Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
- My colleague Jacob Sullum has a good column on the new prosecutorial misconduct case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear.
- If there were federal appellate judge trading cards, I would have the entire Alex Kozinski set.
- I knew weeks ago that someone was going to post this.
- Women outnumber men on college campuses by increasingly large margins. Waiting for cries of gender disparity.
- Be curious to hear what Agitator readers think of the Massachusetts bullying story. My take? The statutory rape and civil rights charges are asinine overkill, and the prosecutor is grandstanding. The assault charges are appropriate if the bullying schoolmates actually assaulted the girl. The commenters to the Slate piece calling for criminal charges against school officials and parents are the Internet equivalent of a pitchfork-toting mob. This is a sad story. Tragedies needn’t always result in criminal charges.
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TheAgitator.com
I think suicide just became a much better way to get back at all those people who teased you in high school.
You will be waiting for a very, very long time.
I knew weeks ago that someone was going to post this.
We’re waiting for your stock market tips.
“Tragedies needn’t always result in criminal charges.”
In a rational society, this would be an axiom of public policy. I think your assessment of the horrible Massachusetts is pretty solid.
To a progressive/leftist disproportionate impact proves race-sex-etc-ism, except when it doesn’t.
The only problem I see with more women on campus than men is dating/sex problem. For women.
Isn’t Massachusetts the same state where Dr. Amy Bishop shot her brother and it was listed as an accident?
I pretty much agree with you on all points you mentioned wrt the bullying story. Apparently, the Mass statutory rape law has no “Romeo & Juliet” clause, unfortunately.
However, it also seems pretty clear that school officials utterly failed to do anything about blatant harassment. And now that the girl is dead, they are taking a, “She’s dead, so the problem is solved” attitude. The talk of criminal charges is nonsense. But if I lived in that community, I would not want these people in charge of children.
Agreed 100% on the Massachusetts story. That’s more or less exactly what I said when I heard about it.
Now… the teachers and administrators involved should be fired, and probably shunned from working in education for the rest of their lives. They failed at their jobs. The students involved should have been suspended or expelled. But the charges, as you said, are, for the most part, mere grandstanding.
These types of problems in public schools are basically unavoidable, because of how they operate. It’s not really the fault of the teachers or administrators, because they’re powerless to fix the basic problems.
I can’t remember where I saw it first (it might have been here), but this article explains it more clearly than I can. It focuses on nerds, but really, it explains there no matter what band-aids are applied, there will always be an out-group in school because the only way to gain status is to push others down, unlike everywhere else in life, where status can be gained via achievement or proficiency. It described my experience of public schools with eerie accuracy.
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
From the Sullivan article:
“D.A. Connick had acted with “deliberate indifference” by failing to train his underlings in their constitutional obligations.”
Constitutional obligations indeed. How about obligations of those who call themselves human beings?
Don’t men’s athletics programs still get the most money? Or do I have the Title *%^! confused?
“Women outnumber men on college campuses by increasingly large margins. Waiting for cries of gender disparity.”
Actually, there are plenty of people in the higher education world who are concerned about this. They call it the “gender gap”. I work in education policy, and I can remember this coming up at least five years ago…
Bullying has never really been treated with any kind of seriousness in elementary/high school.
I was just working over in my mind what would happen if administrators went on a typical “zero-tolerance” bullying bender.
Basically you’d be trading one relatively harmless (though really awful to be on the receiving end of) teenage bully for a powerful, mendacious, incompetent, authoritarian bully in the teachers and administrators.
It’s kind of crazy to me that we expect public schools to be able to take in any asshole’s kid and turn them into productive non-asshole members of society somehow.
Lately I’ve been rethinking the premise that public education is an inalienable right.
Now… the teachers and administrators involved should be fired, and probably shunned from working in education for the rest of their lives. They failed at their jobs. The students involved should have been suspended or expelled. But the charges, as you said, are, for the most part, mere grandstanding.
Reading the article, I’m not sure what the adult were supposed to do. I’m not one to side with teachers normally, but the question raised for me is how adults are really supposed to distinguish what’s bullying, and what’s normal rivalries, jealousies, dislikes and general “people being horrible to one another” behavior? I doubt it’ll be as obvious as three girls circling another in class and taunting her until a breakdown.
Beyond that, what steps do people expect teachers, administrators, etc to take in such cases? I don’t think that we really want kids being expelled for minor relationship drama (and they will) due to the inevitable “zero-tolerance” policies likely to come out of this.
“Tragedies needn’t always result in criminal charges.” Radley, I’m sure you’re familiar with the old phrase “Bad facts make bad law.” Perhaps the corollary should be “bad facts also make bad application of the law” (particularly when it comes to overzealous prosecutors).
