When I was in middle school one of the guys I knew was accused of touching the butt of another girl in our group. He was pulled into the office and suspended 7 days for that. She had personally gone to the principal and reported that he touched her butt in a simuation of anal sex. (finger poking lightly). If she goes directlyto the principal I think that the principal will take her much more seriously and then get you involved.
Bill, having dealt with a most similar situation involving my 17 year old daughter, you (and your family) have my empathy and long-distance support. While most of the advice presented by other posters is sound, I’d like to share my “fix”.
Here in Georgia, much to my chagrin, we have reached the point where it is necessary to install “resource officers” in high schools. These are police officers trained to work in schools with teenagers and in my experience they are compassionate, concerned and well trained. I contact the resource officer assigned to my daughter’s school by phone, briefly explained the situation and asked to meet him off campus. We met and I laid out the situation in detail. The officer understood my daughter’s need not to be identified as a “snitch” and outlined his intentions to slove the problem. You see, he knew the little fuckers that were harrassing my daughter. At least two of them were known trouble makers. The officer followed through on his promises. The problems stopped and my daughter was never identified as a tattle-tale. The officer followed up with several phone calls to me and asked to be informed if the problems arose again. I have never told my daughter how I interceeded and don’t intend to. I wouldn’t want to have her think I’d betrayed her trust, even though in my opinion I did not, perception is reality and teenagers have a monumental perception problem! Sometimes a dad’s gotta do what a dad’s gotta do, and at least here in the South (and I suspect it’s the same elsewhere), you don’t mess with daddy’s little girl ‘less you want a severe ass whippin’! Sometimes though the ass whippin’ has to be figurative rather than literal. Whatever works!
At any rate, good luck to you and yours, Bill. It sounds as if you are following those parental instincts and that you have your daughter’s trust and confidence. That says a lot and I’m certain that you will work it out together.
As long as people keep quiet because they fear this will happen, it will continue to happen.
{{{{{{{{Tsugumo}}}}}}}} Ditto times 10 on what people have been telling Wildest’s daughter. It was not your fault. You did not deserve it.
As far as the pattern of a plaintiff being scorned, well, I know that’s how it is, and I know it’s not right, but…Even if the defendants end up paying no legal penalties, they’ve still had attention drawn to them as (at least potential) wrongdoers. At the very least, it could make them step lightly in the future.
A lot of harassment is done by high school seniors, because they know that they’ll be on another campus the following year, or out of school entirely, and their reputations won’t follow them. But colleges check incoming students’ disciplinary records, do they not? I wonder how seriously they take sexual harassment or assault charges? I wonder how many would not accept an applicant with such charges against him.
(I am not going into that whole “you could ruin the guy’s life” bit. I’m not scheming to keep Miss Wildest’s harassers out of the colleges of their choices. But I think it would be a fine idea if colleges kept such charges prominent in a student’s file. If an incident similar to, or worse than, the alleged incident in high school occurred, the accused’s credibility would take a large hit, and deservedly so.
When I say ‘potential’, I’m talking about a hypothetical harassment case. In Miss Wildest’s case, she is being harassed. But they may have the potential to do worse, and she shouldn’t have to find out.
BTW, Bill-what happened? Is everything okay?
Granted, but my point is: Do YOU want to be the one to tell your daughter “You’re going to be a martyr. You might go through hell from the other kids at school and have no guy go near you for fear they might set you off and find themselves unable to get into college at some point, but hey, it’ll be for a good cause. So keep your chin up, it’s not that bad (despite the fact that I’m not the one who has to go into class every day so it really doesn’t affect me like it does you)!”
Anyway, I’m not trying to be an ass or anything…It’s just that the perspective of people who are older and more mature and realize “Well hey, if someone threatened to get me in trouble with the police and I wouldn’t be able to get into college when they check my criminal record, I’d have trouble getting a job and it would affect my life! I’ll smarten up!” is probably vastly different from a couple kids running around breaking rules and harrassing people. I doubt they really care if they get in much trouble or they wouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
I’m not saying it’s right what they’re doing, and I’m not saying they should be let off the hook or anything (“Boys will be boys”). They’re old enough to know that what they’re doing is wrong, but they also seem cocky enough to know that it’s unlikely anyone is going to do anything about it (like you say, because they’re keeping quiet out of fear).
- Tsugumo
P.S. I’d also like to know what happened with the situation. I hope it went well, high School is a pain. 
my suggestion:
Have her go to the principal right after it happened, tell him and insist that she calls you - if he says something like ‘return to class’ have her leave the school and contact the police. You will have to go down and make it clear that you want action taken and also make it clear that if this happens again you and your daughter will press charges and look into sueing the school.
Now that said, and I don’t know you daughter from Peter, is there anything she does that might infulence them to touch her. Now I’m not making excuses for them but if your daughter is going around wearing a tight sweater or something that might arouse to opposite sex a simple change of clothes might stop all future attacks.
(and what is a 14 yr old wearing such stuff for anyway?)
Bill.
Sorry to hear about your situation. My own daughter is 12YO, unreasonably busty for her age, and had much the same thing go on in school. An older boy 16-17YO pressuring her to have sex with him. I am also quite protective and considered ripping his lungs out but common sense prevailed. I told her to tell the boy that she had told her dad about this, dad was QUITE upset, and had PROMISED to “council” him on the error of his ways if he didn’t desist. This worked for me and the rampant little bastard stays away from her religiously now. I wonder exactly what I’d have done if he HADN’T desisted. On the up-side, me NOT going berserk helped establish a little trust between us, something that needs all the help it can get.
I wish I could help more.
All the best to your and your daughter.
Testy.