There is a sharp disconnect between two prank stories this morning. When Tyrell Morton put an inflatable girl in the girl’s bathroom at his high school, he ended up with a felony charge and a potential jail sentence of eight years. However, when three eighth-grade girls from Dunbar Middle school in Florida tackled an 11-year-old boy and stripped him naked (and proceeded to videotape him and taunt him), they were let go as a simple prank in bad taste.
In the video, the girls stop the boy to chat and then hold him down, strip him naked, and mock him. The video was put on YouTube.
The boy is a fifth grader at Ray Pottorf Elementary. One girl faced a single misdemeanor battery charges, but it was abandoned when the boy’s mother has refused to press charges. I commend her for her restraint, but I wonder what the charge would be if a group of boys attacked and stripped a girl in public, videotaped her, and mocked her.
I tend to disfavor criminal charges in such cases. However, it seems clear that the girls should be expelled and subject to the most severe forms of school punishment. What I find interesting, however, is the sharply different treatment given such acts by boys as opposed to girls. Indeed, I doubt seriously this would have even confined to a misdemeanor if the genders were reversed or that, with the existence of the videotape, the failure to press charges would be determinative. If the police witness or have evidence of a felony, they do not necessarily require the consent of the victim. Once again, I would not take this to the criminal system. Yet, I am surprised that the articles only refer to the possibility of parental punishment as opposed to immediate expulsion and other measures, such as denial of social clubs, graduation etc.
Jonathan Turley
FLOG THE BLOG: Have you voted yet for the top legal opinion blog? WE NEED YOUR VOTE! You can vote at HERE by clicking on the “opinion” category. Voting ends December 31, 2011.
I am guessing (were I in his shoes) I’d want the whole thing to go away.
We already have:
1) The incident
2) The video
3) Media attention which is growing (and I feel bad I added to it to some extent by posting here)
If it goes to court it will continue. Remember the ages here. Kids will take sides regardless of right or wrong but based on popularity. Considering these girls stripped him I am guessing he was an “easy” target. He’ll lose the popularity contest and be seen as a “dick”. Kinda like a guy who rats on people and runs to mommy for protection.
The kid is doomed. He has no good way out. He rolls over he’s fucked. He fights he’s fucked. cause i have being in that position. i am very afraid for him.
What would you do if this was your kid?
With due respect, the enforcement of criminal law is not “about” the victim or “about” the perpetrators; it’s about preventing criminal behaviour.
Whether or not the mother wants to press charges (and her public statements are extremely confusing; while it’s said she doesn’t want to press charges, she has also publicly complained that nobody is doing anything) does not change the fact that the state has a vested interest in arresting and punishing criminals, because they’re supposed to protect all of us. If people are allowed to commit crimes in broad daylight and aren’t stopped from doing so, they and others will be more likely to commit other crimes, quite possibly even more serious crimes.
If it was just about the victim and the perpetrators, well, heck, you could get rid of at least half of the criminal justice system and just turn matters like this over to civil courts. But it’s not; it’s about maintaining a civil society by meting out punishments that deter potential offenders and, when necessary, physically segregates dangerous offenders from society itself.
What will happen in this case if the girls are not arrested is that the State of Florida will be, in effect, saying that teenagers stripping an 11-year-old naked in public and then putting on the video is okay, and nobody’s going to do anything to stop it. Wanna bet what’ll happen next?
fruit flies, please get justice on these girls. i don’t think putting a few names up on the net will do any good. something more needs to be done. i heard debra johnson called these girls terrible bullies and monsters. my fear grow’s even worst now that they could drive this boy to suicide. it has happened to me. if they are that bad. some action needs to be stronger. seriously.
steven stop talking shit. my previous comment was a bit shit. i fell for their friends comments. the boy was mentally handicapped, there is no way he would like that, put himself fully naked on youtube. would you? i certainly wouldn’t. the girls are making that story up so they can get out of the public humiliation.
i really hate these girls.
i think our society is getting worse with regards to how our kids are handled. parents now days spoil their kids to much. compared to my days. kids being sent to prison for murder for life is disgusting. yes these girls should be punished, some community service. prison is not the answer that is stupid. they are blady 12-14year old. this stuff happens all the time, it was just made a whole lot worst by the mother putting it in the media. i disagree with the mother, the way she handle the whole thing.