On a side note, I continue to be amazed when the media report that incidents such as this “challenge a fundamental conception of South Hadley as a nice, ordinary, middle-class small town.” Does anybody still honestly believe that all problems which befall modern society only exist in big cities and/or lower-class small towns?
Can’t even read the Massachusetts story. I had a situation too similar happen to my youngest daughter when she was in high school. It is amazing how fuckin’ cruel kids can be and how their god damn parents can encourage the behavior and teachers can look the other way.
So when I see “teenagers” and “bullying” I just find it is best if I keep walking. Life is entirely too short to spend it being mad as hell.
I can say that in my situation it is very fortunate that there were not numerous criminal charges filed and every god damn one of them valid and against me.
I spent a lot of time practicing deep breathing.
“Tragedies needn’t always result in criminal charges.”
Truth but I wouldn’t be surprised to soon see a proposal for a Phoebe’s Law that may or may not include a bulliers registry.
I think an aspect of school bullying that doesn’t get talked about is the fact that no adult wants to be part of high school drama. I think that is why so much of this is missed by faculty. Teenage drama is just awful and is mostly ignored by people unless it’s their child involved.
I don’t know what the answer is. Part of me says we need to start treating teenagers more like adults. Get rid of stat rape laws. They are archaic and have no place in a modern society. Consenting teenagers shouldn’t be prosecuted for sexual activity. That is just as barbaric and draconian as having sodomy laws on the books.
And think about this. If I bully someone in my office, I get fired almost immediately. All of my adult peers would see it as immature and childish. No one would come to my defense, but I wouldn’t go to jail. These kids should be expelled for acting this way before it gets out of hand. It’s not a crime, so no jail time. But I don’t get to bring my personal bagage to work, I don’t see why a school should be any different.
Kristen “The only problem I see with more women on campus than men is dating/sex problem. For women.”
I’ll help if I have to.
“Women outnumber men on college campuses by increasingly large margins. Waiting for cries of gender disparity.”
Cue Jan & Dean’s “Surf City.”
“The assault charges are appropriate if the bullying schoolmates actually assaulted the girl.”
Assault is a verbal attack. Is bullying not a verbal attack? I’m not up on the facts of the case.
“On the afternoon of her death, a few of them reportedly drove by her while she walked home, shouted “Irish slut” and “Irish whore,” and threw a soda at her.”
Sounds like we have a hate crime on our hands. That is, unless only non-Irish can be victims of hate crimes.
Oh come on! He’s a prosecutor, not a human being.
I always stood up for the kids being bullied.
One day in high school I saw some little freshman getting roughed up by a kid who wasn’t a whole lot bigger so I grabbed him from behind in a full nelson type hold and pulled him back. To my surprise the few moments i was restraining the bully gave the freshman the opportunity to take a punch right in the bully’s face. It didn’t do any damage, but i suspect it really empowered the little guy. Then I told the bully if I ever saw him doing something like that again he would be sorry (or something like that)
Now, I went to a nerdy school and I was a senior and on the football team so I really didn’t worry about reprisal for getting involved, but I think if more kids who find bullies reprehensible, and i am sure it’s a majority, would stand up for the little guy, this would happen a lot less.
It goes doubly for the adults in charge.
Also, parents need to constantly remind their kids that High School always comes to an end and college and the real world is where you can be your self, keep to your self, and pick and choose your interactions.
Ah, the story that keeps on giving!
Re DA Elizabeth Scheibel: “A lawyer friend who has known her since kindergarten remembered how she beat up a bully who was picking on her younger brother, commenting, ‘Even in her youth she wasn’t afraid to hold her position and pursue justice as she saw it.’ ”
Talk about being born to be a State agent! It has been written that what passes for “justice” is simply violence redistributed by the State. Perfect anecdotal proof, especially of the sort of person attracted to State power.
Violence begets more violence, in an infinite negative feedback loop.
After reading Sullum’s article, which I agree is well-written, I cannot tell you how thankful I am that there is no anarchy in America. The justice system works so well! We have nothing to worry about at all! I mean, you can go to law school for three years and completely understand the law of the land! A State agent can be completely trusted with power!
Pardon me while I fucking puke.
“Assault is a verbal attack”
Er, isn’t assault an actual attack? It seems like there are more and more people who don’t seem to get that the phrase “verbal assualt” is a metaphore.
Don’t hold your breath.
As an addendum to the MA story, you should look into the new anti-bullying law that is working its way through the state house. Because a law will stop the bullying. Of course, if parents had a choice in where to send their kids, I doubt we would even be talking about this.
#27 | ShelbyC — “Er, isn’t assault an actual attack? It seems like there are more and more people who don’t seem to get that the phrase “verbal assualt” is a metaphor.”
IANAL, but I always understood “battery” to mean a physical attack, as differentiated from “assault” which is purely verbal.
