Boy breaks grandmother's arm by accident

[Nimbostratus100]

I am not going to say what happened next and what I think until I have heard a few objective opinions on here

The facts of the case

12 year old boy in sports club, leaving the main entrance on his skateboard, which he has been told is not allowed in the building, knocks over the grandmother coming to collect another child. The grandmother has a broken arm and needed an operation

This is a fairly elite sports club, you need to be able to play to a certain standard to by allowed to join. This boy has played there for a year. No serious trouble, several minor reprimands. Reasonably good player. Turns up for the team probably 80-90% of the time.

This happened last weekend. The sports club is meeting tomorrow. The parents have just heard that this boy has/has not been expelled and will/will not be there.

What do you think should happen? why?

I am allocating the voting by a toss of a coin to be random!

YABU - the boy should be expelled
YANBU - the boy should not be expelled

also, what else should happen, as well as/ instead of being expelled?

Thank you

Public liability Insurance isn’t compulsory in the UK as far as I know, but even if they did, it wouldn’t pay out if the club has discharged it’s duty properly. Which it has.

I'm very happy for others to disagree, it's quite good fun watching the knots they tie themselves up in in order to do so h, especially en they have made up the facts to support their non-argument.

What flippant attitude to the injured party? Again, if you look at my posts you will see that that is simply untrue. Pointing out that she would not be helped by wasting time on fruitless legal claims is the reverse of flippant.

The number of parents who think they know how to run a sports club is amazing and they are always the ones who contribute the least.
There will be a code of conduct that the club will work with and sanction the boy appropriately.
It's all very easy for all other parents who probably enjoying the spectating here but they won't be egging this on if it was their child in the dock so to speak.
12 yr old boys can be pretty stupid at times and don't join the dots together when they are requested reasonably to do or not do something - I have one myself and see this amongst his peers too. Hopefully they not here now realises the impact of his behaviour and the seriousness of the consequences

I would do things differently to you. I would get professional advice. The one or two appointments would be worth it. Imagine finding out later that you didn’t have to have suffered financially. Getting legal advice is always the best action.

@Patineur

Can’t see anyone tying themselves up in knots although some posters seem a little to emotionally invested, maybe that’s what you mean.

I hazard a guess you’re pointing that out to be argumentative - as you say this is fun for you.
It’s somewhat related to your tone I’m referring to, you may be unaware of you how you come across.

I was speaking generally, but there are quite a few posts advocating for the fact that he’s 12 and doesn’t yet fully understand that actions have consequences. And several advocating that he just write a letter of apology. Not really punishment in my view. Maybe I should have said ‘people willing to blame something else’ rather than someone else. Is that better for you ? I have no prejudices and I’m not making up facts.

I would suggest that if you found a lawyer willing to take it on, you’d soo find yourself on the losing side and in receipt of the bill for your own, and the defending party’s legal costs. There have been some posts to the effect that there is no case to answer from posters who very obviously have legal experience. And yet you still persist.

As I have said getting legal advice is always worthwhile. You are confusing action and advice. You get advice first and this is always worthwhile. Action is what you decide to take based on the advice. You think that the injured lady should say ok I won’t get any legal advice and therefore I’ll deal with the consequences of the injury …which could be not being able to work, medical intervention etc on but I say that she should get legal advice on the financial aspect. It’s what I would do.

I think Blufelt actually does know the law. Whereas your statement that the boy is 12 so he’s liable proves that you don’t. At 12 he is at the age of criminal responsibility, but he’s not liable to pay compensation until the age of 18. And there has been no crime here so what exactly do you think he’s liable for ? He can be sued, but to have any hope of winning there would have to be pretty cast iron evidence that there was intent to injure. He was careless yes, disobedient, yes, but he didn’t set out to injure that lady. And who pays compensation if the boy has no money - even if it was deferred until he is 18 there’s still no guarantee of recompense. It’s a hiding to nothing.

The quality of his playing is irrelevant if he can’t be trusted to follow safeguarding instructions. I agree with others that whatever the previous reprimands were for (even if they weren’t that serious) have clearly given the club cause for concern. Expulsion sounds reasonable to me. A broken arm for an elderly person is serious.

I agree that we need more information to put this one to bed.

For example - how many times has this old lady fallen before? Does she have osteoporosis? Was she warned she needs to take better care of herself? Perhaps she's a habitual rule-breaker in other aspects of her life too? Does she have any parking tickets - that would prove she's careless and dishonest, right? How can we even trust her version of events? I expect she's probably lining up for a fraudulent claim that'll waste a tonne of time in the courts, and it just pushes up the insurance premiums for the rest of us. There should be consequences - she should be stripped of all insurances, denied NHS care and left out in the cold for at least three weeks. Perhaps she should do some free childcare for the poor boy's family so they can come and watch their son play for a change.

