A disproportionate response?

In the small town of McMinnville, Oregon USA, two young boys,Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelius one 12, the other 13, are in court facing charges which could see them spend up to ten years in juvenile prison and see them registered as sex offenders. Their crime? To race past female classmates and deliver a swat across the girls bottoms, emulating a scene from the 'Jackass' movies.



The boys led into Juvenile Court




What happened after that sounds like a scene from some Kafka-esque nightmare. The boys were taken to the Principal's Office, interviewed about the offence in the presence of a police officer stationed at the school, were 'Mirandised' ie read their rights, handcuffed, and taken into custody and spent 5 days in juvenile detention before being formally charged with several felonies.

Subsequently the local District Attorney has backed off the serious felony charges under tremendous pressure from parents and media and reduced MOST of the offences to misdemeanours. The children still have to go to court in August and, although the possibility of jail time has been lessened, they still face having to register as sex offenders if some of the charges are proceeded with.

There is no doubt that their behaviour was, using modern parlance, 'inappropriate', but sufficient to put two children through the trauma of major criminal charges and the possibility of prison and a sex offenders record? Hardly!

I am inclined to ask what kind of spineless regimen this particular establishment, Patton Middle School, has if it cannot cope with this kind of behaviour within its own boundaries. Isn't that what school authority figures are for?

I'm sure I'm not saying anything too shocking when I suggest that, at 12 or 13, when hormones are starting to whiz around and awareness of the opposite sex becomes a factor, there is all sorts of contact, touching, feeling, which is often reciprocal and a kind of exploration game. It is important, of course, that extremes are distinguished from what might be considered the 'horse-play' of growing up.

The victims in this case have testified in court that there was no way they wanted prosecutions brought, that they were not hurt by the contact and that they felt pressurised by the questions they were asked in the Principal's office..almost as if they had a responsibility to make an example of these boys.

It seems quite clear that this is a situation that has got completely out of hand. It would seem that there has been a series of behavioural problems in the school for some time and the Principal chose this issue on which to show there was an iron fist inside the velvet glove. I think he has shown total weakness and an inability to deal with this himself and proportionately. What he seems to have been oblivious to is the terrible stigma he was laying on two young schoolboys and what a nightmare experience he was subjecting them to, when even their victims were happy to concede that this sort of thing was regular horseplay at the school.

It seems a little bit par for the course. We live in an age where the protection of children is paramount and quite rightly so...but in so attempting to do the right thing, we do seem, in some cases, to have taken leave of that one element in the equation that makes for a fair and just outcome for all concerned.....common sense.