Merriam Webster informs us:
Assault: 2a : a threat or attempt to inflict offensive physical contact or bodily harm on a person (as by lifting a fist in a threatening manner) that puts the person in immediate danger of or in apprehension of such harm or contact — compare battery 1b
Battery: b : an offensive touching or use of force on a person without the person’s consent — compare assault 2a
The article I linked above (in #9) mentions this too.
The kids at the top of the social ladder don’t need to participate in bullying the outcasts to maintain their status. It’s the kids in the middle who have to, or risk becoming outcasts themselves. You weren’t in any danger of losing status, so your action, while admirable, was fairly risk-free. That’s why we can’t simply tell everyone in school to act as you did, because very few can do so without it coming back on them.
Additionally, I don’t think it’s such a given that most kids find bullies reprehensible. I certainly did, being on one end, and you did too, being on the other, but I’d bet many or most kids (especially the ones in the middle) just view it as a fact of life, simply because that’s the only pervasive social environment they’ve ever been exposed to. The author of the article I’ve been referring (who was a nerd) to even says he was surprised that a teacher was shocked upon noticing an instance of bullying, because he assumed all human social situations resembled public schools.
“Er, isn’t assault an actual attack? It seems like there are more and more people who don’t seem to get that the phrase “verbal assualt” is a metaphore.”
Actually (in many states anyway), assault is making a threat with the ability to carry it out. That is why you hear things like “Assault and battery” the battery is a distinct act from the assault. “Verbal assault” is quite correct and not at all metaphorical.
This whole bulling issue in Mass is such a mess.
First of all, no matter how shitty those kids treated her, she hung herself. It’s awful and I couldn’t imagine being in her parents shoes, but that’s the fact.
Second, where were her parents? She was 15 and having sex with older boys, which is very, very common, especially in teens with little supervision. If your 15 yr old daughter is having sex with the guys on the football team, you blew it as a parent.
Third, harassment was taking place on facebook and text messages. If you as a parent don’t take the responsibility to monitor your kids online and phone activity, you are screwing up bad (see sexting). The generation of parents raising kids right now were lucky to have a phone in their room when they were a teenager. For some reason many of them just assume these new methods of communication are harmless or just don’t think about it all.
Fourth, teenagers are secretive by nature and lie. I highly doubt she was upfront with parents or administrators about the situation because she would have had to come clean about being sexually active. Same for the bullies, I highly doubt any of them were honest with any authority figure about what was taking place if they were confronted about it.
Finally, the idea that kids being assholes is criminal is absurd, but the DA is just responding to the adults screaming for blood. She now has an angry mob that she can ride to fame and fortune. This is also another lesson in don’t ever talk to the police as I expect the boys charged with statutory rape talked themselves right into that charge.
#16 Flukebucket: I applaud your self control. My daughter is a long way from high school, but I hope I can keep my cool if I’m ever presented with similar situation. Some people deserve a beating.
Paging Amanda Marrcote, Amanda Marrcote please pick up the white courtesy phone. Amanda Marrcote you have a call, please pick up the white courtesy phone, paging Amanda Marrcote.
“Women outnumber men on college campuses” Ah, but this must still all be part of the great white male conspiracy…..
While I wholeheartedly agree with the take on the charges, I can also sympathize with the parents’ frustration. Here we’ve got a situation where, as usual, the school has done all they can to protect faculty from liability. Add to that the fact that Mass. law (“public duty rule”) prevents public servents from being held accountable in civil court for, in this case, inaction regarding things that students do, and parents feel as though criminal charges are the only recourse available to them.
As a former legal guardian of a teenager suffering from the effects of a painfully ineffective anti-bullying policy during high school, I know their frustration all too well. For over a year I attended school board meetings and maintained steady contact with the district superintendent’s office, arguing my case on a monthly basis to absolutely no avail. When I realized nothing would be done, I was forced to move my student to another district entirely. While I would have never called for criminal charges against staff, the situation is quite hopeless.
On a side note, while I understand where the assertion that more kids should stand up against bullies is coming from, it’s an incredibly unrealistic expectation. In general, humans are simply not hardwired to insert themselves into contentious and potentially dangerous situations on another person’s behalf. Do we remember the recent beating of a teenager at a transit center in Seattle, and the outrage associated with the people who stood by and allowed it to happen? When it hit national news, an expert psychologist (or some similar -ologist) put the percentage of the population who would step in under such circumstances at less than 5%. This applies to less physical situations as well. We are hierarchal creatures interested primarily in self-preservation. This isn’t selfishness or cowardliness, it’s biology, really.
Being bullied sucks, yet high school is so very temporary. There are more kids who just grin and bear it being bullied right now than there are kids committing suicide or possibly shooting up the school. Unfortunately, having perspective is something teenagers are not really known for. Apparently the same applies to those seeking criminal charges in cases where stupid kids kill themselves over total bullshit.
