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Posted on 05/22/2002 2:08:18 AM PDT by SteveH
By recent events, our family has been pulled into the debate over how best to deal with school violence, in what seem the worst possible ways, and on a very personal level.
The Past
A few weeks ago, my son, "Dave", a public high school student, was attacked one afternoon after school in a public park. He had had school sponsored training in "conflict resolution" while still in public grade school, and was inclined towards trying to meet the other student, "Bill". (The names are pseudonyms.)
Bill did not like Dave personally. At one point, he punched Dave, who is one year behind Bill, at school. Dave withheld informing my wife and myself, along with school officials, of this first incident. Both Dave and Bill have Karate first degree black belts.
Bill had put out public taunts in the form of AOL "Instant Messenger" (AIM) "chat member" profile pages on the Internet. These public taunts mentioned my son by his first and last name, insulting him and threatening him with physical harm. This was brought to Dave's attention by his fellow students, all of whom (including Dave) used AOL's chat program to communicate. My spouse and I discouraged the use of chat but did not prevent it because Dave often used it for classwork purposes in addition to socializing over the net.
A meeting was set up, using chat, to take place on the afternoon of the last day of spring break, per Bill's preference. Bill specified 2 AM at a remote park, but Dave negotiated it to 4 PM at a creek next to the school, and Bill accepted. Bill wanted to fight, but Dave agreed only to talk. Each student brought a set of friends as witnesses.
When Dave showed up with his friends at the creek, Bill was there with his friends. Bill also had an aluminum baseball bat in his hand.
By this time, common sense would tell most adults to get out of Dodge, fast. But our son apparently felt pressured socially to go forward. For whatever reason, the two met face to face at the creekbed.
Bill began to berate Dave for bothering him. Dave tried hard to appease Bill, acceding to Bill's demands to kneel before him and apologize. But now, Bill went further, taunting Dave more, hitting him several times with the bat, stopping periodically to ask him "what does it take to make you fight back?". The blows came to our son's head, his shoulders, his arms, body, and legs. His digital watch was damaged beyond repair and bruises appeared on his skin. The other kids watched, not helping or interfering.
At this point, an adult who had been walking nearby called the police over a cell phone. The police arrived very quickly, and rounded up several of the students from each of the two groups, along with Bill and Dave, and brought them back to the high school.
My spouse and I had taken off work early to run an errand, and by chance were nearby when, at 4:40, we received a phone call from the school. We were told that Our son was on the phone (not the school officials or the police). He gave us a very brief description of the incident and told us that the school had asked him to call us to come pick him up. We drove quickly to the school, and met the school's police officer, who had interviewed our son. He was still being talked to by the vice principal. The officer told us that Bill was probably going to be charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon. He advised us to tell our son to tell adults instead of trying to resolve all potentially violent problems by himself (which of course we all agreed was common sense in any case). We were very nervous and just glad to get our son out of there as soon as the vice principal was finished with him.
When we got back, I took pictures of our son's bruises, and captured what information I could from the computer, including some AOL chat transcripts of the agreement to meet.
We were concerned, because it turned out that Bill and Dave knew where each other lived. Realizing Bill would probably be released to his parents that day, we needed to know our options.
We had legal insurance from work, so we tried to contact some lawyers, both within and without the legal insurance system. We wanted a defensive legal posture (insulation from the need to make direct statements to anyone, and investigation into the request for a restraining order). After several frustrating days of phone calls, we got some free advice, but the lawyers seemed to lose interest when we indicated that we did not at least initially intend to sue for damages.
I tried to get a police report from the police. However, again after several days of effort, I was finally told that the report was confidential due to the case being passed to the local prosecutor's office and the fact that the alleged perpetrator is a juvenile (I did get a report number).
I asked the police what our son should do if attacked, either on or off campus, and especially considering the general school policy banning all violence? The officer I spoke with suggested buying our son a cell phone and that he use it if he should feel threatened.
