Judge dismisses sexual harassment charges against 2 Ore. teens

KGW.com ^ | 8-20-07 | WILLIAM McCALL

[SteveH]

There’s nothing sexual about it. That’s the difference.

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... :-)

[SteveH]

What I heard is that the girls did try to get the school to stop it, but the school didn’t stop it. Hence, the cops were called.

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.

[MamaB]

Amen!

[MamaB]

These were not men. They were kids and it never should have gone as far as it did. People are going nuts!

[SteveH]

I’ve never seen any suggestion that the girls backed off their allegations. Was this in another article?

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.