Nothing so scary as a politician or prosecutor screaming “We have to DO something about this!” Thought crime soon to follow….
#37 | Athena
Your post reminded me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
Some interesting information and links to diffusion of responsibility in large groups.
The whole system of public education is a tragedy. The social environment in public schools resembles what you’d find in a prison or county jail. Children quickly learn the lesson that it’s better to be wrong with the crowd than to be right by yourself. As Judge Walter Croskey said in the ruling that pretty much outlawed home schooling in California…
My daughter did death penalty appeals work for a while in New Orleans after law school and she hated Connick. She worked on the case of Curtis Kyles whose conviction was overturned by the SCOTUS because of prosecutors withholding evidence. Connick insisted on retrying the guy three more times before grudgingly giving up. He spent 14 years in prison (11 on death row) before finally getting out.
Given that the government runs the courts, employs the prosecutors and judges, and makes all the rules, if they can’t get a friggin’ conviction after one or two trials, they should be forced to give up and reimburse the defendant’s legal costs. Kyles was tried five times.
#6 “The only problem I see with more women on campus than men is dating/sex problem. For women.”
Not really. From my experience, women that age all date older men. When I was in high school, hs guys were considered immature and the girls like to go to clubs where the policy was “over 21….but if you’re a girl, 18 is cool.” Once I hit college, I found many of the freshman women were dating juniors or seniors, and a fair number of my female friends an aquaintances were dating guys in their late 20s or older(!)
Left college 2 years ago, so my experiences are fairly recent. So yeah, even if you have a 60-40 female to male ratio in your favor at your college (the case for mine), still no guarantee you’ll actually have a lot of pickings as a young male.
I love Kozinsky, so even though he’s not getting a lot of love in the comments, here’s my fave quote:
“The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do,” Judge Kozinski noted. “But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”
God I hope that’s an accurate source, I don’t remember the whole thing myself.
Cynical in CA – I’m very familiar with that particular link. :) I’m the editor and political forum moderator for a true crime site, and if you know anything about the demographics of your standard true crime site, you know it’s overwhelmingly comprised of bloodthirsty, once victimized helicopter moms. Some time ago (maybe two years or so?) there was a case in Modesto, CA (that you may be familiar with) where a crazy father stomped his infant son to death in a psychotic rage. While many gathered, few did anything to stop him. We saw it even more blatantly in the recent case of a California girl raped publicly outside a school dance while a couple dozen witnesses stood idly by, some even videotaping the event on their phones.
The women on my site are the parents in the Mass. bullying story. They are the pitchfork and torch toting individuals who want to burn inactive bystanders at the stake. I spend ridiculous amounts of time explaining concepts like diffused responsibility and reminding them that adrenaline is a funny thing – it can incapacitate people just as easily as it can help them out of a bad situation. People love to comment about what a hero they would be if they witnessed injustice, but the truth is, you can’t know if you’re the hero or the inactive bystander until you’re faced with a situation… and more often than not, people will be disappointed with themselves. But again, it’s not about conscious courage so much as it’s about physiological response.
Personally I think the prosecution is totally inappropriate. The question people should be asking is whether these charges would be filed against the students had Phoebe not committed suicide. I think the answer is almost certainly “no” which means that these kids, mean and unsympathetic as they may be, are being scapegoated to avenge Phoebe’s death. A death, for that matter, which is at least somewhat connected to the failure of the local government (i.e. school) to intervene in a problem of which they had notice. Regardless of the merit of the assault charges or statutory rape allegation (personally I think we need to do away with these), this is not a proper use of the criminal justice system. No matter what happens the result isn’t going to be justice. It’ll only mean that 6 months from now we’re reading a story about a kid being arrested in school and prosecuted for nothing more than a snotty remark to a classmate.
Do I believe there should be consequences to the bullying students? I think so but I’m at a bit of a loss for precisely what that should be. The real answer in my opinion is that the school administration should have taken swift action to discipline the students involved when they were aware of the problem and hopefully avoided the entire incident. I think the best outcome would be for the community and school to get together and work out how they’re going to handle similar discipline problems in school. What they should not do is try to stop it by criminalizing childish behavior, zero tolerance policies, or opening up the door to lawsuits. It is not rational to have people being prosecuted or sued due to another individual’s suicide.
Ultimately I think there needs to be an acceptance that sometimes, no matter how hard we try, bad things are going to happen. The schools need to take complaints from parents and students seriously and react as best they can. Scapegoating people in the legal system is not the right answer, though because it is the easiest, I suspect it is what we will see.
Perhaps teenagers wouldn’t be quite so secretive if their parents treated them more like adults. I find it likely she didn’t tell anyone because she figured that rather than receiving help, she’d catch hell for it. Perhaps if her parents educated her on choices and consequences (natural ones), and didn’t portray sex as evil, she might have decided to ask for help before killing herself.
