Children's horseplay or sexual harassment?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Karina Bland

The Arizona Republic

For parents, "The Talk" about sex is awkward and difficult enough. Now, you need to have a second talk, this one about sexual harassment - and before the kids begin another school year.

The message isn't much different from what you told your children when they started preschool: Keep your hands to yourself and talk nice.

"The bottom line is children should be taught good manners, and they should conduct themselves at school appropriately by showing respect toward others," Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas says.

His office is receiving more complaints about the sexual behavior of children at school. Across the country, students are finding themselves in big trouble for antics that their parents remember from their own school days as horseplay.

Teasing a girl about the size of her breasts or patting a boy on his bottom in middle school can result in a three-day suspension.

Think your child is too young for this conversation? One of the worst cases of sexual harassment one local expert dealt with involved a fourth-grader who bought a big dill pickle at a school fundraiser every Thursday, tucked it into the zipper of his pants and asked girls to touch it.

In recent years, a number of highly publicized incidents nationwide have heightened awareness of sexual harassment in schools. The cases have been controversial, with the debate focusing on what constitutes criminal activity and what is child's play.

Recent cases

In Oregon, two seventh-grade boys who ran down the hall of a middle school on Feb. 22, swatting the bottoms of girls as they passed by, face charges of sexual abuse.

Closer to home, two boys at Desert Arroyo Middle School in Cave Creek were expelled in January and face sexual-abuse charges for repeatedly groping female students, exposing themselves and other lewd acts on campus.

In March, a 12-year-old girl at Cave Creek's Sonoran Trails Middle School was suspended after she snapped a photo of her own genitalia with a classmate's cellphone and sent it to students to embarrass the classmate.

In years past, students could write a nasty note with little fear unless it fell into a teacher's hand in transit.

Today, kids communicate through e-mail and text-messaging that can be passed on to a hundred kids at a time, constituting systematic, and traceable, harassment.

Eight of 10 students experience some form of unwanted sexual behavior at school, primarily verbal, according to researchers at the American Association of University Women.

Half of the students surveyed also admitted harassing somebody themselves - a testament to how confusing something such as sexual harassment can be to young people.

No one wants to create such fear that children don't hug their friends, but kids need to ask that their physical affection is welcomed, says Gina Durbin, director of student-support services in the Cave Creek Unified School District.

"We need to make it really clear that we don't have the right to invade another person's body for any reason, and we must also teach our children that they are in charge of their own bodies," says Debi Neat, director of safe and drug-free schools for the Phoenix Union High School District. "It's all about boundaries."

Sex in the media

Growing up with YouTube, cable TV and the Internet, our children are exposed to far more information and images that are sexual in nature than any generation before them, the experts agree. They also are seeing it all at younger ages, tuning in to Dawson's Creek on the WB and listening to Justin Timberlake's Sexy Back in elementary school.

"We live in a highly sexualized society in which the mass media have lost the former self-restraint that they practiced, particularly with programming that can reach children on the radio, TV or the Internet," says Thomas, who has four children ranging in age from 3 to 13. "

But despite all the talk about sex, kids don't get much useful information, the experts say. Parents let children see material that is inappropriate for their age but don't voice their disapproval or discuss the ramifications of such behavior.

"We are setting our kids up for failure if we don't have a consistent message," Neat says.

Few young people intentionally set out to harm someone else, she says. They often have no idea that their behavior could be construed as harassment or that they are being sexually harassed and don't have to put up with it.

Complicating the problem are some parents who say, "Oh, come on! They're just kids!" when the principal calls to report an incident of sexual harassment.

"We have built this tolerance in America that it is acceptable," says Becky Shultz, a counselor at Deer Valley Middle School in Phoenix and mother to two, ages 15 and 17. "Our whole mentality has to change."

Few schools offer students information about sexual harassment beyond policies against it printed in student handbooks. At Deer Valley Middle School, Shultz meets with seventh- and eight-graders to talk about sexual harassment. They question her mercilessly. "They are hungry for information," she says.

...

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/080...harass0803.html

[jundp 191]

Yeah, a girl got expelled from my school for taking a topless photo and emailing it to a couple of boys. Unfortunately one of the boys had an email address that the whole family used...oops. Mommy found it and forwarded the email to the Dean of Women. Of course, these are high schoolers, but still.

Have you seen the photos some of these kids have of themselves on myspace?

[almaty 19]

whoa, those youngsters are topo frisky....the worse thing in my days, was depantsing someone

[DeadPoolX 9]

Yeah, a girl got expelled from my school for taking a topless photo and emailing it to a couple of boys. Unfortunately one of the boys had an email address that the whole family used...oops. Mommy found it and forwarded the email to the Dean of Women. Of course, these are high schoolers, but still.

Have you seen the photos some of these kids have of themselves on myspace?

I just can't understand MySpace. Maybe I'm "too old" at 27. But whatever the case, I'd never post my entire life (complete with pictures) up on an insecure website for the entire world to see, where anyone could view it! It's one thing to pass photos back and forth between you and your significant other (so long as you actually have your own e-mail address, unlike the teenager written about in the second post), but it's something else entirely to basically "flash" the Internet.

[jundp 191]

whoa, those youngsters are topo frisky....the worse thing in my days, was depantsing someone

Or wedgies

I am personally disgusted by some of the photos I've seen of girls that my son has as friends on his myspace. Seriously, shirts pulled all the way up till there's "just a hint" of ####### there, or full on bikini photos. And these girls don't have their profiles set to private, so anyone can see their photos. Ugh. Apparently I'm becoming more conservative in my old age

[almaty 19]

whoa, those youngsters are topo frisky....the worse thing in my days, was depantsing someone

Or wedgies

I am personally disgusted by some of the photos I've seen of girls that my son has as friends on his myspace. Seriously, shirts pulled all the way up till there's "just a hint" of ####### there, or full on bikini photos. And these girls don't have their profiles set to private, so anyone can see their photos. Ugh. Apparently I'm becoming more conservative in my old age

i agree, i use to go to strip shows, now i just go to the Mall.

[jundp 191]

Yeah, a girl got expelled from my school for taking a topless photo and emailing it to a couple of boys. Unfortunately one of the boys had an email address that the whole family used...oops. Mommy found it and forwarded the email to the Dean of Women. Of course, these are high schoolers, but still.

Have you seen the photos some of these kids have of themselves on myspace?

I just can't understand MySpace. Maybe I'm "too old" at 27. But whatever the case, I'd never post my entire life (complete with pictures) up on an insecure website for the entire world to see, where anyone could view it! It's one thing to pass photos back and forth between you and your significant other (so long as you actually have your own e-mail address, unlike the teenager written about in the second post), but it's something else entirely to basically "flash" the Internet.

Yeah, I made a comment about it to my SO and he said "well it is MYspace." I'm getting old too, DPX because I think it's awful to promote the selfishness or the "it's all about me" that is already intrinsic to the teen years.

whoa, those youngsters are topo frisky....the worse thing in my days, was depantsing someone

Or wedgies

I am personally disgusted by some of the photos I've seen of girls that my son has as friends on his myspace. Seriously, shirts pulled all the way up till there's "just a hint" of ####### there, or full on bikini photos. And these girls don't have their profiles set to private, so anyone can see their photos. Ugh. Apparently I'm becoming more conservative in my old age

i agree, i use to go to strip shows, now i just go to the Mall.

HAHAHAHAHA

You make me laugh (too bad it's true about the mall though)