I read it. And was appalled. With all the posturing and equivocation and weaseling ... by all involved.

Simple. An assault is a felony. It is a criminal action, to be handled by the police ... not the school police, but real cops. It has nothing to do with the school or it administrators.

My wife, a teacher, got hit in a fight between students. A police report was filed the next day and the girl who hit her was arrested. The administrators were upset because it was not handled in house. My experience with school districts and individual schools, from my wife and other teachers, is that the schools will whine and cringe and try to make it go away. As soon as a criminal complaint is filed with the local police, however, the schools shut up and run and hide.

Hey!

You are so right. In the end that's what happened with that girl but I didn't update the thread. She was put on juvenile probation, DHS got involved, etc. At that time I had a full time job, two young children, a husband and a house to care for so time was limited.

Something worse occurred with my son years later and the same school was desperate to sweep it under the rug. The county sheriff's department and prosecutor thought differently and we ended up in court over that one. Even then the school didn't want to protect my son and the on-site deputy had to compel both the administration and the offender to follow the no-contact order the court handed out. The offender was literally ran out of the school when my daughter informed the high school football team of the event and the offender was ostracized. His family left for another state soon after.

It's a sad world.

ETA: I did the best I could. I was really concerned about Brittany's physical welfare when I wasn't around to protect her and yes, that led me to think maybe telling her to not cross herself would be best but in the end I decided no, that was not acceptable.

ETA2: The county sheriffs department has real officers stationed in all of the schools in the district and has as far back as Brittany's kindergarten year. When things go nuts they're the people to talk to.

thanks for the link to the old thread... it was a treat to read posts from the likes of athanasius, custos, and the Catholic defender again

YW!

When my wife's school got a real cop (instead of the public school "cops" -- who essentially were school district employees who were really good, in conjunction with the administrations, at looking the other way ... or threatening the victims if they put up a fuss), she said that the whole environment of the school changed

I know. I had a mano y mano talk with the real cop when he first arrived ... telling him that, if my wife approached him to report a crime, she had my backing, and that we expected it to be treated as a formal criminal complaint. We understood each other.

Over time, there was one more arrest in which a student verbally threatened my wife. He was arrested on the spot and charged in the criminal system with assault. And spent the weekend in jail because our local juvey doesn't release prisoners on the weekends.

And there was the instance when another principal called the cop in to deal with a violent assault. When the cop said he's be over to arrest the kid, the principal said, "No, I'd just like you to talk with him and explain the consequences of the behavior and implore him to mend his ways." The cop replied, "I don't do that. I'm a cop. Don't call me again."

The cop became a genuine hero in the school. DW says it was because so many kids had no male authority figure, read "father", in their lives and they transferred that attachment to him. They would also snitch each other out in a nanosecond if asked by the cop. The word spread immediately that there were consequences, formal consequences, to criminal behavior and, within months, he had to deal only with the real bad apples. He solved several missing children cases in a day. Girls would be picked up by their adult boyfriends and head off to some house for booze, pot, and sex. The cop would ask around and almost immediately be told where the girl was.

When he left, DW reported that the school returned to mayhem and mediocrity.

That doesn't surprise me at all. Quite a sad state of affairs isn't it?

Wait. Where is CD? Do you know?

still living in texas the last i heard... he's involved with a podcast but i can't for the life of me remember the name of it...i'll see if i can find out

here's his facebook page... says he's living in copperas cove ... the podcast ministry is called deeper truth

https://www.facebook.com/donald.hartley3

Wow really? I was born in Copperas Cove.

Thanks! My first thought was that something had happened to him.