On a related note, it annoys me that society seems to be so surprised at the excesses of college, in terms of drugs, booze and sex. It’s as though nobody can divine the likely outcome of forbidding interesting-sounding stuff for 18 years and then cutting them loose tens or hundreds of miles away from their parents. I expect that if it was normal to experience such things in moderation while still under the guidance of their parents, they wouldn’t become such problems upon moving out.
So I’m forced to send my kid (and my $$) to a state run school which allows harassment. If the state is going to FORCE me to do something, they better be up to the responsibility and assume liability (pay attention ObamaCare).
Bullying, assault… are forms of harassment.
Beware the creation of kneejerk new laws covering what is already covered under existing laws. Gets votes. Reduces freedom. No one made safer.
Zargon-
“Perhaps teenagers wouldn’t be quite so secretive if their parents treated them more like adults. I find it likely she didn’t tell anyone because she figured that rather than receiving help, she’d catch hell for it. Perhaps if her parents educated her on choices and consequences (natural ones), and didn’t portray sex as evil, she might have decided to ask for help before killing herself.”
I agree with you, but that’s easier said than done. Here’s what I’m dealing with right now as the parent of a three-year-old. If she writes on the wall and I yell at her, it may increase the likelihood that she’ll stop doing it (a good thing) but then the next time she does something she knows is wrong she’s more likely to lie about it or hide it (a bad thing). At the same time, if I don’t discipline her at all then she won’t lie about it (a good thing), but she’s more likely to continue the same behavior (a bad thing).
As you suggest, my approach is generally to explain why I’m not happy about what she did without getting too angry; that way she’ll hopefully make better choices next time but won’t be afraid to tell me when she does something wrong. For the most part, it seems to be working. However, it’s an art more than a science and I cringe when commenters–especially those without children–make it seem like the choices parents must make are black and white (and for the record this last sentence is not referring to your comment).
My daughter is a long way from high school, but I hope I can keep my cool if I’m ever presented with similar situation.
Hang on to your hat MassHole and start practicing your deep breathing now.
As a guy told me when my wife first got pregnant, “you had better hope you have a little boy because if you have a little boy you have one dick to worry about. If you have a little girl you have to worry about every dick in the neighborhood”
Thank God both of my daughters are grown and married now. But the teen years were absolute hell.
We pulled my daughter out of the local high school as soon as we realized what was happening there and sent her to high school in the next county over. It cost the hell out of us because we had to pay as if she was going to a private school but it was worth it.
I learned a valuable lesson in human nature during that time. I learned a lot about myself and others.
Fuck it. It is over with. I wish I had not had it brought back into my life today. But the truth of the matter is it never is out of my life. Those memories are always bubbling just below the surface
{takes deep breath and logs off}
“Tragedies needn’t always result in criminal charges.”
There were physical assaults. Fuck it. Jail’em.
I don’t agree with criminal charges against teachers and administrators who saw what was going on and ignored it, but I don’t understand why a boss who ignores an employee’s blatant harassment of a coworker can be sued and these teachers and administrators can’t.
I don’t mind if the standard to win any money is quite high, but if the news stories are correct and the girl’s mom’s multiple compaints to the school were ignored and the kid was harassed and threatened in front of a teacher who did nothing the morning she died, I don’t mind dragging the teachers and administrators in to court and having them justify why they couldn’t do thier jobs and keep order.
It’s certainly what the administrators would have to do if one teacher were harassing another teacher and the administration knew about it but didn’t do anything.
CC
There’s a principal in tort law: the eggshell plaintiff. Basically, the way it goes is it doesn’t matter if you have a plaintiff who is exceptionally weak boned, such that a mere touch was enough to shatter the knee. All that matters is that you intended to perform the unwanted action…in other words, you take your victims as they come–you intended the tort, you’re responsible for all the bad actions that come with it.
To apply it to this case…criminal charges are probably overkill for what happened…not sure if the intent necessary for criminal charges is there.
But wrongful death and a harassment suit? Take them for every penny, administrators, bullies, everyone who played a part in this. Sure, they might argue, we never intended her to commit suicide.
That’s nice. Doesn’t matter. She did. Your actions were part of the direct chain that led to it.
Salvo
Not every jurisdiction acknowledges that and even those that do I think you’d have some serious problems establishing causation and foreseeability. You’re also sort of misinterpreting the doctrine. It applies in a situation where a person has unusually high damages like for instance if you threw a baseball at a person with a physical condition of some kind. Even if the speed at which you threw the ball would only bruise a normal person but broke the ribs of this particular person the heightened damages would still be acceptable.
The problem here is that suicide is by its very nature self inflicted. It is foreseeable that throwing a baseball at someone will hurt them. It is not foreseeable that insulting someone will cause them to commit suicide, again a self inflicted act. Maybe out on the west coast where their tort rules are different (i.e. stupid) that kind of logic could fly but even then I think it’s doubtful. By the same logic there would be a cause of action against every implacable employer or cruel love interest who contributes to the misery of a person who ultimately commits suicide.
