Rape and other sexual assault idiocy

[anthrobabe]

This just has me boiling and my gears are grinding and WTF!!!!!

7th grade special education student expelled for rape claim-- male pled guilty to something-- now a federal law suit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/17/national/main20093533.shtml

AND it does not freakin help that this occurred in the southern United States

[pieces o nine]

Horrible!


I cannot understand how anyone could behave so ... so ... so horribly  to a child, especially a special ed student. These school officials seem more interested in having their school  -- and themselves  -- look  good than be  good.

   

[Swatopluk]

I assume this is the same case
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/651533/heartbreaking%3A_7th_grade_girl_raped_twice,_blamed_and_punished_by_school_officials_both_times/

And here are some general observations
http://www.alternet.org/story/152140/cop_rapes_woman_at_gunpoint%2C_11-year-old_rape_victim_smeared%2C_accuser_sued_for_%242_million%3A_is_us_society_failing_victims/?page=entire

[Opsa]

It reminds me of the cases of the priests buggering the boys, only worse, if that's possible.

Poor girl.

[anthrobabe]

Swato, thank you for the extra reading on the case--- I do like to look at as many sources as possible.

It is just mind blowing-- the one thing that caught my attention right off was the fact that a psychologist had already in the girls file statements that she would deny her own feelings and needs in order to be accepted--- naturally these adults were easily able to poke holes in her and thereby her story.

[Opsa]

I tried to write more about this earlier, but got cut off.

I wonder what's up. I grew up in the 60's where we had the "Women's Lib" movement. People made fun of it, but to us young girls it was pretty glamorous and inspiring at the time. Now it looks like it's come undone.

I think a lot of it has to do with these blowhards on the radio and blogs who would say anything to blame others for their lack of control. This seems very unhealthy to me. Any dumb jerk who wants to jump someone's bones without permission has plenty of instant backup for blaming the victim.

Still, they'd better know that if anyone messed with anyone I know, they would have a fight on their hands like they wouldn't believe. If these guys think that women (and the men who truly love them) are going to wear down and take this, they will be in for a big surprise.

[pieces o nine]

I mentioned this story to a teacher friend -- one who deplores the idiocy and callousness of administrators who not only do not *help* students in difficult situations of any sort, but who actually put roadblocks in their way -- not to mention coming down very hard indeed on staff that attempt to reach out. She not only fought her own school for a dyslexic son, she's been a real champion for the special ed kids in her subject.

I was beyond shocked when she shrugged off the story, voiced gratitude that she wasn't in the 'difficult position' of the teachers, staff and admins who let this girl down, and complained about the 'unrealistic demand' of the mother regarding watching out for her daughter.

Billy Joel had it right:  It was then I felt the stranger / Kick me right between the eyes.


The names and professional addresses of the relevant staff & admins from this story are available. They can be written to. In cold, careful, rigidly polite anger.

[stellinacadente]

I am very sensitive to these topics given the fact that I have a little girl...

I have no words to describe the disgust I feel for these peoplewho should have been the keepers of this child innocence and only looked after their own interest...

I am SO glad my daughter is out of pubblic school!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I was beyond shocked when she shrugged off the story, voiced gratitude that she wasn't in the 'difficult position' of the teachers, staff and admins who let this girl down, and complained about the 'unrealistic demand' of the mother regarding watching out for her daughter.

While I don't condone the attitude of your friend I do understand it. Standing up in a case like this is definitively far from a wise career move, and considering that it is often difficult to determine exactly what happened, the subsequent mess only helps to taint everyone involved. True, now they are all tainted but from their (highly cynical and heartless) perspective, had they been able to shut up the girl and her family the problem literally would've gone away.

Which for some reason reminds me...

Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

[Opsa]

That rings heartbreakingly true.

We've figured out the ideal, and ideally the law should defend the wronged, but there are so many loopholes used by a-holes, that everything gets all bunged up.

There is such a thing as justice. Human beings invented it. We just don't seem to know how to maintain it.

[anthrobabe]

I'm sure it was difficult all around and teachers are some of the most overworked people out there but oh this is just too much.

I have daughters as well and try and see myself in this mothers shoes as well.

Is there ever a time that a child is too disabled to attend public school? That is a bomb of a question but I'd like to hear what y'all think.

[Opsa]

Well, I think that there probably are some kids that should not attend public school. Some of them are too mentally or physically challenged to be able to keep up and be happy there, and some are too sensitive or vulnerable to be comfortable enough to learn there. I think it really depends on how the kid feels.

