It's about time!

Good Day Readers:

A few years ago we had occasion to work with a college professor who was home schooling his teenage son who'd been bullied. Although he'd complained multiple times to administration officials nothing was done so frustrated he pulled the boy out of school.

While the Stephen Harper administration talks at length about getting tough on crime and revamping the Youth Offenders Act, to the best of our knowledge there has yet to be a case in Canada where school officials have been charged with ignoring bullying and failing to provide a safe environment for learning. Maybe it's time.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
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Phoebe Prince’s family retains lawyer
Lawsuit against school would break new ground
By Laura Crimaldi and Marie Szaniszlo
Saturday, April 3, 2010

SOUTH HADLEY - The heart-broken kin of Phoebe Prince are poised to break new legal ground if the lawyer they just hired files a civil suit against school officials accused of failing to crack down on the teen tormenters who drove her to suicide, experts said.

No lawsuit has been filed yet, but Prince’s family has retained Springfield attorney Rebecca Bouchard, who declined to comment.

Any civil action by the family against school officials would be “breaking new ground” and could be difficult to prove, legal experts said yesterday.

“If the school administrators have specific knowledge of harassment and assault and stalking and intimidation and fail or refuse to take steps, then they need to be held accountable,” said attorney Bradley Henry, who represented the family of Scott Krueger, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who died in 1997 after drinking at a frat party.

School officials have not been charged in connection with Prince’s January 14 death. But on Monday, when Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel announced charges against nine students in the case, she called the “actions, or inactions,” of some school staff “troublesome.”

Henry said that comment is significant because prosecutors rarely speak publicly about people who are not facing criminal charges.

“The mere fact that the district attorney’s office was troubled enough by such conduct to comment about it publicly suggests there is strong evidence behind those concerns,” he said. “Where there is smoke, there is fire.”

Lawyers would have to prove a direct connection between Prince’s suicide and the conduct of school officials, Henry said.

“If there’s a clear line of causal events from the harassment to the student’s suicide, and if school administrators were aware of some or all of these events and failed to act, there should be no reason at all that they should not be held accountable for those failures to act,” he said.

Boston attorney Anthony Tarricone, president of the American Association for Justice, said Prince’s family could consider bringing claims of negligence or civil rights violations.

“Parents have a right to expect that their children will be in a safe environment in the schools, public or private,” he said.

Meanwhile, three of the students indicted in connection with Prince’s death - Flannery Mullins, Ashley Longe and Sharon Chanon Velazquez, all 16 - will be arraigned Thursday on violation of civil rights with bodily injury resulting.