Claims of fondling roil elementary school

An 11-year-old girl from Lafayette Elementary School in Bucks County's Bristol Township School District said her male classmates accosted and fondled her and five other sixth-grade girls repeatedly over several months.

Another girl said she, too, was grabbed as she came out of a restroom. "They would do it for fun; to be cool. I felt like my body was dirty," she said.

A third girl said she was touched on her buttocks, breasts and crotch 25 times over six or seven weeks while on the playground. "I would tell them 'stop' or hit them, but it kept happening," she said.

Most girls kept quiet, some afraid of being called "snitches." The issue surfaced when a mother said she learned that a boy had torn her daughter's sweater while grabbing the girl's breasts.

She complained on Feb. 7 and triggered a district inquiry that led to two boys being placed on a two-day in-school suspension.

Parents say that's not enough, and they want the principal to hold an all-school meeting to address the situation.

Touching, grabbing or pinching in a sexual way is a common problem in schools, especially among middle-school students, and should be addressed through discussions and programs, national experts said.

At Lafayette Elementary, principal James Moore said the suspensions were handed out before more serious allegations about genital touching had surfaced. If they turn out to be true, he said, he will reopen the matter. "I was shocked," he said. "It would never have dawned on me that this is the kind of behavior that these kids that I know" would engage in.

Meanwhile, some of the parents have taken their complaints to Bristol police, who are expected to meet today with one of the girls, her parents and district officials. The girl has been out of school since Feb. 7, when her parents learned of the incidents.

Moore said last week that the matter was still under review. He said the seven or eight boys whom the girls named had admitted to the "slapping of the butt, grabbing of the butt and touching of breasts" that the girls said had taken place.

The parents of several girls who have said they were touched, however, said they wanted Moore to do much more, much faster. "I want to know why there wasn't an emergency assembly of the whole school the next Monday, saying 'this is going on, this is unacceptable,' " Angelique Rivera said.

So far, Moore has sent out a letter only to sixth-grade parents, informing them about "unfortunate incidents" during recess.

"They need to do more to acknowledge that this is a serious issue" by airing the incidents more widely, Rivera said. "I don't want these girls to think that it is OK. . . . This is not behavior they need to tolerate."

Moore said he did not rule out having an all-school discussion, but not while matters still were unfolding. "I'm not comfortable standing up in front of a bunch of parents if I don't know the whole story," he said.

At least three parents of girls who said they were touched said they had filed complaints with Bristol Township Police after Moore declined to do so.

Monique Modeste, one of the parents, said she did not want the boys "in handcuffs, but they need to be helped" through evaluation and court-ordered counseling.

Township Juvenile Officer Tiffany D'Emidio did not return phone calls asking for comment.

The Bristol Township district serves a working-class area in southeastern Bucks County. About 6,350 students attend nine elementary schools, three middle schools, and a high school.

Meanwhile, sixth-grade boys and girls have been separated at recess and lunch and all the boys and girls in the grade have been interviewed by Moore or by the school counselor.

The district has not identified any of the students. The Inquirer is withholding students' names because of the nature of the alleged incidents. A call left for the parents of one of the boys allegedly involved was not returned; another boy declined comment. The others could not be contacted.

Inappropriate touching among preteens and teenagers occurs often, according to a 2001 national survey by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation of eighth- to 11th-grade students. In the survey, 57 percent of girls and 42 percent of boys reported being the victims on at least one occasion of "touching, grabbing or pinching in a sexual way." Of those reporting sexual harassment, 35 percent said it first happened in sixth grade or earlier.

Katherine Cowan, a spokeswoman for the National Association of School Psychologists, said: "It's a very common problem - at this age level, normal developmental activity often gets tipped over into predatory activity. . . . With television and all the exposure they get, kids often don't know what the boundaries are."

The parents of several of the girls said that the problem should have been addressed months ago. Diana Candy said she had complained about two boys inappropriately touching her daughter last October. Moore said he remembered being told that one boy was "rubbing up against the girls" and said he told the boy to "knock it off . . . he got a recess-detention kind of an infraction. I didn't hear anything after that." Candy said the boy stopped the behavior for a while, but he started again in early December.

In the meantime, she said, her daughter was called a "snitch" by one of the boys.

Several girls said that teachers recently saw boys slapping girls' buttocks and pulled the boys aside to talk to them, but the behavior continued. Moore said he had no reports that teachers had seen any incidents.

Ted Feinberg, the assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists, said that "parents are important allies in combating this behavior. Involvement with police isn't necessarily storming in and yanking these kids out of their seats - it could be an opportunity to sit down and say 'what can we do to educate our children about appropriate behavior and to address the media that are giving these children the idea that this is acceptable behavior.' "

Anti-bullying programs, Feinberg said, also are an important tool. Lafayette school has none but is working on getting one, Moore said.

Feinberg added: "It's a question of setting the tone administratively and making sure teachers don't look the other way - and, most importantly, letting children know that what they see on TV is not acceptable behavior."