Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Syndicated columnist Mark Steyn deserves credit for trumpeting the case of two seventh-grade boys in McMinnville, Oregon, charged withcounts of felony sexual abuse. Their "crime"? Swatting fellow students on the butt as a form of greeting.

Dawn is unclear how the matter came to Patton Middle School's vice principle Steve Tillery and McMinnville police officer Marshall Roache's attention, but Steyn reports that the butt-slapping was a routine part of the school's culture, and that the "victims" later recanted, and noted that they, too, engaged in butt-slapping and "felt pressured" to provide the accusations desired by school officials.

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onetheless, District Attorney Bradley Berry vowed to have the two slappers, never in trouble before, registered for life as sex offenders. After a court appearance in shackles and prison garb, the defendants were charged with multiple counts of felony sexual abuse, banned from school, and forbidden any contact with their friends, Steyn writes.

DA Berry, according to Steyn, says he "aggressively" pursues sex crimes because "these cases are devastating to children."

Steyn's response cannot be improved upon: "No, sir. The only one devastating children's lives is you. If you 'win,' and these 'criminals' are convicted, 20, 30 years from now -- applying for a job, volunteering for a community program, heading north for a weekend in Vancouver and watching the Customs guard swipe the driver's license through the computer -- there'll be a blip, something will come up on the screen, and for the umpteenth time two middle-age men will realize they bear a mark that can never be expunged. Because decades ago they patted their pals on the rear in a middle-school corridor.

"A world that requires handcuffs and judges and district attorneys for what took place that Friday in February is not just a failed education system but an entire society that's losing any sense of proportion. Without which, civilized life becomes impossible. So we legalize more and more aspects of life and demand that district attorneys prosecute ever more aggressively what were once routine areas of social interaction.

"A society that looses the state to criminalize schoolroom horseplay is guilty not only of punishing children as grown-ups but of the infantilization of the entire citizenry."

Bra-fucking-vo.

On August 20, Yamhill County Judge John Collins, petitioned by the victims to drop the charges against the two seventh graders, did just that. Dawn wants to know, though: when is District Attorney Bradley Berry going to answer for his own despicable child abuse?