Posted on 05/19/2014 2:24:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Sheriff's deputies arrested a Northern California mother for allegedly grabbing a fifth grader by the throat after her son pointed him out as the student who was bullying her younger daughter. Delia Garcia-Bratcher was booked Saturday into Sonoma County Jail on a felony charge of inflicting injury on a child a day after deputies took her into custody at Olivet Elementary Charter School in Santa Rosa. Christie Smith reports
Sheriff's deputies arrested a Northern California mother for allegedly grabbing a fifth grader by the throat after her son pointed him out as the student who was bullying her younger daughter.
Delia Garcia-Bratcher was booked Saturday into Sonoma County Jail on a felony charge of inflicting injury on a child a day after deputies took her into custody at Olivet Elementary Charter School in Santa Rosa.
"It's terrible when this kind of thing happens," Piner-Olivet Union School District Supt. Jennie Snyder said Monday morning. "Incidents like these are very rare."
Garcia-Bratcher was released on $30,000 bail. Attempts to reach her early Monday were unsuccessful. A number listed for her was disconnected.
Graduation Bomb Threat Over Drop-Out Secret: Cops The Sonoma County District Attorney's Office on Monday said that Garcia-Bratcher did not yet have a scheduled court date.
Snyder said she will work to prevent Garcia-Bratcher from stepping onto the campus again, and that she was not aware of any bullying allegations. Now that she is aware, she said, she will "investigate fully."
The arrest came after a Sonoma County Sheriff's deputy went to the school on Willowside Road following a report of "child abuse."
When the deputy got there, school staff said a child had been "reportedly assaulted by a parent."
Download NBC Bay Area mobile apps Lt. Steve Brown told NBC Bay Area that a child heard the mother say to the 12-year-old boy, "Don't bully my little girl. This is your warning. Next time I'll tell," before allegedly wrapping her fingers around his throat. She had entered campus at lunchtime, the deputy wrote in his report, without signing in.
According to the deputy, Garcia-Bratcher asked her son to identify the child who had been bullying her daughter. Deputies say she allegedly grabbed the student by the throat in front of many other students, including her own son. No adults witnessed the assault, the deputy said. The deputy did not detail what the alleged bullying was about. And later in the day, the sheriff's office issued a statement that "we were unable to find any nexus between the two students and are unable to determine if any bullying ever occurred between the two."
Brown would not say whether Garcia-Bratcher had a criminal history. But he did confirm that her father, Frank Bratcher, died in January after his body was found in the Russian River. He had recently been released from jail, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
The fifth grade boy sustained red marks consistent with being grabbed in the neck, the deputy said. The injuries were immediately photographed by school staff.
Hate-Crime Charges Filed in San Jose Walmart Attack Parents at the school were upset with the allegations - many of them learned about it on Monday when they arrived on campus.
"It's kind of scary," said Mariam Padilla, who has a kindergartener at the school. "To harm another child is unacceptable. No, I don't know the situation, but I don't know what she was thinking."
Amanda Navarro said she didn't know what to make of the news.
Disneyland Jacks Up Ticket Prices "I don't know how you could put your hands on another child," she said. "But bullying is not acceptable."
Overall, Navarro said she believes Olivet is a "very good school" and this appears to be a "random" albeit "shocking" incident.
The school district's website touts "personal integrity," "productive collaboration" and "effective communication" as some of its "cornerstone" qualities.
“if the mother made a reasonable attempt to get the school administration to stop the bullying and got no help, then a felony charge should be met by jury nullification.”
Plus get a good mean lawyer to sue the school to get the costs of a private school paid for.
“My thoughts exactly. Too often any type of wrongdoing by one child becomes a general punishment for everyone; i.e., Little Joey left his lunch trash all over the table and floor, so the whole class is prevented from having recess while they discuss “appropriate lunchroom behavior.” I haven’t personally dealt with any bullying situations, thank God, but I know parents who have, and from what I’ve heard the school will always take the path of least resistance (usually the well-behaved child with decent parents who don’t want to “make waves” pay the price). I feel forwarned.”
Yes, unfortunately, you have been for warned.
Encourages those who were punished for doing nothing wrong to pay "Little Joey" back for the school's bullying. Nice little game these schools have going... they create dysfunctional environments filled with "problem" students who require increasingly freakish and capricious punishments.
And people wonder why many fed-up parents choose to home school instead of wasting their energies battling a system run by and for bullies. It's a system and culture of abuse that won't shrivel up and die no matter how sick and twisted, because it is funded into perpetuity though force of law, not normal market forces.
