Thursday, January 17, 2008

13 Year Old Girl Arrested For Inappropriately Touching Boys

Two boys have reported that a 13 year old girl touched them through their clothing in a sexual way. Apparently the boys asked the girl to stop and she did not. The girl was subsequently questioned, arrested and placed in a facility. Below is a quote from the article.

The detective has heard a little of what the community has been saying publicly about the arrest and some folks seem upset officers arrested a 13-year-old girl.

But police, he said, are gender-blind.“Reverse the genders and if a boy, generally speaking, if a boy touches a girl inappropriately on the school bus and the school district and the police don’t take action, can you imagine the outcry there would be?” Turney said.

Turney said Wednesday that no bail amount has been set for the girl.

You can read more here.

Some questions:
-Why do you think the public is upset about the arrest of this 13 year old girl?
-Do you think the detective is right in his observation concerning the reversal of genders?
-Why is it that women/girls tend to be given the benefit of the doubt more often than not in situations such as this while men/boys are presumed guilty more often than not?
-Is it okay to make generalizations such as that? Do the statistics allow for such assumptions?

7 comments:

Layneh said...

what bothers me about this is, why would a 13 yr old do something like that?

Makes me wonder about her parents/guardians. While putting her in a facility, i would also be checking up on the parents, cause something isnt right here.

Anonymous said...

This is a tough one because we don't know all the facts (since this case involves minors). I do think that our society often has a double standard in cases like this. Statistically most sex offenders are men, BUT we have to be VERY careful not to mix that up and think that most men are sex offenders. I appreciate this officers point, I just hope that they are not using this girl to make that point. It seems to me that they brought some pretty strong charges against her. I agree that this young girl needs help, and I hope that this experience will teach her a lesson.

Roland said...

Did this girl overpower two boys at once?
Wow, she must be really tough.
I wish I knew more of the particulars than what is listed in the linked article.

pastorbrianculver said...

Back when ai was in 5th grade, we would all line up for lunch and there was a girl in our class, 11 yrs old, who would touch where no 11 yr old girl should touch. All the boys would turn away from her. Nothing was ever done to her and she was never told to stop. I still see her these days [48 now) and she has had a rough life. Makes me wonder if she was sexually abused as a child.

Roland said...

I bet she was, Brian.
Funny how we see symptoms and never look for causes. Myself included in doing just that.

Anonymous said...

I find it so interesting that woman want to be treated as equals to men (*sarcastically* thank you feminists), but really they only want to be treated equally on certain things. My opinion is, if a woman wants to be treated equally, then she gets EVERYTHING that comes with with being a man. Including, but not limited to, if she hits a man, then the man should be able to respond to her the way he would respond to another man. If that means he punches her in the face, then so be it, in my opinion. Harsh, but equal. I bet you will find that 99.9% of women who wanted to be seen, treated, and respected as equals will have a hard time with that idea.

You can't have things both ways. What this 13 year old did was wrong. What I would like to know is why the two boys allowed it. If I were 13 and this was happening to me by a guy, you can bet I would have done everything in my power to stop it. Even if they didn't want to hit her or something, they still could have done something like push her back, or turn away, or something. Obviously we don't have all the facts. However, if a boy did this, our attitude would be to throw away the key, and yet these people are enraged that we would hold the same standard for a girl?

I don't understand why this stuff goes on. Women cannot have it both ways, and to those who think things should be equal, they have to take the good with the bad.

pastorbrianculver said...

of course, we don't know the whole story on why the boys didn't fight back, one thought is this...
girls mature faster than boys and it is quite possible these boys were still rather small compared to her. it's hard to say!!