Authorities: Fifth-graders posted lookout, had sex in class (students face criminal charges)

Source: CNN

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Five fifth-grade students face criminal charges after authorities said four of them had sex in front of other students in an unsupervised classroom and kept a classmate posted as a lookout for teachers.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/school.sex.ap/index.html

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I thought this was important from a political/cultural aspect because of the absolutely unbelievable fact that they intend to charge these fifth graders with felonies. Where in the hell are we as a society when small children are charged with felonies for any reason?

These kids need counseling and a better understanding of appropriate boundaries not a charge of performing criminal acts.

this could benefit the children. I've have personal knowledge of a sex crime committed by a minor and the only way to make sure that counseling was obtained was to have charges filed. By doing this, the family can qualify for the State to pay for the counseling and, on the side of the defendant, the State will also pay for their counseling. The counseling of the charged is mandatory and the counselor testifies in the case on the mental stability of the child and the progress of the counseling.


The charges can work well for the perpetrator and the victim, UNLESS this becomes revenge justice. (on edit "revenge justice" is an oxymoron, but I'm having a hard time with the proper wording that fits the atrocities that could occur in this case)

least one of those children were either molested or otherwise abused.

Criminal charges being filed against the children as the only way to get them help is simply not true.

The fact that ten and eleven year old children are indulging in sexual activity (especially in public) is evidence enough to warrent investigations by whatever Child Protection Agencies or Social Services are in a given state. CPS and/or SS can order immediate counseling.

Failure to comply with CPS or SS can result in the child being removed from the parent's home.

The parents can, of course, refuse. The children then can be removed from the parents' home at which point the parents will either have to work something out with CPS or go through the courts in an effort to get the child back...

CPS mandates counseling through the court system. That was my point. This is where the counseling becomes mandatory, whether the child is in the home or removed. The counseling/investigation is where it is determined whether these children were molested at home, outside the home, and/or where they learned to mirror this behavior.

Charges are usually filed AFTER an investigation, not before.

The only time charges are necessary is if the parents refuse to cooperate.

under the age of fourteen. Sex under this age is a crime and CPS must report crimes and charges must be filed. Perhaps this varies state to state.

Edited to add that IMO the real crime here is the media being involved at all. These are juveniles in trouble. Even though charged, they will hopefully not be convicted, and if convicted, later adjudicated. The media has a responsibility to protect minors and has failed miserably to do so in this case.

Unless someone was raped, these kids should be expelled, but charged with a felony??? I don't get that, unless having consensual sex is a crime. Seriously, I don't understand the response to this incident.

then some sort of disciplinary action should be taken, but charging these kids with a felony is absurd. Any 11,12, and 13 year olds who would do this in public need counseling, not criminal records.

The kids should be disciplined, maybe there should be an investigation by family services, but to charge them with a felony would be silly if this were a story, but since it's reality, I just think it's pointless and probably only harms these kids further.

if the act was consensual. My problem would be with the school and the teacher, and why these children were left unsupervised. I went to middle school in the late fifties, and every so often the principle would call a teachers meeting. This left all the class rooms without supervision, and the students were left to their own devises. This might have been fine except we had a gang of boys that used this time to terrorize the other students. They roamed the hallways, going from one class room to another, threatening certain boys and sexually harassing some of the girls. What kept them from going further than they did were the other students, because no teacher ever came to our defense. The "two Butch gang" (last names of the Butches withheld to protect me) ruled that school and the rest of us just fought to survive our time there. By the way, this was "small town USA" and not the usual big city urban area that you hear these things about.

Call me old fashioned but I'm 35 and 5th grade was a lot tamer for me. I'm glad I will not have to deal with this as a person without kids. I admire those with the courage to try. Wow.I was also 9-10 in 5th grade though and see these kids were a bit older but still? Amazing.

I agree the post #1 that the charges were probably done to get them some help and force a way to deal with it. I can't imagine an actual punishment but they definitely need some guidance as to what is appropriate behavior.

see what having our environment polluted with hormones does!

this is tragic.

you want to expand on that a little?

before our air, water and food was pharma polluted, 10 and 11 yr. olds weren't developed enough to have much of a sex drive beyond normal curiosity.

nowadays many 10 yr. old girls are bleeding monthly and have breasts. sadly they still have 10 yr. old brains.

Children who have been sexually abused often act out, later, and become promiscuous.

nt

Boys at that age are old enough to get a stiffy, but young enough to be in it for play, assuming all was voluntary. It's less about hormones and more about getting away with something.

The penalty kids that young need is expulsion combined with counseling. Lots of counseling.

Repeating the grade is punishment enough.

This country seems all too eager to criminalize children.

And sex.

By charging children this young with a felony? Kids have been experimenting with their burgeoning sexuality since time immemorial.

Man, there has to be a minimum level of intelligence test for most government officials. Just has to.

I was appalled and saddened that the kids would do this. I'm not sure that I care about the charge, as long as the result is that these kids learn more about public and private behavior.

The parents, on the other hand, need a serious clue.

I know a kid who was charged with carrying a gun. I'm sure that's a felony. He had to report to a juvenile probation officer and perform community service.

Please don't get caught up in the word "felony". It doesn't mean the same thing in juvenile court as it does in criminal court.

used by adults. However there is no mystery about where they might have learned about such activities, we are awash in sex drenched media, animals screw all the time, and people do too, and it passed down from generation to generation in juvenile culture. Children lack awareness of adult cultural taboos and transgress them without thinking, but even here they were aware enough to post a lookout. They need to be counselled so that they are aware of the seriousness of sexual matters and the need to respect other person's autonomy and rights, but that is not what cops and prosecutors and lawyers do. To the extent that steps are taken to see that they are counselled intelligently about these issues, that is fine with me, but otherwise, I would try to make as little public fuss as possible about it.

