Location: Johnson County, KS
Background info: I am divorced from the father of my children and we share 50/50 custody.
I live in a tight knit community and our neighborhood has a very old school feel in the sense that kids ride their bikes around, play on the new neighborhood elementary school playground, etc. Parents look out for each others kids.
The old elementary school is getting ready to be demolished and is across the street from the new elementary school. There is a city owned park by the old elementary school that has a playground and kids do sports practices on the green.
Last night my kids were with their dad as scheduled and my son (6) had his first t-ball practice on the green of the city park. As is typical in our neighborhood, my daughter (8)
went with two other girls (one is 8 too and the other 9) to play on the city playground while their brothers had t-ball practice.
Per my ex’s retelling via a text after the incident: the three girls came running up to him and the other girls’ mothers and said: “there are older boys who tried to get us to go into the old school with them. They said there are hot boys are age in there. We told them no and that we were gonna tell our parents and they ran away.”
Ex goes to the abandoned school and sees a door propped open with electrical wire and an old classroom completely “trashed.” He calls the cops, they retell the story to the police and one of the other little girls gives enough identifying information about one of the boys that I was able to figure out who he is.
They make a police report and head home. On the way home, the cop calls my ex and says “we found the boys and talked to their parents and they’re going to take it from here.”
With the facts out of the way: I am livid, scared and appalled that 14 year old boys would try to get 8 year old girls to go into an abandoned building by lying to them. Your imagination can run absolutely wild with what their intentions were if they got the girls inside. But, even if I think of the most innocent of intentions, like they were just trying to prank the girls and scare them, it’s still so wildly inappropriate and unsafe. I’ve spent so much time warning my kids about not safe adults, I hadn’t thought to warn them about unsafe older kids. THANK GOD that’s these girls knew and felt safe to go to their parents instead of going with the girls. It’s extremley upsetting these little girls had their first encounter with boys who want to take advantage of them (in whatever way they intended) at age 8. It’s infuriating that they’re learning now but that boys will try to hurt them and you have to always be on the up and up to stop them from doing so.
I am uncomfortable with the resolution of this being “we talked to their parents and they’re gonna handle it.” I think there needs to be more action taken here, what these boys attempted goes beyond the pale of teenage boys antics and I think it’s scary that they even thought this was a good idea.
So the question is: how do I go about pushing for more responsibility, disciplinary action and possible criminal repercussions for this??!
ETA: The abandoned school is the school districts property and the girls and the older boys (as far as I know now) are students of the school district.
Comments
You can talk to the district about whether they want to do anything about this.
You can ask the police to file charges. Given the detail you’ve provided, I do not see a criminal charge here.
> So the question is: how do I go about pushing for more responsibility, disciplinary action and possible criminal repercussions for this??!
Unfortunately, you can’t.