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

Don't know what the Quadbike has to do with it.

But if it had happened in Tesco skateboard and exactly the same circumstances. They'd be no argument of him being banned from Tesco. They'd laugh at the suggestion.

Banning him from his sport is disproportionate. And nothing to do with him being exceptionally good at it doesn't influence my thoughts

@Mark19735 just because she is a granny doesn't mean she is frail. She could just have landed awkwardly.

It could just as easily have been himself, a dad in his 30, an other child or actually nothing could have happened he could have avoided the people or nobody been in his way.

The bottom line us his crime was skateboarding where he shouldn't have been, regardless of the outcome.

Skateboarding is not a crime.

No, but we're not talking about criminality. Expulsion from a sports club isn't a criminal sanction.

I agree, @takealettermsjones - it's not a criminal sanction. But in the context of the scenario, the parents protesting the club's decision not to expel by boycotting matches and ostracizing the individual concerned, for reasons influenced at least in part by prejudice about that individual's background, could be construed as harassment. Of a child. By a group of adults. Which might actually constitute criminal behaviour, if it persists. Am I right? (From your first post, you seem to know quite a lot about these things, so that's a genuine question, not sarcasm!)

I checked the articles of a club I am a member of this weekend. Apparently, they can instigate disciplinary proceedings with censure escalating all the way up to expulsion from the club if, amongst other things, tennis skirts are not of regulation length or colour. Mentions nothing about shorts. LOL.

If the club in the scenario had similarly draconian rules, then of course they could expel if that's what they have said they would do for any other member caught doing the same thing. But I strongly suspect that a) they didn't publish rules that explicitly prohibit skateboarding indoors (although they may now amend that, I would imagine) and b) they wouldn't even dream of expelling any of their posh members' kids for breaking a similar level rule, such as running in the corridor or using mobile devices whilst walking - behaviours that could conceivably result in similar or worse injuries if one were extremely unlucky.

Take the word skateboard out of the scenario and replace it with something less 'urban', and this thread would have a completely different tone. If the kid had been wheeling their cello case, which they had previously been told to leave in the car, down the corridor and had rounded a corner, knocked over the lady, and caused her to fall and break her arm, would that also be an expulsion-level event? I'd be extremely surprised if anyone would argue that it should be. The blue rinse brigade's hand-wringing is all about the rough kid being at an elite club, and the skateboard is the red flag trigger for that reaction. And still, 700 posts in, hardly anyone seems to give a shit about the lady. Very sad.

Its not people don't give a shit about the lady broken arm, just a bruise, his actions were the same.

It doesn't sound like he's got of scott free Op has said he was without his skateboard, so make up your mind has he been told not to bring it back or has it been confiscated?

The boy is probably feeling awful, the gran doesn't appear to support a boycott to get him banned so why should anyone else support a boycott?

You really can't have it both ways - in one post claiming that I'm upset that people disagree with me, the next suggesting that somehow my tone indicates that I'm being argumentative for the fun of it. As I said, it's quite funny seeing the lengths some people will go to to justify weak arguments, including unsustainable logic leaps and making up facts. I think we are all entitled to point those out as part of a normal discussion.

Harassment can be a criminal offence but I don't believe this is harassment. The perpetrator would need to intend to cause distress/alarm to the victim - there's no evidence the parents are doing this. They walked out of the room without speaking to the child, etc. It seems to me that their intent is to show their displeasure at the club's decision.

We don't know that they're acting out of prejudice about the boy's background (we actually don't know anything about his background besides that his family members are 'troublemakers' and his parents don't attend to support him). There is no protected characteristic. The parents aren't in a position of power over the child.

I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to show that an omission of an act is harassment (outside of the workplace/education settings etc) - i.e. not doing something rather than doing something - not least because the usual reparation for harassment would be an injunction, normally stipulating that the harasser stops contacting the victim. In this case that would just be a continuation of what they're currently doing, right?

The parents aren't obligated to continue to send their children to play the sport just to avoid this child feeling left out/abandoned etc. If, for example, one child in a neighbourhood was known for setting fire to things, so the other parents stopped inviting the child to neighbourhood-wide playdates etc, the parents are not harassing the child. They have no legal duty to let the child play with their children.

Of course, if they were to start making comments, sending WhatsApp messages, broadcasting his personal information publicly etc, then things would be different. I just don't believe that they are harassing him (or indeed doing anything wrong, really) by choosing to remove their children if they feel it's best.

Incidentally, this is why I asked the OP what the previous reprimands were for. If it's anything that caused or could have caused harm to other children in the club, then I can understand the parents' views a bit more. But again, we don't know.

I also asked about the behaviour policy because I agree, to a point it's completely up to the club to be as strict or as lenient as they like. Of course they won't have a rule about skateboarding, but my club has a rule about disobeying direct instructions from an instructor without reasonable excuse (I forget the exact wording off the top of my head), so if this one has something similar, the skateboarding could fall under that.