If you want it another way take another tort approach. Who is best placed to prevent the tort? I would say with suicide the person best apt to prevent the injury is the individual contemplating suicide, not the people who upset them in their daily lives.
Thanks for the followup info Athena, interesting work you do.
Cynical
“Assault is a verbal attack. Is bullying not a verbal attack? I’m not up on the facts of the case.”
Indeed. This is one of the few times that I disagree with the esteemed My Balko. I think that charges were warranted here. The “mean girls” clique was well known and accounts had been forwarded to the administration by Phoebe’s mother and other students concerning severe, long term harassment and menacing. After Phoebe’s death, one of the clique reportedly assaulted a girl who told local news media about the clique’s existence by punching her and pushing her against lockers.
The pathological, empathy devoid behavior that the alleged perpetrators exhibited afterwards, including defacing a Facebook memorial site with hateful and vile innuendo is just icing on the cake.
They are begging for criminal sanction. I am willing to give them what they seem to crave.
Parallels to the Megan Meier case are plentiful here. I suspect we will get a similar over-reaction from the political class. And a similar under-reaction from the people who could have actually done anything about it (i.e., the school officials who stood by and let this happen).
InMd
“The problem here is that suicide is by its very nature self inflicted.”
Yes. At the same time, we are social creatures and function in complex societies with firm rules and mores. The clique that was determined to punish Phoebe for being an Irish girl who was ‘uppity’ and dated above her ‘station’ as the clique defined it made it impossible for her to function within the society. (eg, the high school she is attending)
She was witnessed to have been followed and harassed, menaced, cursed, slandered as a “slut” or an “Irish slut”, and the harassment continued into various social media accessible to a world wide audience.
The aim was to humiliate her and drive her away from the school by making it impossible for her to socially interact or function in any way. As a teenager, she cannot very well pack her bags and find another job, as it were.
The clique was successful, unfortunately.
Omri.
Sorry about the down ding. I meant to give you a thumbs up. My bad.
There was a girl (insert any name here) when I was in high school, who made 3 of me. Big, muscle bound, around 300 pounds to my 100. For whatever her reasons were she decided she hated me and was going to whoop my ass and came right out said so to anyone who’d listen. To avoid her, when I saw her coming I’d go the other way. I had the bus driver drop me off in front of my house so she couldn’t jump me getting off the bus. I did everthing I could to avoid the eventual confrontation.
She came to my house, knocked on my door and ordered me to come outside, I refused. But I did tell her if she opened my door and advanced towards me in my own home one of us was going to the hospital and it wasn’t going to be me. I was scared to death but I had an equalizer…a wooden police baton with nail holes driven into it. I beat the living shit out of her with that baton and she ended up in the hospital with a concussion and knots all over her head. You’d think the fear of looking over my shoulder would have subsided after that but it didn’t for several months. I was always looking over my shoulder never knowing from which direction she’d come. About 6 months later she apologized and admitted she got just exactly what she deserved and promised from that day forward never to bother me again. She kept her word and I lived through the bullying.
It took every ounce of strength and courage I had not to allow her to get that baton away from me that day becuse I knew if I did, I’d be on the losing end. I also found out just exactly what I was made of. Some people have the courage to face their bullies, some don’t.
I think it’s tragic that this child killed herself but there is only so much the school can be held accountable for. They are responsible for any acts committed on school property, including the bus. Anything else they have no control over. I believe the kids involved should be held accountable also but some of the charges seem like overkill as Radley stated.
Was the girl really raped? I don’t recall reading that she was.
@ Zeb, ShelbyC, Cynical in CA
On the question whether there can be such a thing as verbal “assault” for purposes of state criminal law (re the MA bullying case) – cops and prosecutors like to throw around phrases like “verbal assault” and “verbal attack” to encompass any kind of subjectively offensive speech (i.e., any speech involving an insult, a use of profanity, any “tirade” or “diatribe”) regardless of whether any specific threat of violence was involved. Just wanted to flag the issue that while the phrase “verbal assault,” in the mouth of a prosecutor, doesn’t necessarily constitute an oxymoron, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Generally speaking, no matter how offensive you consider someone’s speech, it can’t properly constitute an “assault” for purposes of the criminal law unless it can – reasonably – be interpreted as a specific threat of physical harm. I think that’s important here, because most of the alleged speech at issue here (calling someone an “Irish whore” for example – which I would personally tend to take as a compliment) is probably unlikely to qualify as threatening. Assuming – conceptual leap – that the prosecutors and ultimately the jury actually care what the law says and aren’t just in lynch-mob mode.
