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Post by JGRobinson on Jul 25, 2011 19:46:20 GMT -5
Well put, schools look the other way until its too late then, Bam, lawsuits start a flying! I won't excuse The press for not carrying out its job, sometimes it involves twisting some heavy hitters necks around.
The bigger picture in my eyes is the ease that this disappeared from the headlines and was expunged from discussion boards. If this had been a Farm Boy, the son of a Laborer and a prostitute that rolled someone for kicks, we would never have heard the end of it. It was however three sons of 3 influential and I would say likely affluent members of the local as well as the larger community.
With no statement or regret shown, how can you trust any of these people to deal with personal issues they may be involved with? Child abuse, Battery, Assault, Redress against Police Brutality, etc!
If they weren't involved personally, Valesky would have a law proposed in the victims name, The State Trooper would testify about the countless bullies he's interrogated and tried to prosecute and the Doctor would describe in depth both the physical and mental damage caused by bullies to their victims and their loved ones.
Instead they are hiding behind a paper shield because it was their brats that snapped that kids femur like a twig after taunting and verbally abusing him at the bus stop for weeks before! This subject is much bigger than just a few bullies, its about their Mentors, the Spectators and the Authorities that turn their backs on the victims time and time again.
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 25, 2011 20:20:05 GMT -5
Well, yes, but I don't know what Vaesky would have done had his child not been involved. But if his child was inded involved (I can't find any reference to that, by the way) I'm sure it changed the color of his thinking.
I am the father of a special child who was bullied unmercifully when he was in school and I certainly am aware of what little school administrators are willing to do about it, other than speak encouraging words and hand out brochures. But I know they are hamstrung by the law trade, too.
No parent can justify their child breaking the leg of another, certainly, but when your little perp is 12 years old it's natural to want to protect him, even when he caused damage to another.
The victim's parents are certainly free to complain to the world through the press. If they have decided not to because they are negotiating with the parents of the perps ... well, then I think that is their decision as to how to seek justice. I would think an ombudsman/negotiator would bring these families together to a just resolution, and maybe something like that happened. If not, surely a court will. Meanwhile, it's not for me to pronounce on the behavior of the various parents. As for a lost opportunity for a minor politician to take a stand against bullying, yes I suppose.
I'm not a fan of politicians, but I realize they live in fishbowls and I'm not surprised when they circle the wagons.
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Post by Swimmy on Jul 25, 2011 21:04:44 GMT -5
Having lived through unending ridicule and merciless bullying, I can attest to that, Dave. In many situations, the school administrators scold the victim of bullying and lecture them that they have to learn to fight their own battles. Leave it to me to think outside the box and ruin our sixth grade graduation by shouting out my bully's name during the rehearsal ceremony and asking him to stop kicking my chair, pulling my hair, and spitting on my neck. The teachers yelled at me and asked if I planned on crying like a baby during the actual ceremony. I replied, "Yes, if it means doing [his] job for [him] and getting the little prick behind me to stop burrowing up my ass." But for my parents, I almost was not allowed to attend for fear I would ruin the bully's shining moments.
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Post by Swimmy on Jul 25, 2011 21:06:42 GMT -5
And today's "zero tolerance" policy serves no purpose but to further that goal of further victimizing the victim! Three guys jumped a client of mine at school, and my client gets suspended. All my client did was score the highest on a history test, hardly a reason to expel him.
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Post by JGRobinson on Jul 26, 2011 5:17:59 GMT -5
Welcome back Swimster, welcome also to the "Got My Ass Beat Daily Club". Seems like allot of us out there. I wont say I was a perfect kid, actually I was kinda a "wise Ass", beatings were not helpful but they were acceptable then, seems like they still are.
Monday morning, I would start shaking the second I woke up, it got worse after I got on the bus and peaked about Lunch time when almost inevitably, my ass would get beat! Gym was always fun, Coach Tenhope was just as bad as the Bullies and encouraged us to be "tough", who doesn't love playing "Smear the Queer"? The locker room frenzy was always a perfect place to get pounded, berated or degraded if getting whacked in the head by rubber balls wasn't bad enough. By age 13, I was getting Drunk and Stoned often to erase the days events. This stuff has severely effected me my entire life, I'm not bitter but I have never trusted the "Authorities" with my Wife, Kids, Grand-kids or my own safety or protection and I never will.