On a quick search for the word "letter" on this thread, I make it that around 13 people have advocated the letter of apology. All of them suggest it as part of a wider punishment, though admittedly one suggests the only other contribution should be flowers and chocolates which I'd fully accept is way too lenient. Still, one out of however many hundred it is on this thread doesn't seem too dreadful, particularly compared with the numbers who want the boy expelled for ever.

The fact that so many people fully accept he deserves to be punished doesn't suggest that there is too much by way of deflection of blame going on. The relevance of the boy's background is that it seems a real pity to push him out of a sport he enjoys and which will undoubtedly help to teach him self-discipline when his family doesn't seem to support and encourage his interests. That's exactly how boys of this age end up in criminal activity and gangs.

@Patineur

I will translate - you’re frustrated and were at one point clearly agitated that you can’t convince certain posters to agree with you, but you seem to like to try by being argumentative and contrary, you deemed that part ‘fun’.
They are not mutually exclusive.

Thank you @takealettermsjones - that's a really clear response, and persuasive too.

I expect that in the real world, both the club officials and the parents are far more reasonable and measured than many of the armchair commentators in the virtual space - probably because they have to look each other in the eye and because anything done in real life has real world repercussions.

He's been shown to have disregard ed an instruction related to safety on the club premises on one occasion in over a year. Clearly the club which knows him best doesn't think that he is so dangerous that he can't be allowed back on the premises. Why do you think you know better?

Not comparable, because assuming that Tescos is open and busy you would know that you cannot do that without injuring people and causing substantial damage. Riding a skateboard in a club is risky and stupid behaviour, but neither injury nor damage are inevitable consequences.

Even if he was told as recently as the day before not to use his skateboard in the lobby, an accident is an accident.
That being said, he should probably fund an apology card and a decent bunch of flowers for the grandma from his own money.

It's a matter of simple language definition. No-one, I assume, thinks this boy got onto his skateboard with the specific intention of knocking someone over and injuring them. If he had then yes, it would be deliberate. Since he didn't, it was an accident. If the council fails to maintain our local pavements so that I go out and trip over a pothole in the dark, it's clearly something that could be "helped" or avoided by the council doing their jobs properly but it doesn't mean that the council deliberately injured me.

None of that minimises the seriousness of what this this boy did. The term "accident" covers a range from total inadvertence to outright gross negligence and arguably recklessness, and this is clearly at the serious end of that range.

This is yet another example of the weird logic of those disagreeing with OP. There is precisely nothing in @Mark19735's post that says he thinks any of that is OK, let alone that it should be encouraged. Indeed, he refers to the sanction that the club has imposed with no suggestion that there was anything wrong with that. Yet somehow you derive all these conclusions from his post. Would you care to try to identify exactly which parts of his post demonstrate what you claim?

A boycott specifically aimed at pressurising the club into expelling a child is obviously harassment of a child. Give over.

I'm not remotely frustrated or agitated. I guess I do get a bit cross about people who make up relevant facts or use twisted logic, because there's an element of dishonesty there, but that's as far as it goes. Setting out the correct facts and pointing out logic fails isn't being contrary.

@Patineur

You come across as such I’m afraid, but yes, that sentiment I can agree with you on. I would argue though, that attributing a quality of dishonesty just because someone doesn’t agree with you, as this is a subjective matter whether you want to realise that or not, is a bit of a reach.

We don’t actually have all the facts.

When I talk about facts being misrepresented, I'm referring to facts we do know, e.g. what people have said on this thread. For example, your inaccurate summary of a response of mine as "boys will be boys" and conclusion that I thought this one should be excused from the consequences of his actions - which is completely incorrect.

So your child is running in the corridor at school, bangs into a teacher and she breaks her arm.

despite having been told the day before not to.

you think he should be expelled from school?

@Fuckthatguy , all Patinuer has done is point out that when you said that Patinuer was ‘excusing the consequence’ on the basis that ‘boys will be boys’, you were misrepresenting their views.

Everyone, Patinuer included, has consistently agreed that there should be a punishment but the majority (again, Patinuer included) think that expulsion would be too extreme. Thinking that some punishment lesser than expulsion is appropriate is not ‘excusing the consequences’.

You’ve put (false) words in someone’s mouth, as Patinuer has explained but, instead of acknowledging that, you’re accusing others of being argumentative and generally lashing out.

@Patineur again, I am merely stating what you said had an implication, you didn’t like that.

@NoBoatsOnSunday that’s not all that patineur has said. Don’t create some new narrative for the sake of it, it’s as tiresome as this thread has become.

I’m not creating a new narrative.

You wrongly characterized Patinuer as ‘excusing the consequence’ on the basis that ‘boys will be boys’, which they had not done.

When Patinuer pointed out that you had completely mischaracterized their position you decided not to acknowledge that and instead moved onto to accusing Patinuer of being ‘rabid’ and ‘not liking the fact that other disagree’.

It’s all gone rather off the rails since.

As you have already demonstrated, you have no idea what I ike and don't like. I pointed out the fact that you were misrepresenting the truth. Deal with it.