If it were high school, I'd agree that kids of different ages could've been in the bathroom together . . . but elementary kids tend to go with their classes, so I don't know whether to think older boys would've been in there too. If they were part of a before-or-after-school care program, THAT would make the most sense -- kids of different ages could've been in the bathroom together then.The boys who did it to him could have been older, though. It said he was unconscious, so I don't know at what point that happened, though he said he remembers them lifting him up onto the hook.
Of course, looking back at the article, it's a bit vague on some things. It says they tried to break his neck -- but it doesn't say whether he was hanging by his neck or by another body part. For all we know, he could've been hit in the neck and then hung up by his belt loop. Was he gagged? Were his hands tied? If not, why didn't he bang on the walls or kick his feet? That would seem to be instinctive. And whether other older kids were in the bathroom is an important question.
When articles are THIS vague, it makes me wonder if they're telling the whole story. It makes me think about a story I knew personally a few years ago: The truth was that a mentally handicapped custodian dialed a wrong number and ended up talking to a 14-year old girl. She was polite and chatted with him a minute, and he thought that was nice. So he called her again. And again. And again. At first she was polite to him, but then she got tired of it and told her father, who put a stop to that through the legal system. The guy didn't know he was doing wrong. He thought he had a girlfriend. They were never together in the same room. Not even once. The news articles, which got big press here, described the incident as an inappropriate relationship between a school employee (which makes your mind think classroom teacher) and a 14-year old girl. Did the news lie? No. He was a school employee. It was inappropriate for him to call her. She was 14. It was an "ongoing" situation. But it implied something much more sinister than was really going on.
So, what does that have to do with this story? Nothing really -- there's no doubt that someone involved here is a real scumbag because the boy was hurt badly, and it's downright scary to think that a child could be that evil already. But I don't always trust everything the media reports. They thrive on sensationalism, and being vague (so your mind'll jump to the obvious conclusions) is their bread-and-butter. So I try not to be too quick to fill in blame when all the facts aren't in.
Oh, and in the end, the custodian lost his job and was put on disability. So a handicapped man who was able to work (with supervision) and earn a small paycheck is now being supported by tax dollars. It was a lose-lose situation.
We were 1-8, then 9-12.
I would've liked it if my girls' schools had been structured like the ones I attended. We had three buildings: One building for lower elementary grades, one for upper elementary grades, and a third which housed middle-school grades plus the library. We had one playground on the campus, which was for small kids, and the older kids walked across a small side street to the city park for recess. We shared a cafeteria and gym, but we were scheduled in such a way that we were always with similar-aged kids in those areas.
I've HATED having my kids at different schools. Different busses, two places to pick up or drop off -- for convenience sake, I'd have loved to have them on the same campus. There's always something: PTA on different days, school picture on different days. Keeping your kids together is just easier.
Those are more informative than the first article, but lots of questions are still unanswered.
Yeah, imagine if she walked in on him and he was just trying to fix his stuck zipper. THEN the story would be about a perverted teacher who likes to see little boys with their pants down.
All teachers -- even honest, upright people who have no bad intentions -- take great care NOT to be in the student bathrooms, not to be in a classroom alone with a student with the door closed, etc. It's sad that we have to protect ourselves this way, but students can CLAIM things happened or that we did this-or-that if we aren't careful with how we behave.
And why would this teacher ever think something this horrible would happen?
Yeah, so someone's lying, and we don't know who it is. At a glance, I wonder if the father told his son to report it to his teacher, and the son -- who didn't speak good English -- just didn't do it, thinking it was no big deal and surely it'd stop on its own anyway. I'd be willing to bet the lack of language plays into this significantly.
