No... it's not just horseplay
For some people, what happened on a Glacier High School freshman football bus on Sept. 12 was just boys being boys.
It was just a normal part of football rambunctiousness, they say. Football has always had its unique initiation rites and the bus events were no different than the horseplay players have been engaging in for years.
We beg to differ with that assessment.
When you allegedly have team leaders dragging teammates to the back of the bus, restraining them, punching them, threatening them and even violating them, it’s not merely hazing or bullying and it’s no longer the innocent exuberance of youth.
It is, it would appear, a crime.
The Kalispell Police Department thought it was enough of a crime to warrant recommending sexual assault charges against two freshman boys.
The County Attorney’s Office thought it was a crime, too, although a lesser crime of assault, and that’s why assault charges were filed this week against two 15-year-olds.
And in the eyes of the parents of the alleged victims, there is something else that makes the crime seem even worse. To them, it is incomprehensible — and inexcusable — that their sons have to be in the same school and in some cases the same classes as the youths who allegedly assaulted them.
On Monday, despite 11th-hour legal maneuvering, the last of the alleged assailants will return to Glacier High School. Three of the victims have restraining orders against the suspects, but how exactly is the school district going to make sure that it is enforced in the narrow confines of a high school?
Beyond that simple point, the way this incident has been handled raises plenty of other difficult questions:
When an offense meets the definition of sexual assault — and the county attorney’s charging documents clearly show this is the case — why is the actual charge merely assault?
A prosecutor says that is how the case was handled because parents of the alleged victims wanted it that way. But parents we spoke to disagreed. They say that they and their children feel virtually ignored.
As one mother put it, “We clearly stated that we wanted sexual assault charges pressed and they told us that they were not going to do that.”
Another issue: What is the appropriate level of concern and treatment that the school should provide to the young people placed in its care? This is really a head-scratcher because school administrators continue to insist they have done everything to be inclusive, while parents of victims continue to say they feel left out.
It seems the official stance in this whole episode has been to take care of the alleged perpetrators and let the alleged victims take care of themselves.
We hope that changes — now. We cannot tolerate misbehavior of the kind alleged in this case, and we cannot put the burden on the shoulders of the victims. Otherwise, they are merely being abused again.