There was always about a 50/50 chance that someone of authority other than my crazy older sister would intervene. Chances were much less that the bully would get anything other than a high five for dragging me through the gutter face down.
I cant tell you how many times my young impressionable mind went very dark and devastatingly destructive. If I had been of more questionable stability, I may have done something very bad and it likely wouldn't have stopped with just whacking the bullies! I believed that those watching, judging and turning their backs on my pain were just as bad as the bullies. Bullying is only effective if there is an audience to empower it, I despised the Spectators, the Principles and Teachers the same way I envisioned the Bully; evil, uncaring and brutal. If I had gone Postal, it would most certainly been unforgettable indiscriminate retaliation and retribution. I would have lost very little sleep if any of them other than the bullies had gotten hurt while I was in payback mode.
Trust me Dave its his brat, the word went around the town days before the attack was reported in the papers. Within 48 hours after the report, the OD was cleaning up the chat boards. The talk at Sweet Temptations (Diner) is much more timely and accurate than the paper.
The victims Dad is a well known MD, He and his son were on TV a week later discussing the attack. Both of them showed a bravery unmatched by the punks and their Dads that beat him. He's also well connected in the community and raising hell over this will not help his practice or his relationship with other community leaders. What do you think would have come of him charging his neighbors with criminal acts publicly? Lets see the sons of a Dr, Cop and a Senator, sounds like a pretty fine lineup of upstanding citizens to me"; Dr D would lose his Private Practice and his family would have to leave Oneida to escape the ridicule they would face. My guess is he had to accept a low profile punishment for his sons bullies, he probably had little say.
Zero tolerance is a copout, draw a picture of a firearm, bring a fingernail clipper or your Inhaler to school and you can be suspended, on the other hand, you can whack someone with a baseball bat or trip them while they are walking down stairs and Boys will be Boys! It means quick judgments and bulk punishment without any understanding of the victims situation.
Bullies do cause injury, death and serious injuries, disruptions and major issues within schools and localities. Our failures to deal with it properly results in life changing trauma and unnecessary pain and suffering for the victims and their families. When we ignore it, we risk the real possibility up that the victim may take the laws into their own hands with compounded tragic results and substantial collateral damage.
How can we have expectations that our children will tell us when something is wrong if Senators, Drs and State Troopers are in situational denial protecting their own futures and their spawns? Kids aren't dumb, they do listen but really they observe more than they hear, what they see isn't what were saying to them. Its what were hiding and not doing that effects them more than what we preach to them.
Everyone in the Oneida school system knows who these brats are, what they did and who their parents are. They still get to go to school, get their grades and receive their diploma if they can stay out of jail long enough to get it. Other bullies now realize, you can break someones bones "Picking on them" and still get a fine education in Oneida! Bystanders and Future Victims learned that its not your actions or lack of them that you will be judged on, its pedigree and social status that determines fate!
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 26, 2011 6:50:23 GMT -5
JG, that's an absolutely horrible picture of the people in Oneida and their school system. And there's no one there willing to stand up and tell the authorities to do their job? Incredible.
As for your childhood, I can only conclude your parents failed you. It's amazing you finished school. I don't think I could have under such circumstances. I knew kids when I taught who had been abandoned by their parents. The kid may have still lived at home and had his meals there, but the parents evidently couldn't cope with the hard work of parenting and wouldn't extend themselves beyond dropping the kid off at the mall once a year with a credit card and telling to buy clothes. We had a 12 or 13 year old boy from a seemingly good home living up behind the school in the woods for most of the spring of one particular year before we realized what was happening. And the parents never reported him missing. "We thought he was living at school," said the mother when confronted. "You're supposed to take care of him," she added.
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Post by JGRobinson on Jul 26, 2011 14:51:51 GMT -5
My Mom was a Widowed Single Parent of 3 for most of my formative years. I jumped the district lines to VVS for my Junior and Senior years and legaly lived with a Neighbor friend. If I had stayed at Madison, I would have dropped out, my best friend did the same thing a year behind me. I liteally walked 1 mile to school every day uphill and back for two years. I never had a problem there, The Jocks, Hoods and Heads all got along fine. I was no A student but I graduated on time with a solid B.
