you can’t resort to violence and expect not to be punished for it.
No one is saying that. But you should stop looking for a perfect victim and look at how many adults failed her. The actual issue is she already gone to guidance counselor, principals and school sheriff looking for help but nothing happened. Even at her young age, she is learning that women are not believed while being sexually harassed. She already attempted to deal with the problem “the right way”.
The girls begged for help, first from a school guidance counselor and then from a sheriff’s deputy assigned to their school. But the images were shared on Snapchat, an app that deletes messages seconds after they’re viewed, and the adults couldn’t find them. The principal had doubts they even existed.
With the mocking unrelenting, the girl texted her sister, “It’s not getting handled.” As the school day wound down, the principal was skeptical. At the disciplinary hearing, the girl’s attorney asked why the sheriff’s deputy didn’t check the phone of the boy the girls were accusing and why he was allowed on the same bus as the girl. “Kids lie a lot,” responded Coriell, the principal. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”
It’s easy to armchair moralize that this child acted inappropriately. But I think the best quote of the article is…
“When we ignore the digital harm, the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks,”
Too add on here, the pricipals defense for doing nothing about what the girl and her friends reported worked out to “ive been doing this for a long time, and kids lie a lot.”
Thats it. As usual, a victim of sexual harrasement gets told that since they dont have irrefutable proof, the “system” wont do anything. They didnt even act to seperate the two students from riding the same bus for 1 day.
What’s so mind-bogglingly stupid about this is the adults pretending that the only form of evidence is the images themselves. Testimony IS evidence. In fact, it’s often the primary form of evidence, as no other form of evidence can be admitted in court without someone to testify to its veracity. You don’t just present security camera footage, you present the footage and have someone testify that they set the camera up and can swear to the authenticity of its images. Same with DNA evidence. A scientist gets on the stand and says under oath that they performed a DNA analysis and reached certain conclusions. Ultimately every form of evidence has to have some personal testimony behind it, as you fundamentally have a right to face your accuser.
I mentioned that I do understand why she did what she did. You add more information to this story that only increase understanding as far as I’m concerned.
Let me turn this into an extreme example for comparison’s sake. If a parent shot their child’s rapist and murderer, we all get it. Nobody will say “I have no idea why they would do such a thing.” A lot of us outsiders would look at that case and even be glad about this outcome. And at the same time, the mother or father would end up in prison. Because you cannot take the law in your own hands and expect not to be punished for that. There will be mitigating circumstances, they won’t go in for life. The punishment might just be exactly the time they spent in custody before their trial. But there will be punishment because we have rules about that. (Obviously, this example is not the same as this case of bullying. I’m only using it to compare consequences.)
Was this self defense? She was just defending her digital privacy? I’m not a lawyer. As a layman, I’m going to say this does not meet the legal criteria. Morally? Absolutely.
We can meter out appropriate punishment to everybody else here: the school that maybe responded badly. The parents of the dipshits who got their hands on an undress app. The fact that there are undress apps available to middle schoolers or anybody really. Etc. But we also have the benefit of hindsight.
You and I get why she threw punches. We might even go as far as cheering her on, in our heads, had we somehow been there. Go get those bastards, black eyes for all of them. My point was merely that if you resorted to violence like that you cannot expect not to be punished for it. Like in my extreme example, there are mitigating circumstances. Plenty of them. All should be considered. But there will be something on the record. In this case the suspension/probation, which I hoped is the punishment for every fight.
She got suspended and he didn’t (yet, as we find out halfway through). The headline of the linked article in the post implied that this was the outrageous part. My criticism was aimed first and foremost at the writer/editor of that article.
Cafemom linked to the AP article they shortened.
No one is saying that. But you should stop looking for a perfect victim and look at how many adults failed her. The actual issue is she already gone to guidance counselor, principals and school sheriff looking for help but nothing happened. Even at her young age, she is learning that women are not believed while being sexually harassed. She already attempted to deal with the problem “the right way”.
It’s easy to armchair moralize that this child acted inappropriately. But I think the best quote of the article is…
Too add on here, the pricipals defense for doing nothing about what the girl and her friends reported worked out to “ive been doing this for a long time, and kids lie a lot.”
Thats it. As usual, a victim of sexual harrasement gets told that since they dont have irrefutable proof, the “system” wont do anything. They didnt even act to seperate the two students from riding the same bus for 1 day.
Its no wonder the girl took action.
What’s so mind-bogglingly stupid about this is the adults pretending that the only form of evidence is the images themselves. Testimony IS evidence. In fact, it’s often the primary form of evidence, as no other form of evidence can be admitted in court without someone to testify to its veracity. You don’t just present security camera footage, you present the footage and have someone testify that they set the camera up and can swear to the authenticity of its images. Same with DNA evidence. A scientist gets on the stand and says under oath that they performed a DNA analysis and reached certain conclusions. Ultimately every form of evidence has to have some personal testimony behind it, as you fundamentally have a right to face your accuser.
I mentioned that I do understand why she did what she did. You add more information to this story that only increase understanding as far as I’m concerned.
Let me turn this into an extreme example for comparison’s sake. If a parent shot their child’s rapist and murderer, we all get it. Nobody will say “I have no idea why they would do such a thing.” A lot of us outsiders would look at that case and even be glad about this outcome. And at the same time, the mother or father would end up in prison. Because you cannot take the law in your own hands and expect not to be punished for that. There will be mitigating circumstances, they won’t go in for life. The punishment might just be exactly the time they spent in custody before their trial. But there will be punishment because we have rules about that. (Obviously, this example is not the same as this case of bullying. I’m only using it to compare consequences.)
Was this self defense? She was just defending her digital privacy? I’m not a lawyer. As a layman, I’m going to say this does not meet the legal criteria. Morally? Absolutely.
We can meter out appropriate punishment to everybody else here: the school that maybe responded badly. The parents of the dipshits who got their hands on an undress app. The fact that there are undress apps available to middle schoolers or anybody really. Etc. But we also have the benefit of hindsight.
You and I get why she threw punches. We might even go as far as cheering her on, in our heads, had we somehow been there. Go get those bastards, black eyes for all of them. My point was merely that if you resorted to violence like that you cannot expect not to be punished for it. Like in my extreme example, there are mitigating circumstances. Plenty of them. All should be considered. But there will be something on the record. In this case the suspension/probation, which I hoped is the punishment for every fight.
She got suspended and he didn’t (yet, as we find out halfway through). The headline of the linked article in the post implied that this was the outrageous part. My criticism was aimed first and foremost at the writer/editor of that article.