A 12-year-old girl, Breana Evans, from Milwee Middle School outside of Orlando, Florida was arrested and booked after she allegedly pinched a boy’s butt in school as part of a popular game. While the boy did not want to press charges, the boy’s mother reportedly insisted on criminal charges being brought against the girl.
The boy’s mother’s insistence on prosecution for misdemeanor battery left the girl’s family dumbfounded. Her father told media that “I’m sorry my kid touched your kid. But I’m sorry because you need some help, I think — too overprotective — let your kid be your kid. He might get some friends, and that’s all I have to say.”
I cannot imagine what the mother is thinking in bringing such criminal charges but I am more confused by why the police and prosecutors would go along with such approach. This would seem yet another case where a simple call to parents would seem to suffice. Yet we have seen even hugs treated as criminal matters in today’s zero tolerance environment. We have previously followed the suspensions and discipline of students under zero tolerance policies that are used by teachers to justify zero judgment or responsibility. I have long criticized zero tolerance policies that have led to suspensions and arrests of children (here, here and here and here and here). Here is a prior column on the subject (and here). Children have been suspended or expelled for drawing stick figures or wearing military hats or bringing Legos shaped like guns or pretend bow and arrows or even having Danish in the shape of a gun. Even teeshirts with patriotic or constitutional themes involving guns have been the basis for discipline. Despite the public outcry over the completely irrational and abusive application of zero tolerance rules, administrators and teachers continue to apply them blindly. Zero tolerance policies are often an excuse for zero exercise of judgment. Now matters are simply turned over the police which show the same robotic, unthinking response to childhood pranks and actions.
What do you think?
Lol, Paul. She should also probably be put on a chain gang breaking rocks down! Or is that just a pinch too much?
hyuk hyuk
Where have all the flowers gone?
@Sierra Rose
Thank you!!!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The world is going crazy. Since this was supposedly part of a popular game at the school, are all the other students who have or will play this game also being arrested? What ever happened to detention and a lecture on proper behavior?
Loved your poem Squeeky. Fromm.
Boy or parent should have reported to the school and the girl given detention for unwanted touching. No cops.
Again I need counselling and a safe spot. Now don’t let the meat touch the potatoes. Thank you.
Lashing out the action, returning the reaction-
Weak are ripped and torn away!
Hypnotizing power, crushing all that cower-
Battery is here to stay!
Smashing through the boundaries, lunacy has found me
Cannot stop the battery!
Pounding out aggression, turning to obsession
Cannot kill the battery!
Metallica – Battery
—-
I don’t think this was battery.
Steg – it is assault and battery and she should get at least 5 years, the little thug. She should not be allowed counsel either.
Holy cow, helicopter mom! You’re making your son a wuss and yourself a laughingstock.
I agree with KC. Adults who go to KU got no sense. And if I lived in KC I would not step across the border into KC, KS.
Sending your child to public school is child abuse.
Weird is a country where a 12 years old can be arrested. Weird is the attitude of the staff of the school which apparently avail themselves to serve as a witness to such ‘crime’. How else would the mother know about it, unless it was the boy who cried foul, and in that case he deserves the resulting ridicule. Even so, staff could have overlooked and forgotten the incident.
She’s a dork! She’s a dork!
She’s a dork all the way!
From her first minerette…
To her last frying day.
The school zone is fragile.
The students are cops.
The teachers eat rabbits.
The parents all rot.
It is time to move on now.
It’s time to scream clown!
Some gas and some matches will…
Close the school down.
Mama’s boy.
Good one, Squeeky!
This is why we have young men in colleges demanding “safe spaces” and protection from hearing things that might upset their fragile sensibilities. Too many mamas sticking their noses into their son’s lives, directing and controlling everything, rather than letting him learn to deal with things on his own. Does this kid have a father? Probably not. It’s a shame for both kids, but probably more so for the boy because he’s going to be ridiculed by his peers for being a dork and a mamas boy, and having a mama like that, it’s only going to get worse as he enters his teens.
Talk about Orlando Furioso!!! Well, gots to be rewriting all those nursery rhymes!
A Pinch Between Your Cheeks and Dadgum???
A Modern Nursery Rhyme by Squeeky Fromm
Breana Evans, Puddin’ and Pie,
Pinched a boy and made him cry!
And when his Mom came out and looked,
The little girl was cuffed and booked!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Goose and gander
This is a situation where I agree with the mother. The girl should be charged. Zero tolerance is zero tolerance!
You don’t have enough information to assert that the school and police are applying the hands-off policy blindly. Student privacy laws exist for good reasons.
1. Is the photo of the pincher or the pinchee”?
2. The pinchee’s mother suffers from a serious case of “dumb-ass”. and has no idea what a continuing embarrassing situation she is creating for her son. (Unless of course the picture IS of her son!
There’s more concern about this but none about the GID bathrooms?