Well, he's a male, you know. May as well get the sex offender stigma attached to him right away. Saves time later, you know!

Why go to all the trouble of a messy legal proceeding, though? Why not just take all male babies the minute they're born, and tatoo "Sex Offender" right on their foreheads.

Wow.

I'd expect this kind of bullshit in my snot-nosed, P.C home town of Hingham...not in Brockton, which, for the uninitiated, is a total hell hole. I would think they're too busy fighting the meth and heroin epidemic to worry about 6 year old kids bothering each other. I should know bettah.

When I was in kindergarten this girl named Heather showed me her "pee pee place" while we were sitting and listening to the teacher read us a story. I was pretty shocked, even at the age of 5 or 6. I knew it wasn't a good idea to go around flashing my lady bits to other peeps. But I kept my mouth shut and ignored her. I was a cool cat like that. According to these clowns, her entire life should have been ruined by that.

And since that makes no sense in any rational, well thought out way, it makes TOTAL sense to the people in charge of us.

from the article ..

After suspending the boy, the principal also contacted the school police, the state Department of Social Services and Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz’s office.
Charges were not brought because state juvenile criminal laws do not apply to those younger than 7, Assistant District Attorney Bridget Norton Middleton said at the time.

The principal also attempted to have charges filed and to enlist social services to investigate the family.

THis story was over at Glenn Sacks site when the boy first got suspended. Seems the girl did it to him first.

ANy thoght as to why she as the instigater wasnst suspended, stigmatised, and ratted out to the po po?

One page had a lot of negative comments about undue enrichment for the family and the kid. I don't think they really understood this was going to follow this little boy all his life, once it got recorded by the government. Who knows? Maybe under constantly increasing stupid laws, when he reached 18, he would have had to register as a sex offender and not go within miles of schools, etc.

I am reminded of the false memory hoaxers some years ago. They routinely took confused women and convinced them they had experienced horrid abuse by their parents. It took some major pay-outs to stop them.

lujlp: ANy thoght as to why she as the instigater wasnst suspended, stigmatised, and ratted out to the po po?

See my first post.

I remember a boy very specifically showing me his "pee pee" in Kindergarden, and then laughing about it. I in no way felt "threatened or harrassed" because well, we were 5 and 5 years olds don't think like that. I just thought it was gross because he was a boy, and boys were just gross in general at 5. And "pee pee's" look funny anyway...

6 years olds touch each other all the time in sexual ways (and this doesn't even qualify for that in my opinion) but to them, it isn't about sex, it is about curiousity. Touching forbidden parts of thier body, or other kids bodies, or showing it to other kids is perfectly natural and part of being a kid. This would have been a great "teachable moment" as my teacher hubby likes to say. When they do touch each other inappropriately is when the parents and educators should take the opportunity to teach the kids about personal boundries and "bad touches". Not freak out and label them as sex offenders.

This is either a case of an extremely overzealous principal out to prove himself or the parents of the little girl who wanted to pwotect their pwecious wittle pwincess fwom the big bad evil boys. Either way, the whole thing is just stupid.

Yes, this is all far beyond ridiculous. However, the principal was aware that if she did not take strong action, she could be charged with sexual harassment because she did not do enough to stop it. We are trained yearly about sexual harrassment. Not so much to prevent it among the adults as to stop it with the children. Schools are afraid of lawsuits such as the one above.

It just seems stupid rises to the top...

http://gawker.com/5473564/terrifying-penis+handed-villain-is-here-to-teach-kids-about-condoms

There is something deeply creepy about any adult seeing a six-year old as sexual.

This principal wasn't doing this on his own. he was doing it to forestall the possiblity of a lawsuit from the litle girl's parents. That says something very derogatory about the parents of little girls in his school and community, and community standards and perceptions in general, because I doubt that he dreamt up his perception of them with no basis at all.

Amy,

I confess.

I did it.

In fact, I always took those sexual harassment film clips to be training films.

But, I never really needed any training. In fact, I was constantly getting in bed with my kindergarten teacher. She was nude, and I didn't care what I was wearing. A number of years later, I played "teener baseball" with her son, who was always an a**hole, some would say, rear end orifice.

Imagine, the love of my life (early days only) giving birth to that jerk!

Ahhhhhhh, sometimes God punishes people like me ... sweet, innocent, ... pure as the driven snow.

Good Lord, what has this world come to? This is about as ridiculous as it can be. He's SIX, for fuck's sake!

We really need to stop this overzealous overprotection already.

Only in the United States. The decline is broad, fast, and furious.

When I was a kid, one of the neighbor boys liked to ask girls, "What's Elly Mae's last name?" For those of you who have seen The Beverly Hillbillies, you know her last name was Clampett. When you answered his question, he would grab you between the legs. Oh, the hilarity!

Of course, he soon ran out of girls, because no one would fall for it twice. We didn't even know we were being sexually harassed. In our ignorance,we just slapped the shit out of him and called him names.

OK, the sexual harassmant is absurd but $180,000? Adding one absurd judgement to another is not an improvement.

I disagree, Curtis. It's 180,000 reasons for the school to pull its head out of its ass and be reasonable.

Part of this stems from the infatuation with turning children into "miniature adults".

Look how well that turned out for JonBenet.

Brian, I couldn't agree with you more.

The ones I really feel sorry for about the money though are the tax payers footing the bill.

When I was a kid, one of the neighbor boys liked to ask girls, "What's Elly Mae's last name?" For those of you who have seen The Beverly Hillbillies, you know her last name was Clampett. When you answered his question, he would grab you between the legs. Oh, the hilarity!

