This is what I am going through currently;
Teacher files charges vs. kid over gun sketch
A Taunton teacher is pressing criminal charges against a 10-year-old student after she caught the fifth-grader drawing a menacing picture that depicts him, a gun and a figure of her with a “bullet whole” in her head.
But the boy’s furious mother said she plans to fight the charge in court and believes Taunton police and her son’s teacher at the Mulcahey Middle School overreacted to the drawing.
“Bringing charges against a 10-year-old? I’m irate. It’s caused a lot of turmoil to my son,” said Angela Smithson, who has enlisted the help of the American Civil Liberties Union to fight the charge.
The teacher, Karen Boudreau, 44, filed a police report Wednesday after she yanked away from Cullen Smithson a drawing that depicted a girl named “Kailey” as well as a figure named “Mrs. Boudreau,” both with the words “bullet whole” next to them. A stick figure named “ME” is shown next to a gun, according to the report.
Cullen will receive a summons to court to determine if there is enough evidence to proceed with criminal charges, police said.
Boudreau told police she wanted to file charges “in the hopes that the system could help the child,” according to the report, which indicates that Cullen has unspecified “behavioral issues.”
She told police “in this day and age with school shootings, she also has to think about the safety of the remainder of her class.”
Boudreau believed Cullen was angry with her because she forced him to redo math work, according to the report.
Boudreau declined to comment.
Superintendent Arthur Stellar said the decision to seek criminal charges is up to each teacher. “I don’t know what her rationale was,” he said. “The point is the student ought to learn a lesson.”
Smithson said while her son deserved the suspension, he shouldn’t be treated like a criminal. “He did not threaten. He was making a picture for himself. He wasn’t showing anyone. He didn’t go up to the teacher and give it to her. There were no threats.”
Cullen gets good grades and does not get in trouble at school, she said. She also said her son works out his anger through drawing, she said.
Sarah Wunsch, an attorney for the Massachusetts ACLU, called the accusations “appalling.”
“This is sad that a teacher felt she needed to draw a child into the criminal justice system,” she said, adding she believes the charge won’t stand up in court because it doesn’t constitute a threat. “Everybody tells us this is not a kid who has serious problems.”
Experts in school safety generally agree that filing criminal charges against kids should be a last resort.
Dr. Ronald Stephens, head of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif., said schools should have a team that includes counselors and police to evaluate perceived threats from children.
“You have a threat assessment team sit down and determine what action should be taken,” he said. “School should be a safe place. . . . Teachers have been targeted and I can understand why they might be gun-shy.”
However, Susan Cole, of Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Harvard Law School, sided with Cullen’s mother.
“The drawing presented a perfect opportunity to address a child’s underlying needs,” she said. “Instead, by isolating, stigmatizing and criminalizing this behavior, what may have been an innocent action or a call for help could become a much bigger problem.”
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