Now, we were already aware that another school policy bans the possession of cell phones on campus. However, we were at the time gathering what advice we could get for consideration, including what apparently was the best the police could offer. (We did in fact after consideration decide to get Dave a cell phone and told him to keep it with him, although keep it off and hidden while at school. And we also get the impression that many other children and their parents have also quietly chosen to violate this particular school policy-- particularly female students, for reasons that we imagine may be obvious to everyone except for school officials.)
When school started again after break, Bill was suspended as we had been told he would be by the police. Later, the suspension turned into expulsion for the remainder of the school year, which is the maximum expulsion period permitted by law, so we have been told, for cases of this type.
My wife got a telephone call from Bill's mother; Bill's parents wanted to come to our home and talk. We discussed this and decided to decline, because we were still afraid and we did not know the potential legal ramifications of such a face to face meeting, nor even the potential ramifications of any offhand remarks that we might inadvertently make, which might result in affecting for the worse the legal machinery that was already in motion. We were told that Bill probably appeared before a judge and would as a matter of course ask to enter some kind of juvenile offender program in lieu of a formal court trial; also, that judges typically issued a restraining order under such circumstances; and that Bill needed to express remorse to the court and police in return for a degree of leniency.
Meanwhile, I made a point to speak personally with school officials to let them know that we were in no uncertain terms concerned for our son's physical safety while he was at school, with the potential for a widening or continuance of the initial violent events in my mind. I emphasized the social aspects of the problem to the school, although it was not clear that my input was taken very seriously.
At first, Dave's student friends were afraid to hang out with him or come to our home. This fear extended to the parents, one of whom told us that our son was no longer welcome at their home, simply because they did not want to attract any violence there as a result of a subsequent attack. After a few weeks without serious incident, though, we thought that the worst might be over. Gradually even Dave's friends and their parents drifted back to normal relations with us.
However, to our surprise, our son subsequently received yet more indications that Bill's AOL chat profile contained new threats, again mentioning our son's full name.
We confirmed this ourselves, by interrogating the profile via AIM (this is only possible by AOL chat members when the profile owner is online himself or herself).
I wrote and delivered a letter to the police, detailing the AIM profile information both before and after the baseball bat attack, including the chat member's monicker and tying it to the attack via the police report number (since I had no absolute proof that the chat member was indeed Bill, although this seems fairly obvious to most of the chat-savvy students and to us as parents). I cc'ed the school principal and vice principal.
The police somewhat reluctantly took the report, stressing at the time that they had no proof of the identity of the chat member threatening our son over the Internet, though also saying that they would be forced to investigate now that I had reported the threat, and that they would get back to me later. The principal told me that he could not do anything because of the identity question and because the threats were issued and delivered off campus.
An interesting question is just how did the school officials get information from the students after the attack on Dave? I asked Dave to find out the answer. It turns out that none of the kids would talk when they were brought back to school. According to Dave, they then picked a larger student (one from our son's circle of friends) and told him without giving him a chance to contact his parents or get any legal advice himself, that he could be immediately expulsed from school. Dave's friend was angry but decided under the circumstances that it was better to talk. Then other students caved in and also talked Fortunately, the stories all matched, and exhonerated our son from blame. However, the methods used to extract the stories were extreme and did seem to violate at least the rights usually accorded to adults in similar situations.
The Present and Future
What should our son do in the future if he is confronted with another youth who is intent on starting a fight? I do not recall at the moment any police or school officials mentioning the possibility that Dave can and should defend himself under any circumstances. Perhaps they are legally constrained from giving any advice on self defense, by some institution or agency wide policy.
