Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ravenholme on May 07, 2011, 12:40:06 pm
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A teenage girl who was dropped from her high school's cheerleading squad after refusing to chant the name of a basketball player who had sexually assaulted her must pay compensation of $45,000 (£27,300) after losing a legal challenge against the decision.
The United States Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a review of the case brought by the woman, who is known only as HS. Lower courts had ruled that she was speaking for the school, rather than for herself, when serving on a cheerleading squad – meaning that she had no right to stay silent when coaches told her to applaud.
She was 16 when she said she had been raped at a house party attended by dozens of fellow students from Silsbee High School, in south-east Texas. One of her alleged assailants, a student athlete called Rakheem Bolton, was arrested, with two other young men.
In court, Bolton pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour assault of HS. He received two years of probation, community service, a fine and was required to take anger-management classes. The charge of rape was dropped, leaving him free to return to school and take up his place on the basketball team.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cheerleader-must-compensate-school-that-told-her-to-clap-rapist-2278522.html (There are others)
Accurately sums up my response (http://forum.i3d.net/attachments/battlefield-series-news/943198618d1263840017-no-console-bad-company-2-facepalm_implied.jpg)
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Free money for the school, it would seem.
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I am thoroughly disgusted. May the school board burn in Hell.
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No... she sued the school for dropping her from the team, costing the school some legal expenses. IMO she should have quit the team anyway if that was going to be an issue.
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No... she sued the school for dropping her from the team, costing the school some legal expenses. IMO she should have quit the team anyway if that was going to be an issue.
no
A teenage girl who was dropped from her high school's cheerleading squad after refusing to chant the name of a basketball player who had sexually assaulted her must pay compensation of $45,000 (£27,300) after losing a legal challenge against the decision.
the school won according to the quted report
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Um, yes, she sued the school and lost.
In September last year, a federal appeals court upheld those decisions and announced that HS must also reimburse the school sistrict $45,000, for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit against it.
Sorry if I wasn't clear.
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Wow. To hell with that school board, and the resolution to the original assault is painfully indicative of most Schools in Texas. Can't lose the guys on the sports team, no matter what.
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No... she sued the school for dropping her from the team, costing the school some legal expenses. IMO she should have quit the team anyway if that was going to be an issue.
That may be true, but I still cannot justify a ruling which indirectly upholds characters of lax morals. Now, we cannot be sure of her past involvement with the individual in question, but I feel inclined to lean towards the side of the woman.
Stating that she should have left the organization to begin with isn't improper. But, keep in mind that which makes for a significant element in a young adult's livelihood isn't something the individual in question is liable to just give up on. Given that she was the victim in the prior scenario, without prompting the event, I don't feel that she should have felt that she needed to leave her position, and furthermore can empathize with her ensuing action.
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Words fail me. Unless I'm missing some very important facts, the members of the school board now rank among the worst people in the world.
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A lot of things probably should have happened. My gut says the rapist should have been booted from the team, since they couldn't expel him from the school. Maybe the rape charge should have been pursued further. But, given that he's still on the team and the cheerleaders are cheering, I don't see how she could practically be permitted to cheer for only the other guys, or only at games where he's not present.
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I now have less faith in the US judicial system than I had when I started, which was not a lot. I want to know who the bloody hell was on the jury...
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I now have less faith in the US judicial system than I had when I started, which was not a lot. I want to know who the bloody hell was on the jury...
Texans, probably local parents who wanted the team to continue winning. I'd put money on this kid being their star player, or at least very good.
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Sports are really important guys it's what makes a school good don't you know? Without sports school wouldn't be worth having nobody cares about those book things as long as the teachers keep giving our athletes straight As who cares am I right? Our athletes are gifts from god that get us attention on the state and local news they could never do bad things to other people at all nope. Go team!
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I am thoroughly disgusted. May the school board burn in Hell.
Summarizes my sentiments. EDIT: Although I would never wish for someone to burn in Hell, that sort of describes the feeling I get... I don't know how to explain.
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**** my state.
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**** my state.
Do what I did. Move away. :)
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ahhh hey this is like Carmel's B-Ball team butt raping a another basketball player and they all got off! way to go US justice system. disgusting
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I'm amazed any of the Cheerleaders clapped for this guy.
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OK I'm going to play the advocatus diaboli here and pick some things apart.
We don't have all the pertinent information to the case. Most of you seem to be treating this case like the word of the cheerleader is automatically the correct one. The article posted takes the same view which I consider bad journalism - it clearly paints the athlete as a rapist, no matter the dropped charge.
The rape charge was dropped. Even if the athlete in question pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault (whatever that is in Texas legislation), that doesn't mean automatically that he as guilty of rape. He could have been, but if there was no evidence to convict or even sufficient evidence to prosecute (the charge was dropped), then it shouldn't be assumed that he did it.
However considering the athlete in question did plead guilty to assault on the cheerleader, I don't think upholding her expulsion from the cheerleading team is quite right either, nor is assigning the school's court expenses for her to pay. Clearly there was some credence to the cheerleader's claims, even if the rape charge was dismissed.
Sure, the case stinks of favouritism, but above all it sounds like the letter of the law superceding the spirit of the law.
