Local: Did Manual High ingore bullies’ sex abuse of girl?
Posted in Local with tags Manual High School, Phil Luciano, stabbing on October 28, 2008 by Billy DennisI’m reading Phil Luciano’s article about the girl who stabbed a classmate in the leg at Manual High School. Luciano talked to family and friends of the girl and came away with a sympathetic article about her. It seems she’s a decent kid who was being systematically bullied under the not-so-watchful eyes of teachers and administrators. I’m not going to dispute any of it.
At one point, a teacher was told that this boy and others were touching girls in the classroom. The teacher moved the boys to another side of the room. I can only hope that the girls’ complaints weren’t clear about what kind of “touching” was going on. State law requires teachers to report sexual abuse of children. The would include a gang of boys getting grabby with ANY part of a girl’s ananomy. It’s a form of sexual abuse.
And what kind of classroom is this in which a teacher doesn’t see this going on?
And the fact that the boys kept doing this meant they weren’t very worried about getting caught, let alone punished. Any why should they? When a complaint was made all that happened was that they were moved to another side of the room.
I suspect that there’s something in the culture at Manual High School that needs to be addressed.
And if this girl was in fact being systematically bullied, then her using a knife to defend herself seems perfectly justified, in my opinion. It’s easy to pontificate after the fact about how it’s a poor solution to the problem. Well, it beats the “no solution” being offered by a school district that does not or will not see what’s going on.
