Posted on 08/20/2007 11:32:16 AM PDT by rednesss
Judge dismisses sexual harassment charges against 2 Ore. teens
08/20/2007
By WILLIAM McCALL / Associated Press
Two 13-year-old boys accused of slapping girls' bottoms and poking or cupping girls' breasts at school apologized on Monday as a judge dismissed charges against the two, ending a six-month case that drew national attention.
The charges triggered a debate over whether such behavior in school should be considered criminal.
Four girls listed as victims by the prosecutors had asked the judge to drop the charges against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison.
Yamhill County Judge John Collins did so on Monday, saying it was in the "interest of justice."
A number of young girls were in the courtroom during the hearing. They included at least some of the four who asked that the charges be dropped, attorneys said.
During the brief hearing, the two boys faced the girls and apologized.
"I never intended to hurt you in any way," Mashburn said.
Cornelison told the girls: "I hope we can still be friends."
The News-Register newspaper of McMinnville reported that a "civil compromise" reached by prosecutors and the defense called for both boys to apologize, to pay each of the four girls $250 and to complete a "boundaries education" program.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys said they could not comment on the newspaper report or release details of the settlement because they are confidential.
Pressure has been building on prosecutors to drop the charges, with critics saying they had blown the matter out of proportion and were overzealous.
The boys, apparently inspired by the movie "Jackass," were accused in police reports of swatting girls on the bottom in a school corridor, grabbing girls' breasts on at least two occasions, teaming up to "dry hump" girls, poking girls' breasts and engaging in what's known as "party boy" dancing mimicking sexual intercourse.
They were originally charged with felony sex abuse, misdemeanor sex abuse and sexual harassment in February. Amid growing public opposition to sending the boys to prison and putting them on a sex offenders' registry, prosecutors first dropped the felony sex abuse charges and later the misdemeanor sex abuse charges, leaving the sexual harassment counts.
The judge dismissed the final charges following negotiations between prosecutors and the defense, and discussions with the four girls about whether they wanted the case dismissed.
And that's not an assumption? At a minimum, it seems as if it would be situational, depending on the sexual orientation of the giver and receiver of the gesture, among other things such as the degree of privacy and overall tone of the total interactions.
I don’t think groping is just “horseplay.”
What is the definition of "groping" that you are using? It almost seems ... for lack of a better term ... unequal...
And I think there may be a Brokeback Mountain joke in all this somewhere... :-)
As I’ve said before, what they did met the legal definition of sexual assault. As for any defense that the acts were not intended to be sexual in nature, I suspect that the dry-humping would put the lie to that.
Allegedly did. No trial.
And-- hearsay.
Amen!
These were not men. They were kids and it never should have gone as far as it did. People are going nuts!
Via Michelle Malkin (Aug. 14):
The Oregonian obtained a copy of the police report:
Although the contents weren’t discussed at Monday’s hearing, The Oregonian was able to review a copy. In the Feb. 28 report, a female Patton student and her mother dispute Roache’s account of an interview with the girl a week earlier concerning “party-boy” dancing.
In his initial police report Feb. 22, Roache said the girl told him that Mashburn and Cornelison writhed up against her in a sexually suggestive form of dance. Roache described the moves as “party-boy dancing” from the movie “Jackass.”
But in the Feb. 28 report, taken by a different McMinnville police officer, the girl said there was never any touching involved and that she did not believe Mashburn or Cornelison should be charged with a crime.
Two other female students also disputed Roache’s police report during a hearing in February. The girls testified that they felt pressured under questioning from Tillery and Roache to say things that weren’t true.
It's perhaps advisable to use "allegedly" when describing actions taken by defendants in cases such as these that do not go to trial.
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