$250: Well, That Settles It

I blogged on this back in July when it first made some news:

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.

The charges have been dropped, but not without a caveat. I don't quite understand why, if the girls asked for the charges to be dropped, they were each due $250? If they were violated in some way, there should be charges. If they were not, there shouldn't be. But simply putting a price on it? Was this a vocational school by any chance? ; )

The News-Register newspaper of McMinnville reported that a "civil compromise" reached by prosecutors and the defense called for both boys to apologize, to pay each of the four girls $250 and to complete a "boundaries education" program.

Four girls listed as victims by the prosecutors had asked the judge to drop the charges against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison.

Yamhill County Judge John Collins did so on Monday, saying it was in the "interest of justice."

A number of young girls were in the courtroom during the hearing. They included at least some of the four who asked that the charges be dropped, attorneys said.

During the brief hearing, the two boys faced the girls and apologized.

"I never intended to hurt you in any way," Mashburn said.

Cornelison told the girls: "I hope we can still be friends."

They were originally charged with felony and misdemeanor sex abuse charges in February. Amid growing public opposition to sending the boys to prison and putting them on a sex offenders' registry, prosecutors dropped the felony sex abuse charges and added misdemeanor harassment charges, then later dropped all sex abuse charges, leaving only the harassment counts.

The judge dismissed the final charges following negotiations between prosecutors and the defense, and discussions with the four girls about whether they wanted the case dismissed.

Comments

[Phoenix]

"...boundaries education..." ? Is that like Boundary Rehab?

What would be the equivalent in our day: "First Base, Second Base, Third Base, Fourth Base, HOME RUN! Rehab"?

I don't know where ass-whapping would fit on the old-timey boundary-rehab scale. 'Tittie-twisters' comes to mind, but I'm not sure that was an observable offense. Sigh.... I can't help but figure these poor guys will turn into perverts or guys so shy of sexual advances that they end up forty-year-old virgins.

[seekeronos]

Sounds like just the sort of thing that happens in Japan - male-female contact in the school setting is so tightly managed, and discipline fairly stern.

Flash forward thirty years, and you have Japanese men so timid (around women) that it is difficult for them to even initiate contact, much less take on a leadership role as the male in a male-female relationship. This also may have to do somewhat with the "Lolita Complex" that many Japanese men (particularly 30+ years old) have: as they have such insecurity and lack of confidence to approach females who would be their peers (same age cohort) -- they turn to preying upon schoolgirls and other inappropriately younger women, who willingly receive the attentions they get from comparatively senior men.

That also manifests itself in the "chikan" (perverts who feel up women on the train) phenomenon and the abundance of depictions of extremely graphic sex acts involving barely pubescent females (various "manga" comic books).

The extreme emasculation of the male in this nation is leading us to a very ugly end, where the grown men will be unable to relate to women, and in the end, risk turning to gruesome acts to "reclaim his power" that he has been robbed of so efficiently. That is to say, they risk becoming the very monsters that ultra feminazis see lurking behind every male-shaped shadow.

[Cindi]

send those high school boys over here, I won't bitch ;)~

[Fred Beloit]

A nation of Lolitas and Humbert Humberts? Remind me to stay right here in my trailer in good ole Dixie. Mr christamformum, please be sure to plan on dropping by if you are ever down this way. I'll show you my Mossberg.

[Phoenix]

F, my fellow trailer dweller...... Perhaps I, your fellow mudpie, could drop by to view your Mossberg?

P, your fellow American

[IslamoLlama]

Ah, the daily 2-minute hate.
No day is complete without another edition of Dan standing on a soapbox, shouting and pointing "FREAKS!" while the peanut gallery jeers and throws rotten fruit.

If you think butt-slapping is the worst offense that gets on in Middle School, you really must have grown up under a rock. This story is intriguing only in so far as it is incredibly mundane and people have decided to raise a stink about it.

[Techie]

No, Islamollama, it's because apparently you see fit to place these kids on a life-time sex offender list. Mundane my arse, this is/was pure overkill that had to be called out.