Bullying with a real-life consequences
HE GREW frightened when his schoolmate put the knife to his throat, while his 15-year- old girlfriend shot video with her cellphone.
“I thought she was going to cut me. I was like, ‘ Please stop,’ “said the 16-year- old autistic boy, whose alleged abuse by two girls from his southern Maryland high school made headlines around the world. The case triggered outrage in the teens’ rural community and consternation among advocates for children with disabilities.
Yet even amid his fear, he yearned for the girls’ friendship. And still does. The teen — speaking publicly for the first time about what happened to him — remains more concerned about protecting his relationship with the girls than about what authorities have charged them with doing to him.
The high-functioning sophomore, whose parents agreed to allow him to be identified by his middle name, Michael, described the knife incident as “a game gone wrong. It was a sick game, kind of creepy. But they didn’t have a serious intention about killing me.”
There were other menacing games. On Valentine’s Day, the girls allegedly took Michael to a frozen pond near his home in St. Mary’s County and persuaded him to fetch a stray basketball on the icy water, according to his account and court documents. Within minutes, he said, he had crashed through the ice. He clambered back up and fell a second time, screaming. Neither girl tried to help, he said.
Once again, the incident was recorded on his girlfriend’s cellphone, furnishing a chronicle of alleged assaults that authorities are using in the prosecution of the two Chopticon High School students. Lauren A. Bush, 17, was charged as an adult; the 15-year- old whom Michael calls his girlfriend was charged as a juvenile. ( The Washington Post generally does not name juveniles charged with crimes.) Michael wants the charges against the girls, whom he calls friends, dropped. And his parents want Bush tried as an adult just as fervently as their only child wants her forgiven.
“It really makes me upset that my parents want to see them in jail,” he said. “Because I really like them.” But he also acknowledged that he felt “coerced” by the girls at the pond. He nearly froze to death, he said. And on the way home, they didn’t let him ride with them in the warm car.
“They put me in the trunk,” Michael recalled. “They didn’t want to get the interior wet.”
When the St. Mary’s County’s Sheriff’s Department arrested the girls in March, the charging documents described assaults so disturbing that Michael’s parents aren’t sure they want to see the video footage.
“My son is a staunch defender of his tormentors; it’s embarrassing,” said Michael’s father, a federal government contracting analyst. “He may be more disabled than I convinced myself that he was and maybe more lost than I realised. That’s something I am going to have to deal with on a later day. Right now, I am trying to get justice for him and others like him.”
In addition to the images of the knife being held to Michael’s throat in the kitchen of their tiny rancher, another clip allegedly shows Bush kicking Michael in the groin and dragging him by his hair.
A third video allegedly reveals
He may be more disabled than I convinced myself that he was and maybe more lost than I realised. That’s something I am going to have to deal with on a later day. Right now, I am trying to get justice for him and others like him. Michael’s father, a federal government contracting analyst
the girls trying to push Michael into having sex with his family’s dog.
The details created a furor online. Chopticon students and people across the country vented on Twitter, sharing stories with Bush’s police mug shot, a link to the 15-year- old girl’s Facebook page, and a website where the girls’ photos, their home addresses and phone numbers were published. An online petition demanded that prosecutors charge Bush and Michael’s girlfriend with a hate crime.
After the arrests, Chopticon Principal Garth Bowling posted a letter on the school website, alerting parents that a “serious community offence” involving students had taken place and that any questions should be directed to the sheriff’s department.
Michael Wyant, the school system’s director of safety and security, also emphasised that the alleged assaults didn’t occur at Chopticon.
Even so, he said, “we want to make sure nothing like this happens again.”
This month, the 15-year- old girl pleaded guilty in juvenile court to second- degree assault and displaying an obscene photograph of a boy. The sophomore, whose mother declined to comment, remains in a juvenile detention centre.
Bush, a junior, was charged as an adult with first- degree assault, false imprisonment and child pornography solicitation, and faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted.
She has been on house arrest, but last Monday she reported to a state detention centre for several weeks of psychological evaluation, her attorney Brian Thompson said. — WPBloomberg