at school or it didn’t. I don’t have enough info to know if the school is trying to weasel out of something or the student’s family is trying to weasel into something.
There have been some fascist school districts around for decades. I dislocated my knee in 1st period PE Class. They made me walk on it all day long. It took a week for the swelling to go down before they could cast it, and no it has never been the same. The real salt in the wound was my house was across the street for the bus boundry (1 1/2 miles) So every day as I walked to school with a cast from my butt to my ankle the buss passed me. For 8 freakin’ weeks. And I was dumb enough to send my kids to the same schools. Talk about indoctrinated.
Wow, that reminds of the time when I was ten and me and two buddies were getting ready to play golf one morning at the local community course. There were about five groups ahead of us at the first tee, so we kind of just practiced swinging our clubs. Well, one of my pals swung his club back and hit my other buddy right in the forehead. There just happened to be a hospital right across the street so we kinda helped him over there, got him stitched up and made it back for our tee time with ten minutes to spare.
Years ago teachers (male) would take the pukes out back for a little "chat" to keep them in line from picking on the smaller classmates. Now their little egos will be damaged if a teacher actually puts a foot up their arse.
My son who is 16 year old and large for his age has a problem with the smaller kids punching and harassing him because they know he can't hit back or face suspension according to school policy
My rule as his parent, which supersedes whatever nonsense the schools hand down is real simple, first kid that punches you without provocation, you have my permission as your parent to throw one punch to the solarplex.
Typically that fixes the problem quickly and other kids know leave him alone.
My daughters’ old school was closed, and the district combined the kids from their old school (a nice one) with kids from a poor school (bad kids). It was awful. I knew their teacher at this school, and trusted her. I knew they were okay in her classroom, but lunch and recess were the concern.
This is California, and the kids eat outside on most days so they don’t have cafeterias in lots of schools. One day, it was the first rainy day, so they had the kids go in the gym. I didn’t know how they were going to handle this, so I went to the school. There were kids running around screaming at the top of their lungs and throwing things in the gym. It was a zoo. Absolutely zero control. I pulled my daughters out of their immediately.
After that I went almost every day at lunch to make sure my daughters were okay. If there was a substitute, I stayed in the classroom the whole day or pulled my daughters out of school.
I have twins and I told them to never go to the bathroom alone.
I live in California, and can’t just pull them out of school without being truant.
When I wasn’t at their school that year, I was researching homeschooling and private schools. The following year, they went to a small private Christian school, and we have all been happy ever since.
It really makes me mad that when parents are having a problem with the school, you can’t immediately transfer the kdis or pull them out. I don’t think a kid should have to put up with bullying.
The story does seem a little weird.
Bullying is a real problem tho, and it’s sometimes difficult to actually do anything about as bullies quickly learn to do it away from adults. I don’t know how well things are monitored at the school in question, but it’s likely that if he was bullied teachers didn’t observe it. And these days it’s difficult to do anything about something if it’s a he said/she said situation. Unfortunately bullies have rights too.
susie
Prayers for this little boy.
That line alone gives me a pretty good idea of the "ethnic make-up" of the parties.
Sure, I could be wrong. I have been lots of times. But let's face it, if the bullies had been white and the victim not so the school admin. would never have declared there to be "no evidence...". etc. etc.
I guess you missed this part:
Superintendent Nicholas Kostan said Monday that he is very concerned with Mumbauer's condition above any other issue,"Our concerns first and foremost is for the young man - it is everybody's concern that he recover and come out from the situation that he is in at Mass General,
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.