First Grader Investigated For Sexual Harassment For Kicking A Bully In His Private Parts

from the world-gone-mad dept

We recently wrote about expanding efforts to make almost anything people don’t like considered bullying — including rolling your eyes at someone or excluding them from a group. Meanwhile, there’s this bizarre story, sent in by Aaron DeOliveira about a seven-year-old first grader who’s being investigated for sexual harassment after kicking a bully in the testicle. Yes, the other kid bullied him first — choking him — and he responded. It’s the choice of where the kick landed that seems to be the issue. The principal doesn’t seem to care, noting that all that matters is that since one kid hit the other in the groin, “that’s assault. That’s sexual assault.” Is common sense dead?

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Comments on “First Grader Investigated For Sexual Harassment For Kicking A Bully In His Private Parts”

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90 Comments
vancedecker (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

Interesting factoid.

After consulting my copy of the Shatnerverse, apparently, the director was initially adamant that the alien unmentionables be placed on shins for easier access.

However, lawyers on the set decided, quite smartly, that they would not be able to sustain a convergent scifi meme defense against Farscape, who were first to place alien no no places on the shins, as they did with the Scarrans.

So, instead, they moved the position slightly higher, to the knees. Which is completely different course, and a much more realistic area for evolution to place reproduction organs.

MRK says:

Yes, the child is clearly a paedophile. For the good of the community he needs to be placed on the sex offender registry for life.

Of course, the kid will have to be home schooled and may never play with other children. Since people on the registry cannot be within 1000 feet of a school, park, or public place where children gather.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:

Such laws make it so that, if anything could possibly be interpreted that way.

[citation needed]

I spent 20 minutes on Google and couldn’t find any statistics for how often people are charged for failing to report and I couldn’t find any news stories from the last couple of months of anyone being charged.

I think this is the typical overreaction that comes out of schools all the time. Like suspending kids for having a butter-knife in their backpack because of the zero tolerance policy on weapons. Really, a butter-knife is a weapon?

http://www.ketv.com/r/5027982/detail.html

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3 Re:

Lets not forget about the child who was expelled for turning into the teacher a plastic knife that the child’s mother accidentally packed in her lunch.

“The child was told that she’d done the right thing — then was expelled.”

and then classrooms have scissors with metal edges and that huge dangerous paper cutter sitting at the back of the room. But plastic knives … much too dangerous.

Franklin G Ryzzo (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Thanks for the suggestion to read the external link… the situation is even more asinine with all of the details.

A seven year old does not have the mental faculties to understand sexual assault in any situation. In this situation, there clearly is no sexual assault only self defense.

The first thing taught in any self defense course is to attack the genitals. Would the principle prefer that his 1st graders avoid the genitals and go for the next best target of gouging the eyes or perhaps trying to break the nose? The author of the original article makes a pathetic attempt to justify the schools actions by asserting that the school must investigate both sides of the story but that’s a crock. A 1st grader is incapable of committing a sexual assault in any way shape or form. Even if he crawled under a desk and stuck his hand up a girls skirt, there is still nothing sexual about the act. It’s just kids being kids and doing stupid shit that they will learn not to do in the future.

This situation is truly pathetic!

TtfnJohn (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Just imagine the uproar if they’d found them 30 minutes later playing doctor behind the school gym!

In the meantime sexual offenders go on doing it for years on college sports teams, junior hockey teams and other forms of activity that’s supposed to teach fair play, athleticism, social skills and a host of other excuses schools use for wasting so much money on sports teams after axing PE programs.

Is it any wonder that by the time children reach adolescence they are convinced all adults are raving morons and, in their turn, when they have children become raving morons 30,000.2

The Devil's Coachman (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

So do I. One the first fist is swung, or kick attempted, the other party will know the true meaning of pain. I don’t try for the knockout blow, but merely to inflict the most intense pain with the least effort. Once you pop someone’s eyeball out, they tend to leave you alone long enough for you to find a suitably heavy object to finish the job. I was and still am short, but got beat up only once. All subsequent engagements had a different outcome. You also get a rep, as someone not to be trifled with. I’m not a tough guy, but a guy you better not try to get tough with.

Kevin H (profile) says:

Re: Re:

I have always gone by the thought of its a fight, nothing needs to be fair about it. If there is a table light enough to be thrown at you so that I end up not getting hit then I am going to throw a fucking table at you.

I do make the distinction though that pulling a knife or a gun is not valid. Unless its my daughters boyfriend in which case he would have been thoroughly warned ahead of time.

Carlos Sol?s a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I (profile) says:

Is common sense dead?

Is common sense dead?

Well, taking into account that:

– Killing Michael Jackson has a lighter prison punishment than singing one of his songs in a video without forking $100000 to the RIAA
– The US government can (and will) arrest political dissidents indefinitely without trial, legally
– Bailouts are being given to banks but not to householders
– Excluding any person from any activity for any reason (even if it’s common sense to imply that said person has a convincing reason not to take part from said activity) is slowly being redefined as discrimination

… yes, the common sense has long died in the US. Perhaps they can import some from – oh, so it’s dead overseas too?

