A story came out Friday that a girl at Rainier Beach High had been sexually assaulted by another student during school hours and the school neglected to contact the police.

Instead, the rapist boy and the boy who played lookout each got 3 day suspensions.

Huhm, so now the going punishment for sexual assault is not jail time, but school suspension.

“There are things that are in place for discipline,” said Gary, “The situation was investigated and dealt with.” (That would be Robert Gary Jr., the principal at Rainier Beach).

Someone needs to remind Mr. Gary that rape is a crime, and the only place for discipline in criminal cases is the court system. These are not a couple of boys blowing spitwads or graffiting a bathroom wall. These boys are a rapist and a conspirator to rape.

I feel for this poor girl. She did exactly what she was supposed to do, what we tell our kids to do all the time. She reported the incident immediately to an adult. And then, weeks later, the same adult she reported helped her file a police report when it became clear the the school administration was not going to do it themselves. How much evidence has been lost in that time? How long have the boys had to get their stories straight? How many days did the girl have to continue attending school with her attacker while the principal sat on his hands because he believed enough discipline had been handed out? That one I can actually answer- school got out on Friday, the 22nd. There were 15 school days between June 4th and the 22nd, three of which the boys would have been out on suspension- so 12 fucking days spent in the same building with the rapist and his looky-loo buddy.

I had thought that there was a legal requirement for school professionals to report sexual abuse, but in my very quick research of Washington state rules I found that teachers have a duty to report suspected abuse or neglect to the principal, but it is the principal’s discretion to report it to other authorities. And these laws only apply to suspected child abuse, not to rape or threats of violence from other students.

This isn’t the first time that Seattle Public School’s has had such an issue.

A Ballard High School student threatened to kill another student during a May 11th class. The school knew about the threat, but didn’t contact police.

Maybe the schools would have more time for teaching instead of dealing with “social problems” if they left the actual criminal stuff up to the justice system, like say rape and death threats. Maybe Seattle Public Schools needs to have a policy where all criminal acts that present a threat to other students MUST be reported to the police. You know that if the girl had reported a gun in a locker or a someone with a bag of pot- the principal would have been on the phone to the police in minutes instead. But violence directed at a single student, particularly a female student doesn’t warrant a fucking phone call.

Happy Friday!

For the last few hours a group of guys has been out behind my fence demolishing the blackberry and morning glory bushes that have been waring with each other for space.

The constant buzz/whine of what sounds like a dozen chain saws is driving me completely batshit crazy. I’m pretty sure that those bushes were the only thing holding my fence up. When they are gone, will my little postage stamp yard be exposed to all the world cause my fence has taken a suicide dive onto the sidewalk below?

And now my eyes are all itchy because of all the pollinated crap that is getting released into the air.I am not a happy camper. Wah!

Lesson #7468: No matter that it’s been 4 hours and three hand washings since you sliced hot peppers to make kick ass pico de gallo, you can still burn your eyes if you touch them with your hands. (This lesson applies to naughty bits as well, though I didn’t actually rub those to find out for sure).

Lesson #7469: Cava, a sparkling wine from Spain, kicks champagne’s ass with the fury of a stampeding bull. Mas cava por favor!

There I was, innocently (ok, nothing I ever do is innocent) taking a nap on the couch about to start on a deliciously naughty dream involving hot naked boys when suddenly, the booming voice of Bill Cosby interrupts what promises to be naughty bad fun with a screaming rant about how all grandchildren are spies.

This is shocking enough to wake me up where I find that Bill Cosby is on the TV- screaming about how grandchildren are spies. Possibly that is the least sexy thing ever. Ok, maybe the idea of Dubya giving Turdblossom his nickname in the middle of a santorum filled bathroom is less sexy, but Bill Cosby is obviously a close second.

But the point is- TV is evil because it will ruin naughty bad dream time with hot, naked, imaginary boys. This should be considered a public service announcement.

It used to be that a slave counted as only 3/5ths of a person. No wait, make that 3/5ths of a white man, not just any old person but the gold standard from which all others are oppressed by.

