Once at a party we decided to share our most humiliating moment. We were all full-fledged adults, but without exception our stories featured school-related events around the ages of 10-14.

This woman, adult woman – set me up (an 11 year old no less) to be taunted by my classmates and even left me at a school outing to wander 2 miles back to school myself… with no remorse.

I have PCOS and one of the signs of that is precocious (early) puberty. Mine hit hard when I was 9. I had full breasts and pubic hair by 10. A couple of my classmates told this to the teacher… who marched me down to the nurse and called me a liar. She and the nurse DEMANDED I strip in front of them. STRIP.

Afterwards they called my mother and wanted to know what was wrong with me! If that happened today I’d have had a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the school district.

I feel for this girl. I know what she went through.

The school should be ashamed of itself.

I stood in the hallway one day and realized it was only a matter of time before someone would find a reason to sue – valid or not – since a teacher each year in my building had been sued by a parent or was put on probation by the district.

The system itself was toxic. The top administrators were either unavailable for any type of support or unwilling to get involved, period.

This girl was a victim of toxic thinking.

A strip search of a boy would have been done by two men and surely in such an instance they would understand an “unexpected” erection. Of course I’m not male so I don’t understand all of the biological considerations, but this doesn’t seem to be a situation conducive to arousal. It’s probably my ignorance which leads me to believe the part in question would shrivel as much as possible for protection.

Pat’s post is about the right to privacy, not gender bias, so what is your point?

BTW, Pat, the toon makes me cringe and since the point of illustration is to help promote understanding, it is extremely successful.

Also, can someone please explain to me why the possesion of over-the-counter painkillers is a searchable offense in schools today?

How true. That same double standard of credibility extends into adulthood as well. It has almost become routine in contentious divorces for the woman to automatically claim abuse, verbal or physical, even though the man may be completely innocent. Once accused, it is nearly impossible for any man to prove his innocence, as it’s difficult to prove a negative. Ironically, the worst aspect of such false accusations is that it detracts from the credibility of women who actually are abused, so it would make sense for the penalties to be severe for women who’ve made false charges. The lawyers that encourage such vile behavior should also be punished. The more contentious the divorce is, the more money the lawyers walk away with, and they care little about the lives that may have been ruined.

Sandi, although it is sad in a way, your son may have learned a valuable lesson about people, I hope he had nothing else to do with the girls that trashed his reputation, and I hope the girls learned the damage that can be caused by falsely crying “wolf”.

Meanwhile my husband works for the 2nd largest school dist in the US. I’m not going to state exactly what his job is, but he’s been to most of the schools. He’s thrilled I agreed to stay home & homeschool our son & his co-workers are always asking him “what cool field trip or activilty did the homeschoolers do this week”. We feel very lucky to be out of the insane school system.

Rich

When he was in 8th grade, a girl who was one of his friends, told the assistant principal that my son had touched her breast. Two of the girl’s friends, also friends of my son, said they had witnessed this. It never happened, but there were all those girls saying it did, so my son was interviewed by the police on campus without my knowledge. Ultimately, he had a note placed in his record and was suspended for three days.

When they all got to high school the following year, the girl admitted to my son that she had lied and apologised. She hd been angry because he wouldn’t take her to some school dance. Nice that she finally apologised, but what good did that do my son? Too late to clean it off his record.She suffered no consequence at all for lying in such a terrible way.

So my experience as the mother of boys and girls is that girls are always believed, and boys pay for it.

All teens are somewhat vulnerable, especially when dealing with adults in position of authority, and should at least be allowed to contact their parents before being subject to such a high degree of suspicion and questioning (if the administration viewed this as such a big deal, why not call the parents).