(For the hard of thinking ... that was irony. She deserves great sympathy for an unlucky situation the befell her. But there's no difference between the above, and what many posters seem to think is acceptable in regard of the child)

Show me a 12 year old that hasn't had a single reprimand. ALL kids get reprimands at times. Getting an occasional, for example, yellow card in football doesn't mean there is cause for concern.

Wow this got heated 😅

I'm finding it interesting that some people are saying he shouldn't be as severely punished because he's an elite sportsperson and the punishment would adversely affect his sporting career going forward. It reminds me of the Brock Turner case. Before anyone comes for me I KNOW that a rape case is vastly different from an accident on a skateboard. I just find it interesting on the specific point of whether a punishment should change based on how it will affect the perpetrator's promising future.

Thanks for the update OP, I'm glad that things seem to be going as smoothly as they can for you. It's hard work running a sports club.

It's hilarious how many people think this was a simple accident.

An accident that wouldn't have happened if this kids wasn't skating indoors, something that he'd been explicitly warned against doing.

Would it be an accident if you knocked someone over while driving a quad bike through Tescos?

Breaking an arm can be life-changing. I broke my dominant arm in my mid-50s (so at least 10 years younger than the victim here). I had to have two surgeries under general anaesthetic both of which had 4 week recovery times. For the first surgery I was only able to take less than a week sick leave because my job was pretty high level and there was no easy replacement for me. I had 18 months of pretty chronic pain and eventually was signed of for 2 weeks for stress. I had weekly physio and Occupational health appointments and had limited use of my dominant had for almost 2 years. I couldn’t drive, dress myself easily, do many normal things eg cook, cut up vegetables etc for several months.

I was lucky - my employer paid me my full salary throughout. But it took ages before I felt safe just walking around. And I’m an extremely active person and not normally fearful of falling.

I don’t think he should be expelled mainly because playing sport is good both physically and mentally. As he is approaching his teenage years I think playing sport is even more important.
However, if he were my son he would not be allowed to take his skateboard to the club, he would walk.
I would take him to the victim to apologise with flowers and chocolate/fruit.
Whilst there I would ensure some penance was agreed such as lawn mowing, shopping, sweeping the yard etc but fully understand he might not be welcome. I would do my best to ensure the help was accepted because he needs to see the bigger picture beyond the shock and pain of the accident which was likely pretty traumatic but not the whole effect.
He is young and was stupid and disobedient but expelling him is not in anyone’s best interests.

Yes totally agree @MaryMcCarthy

I think people are thinking that because he didn’t deliberately skate into the other person (well, we hope that’s not the case!) then it was an accident in that “it couldn’t be helped.”

Of course that’s obviously false. If he hadn’t disobeyed what he’d been told or had applied some common sense, the woman would not have been seriously injured.

True - but we don’t know that’s what it was - and his behaviour was really careless. That rule was there to prevent accidents. And a 12 year old should be able to understand that.

According to Age Concern, 100,000 elderly people are admitted to hospital with broken bones each year. It is fairly common. On this occasion, the chain of events that led to this accident had, as one link in that chain, a 12 year old child and a skateboard. The other 99,999 hospital admissions will have had other causal factors. Nobody is disputing that each and every instance, including this one, where a person is hurt, is deeply sad and upsetting for everyone involved.

But for some reason, some of the other parents at this club organised a boycott of the next match and attempted to publicly humiliate and ostracise that child, because they couldn't or wouldn't accept the sanctions that the club's internal disciplinary proceedings had decided upon. The OPs thread is about a group of adults ganging up on a child. Everyone chipping in with 'but a broken arm really hurts' is completely missing the point. If those adults had set up a gofundme for the old lady, or had organised a rota for the team's players to help her while she recuperates - that would have been an example of society working well. But that isn't what the OP described. What was painted was a very clear picture of parents harassing a child who didn't come from the "right" background to play at an elite club with their children. The issue is about adults bullying a child. For those who feel justified in supporting that approach - I can't even begin to fathom what your values are or what kind of society you want to live in.

This is exactly it.

I cannot understand the parents attitude to this 12 year old kid. They must already feel terrible and now this behaviour from adults at the club piled on them too.

So you think it's okay that the kid completely ignored the safety rules, completely disregarded what he'd been instructed to do, and did whatever he wanted? You think that sort of behaviour should be encouraged, particularly if it results in serious injury to innocent parties?

A boycott is not harassment of a child, give over. The parents are entitled to take their children elsewhere if they disagree with the club on anything. I run a sports club and I've had several parents pull their kids out after realising certain things about our content that they didn't agree with. That is their right.

There seems to be a lot of people who think that disagreeing with expulsion means no sanctions at all. I am pretty sure no one is suggesting that. I haven't seen anyone suggesting that nothing is done. Just that expulsion and bullying by other parents isn't appropriate.

If in the same token, just as boycotting isn’t harassment, how exactly then is disagreeing with a punishment bullying?

I very much doubt any of these parents engaged directly with this child. That would be an entirely different matter.

It isn't! I agree, if the parents had cornered him and shouted at him in the corridors, then that's different.