We are in a wealthy part of town on a sports team where most of the parents on the team are high level officers and directors for large corporations. One of the parents invited a bunch of the kids over to his house for a party. There were older boys there as well, friends of one of the teammates older brothers. These kids were older and larger than the sports teammates and they beat up on one of the young teammates… ganging up and beating and stomping on one of the teammates extensively causing him to need a doctors visit. No long term damage but still, a frightening situation.
Since the older kids doing the beating included a son of the dad hosting the party, the family hosting the party was later confronted by the parents of the kid who was assaulted. The party hosts family called the kid who was beaten up a liar and said that their older son didn’t do it, then they made up a bunch of stories basically trying to lay the blame on the kid who was beaten up. Of course all of the older kids chimed in and denied having done anything wrong.
All of the younger kids there at the party backed up the beaten up kids story, saying they too were being picked on by the older kids at the same time as their beaten up teammate. One of the young kids even witnessed his teammate being kicked while he was laying on the ground and he helped pull his teammate out of the room while the beating was taking place.
After the story came out, the parents of the kid who was beaten up refused to press charges against the kid(s) responsible. The parents of the other young kids also didn’t do anything about the situation and remained silent. Meanwhile, the family hosting the party have denied everything and insist that everyone else is lying. Since the family of the boy beaten up won’t press charges, the team isn’t going to do anything and this family that hosted the party is still coming to practices and games.
Now, I am being told by some that the parents of the younger kids aren’t doing anything because they feel that the party host is a coke dealer and they are scared of what might happen to them if they speak up. Does this sound right to you, that wealthy influential parents are scared of a coke dealer enough to let their kids be victimized at his house without saying a word?
What would you do in this situation if your kids were involved?
My kid would be off that team, before the sun went down. And I’d be unavailable for any commentary and instruct my kid to keep quiet as well. My child would never go to that home ever again. A brief smile, nod or wave would be the ENTIRE extent of my interaction with anyone else involved, parent, coach, other player.
None of this requires discussion, review or clarification, to or with ANYONE, in my humble opinion.
I don’t know how much of your social life would be disrupted, but yeah, everyone off the team.
Can you contact the press about this incident? Something needs to be done if the parents of the assaulted kid won’t involve the police. There will be medical records to back up the claim.
Call an anonymous tip in to the police. I’m not advocating you SWAT him, just call the non-emergency line and tell them you suspect so-and-so is dealing drugs out of their house or whatever. A coke dealer trying to maintain a respectable suburban family man image has a hell of lot to lose, and even just a friendly visit from the local police might put the Fear o’ God into him.
Coca Cola; You Can’t Beat the Real Thing . I’m assuming you are in the Atlanta area, where being employed by Coca Cola gives you some real leverage. If this guy is a regional distributor (or higher) I suggest you back down. The Pepsi people won’t come aboard to help, neither will those cowards at Faygo.
The first thing I would do is verify that my kid(s) were at this party. I would then ask them what actually happened at the party. 1st person evidence is so much better than 3rd party hearsay.
No one who was at the party is pressing charges. There have been no arrests. Now someone has started a rumor that the party hosts are coke dealers.
I suspect that the coke dealer rumors could simply be a case of sour grapes, or envy.
OTOH, if my offspring had ended up in the hospital, I would want to know who was involved, and what had happened. If that requires police and lawyers, so be it.
As far as someone being afraid of the alleged coke dealer’s retribution is concerned, it’s just as likely that the coke dealer would stop supplying drugs to anyone who complained as opposed to initiating a drive-by assasination.
A guy I worked with in Las Vegas tried to get me to invest $1000 to help him get started dealing coke. I declined. Six weeks later he was found dead in his apartment, strangled with an electrical extension cord.
A guy in Miami who had used my sister as an unwitting mule (he’d give her money and his Lincoln to go shopping at a certain store without mentioning the coke in the trunk which was being picked up while she was in the store) was eventually found, along with his body guard, chopped into pieces, floating in a plastic trash bag in the ocean.
On the brighter side, I knew a couple who took $10,000 on a buying trip to Columbia in 1970, reinvested their profit, and in three trips over a few years had over $1,000,000 and retired very young to a beautiful ranch in a canyon overlooking the Pacific.
None of these people were coke users; they were only in it for the money.