TtfnJohn (profile) says:

Re: Re:

It removes the possibility of the children in the school of obtaining critical thinking skills by example thereby leading to cults, political correctness and people who will continue on to law school after failing carpentry 101 in trade school advise schools to adopt even more zero tolerance rules no matter who ridiculous they are in practice.

Good thing too, cause that means that tradespeople still have brains and intelligence because the law school has absorbed all the Darwinian brain failures and turned them into lawyers.

Keroberos (profile) says:

Is common sense dead?

I don’t think it ever really existed, if it did it’s been a very long time since I’ve encountered any evidence of it. We’ve become a society of blindly following whatever rules are handed to us regardless if they make any sense or not.

Also they would be open to liability if they didn’t. It’s a way of passing the buck to someone else. If the principle made a judgment call on this, and the school got sued (which is highly likely given our litigious society), it would be his head on the chopping block.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

“If the principle made a judgment call on this, and the school got sued (which is highly likely given our litigious society), it would be his head on the chopping block.”

I disagree. First, there’s the matter of right and wrong. Saying sexual harassment or sexual assault happened here is clearly wrong. Trying to ruin a kid’s life for defending himself is wrong. The principal, as a human being, should perhaps consider doing the right thing for the children as opposed to what he thinks would save his own skin.

Second, when you make obviously wrong decisions, you open yourself up to litigation that will actually stand up in court. Sure, the bully can try to argue that we should all ignore his choking and his rights are somehow being violated because his victim isn’t expelled – you may have a lawsuit, but the school would probably win it. As opposed to the lawsuit from the student you just expelled for defending himself, which the school would probably lose.

khory (profile) says:

????

Outrageous!

Kids fight. All the time. It’s what they do. The proper thing to do is inform the parents, maybe suspend both parties for a day or two and move on with life.

Sexual Assault? They are 7! There is nothing sexual in a 7 year old’s world!

Are they trying to torment this child? Do they give any thought to the message this can send to a kid? Tell them what they did wrong and why, that it’s wrong to fight and kick people in the genitals. This is when and how kids learn right and wrong.

They are blowing this out of proportion and risk giving this child some self perceived stigma that he is bad or something is wrong with him. You don’t think other kids will tease him about it or call him a perv? That’s what kids do. Are they going to arrest them all for harassment? Where does it end.

I apologize for rambling but I am genuinely angry about what is happening here. I fear for my own children.

I will be writing the superintendent and letting her know how wrong I think this is. I urge others to do the same.

Rekrul says:

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, there was one kid who was kind of a jerk. He didn’t beat me up, but he’d do little things to bully me. One day we were both in an interior bathroom (no windows) and he started flipping the light on and off, and wouldn’t let me leave. So I kicked him in the groin. I didn’t really land a solid kick, he jumped back and it was more like a mild thump.

Anyway, everyone else had already gone back to class, so the teacher came looking for us. She wanted to know what was going on and he complained that I kicked him “in the balls”. The teacher asked if that was true and I just told her that he wouldn’t let me leave. She took both of us back to the classroom and then announced to the whole class that I had kicked him in the groin. Half the class started applauding. She told us to take our seats and that was the end of that.

Marie (profile) says:

shame on him...

Clearly the principal has never been choked, at which point instinct tends to make one bite, flail, hit, and kick – where any of these blows might land tends to be happenstance unless once is trained in self defense, which I very much doubt this first grader was. Good for the kid for defending her/himself. Shame on the principal for not addressing the real problem – that one student thought it would be a good idea/fun/appropriate to choke another student.

Josef Anvil (profile) says:

Ok that was FUNNY

Mike, I’m not sure where the tech is in this story, but it was still a funny read. Kudos for that and generating quite a few funny comments.

Personally I love all the tough guys responding to this article. Especially the guy who advocates popping out eyeballs in response to a threat (hope he doesn’t have any kids, or live in Boston).

The odd thing is that parents actually leave their kids in the care of people who can confuse a kick in the nuts with rape. 0.o

Nraddin (profile) says:

Even the author has lost their mind....

Basically One of two things happened here.
1) Child A was attacked and choked by Child B, and responded to the lose of oxygen in an appropriate way. Child A caused pain without damage to Child B in order to illicit the response needed (Not just desired and Air is generally considered a must have) which was have Child B release his throat. This was done with a blow to the genitals.
2) Child A ran up and punched/kicked Child B in the crotch and then Child B started choking/fighting with him.

Either way, one of these two children was reacting to being assaulted. And while we don’t want to encourage fighting in situation 1 it’s not fight on Child A’s part but self defense. The author however comes from the prospective that obviously they should be punished, and obviously the strike to the grown was assault, not self defense at all. I wonder what people like this think they would do if someone had there hands around their throat and was choking the life out of them. Are they going to call 911? What do they do if there is one one around? Do they just lay down and die? People like this that have institutionalize the vilification of natural human behaviors and responses, that cause so many children to end up ‘in the system’ before they can graduate from High School.

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