The articles describe what allegedly happened, said the school found the situation to be coercive, whether implicitly or explicitly, and that the school expelled the boys and placed the girl on leave. It does not contain any statements from the girl or her family, or from the boys. I’m fairly certain the girl did not say that she advertised as being available to perform oral sex on groups and arranged this meeting in advance, (a closer analogy to the strip club or bachelor party ). She may indeed have told the school that she was coerced. Neither you nor I knows what she told the school, or what the uninvolved boys told the school. And without that information, it is impossible to tell whether the school was right or wrong in expelling the boys, but not the girl. I suppose it is possible that the girl told the school she arranged this meeting in advance, and willingly performed oral sex on the boys, and they somehow decided she was coerced and not at fault. In that case, I would say the school was wrong to expel the boys and not her , just as I am sure if it turned out that she said she was coerced and the two uninvolved boys said she was crying hysterically, you would say the school was corrrect to expel the boys and not her.
I haven’t actually seen anyone on this thread say it must have been coercive, only that the school found it to be a coercive situation, or that it wasn’t clearly consensual. I have however, seen someone say
Apparently meaning either she couldn’t possibly have been coerced if she entered the locker room voluntarily, or worse yet, that if she was coerced, she deserved it for entering the locker room.
Indeed. It’s possible that they had some secret information to justify the punishment, and they can’t release it because of some legal issue. If it ever comes to light, I’ll change my opinion.
Based on the plain events we’ve heard about so far, though, it seems like an overreaction, especially with these vague phrases like “pressured, consciously or unconsciously” and “implicit, if not explicit, coercion”.
Yeah, and what’s the deal with those baggy pants? Back in my day, we wore belts! With onions on them! (Green onions on St. Patrick’s Day, which was called Irish Candlemas!) And why do they have to turn that hippity-hop music up so darn loud?
What I see is a difference of opinion as to whether any exploitation actually took place.
In MA as of the early 80s a child must be five by October 1st to start kindergarden - much to the fury of a neighbor whose son missed the deadline by 2 days. They appealed and lost - no exceptions. Throughtout my years in school in MA and southern NH (where many former MA residents moved to) it wasn’t unusual to have kids in my class that were several months older than me because they had fall birthdays.
As for the OP… a 15-year-old girl and five older boys? To me it seems as likely that she did it hoping to avoid involuntarily being subjected to worse as it is that it was consensual. Either that or she really liked giving oral sex :dubious:
Exactly. I was embarrassed to say it but, no other way to say it
Well I can see argument over whether it was rape. I can see argument over it being consensual. But you can’t tell me that girl wasn’t being used. She may not have had the wits to realize she was being used but that’s a matter for her parents and therapist to fix.
I mean paint for me the picture where she isn’t being exploited? Seriously.
Maybe her friends dared her to do it. Maybe she enjoyed the feeling of having power over these hockey players for a few minutes. Maybe they offered to do some big favor for her. Maybe they paid her. Maybe she just wanted them to like her.
I guess it depends on what you want to call exploitation. As far as we’ve heard, she certainly gave more than she got, so I suppose you could say she was used - but that implies that there was something mean or unjust about what the boys did, and none of the facts we’ve seen so far support that.
It’s conceivable that it was a totally consensual bit of sexual experimentation, but I think it’s reasonable to thoroughly investigate the possibility that it wasn’t. Five on one, all older guys, yet totally consensual … if that doesn’t get your eyebrows going up, you’re extremely credulous.
The people in possession of all the facts made a decision.
They decided that what the boys did called for expulsion, while what the girl did, did not. It’s hardly fair to second-guess the school when we don’t know exactly what happened.
However, I can think of no conceivable situation in which any sober 15 year-old girl would give five 16-18 year old boys oral sex without some serious self-esteem issues at best, and coercion at worst.
At that age “Do it, because we’ll tell everyone you did anyway” wouldn’t be out of the question, and would count as co-ercion.
And for the person who said that a girl entering a boy’s locker room is giving implicit consent to sexual acts needs to re-think their position. She could have done it as a dare, been offered drugs, alcohol, money or simply gone in out of curiosity.
Nothing about the act of walking through a doorway, even one with a keypad, should be taken as implying consent to sexual activity- especially in someone who is legally unable to give it.
