Roughhouse to Jail House

If y'all have been following along, I first wrote about this case of bullying HERE and now we have an update.

Four teenage boys in Tampa, Florida, were charged with four counts each of sexual battery after allegedly raping a 13-year-old classmate with a broomstick. The four boys are: Randall John Moye, 14; Raymond A. Price-Murray, 14; Lee Louis Myers, 14; and Diamante J. Roberts, 15. Their names were released because they are being tried as adults. If convicted on all four counts each boy could receive up to 120 years in jail.

Prosecutors allege the four boys raped the 13-year-old boy multiple times over a two month period with both a broomstick and hockey stick. They say two defendants held the other boy down while the other two defendants sodomized him with the sticks. The boy's screams could be heard outside the boys' locker room at Walker Middle School where the alleged assaults took place.

It was only after a separate, unrelated incident, a fight, that broke out on the football field and continued into the locker room, when a coach heard the young victim say, "I'm tired of them getting on me," that the school started an investigation. School officials questioned the defendants, and all four admitted in a written statement that they had sexually assaulted the victim.

Now, they're being charged as adults because of the brutality of the crime.

In court defense attorneys told the judge that their clients were good students and had never been in trouble before. Attorney Tim Taylor, representing Randall Moye, said his client's family is among the finest in the community.

First off, "good students" don't rape fellow students, no matter how fine their family.

Taylor then presented six character witnesses, including his client's mother, Jeanne Myers, who said her son described clowning around in the locker room with a hockey stick. She added that he told her about holding down the victim for a few seconds.

Clowning around with a hockey stick? Holding a boy down for a few seconds? When will parents get it that their children are out of control and the more that you protect them, and make excuses for them , the more trouble they'll find. I imagine that if a further investigation took place, we might learn that these four rapists have been on a terror streak for quite some time. if you have an inclination to bully, if something in your psyche is so warped that you want to bully another child, you tend to start small, with name calling or shoving. You don't start with sodomizing a young boy with a broomstick.