Crescent Middle School Boys Face Felony Charges for Bullying Incident

An Oklahoma mother said a Crescent police officer went above and beyond for her and her son during a bullying incident, and now three middle school boys are facing felony charges.

Tuesday, September 14th 2010, 3:00 pm

By: News 9


By Adrianna Iwasinski and Rusty Surette, NEWS 9

CRESCENT, Oklahoma -- An Oklahoma mother said a Crescent police officer went above and beyond for her and her son during a bullying incident, and now three middle school boys are facing felony charges.

Marcia Jones said she can't thank Crescent Police Chief Kalon Barnett enough for filing a criminal complaint against three middle school students who last month videotaped an incident where they harassed and kicked her 12-year-old autistic son, Jacob. The video that the three posted on YouTube showed them kicking Jacob in the stomach. The video has since been taken down from the website.

"They kicked him. They dropped him to the ground. They had no right to do that, had absolutely no right. None," Jones said. "I want it to stop. I don't want any parent to have to watch their child being kicked, beat, ridiculed, made fun of. No parent should have to go through that."

The Logan County district attorney has filed felony assault charges against the three boys and the Crescent School District has also taken disciplinary actions. Both the Crescent school principal and police chief said this sort of behavior will not be tolerated.

Principal Rick McCombs said he was appalled when he saw the video. He said the school district's teachers already go through harassment training, but since the incident, they have had an assembly at both the middle school and the high school to address the incident.

Barnett said he is continuing to monitor Internet traffic about the incident and said everyone needs to take bullying seriously, especially the boys involved.

"It was brought to my attention that 20 minutes after they left court, there was a post put back on Facebook that this was not very serious. Anybody that's seen the video said that he was brutally attacked. You know, where is the line? Where does it go from horseplay to assault? This is clearly assault," Barnett said.

The school district also plans to have a group called Upward Bound do an anti-bullying presentation in a couple of weeks. The group's campaign called Stand For The Silent was created by a father from Perkins, Oklahoma whose 11-year-old son committed suicide after being repeatedly bullied.

"We'll take every avenue that we can possibly take to get the word across to these students, treat each person as a person and not as somebody that you can take advantage of," McCombs said.

Francie Moss is the group's advisor. She said when the Upward Bound students go to Crescent or any school district, they'll target the students.

"There are new stories coming up every day, and I think what we did is we threw the door open by being so out front that we're against bullying," Moss said. "Because when it's not accepted by the students and tolerated by the students, then that won't be the norm."

As far as the students in the video, McCombs said all three have been suspended.

Jones said she received an apology from one of the parents but said that they also requested for her to contact the D.A. and request a lighter charge. Jones said she will not.

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