Going to take a big zot from above to break open these prisons and set the captives free.
A fat, violent biker-gang kid, about 11-12 years old, who lived across the street threatened my little daughters once - he was always pestering them verbally, but on this occasion, he came across the street and started swinging a heavy bike chain at them while they were playing on the sidewalk in front of our building.
I saw this out of the window, ran down the stairs and screamed at him so loudly he dropped the chain and started running. I ran down the street after him, grabbed him and pinned him to the ground and made him say he wouldn’t ever come near them again. He was crying, I guess mostly because he was so surprised. I’m small and he was bigger than I was, but never get in the way of an angry mother!!! Nothing stops us.
His father, recently out of jail, came over but then just shrugged and said the boy was misbehaving. Later, the kid was taken out of the home - which was totally dysfunctional, because as usual, the parents’ miserable lifestyle had everything to do with his behavior. He’s probably in a state prison or dead now, unfortunately.
Still, the moral of the story, is never mess with somebody’s kid if momma can find out about it. In the same situation, I’d do the same today, no matter what. It’s the only solution to “bullying.”
Reminds me of when I was in the 9th grade and was hit in the back of the head with a “hard” softball after a PE class in an unprovoked attack. When I protested to the culprit, he hit me in the face. Knowing that we were forbidden to fight and were to take such issues to the “coach,’ I did just that. He chose to ignore it, dismissing it with, “You’re not hurt, are you?”
Too bad the daughter wasn’t gay.
Same thing here, my grandson is now home schooled. Got his end of year results last week, in the 99%. At 14 he is already programming. Got help from his dad, who is an engineer. And is his full time teacher.
The bully has been moved because he was getting in too much trouble.
My grandson had been in the same Christian School since K4.
Now he will start college by age 16.
And I am still angry because bullies get away with their bad deeds.
There's the money quote.
Sounds just like my grandson’s principal.
One time when my grandson complained, the principal said “People spit in the face of Jesus”. Oh he is such a moron, and he knows what I think of him.
I could do that, I grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
I remember as a little girl, seeing the men in white sheets, I don’t recall seeing a hood.
I would know how to dress for the occasion.:):):)
I must say I am kidding. Someone may read this and think I would do such a thing—NEVER_NEVER.
“I am the grandmother of a boy that was bullied at a Christian School, the principal was a good man with no backbone.”
I had a similar issue to deal with - except it was sexual harassment of my daughter.
I made an appointment, told them they had 24 hours to handle it before I filed police charges publicly.
It was handled that day.
Just recalled, my grandaughters teacher in K4 had her husband helping in the school, same Christian School my grandson was in.
He was arrested a few years ago for molesting his granddaughter. I just found out last week, he is already out of jail. His wife is back teaching K4. Though he is not suppose to be within 1000 ft. of a school.
He had also molested another family member and it was kept secret.
Paid for by taxpayers. 'Time to send your kid to school with a wooden pistol.
She’s a successful woman who has worked her way up to managing a large department store.
Meanwhile, I would bet the 350 lb ghetto thugget has 5 chilrens by 3 different mens and pays for her pizza and cable bills with 6 different types of welfare.
Your friend’s daughter won.
I think one of the big problems of Christian schools is that parents of troubled kids pull them out of the public schools and put them in Christian schools, which leads to this kind of thing.
The school students my grandchildren attended are mostly children of active church members. One boy was there because he was not doing well in public school. Only 250 students K4 through grade 12.
We were not members and believe me we were treated as such.
I’d graduated and left home but my sis, normally very quiet and studious, flat cold cocked a hoodlum that was bullying our much younger brother (the one I took to his first day of kindergarden when I was a senior). She put the little ruffian on the floor of the bus, told him to never lay a hand on or get near the kid brother again or she would put him on the floor again. Went back to her seat and never said another word. The old bus driver, the one who drove the hoodlum kids mom when she was in school was laughing about it more than 25 years later.
I think the legend is still told to this day. ‘Course that was in the days when we had gun racks in the pickup and carried our rifles and shotguns to school so we could hunt in the mornings or after school. I even bought a pistol from the coach and kept it in my locker until we went home on the bus.
I’d come around the corner at the parking lot sideways to skid into the parking spot and even got pea gravel inside my tires when the bead would break a bit. Took me a long time to figure that one out.
Those were better days than these. We got to be kids growing up in the country and we had freedom but we also had accountability, responsibility, punishment and consequences then it was over. We worked at whatever we could to buy our old pickups and cars and gas but we worked. None of this life haunting zero tolerance on your record for life crap.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.