DADvocate

DrHelen posted today on two 13 year old boys in Oregon being held on criminal charges for slapping girls bottoms. Once again, those who supposedly are educating our children and enforcing our laws are out of control and behaving like power drunk idiots.

The case is pretty much this.

Court papers said the boys touched the buttocks of several girls, some of whom said this made them uncomfortable. The papers also said Cory touched a girl's breasts. But police reports filed with the court said other students, both boys and girls, slapped each other on the bottom.

"It's like a handshake we do," one girl said, according to the police report.

The boys were initially charged with five counts of felony sexual abuse. At a court hearing, two of the girls recanted, saying they never felt threatened or inappropriately touched by the boys. The judge released the boys but barred them from returning to school and required that they be under constant adult supervision.

District Attorney Bradley Berry has since dismissed the felony counts. The boys face 10 misdemeanor charges of harassment and sexual abuse. They face a maximum of up to one year in a juvenile jail on each count, though Berry said there was no way the boys would ever serve that much time.

"An appropriate sentence would be probation," he said. "These are minor misdemeanor charges that reflect repeated contact against multiple victims. We never intended for them to get a long time in detention."

"We're not seeking major penalties," he said. "We're seeking change in conduct."

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Berry, the district attorney, said the victims -- the girls who were touched -- were being overlooked. "What's been lost in this whole thing are the victims, who have been pressured enormously by these boys' friends," he said.

Let me begin by saying virtually all of what the district attorney is saying is bullshit. The few of you who regularly, or irregularly, read my blog know I rarely cuss. Sometimes nothing else suffices. I am certain that millions of boys, at some time or another, have engaged in the same activity. (I can't remember actually doing such but I did do other things probably equally evil in the eyes of the almighty Bradley Berry.)

This is a case that could have and should have been handled within the school. This speaks to the incompetence of the teachers and school administration. That D.A. Berry is making such a case out of this says something about him also. Classically Liberal believes that Berry is simply a bully. "Why is Mr. Berry prosecuting these children in Oregon? Because he can."

Of course government is supposed to be different. The Founding Fathers basically saw it as a playground patrol who was there to stop the bullies. What they didn’t expect was that the bullies would become the playground patrol. And the more power the patrol had the more bullies found it irresistible. Like moths to the flame, bullies are attracted to the accumulation of power over others.

Classical Liberal points out another case of district attorney going after a boy for what should have been dealt with outside of the criminal justice system. Are these district attorneys destroying boys lives in an attempt to further their careers. Ray Nifong certainly tried.

DrHelen links to a column by Mark Steyn on the subject.

Do you know Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison?

If you do, don't approach them. Call 911 and order up a SWAT team. They're believed to be in the vicinity of McMinnville, Ore., where they're a clear and present danger to the community. Mashburn and Cornelison were recently charged with five counts of felony sexual abuse, and District Attorney Bradley Berry has pledged to have them registered for life as sex offenders.

Oh, by the way, the defendants are in the seventh grade.

Messrs Mashburn and Cornelison are pupils at Patton Middle School. They were arrested in February after being observed in the vestibule, swatting girls on the butt. Butt-swatting had apparently become a form of greeting at the school – like "a handshake we do," as one female student put it. On "Slap Butt Fridays," boys and girls would hail each other with a cheery application of manual friction to the posterior, akin to a Masonic greeting.

One commenter at Steyn's post leaves this address to send money to support the boys' legal defense:

Cory and Ryan Legal Defense Fund
235 E 3rd Street Suite 1
McMinnville, OR 97128

Another commenter to Steyn's column had this to say:

DA Bradley Berry, you are going DOWN. Not only will you be stripped of your job and law license, held in criminal contempt and never again hold a meaningful job anywhere in the USA thanks to your absolute buffoonery and the publicity you have brought upon yourself. You are also going straight to hell for willfully destroying the lives of these children. And society will be far better off when it happens.

A little strong but I can't disagree unless Mr. Berry performs the necessary acts of contrition before it's too late. Disgusting!