Questions arise over district attorney's decision to charge transgender teen

[DriftingCrow]

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_24888855/questions-arise-over-district-attorneys-decision-charge-transgender
Contra Costa Times; Theresa Harrington

A growing public campaign is putting pressure on the Contra Costa County district attorney to drop battery charges against a transgender teen -- charges that were filed after days of taunting and harassment by classmates erupted into a fight at Hercules High School.

He [the president of the school board] questioned why the District Attorney's Office, which has limited resources, is pursuing a matter that he believes had already been resolved. "People are talking about this," he said. "It doesn't seem to be fair. You're prosecuting a victim here? It seems like this is really a school issue. They took care of it at the school site."

The petition [on change.org] by Valerie Poquiz says Gutierrez was taunted and bullied because of her gender identity.

[Amy The Bookworm]

While I think that the school could do more in the future to prevent incidents like this from happening again, or dealing with them more effectively, I agree that this is a school issue, as the principal says. It's absolutely ridiculous that the DA is prosecuting this girl. This all happened back in November. The school suspended all four kids involved. While I have mixed feelings about that, she did throw the first punch. So I do understand in a way why she was suspended since throwing the first punch kind of ties administrator's hands if I understand how this works (which I may not), but I also am glad to see the school didn't look at this as her being the soul aggressor and suspended everyone else involved too.

After the school looks into what happened and how to avoid it in the future, that should be the end of the story.

This happened so far back they're all back in classes by now. Instead the District Attorney's decided to step in. It's total garbage!

...I'm so angry that I'm jumping from topic to topic in this ... It's just so screwed up.

[Jayne]

I know that times have changed since I was at school over 20yrs ago but this brings back memories of an incident that got me into trouble.
From the age of 12 I experienced daily bullying due to my eczema, every day I would turn up for school half an hour late so I could skip registration & go straight to lessons, this meant one less session of name calling to deal with per day.
I often got beaten up & no matter how much I reported the bullying it either resulted in nothing or made things worse, one day after being called "scabby", "pizza face", "the unclean" etc I snapped back at the bully who was Welsh that he was a no good sheep s*****r, when I left the lesson one of the bullies friends started a fight with me, there were 2 hits, he hit me & I hit the floor.
The deputy head who had never taken any effective action against my bullies gave me 5 detentions for the Welsh slur (he was Welsh himself), I never participated in a single detention & as punishment they doubled the number every time I didn't turn up, by the time I left school I had built up over 200 detentions!

This case just highlights the age old fact that the systems that are supposed to protect the bullied often end up punishing them for being a victim, I had hoped the world had moved on & was now a better place but it would seem that the cycle of the victims being punished for saying enough is enough still hasn't been broken.

This case should be considered closed & dealt with instead of tarnishing this poor persons record & view of the world, if she needs help from the authorities in the future she will quite likely not want to deal with a system that has unfairly punished her & she will be effected for the rest of her life.