Criminals have more rights than our children

I am going to take a moment to rant, I have a 13 year old daughter who loves anime, horror movies and heavy metal. she is an honor roll student and an emotional caregiver, she loves animals and nature. Until two weeks ago has never been in trouble in school, her and one of her friends were talking about an episode of an anime show that they had seen and of course it has killing and death and blood etc. Apparently a student overheard the conversation and went to the assistant principle and told her that my daughter was talking about killing people at that point my daughter was taken out of class and to the office. This is where the title of the post come in. she was searched, her book bag was searched they took her drawing pad from her bookbag and went through it and this is where the shtf, my daughter loves to draw she practices in that book and of course there were characters with knives and scary characters and normal cats and snakes and puppies and fairies and even a rainbow or two. once they saw the scary drawings she was immediatly interrogated by the counselor, copies of the scary drawings were made the SRO officer was brought in to talk to her.
Now one week later the same person went to a teacher and told the teacher my daughter made a direct threat to kill to her, this time they went straight to suspension wanted to send her to and alternative school. This is when we found out about them copying her drawings of which they only copied the ones that made her look bad and the extent of the questioning with the counselor and the counselor telling the crisis counseling officer that our daughter wanted to kill herself etc etc. Now to save from rambling on and to get to the point of this thread

1. Our children can be questioned in a coersive environment without us being notified until after the fact
2. our children can be searched and their property seized without reasonable suspicion or probable cause (in my daughters case there was neither)
3 our children have no right to face thier accuser
4. judgments can be made based on one persons accusation without cooberating information or evidence to back that story

I think this is rediculous our kids should have atleast the same rights as a criminal, I understand in this day and age with all the school shootings that schools have to treat each threat as serious but there should be some due diligence in their investigations. Involve the parents before the searching and questioning to make sure the process is fair, require statements from more than one witness.

Now I know the natural question is "What if she did do it?" and i can say honestly I don't believe she did and neither do her teachers who were not informed of the situation except the one involved in the second incident and he didnt hear anything. Her teachers were willing to write character statements for her and told us we should persue the matter to the end because in their view our daughter would not have done this.

You may be right but this has been going on for a long time and honestly I believe your daughter probably did tell the kid shed kill them. Its the way kids are these days even if she wouldnt really do it. You do have one thing wrong though a felony can be searched and drug tested any time any were there house can be searched at any time to. Im pretty sure the school cant come to your house and search her room. The issue is real with the schools but your rant about criminals is moot.

reply to post by N3kr0m4nc3r


Sorry, I fail to see how this treatment make leads you to believe that criminals have more rights, in fact criminals are treated exactly like this, and don't fool yourself into thinking their not. You see, I have been a bad boy before, and I got caught, and paid for my crime, but this is exactly the way I was treated.

and lets face it, any kid that has drawings of people with knives and violent acts in his/her scrap book HAS issues (IMHO)

reply to post by MidKnight


Im not trying to bash the guy or his daughter and you shouldnt either. He said she was into anime and it thats the case the stuff shes drawing will be related. A lot of animated stuff from japan the characters use weapons its very common. That doesnt mean theres something wrong with her maybe she wants to get into the bossiness one day and to do that your character design and art has to be pretty good and people have to like it. Sadly today kids like violence and sex more than anything else.

reply to post by darknull


Not Bashing, just pointing out.

Maybe a school environment is not the place to have art that may be misinterpreted. I mean in this day and age, having that stuff with you at school, is asking for someone to react badly to it. I mean if I am at an airport with drawings of planes on fire, I would expect there would be trouble at some point.

I'm not saying that the actions of the school weren't extreme, or even wrong , all I am saying is that maybe for some this was a predictable outcome.
.
With shooting rampages, bulling revenge, suicides and general psycho flip-outs, do you really expect the school to not take this stuff seriously?

and the whole point of my reply was that criminals DO NOT have more rights than children

I respect you opinions and while it may be entirely possible that she did say something like that the point of my post was this, I understand that because of the nature of the complaint they probably had to search her bookback to make sure there was no weapon. How did the art book come into play she can't hide a weapon in there and the contents were not relevent to the search and the fact that they did copy only the contents that supported their case and not the whole book. It would be like them taking your blood soaked shirt where you tried to help the victim and not the weapon with the fingerprints of the person who actually did it and charging you. Also the fact they can in an incident this serious question a child without the parents present at the time, Darknight even as a bad boy you were allowed to have a lawyer present during questioning. It just seems off that in this day and age any child can walk up to a teacher and whether true or not state "little johnny threatend to kill me" and Johnny can be submitted to this treatment on a word.
we send our kids to school where they learn about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights yet the school systems require them to leave those rights at the gate.

Darknight you are absolutely right and as a parent I should have realized the problems with her taking that to school and have since remedied that issue. and maybe the title of the topic should have been children in school.

reply to post by N3kr0m4nc3r


Ive had first hand experience right after the columbine shooting my second grade brother was talking to some friends about how if he would have done it he would have done it right. He was took to the office and searched, the police made sure no weapons were in our house and he had an adult with him at all times in the school. The schools really are out of hand. Im glad to hear you got that fixed up with your daughter if shes good with the drawings even if there is strong subject matter in it support her it could give her a good career one day, they seem hard to come by in this day and age.

most schools have a policy that state something to the effect - any possessions by the student can be searched and seized upon the discretion of the faculty. In fact they are require to go through that note book, as it may contain evidence of a crime plot. In cases of school security they do not have to wait for parental presence to investigate the threat, solely to determine the validity and level of said threat.

The main problem is that they fear if they(the schools) don't take every little thing as being serious, they could end up on the evening news.

reply to post by N3kr0m4nc3r


assuming your daughter is completely innocent
[and she really didn't make a childish threat against the snitch]

sue snitch and family,
yeah, take them to court for libel, slander or whatever applies
have court subpoena all school employees/officials involved, and make them turn over docs.

make a reeeeeeally big stink, and they'll think twice next time.

school officials will be waaaaay more careful in the future with your kids and those of others
because they know you'll go right over their heads to a higher authority if need be


after all, this is your daughters reputation and possibly her future that's at stake.

Originally posted by darknull
You may be right but this has been going on for a long time and honestly I believe your daughter probably did tell the kid shed kill them. Its the way kids are these days even if she wouldnt really do it. You do have one thing wrong though a felony can be searched and drug tested any time any were there house can be searched at any time to. Im pretty sure the school cant come to your house and search her room. The issue is real with the schools but your rant about criminals is moot.

I see your point, but just because felons can be searched, etc... doesn't mean probation officers do their job, or do it thoroughly. Otherwise Jayce Duggard wouldn't have had lawsuit merit. Our kids have no rights whatsoever. The school do try to search other than the child themself. Otherwise this 12 year old wouldn't have a lawsuit for the school invading her privacy. Facebook I went through a similar thing with my daughter. She's special needs and was in a special class, yet the school adamantly refused to put her in an autistic school claiming they could "handle" her. After 2 years of constant ISS, OSS, "don't bring her in tomorrow", getting calls to pick her up a half hour after she arrived at school because they couldn't "handle" her, it all came to a head. We had a meeting with PINS (persons in need of supervision) and a probation officer(!?!) the school said they were going to court to remove her from the home and put her in foster care. They said since they couldn't control her, we must not be able to either, so therefore they were going to remove her. I actually told them over my dead body and walked out. I went straight to the autistic school and had her evaluated. They were surprised she hadn't been there since Kindergarten. They started her that week and because she was a minor, the school board had to pay for her busing and the school tuition.

The school have too much power. Power that we, through our Representatives, gave them. We need to take it back.