Something above a pulse should be required.

If there's excessive punishment involved, it seems more often then not it involves a minority.

Gee, I wonder why that is.

the "minorities" were shipped out of New Orleans and not allowed to return ...

;)

On edit ... realized that the school was rural (which is really freeper country anyway ...)

And some are there without their parents. The children have returned to attend their old schools while the parents have remained elsewhere to work. They send the children money to support them, but the older children, some in their mid-teens, are in charge of their younger siblings. There is a problem in N.O. with the growing youth violence due to the destruction of family structure brought on by Katrina and the governments handling of it.

If, in the investigation, the police/CPS uncovers abuse of one or any of these kids by adults, the petition/charges can be amended to reflect that. This is rural Louisiana, so my guess is that there is one judge who will hear all the cases, anyways.

Charging isn't convicting. Convicting 11-13 year olds of obscenity will not follow them past age 19.

My guess is that one or both of the girls involved has been sexually abused somewhere down the line-not necessarily by a relative, but by an adult or older kid, or she (they) wouldn't have participated.

As far as funding for counseling services goes, CPS does have some funds for it if there is abuse or neglect going on in the home of any of the kids involved. If not, then the only way to get the treatment funded is through the delinquency system, unless the kids' parents have insurance or money to pay for it up front.

chances are at least one of them will end up in the system.

The juvenile system of incarceration is just the first rung on the ladder to prison. Kids are abused in a torture chamber not helped in a healing environment.

The criminally-unjust system and the juvenile hall is just as inappropriate for healing as the prison.

My guess is that one or both of the girls involved has been sexually abused somewhere down the line-not necessarily by a relative, but by an adult or older kid, or she (they) wouldn't have participated.

I really, really, really, hope their heads don't get messed with even further by the adult reaction.

Maybe they were just provideing a service to there other classmates Giveing them a real sex ed class lol.
cue John Cleese From the "Meaning of Life".

.. programs considering the state of our "no child left behind" (in our rush to return to feudalism)"education" system.

Lewd conduct? Public indecency? I mean they are 5th graders, the teachers ought to be held more accountable than the students.

teacher is not allowed to leave her students alone without another teacher/school employee in the classroom with them especially in the elementary school range. In the middle school level, teachers may go out into the hall for a minute or two without having another teacher in the classroom, high school is a small bit looser, but not much.

For a teacher to be out of the classroom long enough for something like that to happen would result in some kind of discipline for the teacher.

These kids need help, not criminal charges, but I think that school has some serious explaining to do. Leaving a group of 5th graders completely unattended is unacceptable.

she needs to see us right away". "I wonder what it could be about"?

<Ward Cleaver> "Probably nothing, dear".

<June Cleaver> "She said it had something to do with some of the girls in his class".

<Ward Cleaver> (laughingly) "Probably just performing oral sex on one of his classmates or finger-fucking little Judy Hensler in the janitors closet".

:crazy:

The students were arrested Tuesday at the Spearsville school in rural north Louisiana, authorities said. Two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year old boy were charged with obscenity, a felony. An 11-year-old boy, the alleged lookout, was charged with being an accessory.

In 1991.

Sickeningly, it happens, particularly when kids are re-enacting past abuses.

saw such as porno. The fact that they did it in a class is the main problem I see here. There should have been supervision. I don't see the reason to make criminals out of the kids. Some serious work with professionals maybe. It is anti social behavior.

By the so-called "adults" in charge.

if you consider the kinds of crap our kids are exposed to every day of their lives:

A lying government killing people on the TV news.

Soft core porn as car and hamburger commercials.

Hypocrites in high positions.

Underfunded schools with little in the way of the important things -- art, science and physical activity (well, they solved that last one in their own way).

Being charged with a FELONY for exercising extremely poor judgment.

(Especially in light of the latest science which has shown that poor judgment is a character trait of nearly everyone under 25. That's why they used to be supervised by the village instead of thrown in into the hands of one overworked teacher.)

It makes one weep...

Everything in this fucked up fascist theocratic police state is a "CRIME"!

God DAMN!

What simplistic bullshit!!!

Ah, but actually getting children appropriate help for their inappropriate behavior would never occur to this authoritarian bunch of hypocrites.

No, we gotta "find out WHICH crime occurred" according to the sheriff...

Geeez!


I watched the video -- they had the kids fuzzed out but it looked like white teachers and mostly black kids...

As Gomer Pyle would say, "Suprise, suprise!"

1. Where the hell was the teacher?

2. Why are thirteen-year-olds in fifth grade?

3. What is wrong with these kids' family backgrounds that they think it's okay to have (or simulate) sexual acts in front of other kids?

4. Criminal charges? No way. Investigation to see if any of them are being sexually abused or exploited, followed by intensive counseling.

This is as stupid as charging that fourteen-year-old with "terrorism" when it should have been plain old assault.

That is until he turned sixteen and quit school. This was in the good old days when if you missed most of the school year, they just made you retake it. He very seldom come to school and didn't do much when he was there but get into troube for bullying the rest of us. He was from a family that didn't set much importance with education. They taught their children how to survive by theft and salvaging, mostly theft.

very poor reporting.

Free. Great message.

And throw away the key. They knew what they were doing. Little perverts.

It's all Clinton's fault. HE invented the "if it feels good, do it" mentality.

What will we tell the childre....

Oh, I guess they've already heard about the Clenis™.