Mom was also a School Teacher and believed the School was right no matter what happened. I wasn't that likely to squeal either, it just made the beatings worse when nobody was looking. She never beat us but we did get the sandal or the belt occasionally (well deserved I'm sure)!
Little inbred school systems have way too many secrets. They should be Mothballed or imploded!
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 26, 2011 17:20:54 GMT -5
A friend went to Morrisville and described it to me. From what I remember, it sounded much like your Madison. He also said (back then) the teachers drank with the students in the local gin mills. Great for discipline. Your Mom had a tough row to hoe.
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Post by Swimmy on Jul 26, 2011 19:36:08 GMT -5
I hear ya, JG. I remember some kids picked on me. One fell and smacked his head on ice. I was completely soaked by continual whitewashing. The bullies got their story straight and said I hit them. Go figure it was my sixth grade teacher who stuck up for me, while my mom stormed into the principal's office asking what her son did wrong. Even after my teacher, and the principal explained that they sorted it out and that I needed a change of clothes, my mother insisted I did something wrong.
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Post by Swimmy on Jul 26, 2011 19:37:53 GMT -5
It was not until my junior year of high school that the bullying finally started to stop as the kids realized I knew far more people outside the school than they did. Suddenly, I was someone to know. In fact, one girl ended up at the same undergrad as me. She tried to ride my coattails to meet other people. My team put a stop to that. Prior to that, even the gay guys bullied me. People who said they were my friends would join in the fun of picking on me. I guess that's why I only keep three close friends and could care less about the rest.
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Post by JGRobinson on Jul 26, 2011 20:08:38 GMT -5
It took me a while, but I learned not to be the victim. I see those who did the crap as weak. Sometimes I run into them and they are nothing to write home about. Those bullies "most likely to succeed", succeeded in getting fat, prego, divorced 3 times and generally won't be beating anything but their own meat but they caused an awful lot of pain in my younger years. I dont long to get back at them, I just wish the schools would finally put a stop to it by putting their foot down. Break the rules by bullying someone and your out, dont come back, ever! A few of those and parents will fix the problems themselves!
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 26, 2011 20:23:50 GMT -5
You can't refuse a child an education through age 16 in NY State, so ordinarily you can't expel him from school, only remove him for Home schooling by a paid tutor. Beyond that (e.g., he beats up the tutor,) you can insist he go to a residential school for wayward teens. That cost my district over $100 K per year fifteen years ago when per student cost in the district was about $10,000. We had two kids in a residential school and it was a major line item in the the school budget. In that year the $225,000 was more than equipment purchases for technology, the library and the cafeteria combined.
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Post by Swimmy on Jul 26, 2011 20:45:13 GMT -5
Isn't that remedial homeschooling that is 1 hour per week really the same as refusing a child an education?
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Post by Swimmy on Jul 26, 2011 20:48:41 GMT -5
It took me a while, but I learned not to be the victim. I see those who did the crap as weak. Sometimes I run into them and they are nothing to write home about. Those bullies "most likely to succeed", succeeded in getting fat, prego, divorced 3 times and generally won't be beating anything but their own meat but they caused an awful lot of pain in my younger years. I dont long to get back at them, I just wish the schools would finally put a stop to it by putting their foot down. Break the rules by bullying someone and your out, dont come back, ever! A few of those and parents will fix the problems themselves! I don't worry about getting back at them. Karma did that for me. One guy ended up being jailed for 4 years for taking a padlock to some poor guy's face. Another was kicked out of college for committing theft. Another was arrested for assaulting someone else and he lost his job because of it. Those are just the ones who made the OD headlines. So, I assume karma served revenge on all my other tormentors as well. I just find it interesting that some of them come to me for their legal troubles and I still see the bullies they once were; telling me I'd never amount to anything and now I'm handling their legal problems. If that isn't a bitch of a karma pill to swallow, I don't know what is! lol
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Post by dgriffin on Jul 26, 2011 23:02:35 GMT -5
Isn't that remedial homeschooling that is 1 hour per week really the same as refusing a child an education? Swimmy, I'm not really current, but it's my impression that homeschooling as a replacement for classroom experience because of behavior is 3 days per week with homework, the same that would be offered to a student who for medical reasons cannot attend school. (I think it's three days, maybe it's four.) If a student works at it, he should be able to stay current with the 3 days plus homework. My son was able to in his junior year when he had leukemia.
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