You may think that the times of considering the value of one person as less human than another have gone away. You may think “sure, we still have problems with individual bigotry, but our laws treat people as, well people”

I am hear to tell ya- not a fucking chance.

Pandagon has got a post up about the censoring of language by the FCC. I think it’s a complete load of bullshit that “fuck” is uttered a in millions of homes everyday but never on network TV- cause we must protect the children.

So of course- the “we must protect the children” dipshits come out.

I have always taken the view that exposure and explanation is better than walling a child up in a candy frosted land of pure thoughts. This applies to:

Sex education: sex happens- if you make me a grandma before I turn 50- I’ll kill you, use a condom, make sure that both sides enthusiastically consent.

Violent video games -it’s fun to play a warrior hero in a game, but that is fantasy and violence is not heroic in real life. In real life people really get hurt and die and it’s much harder to figure out who the bad guy is.

Porn: If you ever try to treat a woman like women are treated in porn she will not enjoy it. Porn is fake, real sex doesn’t look like that. And those sites put viruses on my computer- that is bad bad bad!

And the topic of this post- Language!

Cuss words are earned in our house. That means that it needs to be something bad enough to warrant a cuss word. A six year old doesn’t usually have anything terrible enough to warrant a cuss word. A twelve year old may have a few things, and the Kid gets to test out usage with me without fear that I am going to fly off the handle. There are a few rules though- he is never allowed to use words that insult groups of people that he is not a part of- meaning the only racial slurs he would be allowed are cracker or honkey, and since he has a penis he doesn’t get to call someone a coward by calling them a pussy (Hello! They push babies out of pussies- nothing cowardly in that!)

In an effort to bullyproof the kid, we run through things that would be appropriate comebacks to teasing. Those comebacks cannot be racist or sexist or ableist and since they are highly likely to be used at school, can only contain cuss words in foreign languages. He can call someone an asshole in Russian, for that I am proud.

But what does this have to do with the “But what about the children” language police?

Last summer, the Kid was walking up to the grocery store when 3 other kids stopped him and tried to rob him. They pushed him around, hit him and wanted him to give up his money. His response was “Fuck off”.

He came home, we called the police. The other kids were found and their defense was “we tried to rob him but he cussed at us. “

Let’s see- trying to rob someone= actual crime (in this case, because they hit him it would have counted as a felony even though they didn’t get anything out of it), responding to a crime with “fuck off” = not a crime and a completely reasonable response to the situation.

Somehow we have kids who think that it is just as bad to cuss at someone as it is to rob them. Either cussing is being highly overestimated in it’s criminality, or we have some fucked-up value system. And it wasn’t just the kids, when the officer came back and told me what had happened (which I already knew from my kid) he expected me to be shocked by the “Fuck off”. When I said “Fuck off is a pretty appropriate response to that situation, don’t ya think?” he had to think about it for a second but he agreed.

So I think that I will teach my kid that cussing is ok but robbery is not.

(Endnote- while we could have prosecuted the kids, I don’t generally think kid jail is a good idea. Instead I asked the officer to scare them and their parents really bad with the idea that we could press charges of felony robbery for what they did. Kid hasn’t had a problem since. )

There’s been a bust of immigrant workers at a food processing plant in Portland, Oregon.

Details are sketchy, but I wonder if this will be another New Bedford?

There was also serious fallout from the detention of hundreds of workers: Dozens of young children were left stranded after their parents were rounded up by federal authorities. As a result, many children weren’t picked up from day care or school.

Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts, estimated about 100 children were left with babysitters or caretakers.

“We’re continuing to get stories today about infants that were left behind,” she said Wednesday. “It’s been a widespread humanitarian crisis here in New Bedford.”

Let me get this straight- if you’re an American citizen who has kids but can’t get a job then you are a useless waste of space and you and your kids don’t deserve to get enough to eat (see food stamp challenge) but if you’re an illegal immigrant who is working you are a criminal for having a job that puts food in the mouths of your children and it’s better that they should be left stranded at daycare while la migra holds you hostage.

Or shorter US Government “Poor people and their children don’t get us reelected but raids on poor people do”.