Sick-sick-sick! Will it never end.

[BlackShanglan]

If someone stepped out of the room and ATTEMPTED to summon help, they would most likely be next (girl) or get the crap kicked out of them (boy). Where could they expect to get help? The police? From what has been said in this thread, there was a cop in the school already. The administration? The principal may well have arranged the assault. The other students? If the police don't care and the administration doesn't care, the students can't care.

Pull the fire alarm. That would take half a second of thought and no balls at all, and would disrupt the actions and bring police and authorities running.

I don't buy the theory that every person in that gym was so terrified that he or she could not possibly have acted. If nothing else, I imagine that watching this poor child assaulted had their attention focused on one location; it can't have been impossible to slip out. As for the principal arranging the assault, I rank that a remote possibility that no person of any character or spirit would allow to prevent action in this case. Finding help is as close as the nearest classroom or office; I don't believe that a teacher faced with a student crying "a girl is being attacked in the gym!" would shrug and continue with the lesson.

And yes, thank you, I have been outnumbered, outmuscled, and outsized. And I did act.

Shanglan

 

[minsue]

*standing and applauding*

 

[cantdog]

The irony is, the best CYA is to do the right thing.

I have contravened policy to do the right thing. It works. If you've handled it the way it needs to be handled, you are a hundred times more lawsuit-proof than if you duck or follow flawed policy.

You keep you job, too. The bosses just duck and cover up their responsibility for the flawed policy.

Disabled or not, that's irrelevant here. Schools in my state, and the people staffing them, stand in loco parentis. A crime having been committed means you must act, on that basis. You aren't an officer of the law, but you do stand in a position of fairly closely defined responsibility, and you must not fail to act.

 

[BlackShanglan]

The irony is, the best CYA is to do the right thing.

I have contravened policy to do the right thing. It works. If you've handled it the way it needs to be handled, you are a hundred times more lawsuit-proof than if you duck or follow flawed policy.

Excellent point. The only people I ever saw sacked for a screwup - and it was a very major screwup, euthanizing an animal that should not have been put down, and whose owner wanted it back - were not sacked for the error, but for the coverup that took place afterwards. I saw it all go down from the management side, and it was depressing. The management were desperate for ways to keep these workers, as they were all good staff with skills we needed. But once we found the trail of falsified entries and blatant lies - all undone by their ignorance of the fact that we ran computer backups every night and had the original data stored - we had little choice but to let them go. No one was happy about it, but the worst of it was that if they'd just done the right thing - admitted the mistake and taken responsibility - no one was originally in line for sacking, or even a pay cut.

And so here. If the principal had acted immediately and in good conscience, I can't see how she could have been held personally responsible. But now she is.

Shanglan

 

[Boota]

I'm a firm believer in revenge. I have to say that, prison time or not, death sentence or not, if I was in the same position as this girls father, I would kill them all. Not kill as in beat up. Kill as in I would take a knife, find them and cut their fucking heads off.

I don't understand how anyone could just stand there and watch it as it happened. If you can't physically stop them, run and get someone. Fucking people suck! Even as a kid I KNOW that I would have jumped in and even possibly taken a beating before I could have let that happen. I've taken beatings for similar situations before and I would do it again.

Just when you think the world can't disgust you any further...

 

[SeaCat]

Boota,

I agree with both you and BlackShang on this. Most people here know my position on this, and the punishments I believe fit this kind of crime.

Cat