i play with 12-14 year old kids, which are my cousins, they drive me up the wall, they don’t listen me. 3 of the little toe rags tried to pull my trousers down the other day. i couldn’t hurt them, otherwise i will get done for child abuse. so i had no choice but to runaway.
it’s obvious that parent’s of these girls have breed this behaviour into them. i blame the parents not the girls. the parents need to be looked at.
why don’t parents f*cking step up to the plate? what’s with this spoiling attitude. my 14 year old cousin is already dealing drugs, expelled from school and from the football. and the his parents are doing nothing about it. they just laugh at it. it won’t be long until he is jail.
you need a private detective on this case seriously. otherwise you have no chance.
i think the girls could be saying that, to get out of it. cause the boy is mentally handicapped. and make him looked even more stupid. and also because he would struggle to stand up for himself.
god know’s what to think anymore? i am so confused on this whole case. so many different stories flying round. we really need a detective on this one.
we are going to need some serious luck on this.
so you carry on not being born, because you are obviously ignorant. cause people like you do not want accept the facts of the case. what good is printing a few names on the net to everyone. they mean’s nothing to me. i could round fort Myers for all my life, and still not know who these girls are. without pictures of the girls, your wasting time. no one seems to be willing to get these girls punished, friends, state or police. they must be laughing at us in wasting our time. sorry if i am being blunt. its the truth.
printing a few names round the net, is little justice to me. get pictures of these girls, then i will consider that will be better justice.
well then good luck fruit flies because no one will press charges. do you really think the state attorney will listen to you. because she know’s what happened. from what i know she will not even be considering prosecuting the girls. so you will be wasting your time seeking justice.i wanted justice as well.
its being 6 months now?it doesn’t seem very unlikely it will happen. they don’t take this long to decide in prosecuting,when comes serious felonies. these girls would be in jail now. i have seen a 11 year old boy put behind bars for murder. when the state wants to prosecute they will, with you or without you and these girls had over whelming evidence against them. . these people don’t give a shit on our little opinions, on what should happen. or whether or not the mother didn’t want either.
my uncle is a state attorney for California, and he told me they don’t care what what people want from them. do you think our governments really care about us. bullocks. i am going to carry on with eating my snickers bars. i will get more justice out of eating that, then waiting for justice to be served on these girls.
so i will also have to agree james and jimbo on this one.
Riiiight… and that’s why he’s yelling for his mom while all this was going on. I’m calling BS on this one. I was born at night, but not last night.
Try again.
i have heard the same story jimbo, i have just received messages from thier friends about what happened. i agree just leave the girls. the whole case make sense to me now. i couldn’t understand why no one was willing to press charges. the boy was actually the one that started it. and the poor girls got in trouble. the friends stated it, they would not be friends with the girls, if they did it without his consent. now that’s why the mother said it was a prank gone to far. and she was right. silly kids all of them. the boy also never wanted to press charges, he begged her not to. she was angry about the whole thing. this what i heard from friends as well.
please stop the commenting of the girls, i found out that it was not the girls fault, but the boy actually asked them to do it to him. and the friends said they would not be friends with them, if they had actually done it without his consent. i have a had few of their friends tell me this. this is why no one pressed charges against the girls, and that’s why they are not in jail. yes they should not have done it. but we all get easily lead on by friends. its seems to me it was stupid prank gone among friends. this why the mother did not press charges, because the boy was the one that started it. these girls are not bullies. they all just did something very stupid. they are all hurting.
so please leave all parties alone. this is what happened. otherwise you all a bunch ignorant people.
those bitches need to go to prison, i hate them. Johnna Cadena, Allie Bailey, and Ariana De La Torre you are monsters. we don’t need girls like you in this world. i hope you never get boyfriends and people don’t like you at school. fuck you
so will i. they are disgusting girls. lock them up
i will be trying to keep my kids away from them, and i hope other parents do the same.
it was a joke lol, keep doing what you need to do to stop those bullies. i won’t certainly will trying to keep my kids away from them. at least i know their names.
Johnna Cadena, Allie Bailey, and Ariana De La Torre i hate these girls, bunch of rapist. you should be in prison for what you have done. you whores. i hope you are hated at school
“leave the girls alone for godsake, they are 12-14years old, they made a bad mistake, and could not see their actions would be so devastating to all parties involved. i am sure if they are intelligent girls and they will think twice about doing this again.”