I have a daughter in public school, too. I came very close to pulling her out in kindergarten, because she seemed to be upset. Turned out it was her callous teacher that was upsetting her. Once I was able to convince the principal that she needed to switch classes (a process that took months and finally the not-idle threat of pulling her out to homeschool) she was fine. I don't know why the principal did not believe her or me. I think it was just too inconvenient for them to let her move to another class.

What if she had been abused, I wonder? This principal jumped through all sorts of hoops to convince me that the teacher was just fine and it was my kid that had the problem. This in spite of the fact that she's the nicest, most polite and considerate child anyone could hope for.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I'm not completely sure, I do understand the urge to shield a child from harm and certainly an abusive teacher is reason to be upset, but there is other argument that bears having in mind. How old is old enough for a child to be exposed to the ways of the world? Cruelty is quickly found in daycares and preschools -albeit from other kids- and different forms of subtle (and not so subtle) mistreatment can come from those in charge of the kids. The sad thing is that that experience will get worse overtime, the abuses of power will come and hit sooner or later and the ability to cope with them is IM-Perhaps-Not-So-HO linked with those previous experiences. The latest you are confronted with injustice the harder it will hit you because it will destroy one of the pillars of your mental model. It's the same with pain, I do recall my wife being upset if my son came with one or two bruises from his Taekwondo lesson, but the problem is that he had to learn how to manage pain and better if that is in a controlled environment that in an uncontrolled one. The job of a parent is to prepare children to his/her life as an adult and many of the realities of adulthood are upsetting and uncomfortable. I can't say I know exactly how to do this (I tried my best with my son) but I do know that it has to be done.
---
I hope I didn't come up to aggressive on my point, my intention isn't to criticize but to explain my POV. Apologies if I was too brash.

[Swatopluk]

Maybe it should again be girls-only schools...in St.Trinian's fashion.
"In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared."

[pieces o nine]

I'm on the fence on this topic. I don't have children, although two adopted nephews/nieces have issues from probable fetal alcohol syndrome and one cousin has an aggressive, childhood-onset arthritis which severely limits her interactions with the world.

I'd like to see as many children 'mainstreamed'  [bleah -- not the best term]  as possible, for both their benefit and that of the larger population. Concealing them at home or ghettoizing them in institutions deprives them of opportunities to learn and achieve to their limits; deprives the larger society from their unexpected insights, achievements, and talents; and insulates kids -- and parents -- in the 'normal' segment of the bell curve from getting some valuable perspective on the relativity of [normal].

At the same time, teacher friends have sometimes expressed frustration at having to create a curriculum, syllabus and prep work for all the [normal] students in a given class, and then create another version for at least one and sometimes several different physical and mental levels. V has had some students who required a personal aid, and aids may -- or may not -- display any discernible interest in whether the single student entrusted to their care is getting anything from the lesson or activity.

Cases of handicaps so severe that they prevent interaction or learning put serious strain on overworked teachers who are still being held to a No Child Left Behind, teaching-to-the-standards-test for the rest of the class, and it deprives both [normal] and gifted students of productive time with the teacher. It stresses a system which is often being plagued by or threatened with budget cuts and hiring freezes, without a discernible ROI.

And yet ... there must  be options beyond yanking everyone from class who can't perform to [normal] expectations, and expecting their unlucky-in-the-genetics-lottery parents to bear the entire financial, emotional, and physical burden. I don't know what those options are, though.

[Aggie]

And yet ... there must  be options beyond yanking everyone from class who can't perform to [normal] expectations, and expecting their unlucky-in-the-genetics-lottery parents to bear the entire financial, emotional, and physical burden. I don't know what those options are, though.

In my high school, we had a special education learning centre and teachers to work with the students who couldn't comfortably perform up to [normal] standards.  AFAIK, those students were taught through the usual 5 years of high school, and graduated with special ed diplomas.  The class held students with a wide range of capabilities, but seemed to work well enough (lots of 1 on 1).  They were able to go to school with everyone else and mingle with the student body, but didn't need to have attention diverted to them in a general classroom setting.

Gifted students at my school, OTOH, were booooored.  We just plotted mayhem and destruction from the back row of Physics class.  

[Opsa]

Zono, you did not offend me. I agree with you that some people over-protect their children, and run the risk of having them ill-prepared for the cold, cruel world. I know some people like this, but it's their kids, and they'll probably fight through it sooner or later.

In my case, I felt that th'Olette needed a more positive first year in school. Since then she has had teachers that have been everything from brilliant to helpless, but I wouldn't pull her out, now. She understands that that's how it goes. I was concerned that if she had to relate her whole school experience to this one teacher, it might be discouraging for her. I went and visited the class many times ( as volunteer class helper), and I saw how this teacher was, and I too was impressed by how unapologetically awful she seemed to be, even with a parent in the room. She was unnecessarily rough, barked orders, complained about administration out loud to herself (with the kids there), and was unpleasant all around. It was when she suggested that the kindergarteners use a horse hypodermic needle to punch holes in the holiday ornaments they were making that I knew I had to get my kid the heck out of there.  I wasn't going to leave my five year old with someone of such questionable judgement. (I did step in and offer to punch the holes for them, using a ballpoint pen, which worked just fine.)