But for all we know, their reasoning may have been nothing more than “None of you kids should be doing anything sexual anyway, and you boys are old enough to know that.” Or “A Milton girl would never commit such a nasty act as fellatio, so you boys must’ve forced her into it somehow, explicitly or implicitly.”
In another situation, it might be easier to give the school the benefit of the doubt, but sex (especially between teenagers) is a subject that tends to make people overreact.
Low self esteem is no reason to expel anyone from school.
Apparently, there was another incident in another room in the school involving the girl and three of the boys in involved in the previous offense. Another student kept watch at the door.
Legally, I know a 15-year-old can’t give consent, but the facts are making a reasonable claim of “coersion” increasingly untenable. IMO, the Milton administrators have acted unfairly. It’s their call whether the students stay or go, but what goes for the boys should go for the girl. It would be unconscionable for them not to hold her equally responsible; she clearly was a willing participant.
Personally, I don’t think any of them should be expelled, though certianly sex acts in communal areas shouldn’t be an unpunishable offense. Maybe these kids made some mistakes, but expulsion from a private school could have some lasting repurcussions. I’m not sure if the infraction warrants such severity.
Sorry, DtC, i was a but rude in my first post towards you. But it irritates me when women are automatically given victim status in a sexual encounter. Women like sex, too. If the situation were reversed, and it were 5 girls on one guy, would the man be a victim?
And the age difference isn’t that big of a deal either. Females are biologically and socially programmed to seek older males for mates. It’s not as if the difference were huge, such as a 20-something and a teenager … they were all teenagers.
The school claims that a 5 on 1 situation automatically implies coercion. Their reasoning is flawed so second-guessing them is very fair.
The school is free to discipline the students as it wishes, but to accuse the boys of coercive rape is just plain wrong, when the evidence points in the other direction.
And I can’t assume that it was a case of co-ercion on multiple occassions?
Just because it happened more than once STILL doesn’t mean she consented or wasn’t co-erced. You understand that, right?
It doesn’t mean she didn’t consent, but it doesn’t mean she did either. The school, on weighing up all the evidence decided she was not in a position to freely consent, therefore she was not punished to the same extent. Which seems reasonable to me, especially as any consent she did give was not legally valid, while the boys, being older (not just being boys) are held to a different standard.
I didn’t make my point clear. Of course the man can be a victim if he is an unwilling participant. My question is: Does a five on one situation automatically make him a victim?
Yes, i understand, but why do you assume that? There isn’t any evidence in the case to conclude that coercion was involved.
This is not true. The school did not weigh up all the evidence. Ths school specifically stated that because it was a five on one situation, it automatically means that coercion was involved.
She cannot give legal consent, there is no argument there. What bothers me is that people are making a moral judgement of coersive rape, not a legal judgement of statutory rape.
The legal consent issue may be moot, as the DA is unlikely to attempt to prosecute such a case. If one is concerned only with technicalities, no one in the case is technically guilty of anything, as none of them have even been tried.
Otherwise, all you’re left with is moral judgements. My personal oppinion is what these kids did was extrememly tacky, but hardly indicative of moral terpitude. No amount of psychoanalyzing, given what we know, is going to allow us to adequately explain their behavior, but I don’t think that anyone can convincingly assert the girl was a victim of criminal debasement. There is nothing leading us inevitably to suspect acts of coersion in any form but the purely techincal (the legal inability to consent, vs. the practical one), and I daresay the evidence available to us suggests rather the opposite. However irresponsible certain behaviors may be, those who harbor under the illusing children cannot be willing and enthusiastic participants in sexual activity are living in a fantasy world. Girls and boys enjoy sex, and at 15 girls are perfectly capable, both physically and psychologically, of sincere and uncoerced desire for and participation in sex.
So fine: Expell the boys on a legal technicality for which they have not even been tried, and exonorate the girl as if she was blameless of the “crime” of precocious desire. What a perfectly neat and arbitrary solution to a complex problem that defies cookie-cutter interventions. I love the moral clarity of the prude.
