[nitpick]
It’s Finnegans Wake, the title is an imperative, not possesive.
[/nitpick]
She’s not an idiot. He trusted the word of his daughter, that’s not exactly unfounded or no evidence.
Current social mores got rid of the concept of personal responsibility 
Bullshit.
No it isn’t. I know from my own professional experience that it’s extremely difficult to get any sort of legal intercedence in cases of suspected abuse within families. It is NOT true that a kid can just call the cops and “get the parents in a lot of trouble,” There are some pretty stringent guidelines about what needs to be witnessed and what the evidence has to be. It’s also not true that students can just say whatever they want about teachers and be believed with no evidence or no consequences. I’ve BEEN a teacher. It takes a lot of evidence and most teachers these days never put them in a position where they can be accused anyway. It’s pretty much SOP to make sure that you’re never alone with a kid or never in a situation where other people can’t see you.
It’s hearsay. That’s the very definition of unfounded and no evidence.
There is genius in this comment.
Oh, bite me. Daughter comes home, says teacher molested her. Daddy sees red, goes to school to confront teacher, things get out of hand. Daddy punches teacher.
Under those circumstances, I can see where he’s coming from. As a parent, I go into Mama Bear mode when someone hurts my child, and I can understand the father not thinking clearly initially.
Now that facts have come out showing the daughter lied, the father continuing to stand by his daughter is unforgiveable. Could the father have handled this better? Definitely. Do I understand the urge to hurt someone who hurt your child? Yes, I do. And all things considered, it’s not like he went gunning for the guy or landed him in the hospital. The guy got punched in the face. Not fun, of course, but he will recover.
My point is the father is compounding his initial reaction by continuing to believe his daughter in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That, to me, is a bigger issue than the father punching someone he thought had molested his daughter.
Never count on TV “news” people to try for accuracy in their transcriptions or quotes. All they have to do is get through 22 minutes looking pretty.
We have two different posters differing based on their own personal experiences.
I’d like to point out to each of you that your experience is only a single point of data regarding your own part of the country. It is quite possible that different jurisdictions may act quite, quite differently in regards to this situation.
Sure sounds like “shoot first and ask questions later” to me. Whether or not an investigation ultimately clears the accused is immaterial. In many cases, the damage has already been done:
Kids often do know, or at least believe, that if they file false accusations of abuse against a parent, teacher or other adult as a means of retribution for some wrong, either real or perceived, they can cause considerable upset to the individual even if an arrest is never actually made.
The “suspensions” are usually pretty quick- maybe a day or two, the accused does not get into any real trouble and there definitely are consequences for making false allegations. In most cases, there is no “damage” to the falsely accused. The staff at these schools knows both the teacher and the student and I can tell you, they know bullshit when they hear it.
Oh, come now! No consequences for their actions? Only if their parents suck. If you don’t parent your kids, and set that example for them, then sure, they’re going to be lying cheats who use the system. I know no kids in my experience of teaching whose parents are even marginally active in their lives who would behave as you suggest.
“Things” get out of hand? No, DADDY gets out of hand and commits a crime.
Since when is it okay to commit a violent crime because “you’re not thinking clearly?” A responsible parent does not go around hitting people. Everybody loves their kids and wants to protect them. That doesn’t make you special and it doesn’t make you above the law.
Wow. So any personal assult is acceptable if the injury isn’t permanent?
“Most” is not “all”. Ergo,
…was not entirely correct. In any case, Clothahump’s statement was about what kids “know” (that is, what they know in their heads, whether true or not), and I can assure you from personal experience that kids absolutely do “know” they can use false allegations of abuse to get revenge on an adult. I disagree with his comment concerning consequences for the kids–there certainly are consequences in most cases, but kids don’t tend to think about them.
I can’t imagine there is no damage to the falsely accused… it would be very stressful to go through something like that, and strain the man’s relationship with his own family and his colleagues.
Are you kidding me?
It’s certainly not hearsay.
It was a story from his daughter about what happened to her.
Some kids believe they can use false allegations to get revenge on an adult. Those kids are mistaken. False allegations ultimately backfire on the accusers.
I also have to say that the frequency of allegations- at least of serious allegations- is pretty damn low. I never saw a single case of a sexual allegation, for instance, it was far more common for kids to say that a teacher had been physically rough (“he pushed me,” “She twisted my arm”) than to allege anything really serious. The kinds of allegations that did occur could most often be resolved within minutes because there were always witnesses.
Beat me to it, Dio.
Unless there is proof that the aide egged daddy on (“I did and they’ll never prove it! Nyah, you’ll never catch me copper!”), no “things” got out of hand; the father got out of his skull.
I could understand (and maybe forgive) a parent taking a pot shot if all avenues of government intervention had been exhausted, and there existed some high level of evidence supporting the daughter. (e.g. someone gets off on a technicality, like protocol was not followed, but the proof is pretty damning, kinda thing.) But from this story, all we have here is the darling daughter accused the teacher, and then daddy assaulted him (and, later, slandered him). It is one thing to want to protect your child from a pedarest, but another thing to assault a suspected pederest, on solely the word of a 13y/o. This is on the same level as the scandal of “repressed molestation” cases that came out in the ninties. (And… not that dissimilar to what happened in Salem…) Kids lie, ya know…
Like I said, the colleagues know the principles involved. They know if a student is credible or if there is any plausibility to a charge against a teacher. Yes, it is possible to be mistaken, but the default (from what I saw) was always to assume the accused teacher was innocent until some real evidence was produced. It’s a “there but by the grace of God…” kind of thing.
So you’d be fine if some neighbor kid accused your husband of molesting her and came over and punched your husband, right? What if it caused permenant damage? Death?
Tell that to the teacher’s aide.
I don’t know where about where you live, but around here the news media swarm around abuse allegations, especially involving teachers or clergy, like flies on dogshit. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and WPXI television are particulary noteworthy in this respect. The retractions which follow unfounded allegations do not get the same high intensity coverage. In the end, more people will have heard that a person was accused than ever hear of his/her being cleared.