Of course, he soon ran out of girls, because no one would fall for it twice. We didn't even know we were being sexually harassed. In our ignorance,we just slapped the shit out of him and called him names.

Posted by: Pricklypear at February 17, 2010 9:16 AM

Prick, for short,

Wasn't me.

Know why?

This is Donna Douglas:

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm681482240/nm0235031

Nobody on God's green earth gets away with "slapping the shit" out of me, not even an army of girls.

On a side note, I've noticed a side ad for "Muslima.com" billing itself as "The International Muslim Matrionial Site." There is a picture of a young muslim woman wearing a red hijab with the ad.

It's rather ironic that this would appear on Amy Alkon's blog. Either that, or Amy's had a rather unexpected conversion (which I doubt).

Never thought i'd see the day when 'wedgies' were considered sexual harassment.

"Nobody on God's green earth gets away with "slapping the shit" out of me, not even an army of girls."

Are you sure it wasn't you, K? You seem awfully defensive.

Anyway, I didn't mean it literally. No one could slap the shit out of that guy--you'd die of exhaustion first.

"OK, the sexual harassmant is absurd but $180,000? "

I wonder how much of that was compensatory damages and how much was punitive damages. I assume the $20,000 to the parents was compensatory (they probably spent far more than that on lawyers, not to mention their own lost time). How do you compensate a child for loss of reputation, especially when you have no idea what the long-term consequences will be? I don't know.

An argument can be made that punitive damages shouldn't be awarded to the plaintiff, since doing so tends to encourage jackpot-jury awards. I'm not sure whether I buy the argument or not; there doesn't seem to be much data. Also, if punitives were not awarded to the plaintiff, where would they go?

If I had been the parents, I would have said:

Pay me for the legal fees, the lost time, fire the retarded administrator, and we'll call it even.

"How do you compensate a child for loss of reputation, especially when you have no idea what the long-term consequences will be?"
A first grader (and his friends) would have forgotten about the suspension within a week. Any long term consequences (which I find highly unlikely) will be from the four year lawsuit and parental greed not the idiotic behavior by the school.
The proper way of prevention is to dock the principal $5000 for incompetence not to take money from the school district.

The award may be reflective of evidence of malice on the part of the principal. This would explain why she has to write a personal letter of apology. She wasn't simply interpreting a gray area of the policy, she'd deliberately manipulated its intent to apply it to a child and then tried to have him prosecuted by the law.

A lot of women working in public education dislike male children. They're pretty open about it, but no one calls them on it. In the extreme, you get situations like this one.

P,

Yes I am sure it wasn't me. I was too busy explaining to my Mom why I had the same color stains on my Catholic School white shirt as the kindergarten teacher's favorite lipstic. My Mom looked at me kind of funny, and said "Well, anyway, whoever she is, that is not the type of lipstic a school girl wears in class." "Yeah, Mom", I replied, and then I am racing out the door to get in a little baseball before the sun sets.

"A lot of women working in public education dislike male children. They're pretty open about it, but no one calls them on it. In the extreme, you get situations like this one."

Oh yes, oh yes. My only clear memory from first grade is of my teacher swinging me around by one arm, because she was so angry that I kept speaking up in class. Only the girls were supposed to know things and answer questions.

Scarred for life, I am... Just kidding, of course, but that was decades ago, and in the meantime the whole school system has become even more massively anti-boy: no competitive games, no rough-housing - no chance for "boys to be boys". Instead, it's ADHD and drug them into passivity.

bradley13,

I salute you.

That last paragraph of yours is priceless.

The sad truth is that the forces of which you speak have carried over into the federal government ...

resulting in a "glass ceiling" filled with competent female management and also a disproportionately high number of female managers who have exceeded their "Peter Principle".

Every mother's nightmare-- it happened to my son. Fortunately, we did enough to contain the damage before it spiraled out of control. My son, AGE FIVE, was suspended for rubbing a little girl's hand against his "clothed pelvic area." And Social Services was called out! And the interim school counselor treated it like a damn SEXUAL ASSAULT! I was livid. Fortunately, the social worker and the DCS caseworker were on our side, because THEY WERE FIVE, OMG!!!!!!! AND developmentally delayed because of ASD. Moreover, the little girl used to climb on top of my son at nap time! Did she get suspended? Nooooo. Also, the little girl's parents were on the same page as we were. Do you think they would be so understanding if they thought their daughter had been sexually assaulted? Noooooo.

Gah! Sorry for venting, but I still have post-traumatic nightmares over this whole experience!!!

"The ones I really feel sorry for about the money though are the tax payers footing the bill. "

Screw the taxpayers with a chainsaw, because those very same taxpayers are the sue-happy morons who built this climate of hysteria.

One Anonymous, something similar happened to my son in fifth grade - different circumstances butr same geenral outcome. My ex-wife and I demanded a meeting with the principal and it scared the shit out of him when a lawyer followed us in - I was perfectly happy to look like a sue-happy moron, but it was never going to go to a real lawsuit. Mother Dragon made a lawsuit quite unnecesary.

If Obama's "Safe School" Czar gets his way this behavior will not be harassament, but will be required.

http://patterico.com/2009/12/04/obama-safe-schools-czars-reading-list/

Jim, I am so glad you advocated for your son and were smart enough to bring a lawyer the first time! I'm not a litigious person, either, and would not sue my school system for wads of cash-- but I have no problem lawyering up to protect my son's record! It's sad that common sense requires the presence of an attorney to snap people's brains out of their zero-tolerance fog!