We Punish The Victim

There is a column in yesterday’s Hartford Courant by Susan Campbell on racism in the suburbs.

In her column, she wrote…

Talking About Race In Suburbia
February 10, 2010

For the past 2½ years, Taylor Atkins, a 15-year-old African American high school junior in Stafford Springs, has been threatened and harassed. She's been pushed and called racial names. Someone put feces in her mailbox at home. Someone handed her a Confederate flag to sign.

School administrators say when incidents are reported, they investigate and punish culprits. Local troopers say the same, but the hate continues.
…
For a moment, it felt like the veil between races was rent. Superintendent Therese Fishman said the school planned to tutor Taylor Atkins for a while to give everyone a chance to cool off. The board might implement an Anti-Defamation League program, A World of Difference. They've called for help from the University of Connecticut. But Fontanella spoke about the need for reporting of each incident, and when people tried to react, he banged his gavel. Paula Atkins reiterated that she wanted an education for her daughter — and that the board was risking a lawsuit for not helping her daughter feel safe — and then Taylor Atkins fled the room, followed by students who'd come in support. That group was followed by the grown-ups when Fontanella said the board was moving on to talk about the budget, although school Principal Francis T. Kennedy spoke later of efforts that the school is making.

What was the superintendent answer to the harassment? It was to give her home schooling, in effect punishing the victim by isolating her. Home schooling is usually reserved for student who are given suspension.

We see this type of behavior by other school districts, to remove the victim. A trans-women who was a victim of bullying at her school was moved to a school for troubled students. Later the bully was transferred to her school where he began bullying her again. She was then given home tutoring, in effect revictimizing her again, instead of punishing the bully.

This does not only happen in school systems but as I reported in another blog entry, in prisons. A trans-woman was put in solitary confinement just because she was transgender and she was only allowed out of her cell one hour a day. Solitary confinement is usually reserved for hardened criminals who have disciplinary problems. Once again, they punished the victim.