The worst part of it is of course that the court ordered the girl to pay the court expenses of the school. 45000 dollars, really? Is that what a public legal counsel costs these days, or is it customary in Amurrica that you can hire as expensive a lawyer as you wish, and if you win the case the other side will have to pay their expenses?
That doesn't sound right to me at all - it creates a preferential system to the people who have the money to hire expensive and good lawyers in the first place, leaving those who don't have money to use (probably overworked and stressed) public legal counselors... :nervous:
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OJ anyone?
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EDIT: Nevermind, I get what you're getting at.
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OK I'm going to play the advocatus diaboli here and pick some things apart.
We don't have all the pertinent information to the case. Most of you seem to be treating this case like the word of the cheerleader is automatically the correct one. The article posted takes the same view which I consider bad journalism - it clearly paints the athlete as a rapist, no matter the dropped charge.
The rape charge was dropped. Even if the athlete in question pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault (whatever that is in Texas legislation), that doesn't mean automatically that he as guilty of rape. He could have been, but if there was no evidence to convict or even sufficient evidence to prosecute (the charge was dropped), then it shouldn't be assumed that he did it.
However considering the athlete in question did plead guilty to assault on the cheerleader, I don't think upholding her expulsion from the cheerleading team is quite right either, nor is assigning the school's court expenses for her to pay. Clearly there was some credence to the cheerleader's claims, even if the rape charge was dismissed.
Sure, the case stinks of favouritism, but above all it sounds like the letter of the law superceding the spirit of the law.
The worst part of it is of course that the court ordered the girl to pay the court expenses of the school. 45000 dollars, really? Is that what a public legal counsel costs these days, or is it customary in Amurrica that you can hire as expensive a lawyer as you wish, and if you win the case the other side will have to pay their expenses?
That doesn't sound right to me at all - it creates a preferential system to the people who have the money to hire expensive and good lawyers in the first place, leaving those who don't have money to use (probably overworked and stressed) public legal counselors... :nervous:
thats the way the american legal system works. if you have money to throw at the problem, rest assured that the outcome will be more in favor of you than the other guy. public attorneys do not care if they win or loose, they are merely bureaucrats who are used to make the system look legit, and they get paid regardless of the outcome. id say pass a law where if the legal expenses on both sides are vastly different, then the side with the most money should have to give money to the other side to match their expenses.
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Is that what a public legal counsel costs these days, or is it customary in Amurrica that you can hire as expensive a lawyer as you wish, and if you win the case the other side will have to pay their expenses?
You are severely underestimating the amount of time this case has been at work if it made it as far as the Supreme Court. It's likely required retaining the services of a lawyer or lawyers for months of work. 45k is a reasonable sum; arguably it's actually low.
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While that's a lot of money, I wouldn't call the lawsuit 'frivolous'... I'm curious, does anyone here think that it was? Right or wrong doesn't matter, could the reason for her even bringing the school to court be considered 'frivolous'?
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Well she filed it on First Amendment issues which was a bad choice. They should have filed it on causing emotional distress in which case they might even have won.
Once I read that section it became obvious what the problem is. She can't win on first amendment grounds. If you say that someone can choose to act on first amendment grounds when acting as part of a body you've basically opened the floodgates to all kinds of nonsense.
As I said before though, I am amazed that none of the other cheerleaders supported her.
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Yeah, I think you're right about 1st amendment. It's not a freedom of speech thing. I'm curious, though, as far as all the little unknown details. This could either be someone being a drama queen at the expense of everyone else, or it could be a really heinous incident that actually occured which has been stuffed under the rug for the sake of the best interest of the
collective school.
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As I said before though, I am amazed that none of the other cheerleaders supported her.
/me gets a nagging feeling that not everyone minds being assaulted by a certain popular guy..
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She wasn't refusing to shout for the school team, merely for a single player, so surely if the argument is that she is being a mouthpiece for the whole school, the reply would have been 'Then why was I being asked to shout for a single member of it?'
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And why was that single player even still on the team? This shows something is seriously wrong with the american school system, sports players get away with everything whereas the rest of us are treated as suspected drug dealers if you bring cough drops to school.
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And why was that single player even still on the team? This shows something is seriously wrong with the american school system, sports players get away with everything whereas the rest of us are treated as suspected drug dealers if you bring cough drops to school.
Half the football team at my school got kicked off the team because they went drinking over a week before the first game. Don't make stupidy huge generalizations like this, it makes you like an ignorant ass.
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And why was that single player even still on the team? This shows something is seriously wrong with the american school system, sports players get away with everything whereas the rest of us are treated as suspected drug dealers if you bring cough drops to school.
I've been to a School like this. I've also been to Schools that didn't have sports teams due to minor behavioral issues. While crappy "sports first, everyone else is an evil hippy teen" schools certainly exist and are disgusting, I highly doubt generalizing all schools in America as such is a wise move.
Though, like I said before, a disappointing number of the aforementioned sports first Schools seem to reside in Texas.
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And why was that single player even still on the team? This shows something is seriously wrong with the american school system, sports players get away with everything whereas the rest of us are treated as suspected drug dealers if you bring cough drops to school.
Yeah, that's a bit of an unfair generalization.