The principal didn't believe me when I told her about that incident, even though I was right there when it happened. She said that the teacher was fine and maybe there was something wrong with my kid. She said that no-one else had complained about this teacher. I found out later that many had complained about her. The system could not fire her, so it defended her.

[pieces o nine]

...
The system could not fire her, so it defended her.

And yet ... there are many stories about the system figuring out a way to fire "good" tenured teachers who run afoul of the wroing good ole boy.   

[Swatopluk]

Not exactly on topic, just 'sex-related'
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/658903/u.s._gov._secretly_infected_thousands_of_guatemalans_with_stds/
In these cases there is not even the Tuskegee excuse that the doctors were just lying to the guinea pigs while not personally infecting them.
Can't say I am actually surprised. The US track record on things like that has been abysmal for ages. To be sarcastic: where was the need to import and shield nazi scientists that conducted lethal experiments on KZ inmates? There obviously was a more than sufficient supply in-land.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Old news in the complete sense of the term, the case is frequently mentioned with the similar abuses done to african americans in the US some years earlier IIRC.

There is no such thing as The Good Guys^TM 

[Opsa]

It's really weird that any of those projects were allowed to go forward. Where was the objector?

In contrast, I wonder how much of this sort of carp gets sidelined and we never hear about it?

[Swatopluk]

I only noted after posting that this special case got out last October.
I have encountered people in discussion that excuse Tuskegee with "Hey it was not US that infected them (we just made use of the fact)". That would not work in this case (except for the Cheneys of this world that would say "Hey, those were not US citizens and thus don't count').

[Aggie]

Third-world drug trials are still a reality and unfortunately common, AFAIK.  To do a double-blind study on a disease-burdened population, you need to leave part of the study group untreated.  It's a catch-22 - if the treatment works, you've allowed the disease to propagate in the other half, and if it has grave side effects, you've spared half but harmed the other half. You may be sure deaths and disabling side-effects are well buried when the overall result is not favourable.   

When the studies are focused on prevention of disease transmission, as with AIDS trials, it's a morally tenuous position.  It's likely for the greater good, but you need to find a population that is not using effective modes of prevention (condoms, for example) to run the study, and their participation in the study may give them the false impression that they are being protected to some degree.  Testing may lead to effective modes of prevention, but there already exist methods that would work if some of the cultural and religious barriers could be removed (thankfully, there is work going into that side of things, as well). 

[Swatopluk]

There is still a bit of a moral difference between drug testing, not treating people while pretending to do so and actually infecting them without their knowledge (and then treating or not treating them). All of these can be criminal and/or loathsome but there is a sliding scale of evil.

[Aggie]

Yes, these days they really do try for sensible evil, compared to the senseless evil of the past.  Sometimes the outcomes are similar, though, and a big part of the reason these tests are being carried out overseas is that they wouldn't fly at home (@US pharmaceutical industry).

The domestic strategy, I should think, is to use alternate methods of cranking up the nation's anxiety levels. The market for treating anxiety disorders in the US is $46 billion dollars per year....  if the pharmaceutical industry isn't actively working to increase that market, they are stupid (if they are, they are evil). If say, $100,000,000 was spent annually across the industry to increase that market by only 2%, they'd be getting better than a 900% return on their money. $100,000,000 buys a lot of influence with media and government, I suspect.  The money is being sucked more or less out of government, especially if the US ever gets decent health care in place, and out of businesses and wage-earners in form of the rising cost of health care benefits/insurance.

[Griffin NoName]

I heard of a drug trial which showed such positive results half way through that they stopped the trial and treated the control group. Unfortunately can't remember any other details.

Re. cranking up anxiety, people get anxious about whether they should take medication to reduce anxiety

[anthrobabe]

Great reply's.
No offense taken with any of them.
I too am on the fence-- we can not coddle children but I feel there are some who are so profoundly disabled (or criminally disruptive) that they can not main stream-- maybe if the teachers were not overwhelmed it would help in that all the children would be exposed (not a good word but ?) to all types of people and learn that the world is so much bigger than 'my family'-- and interaction is wonderful for ALL children.
I had several college class mates with a great deal of physical limitations due to cerebral palsy but to me they were just other students and luckily for me now my friends.

And as to the gov't tricking and infecting. Well they are bastards.