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[quote=Anonymous]Once upon a time I learned the Rule of Seven in law school. It’s a common law idea, not VA state law. And it’s generally civil, not criminal. But it works in sorting out how to respond.

Ages 0-7, kids are not legally responsible for their actions.  Call the police on a six year old, and no one is booking them for a crime or winning a civil lawsuit, especially if the school was supposed to be supervising the,   You have to work with the school.  Which sucks, I agree, because schools often ignore the problem.

Ages 7-14, there is a rebuttable presumption the kid isn’t culpable. Again, I would work with the school, as much as it sucks— unless there were repeat offenses by a neurotypical kid or what happened was very serious and the school is not sufficiently addressing.   At which point, I’d get a police report, even if just to threaten the parents if they don’t get their kid under control.

Age 14 up, which is HS, most kids have the mental ability to understand the consequences of their actions. At that point a police report happens— if I would file a police report for similar actions outside of school.

For example, a former student mingled with the crowd getting off of buses at DD’s HS. Approached a girl at her locker and made sexually suggestive comments and touched her sexually.  He was arrested and charged.  Teen sexual inuendo comments aside (which don’t get a police report in my world), if my DD was sexually assaulted in school, I’d call the police.  A friend had a DD at a “top” FCPS HS who was forced into a bathroom by mean girls, had her jeans pulled down and photos taken, which were distributed wide.  The school did nothing. Mom moved the kid to private. I’d have called the police.   Ditto if there were very serious threats or physical assault.

Here’s the thing. You cannot walk into a store at 15-16 and and sexually assault a patron, or hit a patron, or tell them you have a gun and are coming for them without legal consequences, in the form for a trip to Juvenile Court.  So why was there not be legal (juvenile court and civil) consequences of the same kid does the same thing in school?

Making school a safe place to commit assaults really concerns me, because it’s starting down a path. The boys who get away with forcible touching in HS is the kid who feels emboldened to roofie and rape a girl in college and commit domestic violence because they learn that there aren’t real world consequences in their “safe spaces” where the police are hesitant to become involved.  Scratch that. As was seen by $1000 bail for a five striker who tried to run over his GF, and then rammed a car into a Christmas Parade an killed several people, the police and justice system don’t take crimes that occur in “safe spaces” seriously.

Of course the police don’t want to deal with an assault in a HS. Or a rape on campus. Or DV.  And they don’t tend to take these crimes as seriously as they do similar assaults in public places.  That’s just wrong and we need to call it out and change the way people think. Someone who would seriously injure a loved one or classmate will have no issue harming a stranger.

BTW— I’ve never had to call the police. My DS was assaulted in MS, (age 12) and we worked with the school to get an appropriate resolution. Which we did.  If the same thing happened to a HS junior, and it gets reported to the police.

I think, like many FCPS forum discussions, this discussion is a mess, because people aren’t drawing a distinction between a 5 year old biter and a 15 year old who uses a taser on someone in the locker room or assaults them on the band bus (Hi Oakton!’)[/quote]

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