That does not absolve our responsibility as parents from giving our children as much advice as we can to avoid physical harm. But what advice to give? I recently polled selected parents (one of whom happens to be a Karate instructor, another a firearms owner) and this is the answer I heard: first, if there is sufficient advance warning, tell the school officials and one's parents the specific threats and incidents. Second, the parents can write a letter to the school officials, parents of the agressor, and possibly the police detailing facts believed to indicate imminent danger to the student. Third, if possible, ignore the threats and just walk away (perhaps run away, if necessary). Finally, if all else fails, and an attack occurs in a situation where there are no authorities present to stop it in time, fight back with sufficient force to stop the attack, though no more than necessary to stop the attack. Fight back even if it risks punishment from the school. Even if it risks expulsion.
It seems better to be alive and kicked out of school, rather than dead in the hope that adhering to nonviolent but overly simplistic and impractical school policies will somehow rescue one from imminent danger from any agressor.
Today I've passed along some advice to my son: avoid physical confrontation whenever possible, but don't be afraid to fight back if you are left with no other choice.
You need to move. If you aren't going to fight, the best idea is to run and live another day. Your son is going to get killed if he stays in that town. I'll repeat, Dave will kill your son because he knows your son won't defend himself.
And on top of that, just stay very aware, and make sure you let your son know that the way he handled the 4pm incident -- groveling on his knees -- has fired up that bully into overdrive. If he went there, and saw the bat, he should not have approached "Bill", but bantered to him and his crew from a distance.
It's like a with a cat that is a mouser -- once the cat moves beyond a certain point, the cat will strike the mouse and there is no holding him back. By kneeling in front of a bully your son has charged up Bill, and he is likely to attack your son at any opportunity -- a predator seeing your son only as tasty prey.
It will many *years* of holding Bill off -- like until he gets married and has kids -- or Bill's getting very severly beaten/defeated -- it not physically, then in court before a hard judge, before your son is out of danger with this bully.
I'm speaking from having grown up in tough neighorhoods and having dealt with such bullies and having seen others fail to deal with them.
In the early 70s I was in 7th grade (junior high, grades 7-9) in a wealthy suburb of Boston. It was the educational equivalent of "Lord of the Flies." There were constant fights and threats of violence. Easily the worst years of my life.
One day I got mugged in the boys room. I was afraid to tell anyone, but a few days later I broke down and told my dad. The next day I was called to the office of the vice-principal (an accurate title) who spent half an hour explaining to me how it was impossible for teachers to patrol the bathrooms and basically that there was nothing he could do about it, or was going to do about it.
Looking back, it pisses me off even more. I went back to my old high school about ten years ago and noticed that all of the doors had been broken off the bathroom stalls and that the mirrors had been replaced by rectangular pieces of chrome since they had been broken so often. Tell me that "school" isn't a prison.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how the Junior High principal used to pal around with the burn-outs. At the assembly on the last day of school one of the burn-outs set off an M-40 (1/4 stick of dynamite) backstage. And as the day ended Alice Cooper's "School's Out" was played over the PA, by burn-out request, I'm sure. Life imitating art or something like that...
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end any fights I get into.
Should add two points.
1. Remember that all fights are to the death (or at least should be treated so)
2. There is no such thing as a fair fight. There is only a winner and a loser. So if you're forced to fight, go for the win
God Save America (Please)
>end any fights I get into.
Should add two points.
1. Remember that all fights are to the death (or at least should be treated so)
2. There is no such thing as a fair fight. There is only a winner and a loser. So if you're forced to fight, go for the win
I'll add my 2 cents from my edumication in public school:
* The only fair fight is a fight you can avoid/talk your way out of/run away from... you avoided it, so fair enough, and you're the winner by avoiding the fight. A true man does not need to hurt someone else to save face.
* All other fights are life or death. Go for the throat, kick in a kneecap, stick a thumb into an eyesocket. If you are reasonable and cannot avoid a fight, then your opponent has no value for your life, so defend your life fully.
Since the other party is conveying threats using AOL software, they may be interested as might the ISP.
If I my son had faced a similar situation as yours, I believe I'd enroll him in a karate class where he would learn to defend him as a last possible solution. I can only imagine the damage to one's self-esteem after having kneeled to this hideous child's abuse. Good luck to you all.
GSA(P)
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