It’s really not about prudery. The five on one situation is implicitly coercive. Not in the sense that the girl couldn’t have consented, but rather that there was no way for anyone, even those involved to be certain that any apparent consent was untainted. In much the same way that apparent consent is tainted when sexual activity occurs between supervisor-subordinate, doctor-patient, teacher-student or guard-inmate. As a society, we prohibit such relationships, and the person in the postion of more power generally gets punished in some way when they are discovered- the supervisor gets fired or transferred or sued, the doctor loses a license, the teacher is fired and the guard may become an inmate. These boys got expelled from a private school which has no obligation to accept or retain anyone
The school does not appear to be expelling the boys on a “legal technicality”. I am certain the result would have been the same if she were old enough to consent. If anything, the school is expelling the boys because of a value with which you perhaps don’t agree- that people should not engage in sexual activity when there is any question about the other person’s consent. Or because the girl said she was coerced- you are assuming that she wasn’t, and we don’t know what she said.
And there’s another issue - although 15 year old girls can indeed be willing and enthusiastic participants in sexual activity, I find it implausible that a 15 year old freely consented, with no pressure whatsoever to perform apparently. unreciprocated oral sex on five boys.
To all of you who say this is a case of reverse gender bias - there was a 15 year old boy involved in the first incident and who got the *same punishment as the girl * - i.e. not yet expelled. All those who were expelled were over 16. I think that pretty much settles the gender bias paranoia.
The school CAN’T expel her (or the 15-year old boy) at this point. From the article:
In other words she may still be expelled. But realize there’s an ongoing criminal investigation here, and the school still has to recognize the possibility that she was genuinely a victim of coercion and/or statutory rape if not rape (what’s non-statutory rape called?) - in which case it would be totally inappropriate to expel her at this point.
I think it’s precisely the (imaginary) reverse gender bias paranoia that is fueling this totally misplaced indignation. If this had been an all-boy event or an all-girl event and the school had chosen to expel everyone except the younger student who was asked to perform sexual favors, then not an eyebrow would have been raised. Almost everyone would have said - well the school regards them as more victim than perpetrator, or their infraction is not quite as great, and that’s their call. You really make enormous assumptions about the school’s reasoning that are not born out by the facts at all.
Is a group asking one person to perform sexual favors on the rest inherently coercive? Well for one thing if you look back at the article, it appears that was just the Boston Globe’s piss-poor paraphrasing of what the school *actually * said which was:
What they’re really talking about is of course peer pressure. A group of older students asking a younger one to give them blow jobs does, I think, automatically fall under the rubric of conscious or unconscious pressure to perform sexual acts. Pretty much by definition.
I don’t know where some of you are getting that it was her “precocious sexuality” driving this. The articles all say she was asked to give the boys oral sex and complied - not the other way around. And for some reason you’re taking the view that because this had happened previously (with members of the same group), that that somehow means she was the instigator the first time around. What??? It doesn’t follow. I’d think probability would tell you that what happend the second time was probably what happened the first time - i.e. they asked her to do it and she did. The second time they just increased the stakes ( alarger group) and asked her again.
Who knows for sure what really happened - but why just assume the school is mistaken, bigoted or blind when they have more information than you about how it happened and who was involved, the information we do know tends to support their statements, and you have no evidence contradicting a word they say?
Lastly, what if she totally wanted it? Doesn’t that pretty much exonerate everyone? Well, no. The school’s saying that they should never have asked. This is not an unreasonable request since a school like Milton has pretty high expectations for behavior. They expel for MUCH less than this. Also they have the responsbility for keeping the environment respectful towards all the students - and that includes preventing students from degrading each other (whether they want to be degraded or not).
Nope. It does automatically call his apparent consent into question, in the same way that the possibility of being fired or receiving a failing grade calls his consent into question.
I somehow get the feeling that you read that to mean that the school is accusing the boys of intentionally coercing the girl. They are not. The schol simply said that the situation was coerceive, whether the boys intended it to be or not.
Not sure what you mean by “coercive rape” - certainly, no one has said the boys should be jailed. People have said that the boys showed poor moral judgement, used the girl etc, and that the school is entitled to expell them if the behavior didn’t meet the schools standards. But think about this for a second- this would be an entirely different conversation had the same girl met the same five boys in the same locker room separately wouldn’t it? Why did the find it necessary to have a group experience?
Yeah I find it pretty hard to envision myself. Although anything is technically possible, I find it requires the imagination of a creative pornographer and the incorporation of a large number of implausibles to make that dog hunt.