I think the boy that was sexually assaulted would have loved to have been left alone. But he wasn’t. Yes, they did make a few bad mistakes. They made a few felonies. They need to be punished. Otherwise, this kind of BS will continue and the double standard will get worse and worse, until you see some people getting revenge, since the legal system won’t do anything about it.
The best thing to happen is they serve some sort of time for this, and this goes on their record.
Susan, when you say people are attacking the girls, do you mean they are actually being bullied in person? If that is the case, I hope their parents report it to the police and press charges. Our purpose should be to discourage bullying rather than to escalate it. If you mean that people are merely distrustful of letting younger children be around the girls without adult supervision, I see nothing wrong with that.
I had a friend in high school whose younger brother was driven to suicide by bullies. The bullying seemed less severe than in the youtube bullies case. They never touched him; they only taunted him and called him stupid. They did it so often, however, that he reached the point where he could not live with it any longer. I don’t know, but would guess that bullies bold enough to post their attack on youtube must have a long history of getting away with “pranks” and recieving no punishment. Most kids try not to advertise their misdeeds to parents.
If this was a one-time prank it is not as bad. If it is only one episode of continuous bullying, it could be tragic. As several have pointed out, we don’t know the whole story. What we know of it makes me believe we should discourage bullying, and that is not being done.
I don’t know if it was consensual play that got out of hand or a premeditated attack. If it started as consensual play, it became nonconsensual when the boy asked them to stop. Not one of the three stopped, and at that point it became battery. One of them in fact, pressed her knee on his throat to prevent him from calling out. After the attack, the video was posted on youtube. That was not a spur of the moment lapse of judgement. It remained on youtube over 24 hours when they could have removed it at any time. Definately premeditated and intentional.
According to what I have read, most violent crimes are not punished. Often it is because there is no proof that the suspect committed the crime. Offenders usually try to conceal the fact that they are guilty, not put it on youtube and broadcast it to the world. Sometimes it cannot be proven that a crime has been committed, as in the case of a death that could be murder, but could also be accidental or suicide. What I find so alarming about this incident is that we know what happened and who did it. It is on the video. The police and prosecutor still do nothing about it. This seems to encourage more bullying.
please remove the comments of the girls names. its disgusting that people are attacking young girls that made a bad mistake.
I’ve not seen any evidence that these girls premeditated their “crime”. Considering how many children(and those girls still are that), that have cellphones on them now a days it could have been a joke that went overboard and then one of them posted it online, which I agree was most certainly wrong.
Make no mistake I think they deserve punishment but to force them to register as sex offenders over something like this is pure zealotry. That would ruin three possible White girls lives.
If the parents pamper the boy as a result of this. If they send him to some head shrink over something like this, they’ll encourage the emotional baggage. If they make light of it and explain that it was wrong but not really that big of a deal he’ll rebound.
i disagree with the mother putting in the media, she should of just got the video removed and dealt with it among the girls parents. and now this is going to be on the internet forever. and the boy will be reminded of it forever. maybe alot of angry male towards the girls, and maybe revenge.
leave the girls alone for godsake, they are 12-14years old, they made a bad mistake, and could not see their actions would be so devastating to all parties involved. i am sure if they are intelligent girls and they will think twice about doing this again. they should be punished, i think counselling would be best for them. as far as getting their names put on all over internet is flaming stupid. that’s going to a have big effect on them. i am sure when they are older enough they will be very sorry. they will be thinking how could i have being so cruel to him. all kids can be cruel to each other. its a fact of life. i have to agree with the mother, bringing the law into everything our kids do for stupidity is flaming cracked. let the parents deal with it.
i am sure this boy will get over it.who knows there is alot worse worse things have happened to people and still no justice gets done. what about all the women that raped and their cases get dropped. i don’t see people trying to get justice for them.
the people looking looking for justice on these girls are pathetic,they just can’t handle some girls stripping a boy for a stupid joke. i bet some angry men out their that are doing this. why don’t you focus getting justice on girls that get raped every day. and these men get away with their acts. what about parents abusing their kids every day. please just get over yourselves.
its kids being stupid. have you never being stupid? i have worst happen to me. i was stripped naked at school. i am perfectly fine now.