Part of screwing up is that you catch some sort of Hell for it. No really. Now, the parents that just give their kids Hell about a screw up are failures. Like the parents of the girl who killed herself due to issues surrounding some sexting. Cutting her off from friends, favorite activities, etc. Probably not a good move when one considers all the abuse and harassment she got at school. At that point have access to friends might have helped.
Monitoring is also a good idea as well, these are teenagers not adults, they think they know what they are doing, but more often than not they don’t. It wasn’t till I was about 25 when I realized my father was not an idiot and knew a Hell of a lot and I could go to him for sound advice. Teens don’t realize that we create rules not to make their lives unpleasant but because we better understand the potential risks and pitfalls. Granted you can’t protect them forever and treat them like they are 6, but treating them like equals is also most likely a recipe for disaster.
Check your kids cell phones. Tell them you will be checking with the provider for the number of text messages for that billing cycle if the numbers differ from what is on the phone…problems will ensue. If they need to delete messages prior to the end of the billing cycle, then they bring the phone to you so you can check the messages. Check their e-mail as well. If they have facebook or other accounts watch those too. Check who their friends are, ask questions, etc.
And yes, talk to your kids. I’ve already talked to my son about sexting. I told him the potential ramifications:
criminal charges,
life time on a sex offender registry,
loss of use of a cell phone, computers, etc.
And i pointed out the other thing: humiliation. Is there a kid you don’t like at school? What if you take a picture of your schwanzstucker and this kid gets it and decides to have some fun in photoshop? Imagine everyone seeing that picture…even the girl you like. I think that more than anything really got to him. The possibility of humiliation. That, and I told him, the cops are not your friend, never trust them; you can trust me and you can trust mommy and that is pretty much it.
TL;DR Beniamino–”Fuck you!!” and “I’m going to beat the fucking shit out of you!” are two potentially different things.
#58 | celticdragonchick | March 31st, 2010 at 3:59 pm
InMd: “The problem here is that suicide is by its very nature self inflicted.”
I wanted to address this earlier.
Suicide is obviously self-inflicted, but I believe that there must be a motive in every case.
Suicide is a living being’s most unnatural act since it overwhelms the survival instinct, every creature’s most basic programming. No creature chooses suicide casually, it is always an act of desperation, even in the case of the parent sacrificing his/her life for that of the child. (If anyone can challenge this premise, I welcome the rebuttal.)
Thus, there must be a motive in every case. Motives will vary in degree by individual — for some, it comes in performing the duty of a frontal infantry assault; for others, the inconsolable grief of losing a loved one; still others, the living hell of unchecked abuse by family or peers.
Behind every suicide there is a motive. I believe that blaming the suicide victim only tells half of the story, and the unimportant half at that. The more important knowledge is what motivated the suicide, so that mitigating steps can be taken in future cases, hopefully rectifying the injustice and preventing further wrongful death.
#62 – “Granted you can’t protect them forever and treat them like they are 6, but treating them like equals is also most likely a recipe for disaster.”
I see what you’re saying, but I think a bargain can be struck, here. You can treat a teenager like an adult without treating them like an equal just like my boss treats me like an adult without treating me like his equal.
My parents very much treated me like a little adult. They never assumed I couldn’t grasp something; they’d lob it to me and, if it became clear that I wasn’t getting it, they’d ratchet it back a notch. That’s the biggest mistake I see parents make. They essentially stunt their child’s development by underestimating their capacity. Another classic error is the “because I said so” explanation. “Why” is a question that should always be met with consideration and transparency. How can a parent expect their child to exercize judgment if that child has never been privy to the mechanisms behind it?
Of course, this didn’t mean I had complete freedom, just like I don’t have complete freedom at work. There was established structure and specific things expected of me. When I screwed up, I never “caught hell”, I was met by reasonable consequence that had been laid out for me in advance (when possible), just like at work. Perhaps the most beneficial part was that I could challenge any policy. I was always free to argue my case, whether it was asking for a privilege (“Here’s why I think I deserve to go to this concert:”) or a lasting change to standard operating procedure (“Here’s why my curfew should be extended:”). If my case was strong enough, I’d get my way. I was never a victim of circumstance.
Frankly, my parents’ strategy was wildly successful. It took the edge off my teenage years, made their lives less stressful (giving hell isn’t any more fun than catching it in most cases) and ensured my transition into adulthood would be flawless… and it was. I don’t recommend ANY parent treat their child as an equal, but treating your child like an adult has very tangible benefits to it.
Of course, but consider that technology is vastly different than it was just 20-25 years ago. Now a kid can take a picture of his junk and have it seen by hundreds if not thousands. Add on top of it the rather harsh penalties that our society has levied on such an act and the costs become rather steep. Balance suggests balancing the costs (as I’ve already laid out at least in part) with the benefits–teaching a child responsibility. Unfortunately our “Dear Leaders” have decided to make the job of parents all that much harder when it comes to teaching responsibility. Now if we give our kids responsibility and they mess up they find their lives ruined.
