Two middle-school students in Oregon are facing possible time in a juvenile jail and could have to register as sex offenders for smacking girls on the rear end at school.
Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, were arrested in February after they were caught in the halls of Patton Middle School, in McMinnville, Ore., slapping girls on the rear end. Mashburn told ABC News in a phone interview that this was a common way of saying hello practiced by lots of kids at the school, akin to a secret handshake.
The boys spent five days in a juvenile detention facility and were charged with several counts of felony sex abuse for what they and their parents said was merely inappropriate but not criminal behavior.
WHAT?!?!? Slapping someone's bottom is a felony? You know, in the workplace, that's called sexual harassment ("and I don't have to take it"). I wonder if there has ever been an adult convicted, or even charged with a felony for this very action.
When I was a senior in high school, I got groped by a guy acquaintance on a newspaper field trip. Out of nowhere, he just reached out and grabbed himself a handful of boob. And I did what I think most of my contemporaries would have done: I slapped him across the face hard enough to leave a hand print. And then he and I got over it. And had I told a teacher (actually, I think one may have witnessed the slapping... good thing I wasn't charged with felony battery!) I seriously doubt the police would have been involved. I don't even think he would have been suspended.
It's only been 11 years, so please don't try to tell me "the world is a different place." Does anyone out there actually think this matter is being handed appropriately? And slightly off-topic, click on that news story if you have a second. If it were your son on trial, wouldn't you iron his shirt before his hearing? You know what they say about first impressions!
3 comments:
The prosecutor in that case should be slapped across the face. Hard.
The public keeps pushing for stiffer punishment for sex offenders and then prosecutors and school districts come in behind them and commit acts of severe stupidity like this. The term "sex offender" may soon not mean a thing because every little boy or girl in school that's given a hug, stolen a kiss or copped a feel will be labeled with that tag.
Common sense is an increasingly rare commodity these days.
(Poor little boy, looks like mom couldn't get her act together long enough to iron his shirt. I'm sure that rather than offending the judge it probably elicited more sympathy than anything else.)
Who grabbed you? Dennis? I'll tear him limb from limb!
Do you remember when something like this happened to a 4 yr old in Marlton? It almost ruined his family!
And another thing! Isn't Oregon where the known sex offender just killed a child?
Oh, well, at least we're all safe from Cory and Ryan! We may be raped, murdered, and left to rot on a mountainside ... but thank God our hineys are safe from the "slapping duo!"
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