It is ironic in an effort to “protect the children” our “Dear Leaders” have made it harder to protect them…from the State. Go google “zero tolerance policy” and school in the news section and see how many idiotic examples pop up.
“She had a tylenol so we had to do a full body cavity search.”
Okay, we haven’t gotten that far, but that SCOTUS case where the girl was strip searched…the school districts attorney’s argument for not doing that was lack of training. Get the training and presumably his view would change. As one commenter here put, we have all these anti-child porn laws, anti-child abuse laws, etc. so we can send our children to public schools where government officials may, one day, insert his/her finger into a child’s anus.
“The market can remain irrational longer than
you can remain solvent.” — J. M. Keynes
When bad prosecutors are allowed to go on with their lives as normal, (seemingly screwing the hell outta anybody so they can build their record), the list of available remedies becomes very short! Rule 5.56 may appear to be the best choice for some.
As to the kiddletts……..
GAWD as bad as Utah is at many things it at least recognizes that their little darlings will play DR and Nurse. From certain ages you get a three year differential spacing. Probably helps save some digital space and rental challenges for many.
Part of me wants to give the school teachers and admin some slack, part of me says burn them to hell! If you had grown up in my shoes you would understand that in an instant! Public schools have done little over the years of legal challenges except evolve layers and layers of BS to protect the school and it’s personnel. Not all bad, but they reduce the challenge of actually educating to a series of documentable steps, the same with supervising them. Fill out the forms, make the calls, go through the motions to protect ones ass and the schools too if possible.
All they care about is being able to demonstrate that they did something when the complaint was brought forth. Weather or not it helped or hindered is of no importance to them.
Putting on a sad face is actually quite easy to do! Admitting, as an adult, and official of the institution that you really didn’t give a shit?
I have a very hard time coming to any kind of real conclusion about the bullying story.
My first reaction is that speech is speech and short of yelling fire in a movie theater it’s protected no matter what. Defend those you most disagree with and all that.
However, as a former kid who was bullied, I say lock them up and throw away the key. I was a fat kid in school (now I’m a fat 20-something) and got tortured about it for the 12 years I was in public school. The problem is this: the person being bullied is left no options to deal with it. Often parents tell you to suck it up, teachers don’t want to hear about it and if the kid decides to beat the crap out of his tormentors, the tormentee gets in trouble. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times.
My biggest problem with filing charges is where criminal responsibility ends. The kids are obviously guilty of harassment and possibly battery and (in this case it’s useful) statutory rape. (As a side note, I don’t like the idea of statutory rape laws, but sometimes they’re a means to an end, as in this case, and need to be looked at as such.)
But they got their moral compass from their parents and therefore, if the parent did nothing about their little snowflake’s bullying, they’re responsible too.
Another problem is the difficulty of throwing kids out of school. As a commenter above said, if a young adult just getting into the workforce after leaving high school did this stuff they’d get their ass thrown out on the street. But because public education is mandated, you can’t throw out trouble makers and you can’t control them because the parents will have you sued for hurting their kid’s self esteem.
Basically, as a limited government, liberty loving person, I say you can’t charge them.
As a human being, I say that until they can show they have some respect for others, throw away the key.
“I don’t recommend ANY parent treat their child as an equal, but treating your child like an adult has very tangible benefits to it.”
Great series of posts Athena, best I’ve read here in a long time. I agree with your philosophy completely regarding child-raising. I always try to treat my kids like adults-in-training. Makes perfect sense to me and your anecdotes bear out what I’ve seen in my own experience. Thanks for a great discussion!
Well, they won’t be bullying Phoebe anymore. The poor kid didn’t see any other way to deal with it; other options such as dropping out and getting a GED, home schooling, transferring to another school seem like rational alternatives, but kids think in terms of the immediate situation. When I was in school in the 60′s and 70′s [ as a guy] differences were settled physically. Fight and get it over with. But the technology today makes it much more difficult to deal with.
As far as the kids who were doing the tormenting, maybe just expel them and leave it at that. In my experience, teachers and administrators are pretty useless in dealing with student conflicts. I’m not sure what, if anything, should be done to them.
What is the difference between “bullying” and assault & battery?
You cannot and will never stop children from being mean and petty to one another.
You can and should respond to credible allegations of battery.
There’s a huge diffference between this new media definition of “bullying” (‘Stevie yelled “fattie!” at me in the hallway today!’) and “bullying” in the more traditional sense of the word (‘Stevie and his friends beat me up and gave be two black eyes on the playground today!’).
I like to think of Revenge of the Nerds when I hear these misguided cries for new “anti-bullying legislation”. Just 20 years ago we were so lighthearted about things. What happened?