North Bend Washington teen cleared in anti-gay assault
A 16 year old from North Bend Washington, just 30 miles outside of Seattle, has been found not guilty of assault which erupted after anti-gay slurs were made in the high school locker room.
From The Advocate:
An 11th grader at Mount Si High School in North Bend, Wash., was found not guilty on a charge of assault, stemming from a locker-room fight involving antigay slurs last November.
A freshman, 14, said the 16-year-old junior hit him twice as he was attempting to defend a friend who was being bullied, according to the The Seattle Times. The freshman sustained a broken eye socket, two broken teeth, and a concussion. He was absent from school for two months and did not complete the academic year.
The younger student and his family assert that the fight was the boiling point after weeks of bullying that had never been reported to school authorities.Witnesses testified, however, that the freshman had been taunting other students and had used gay slurs as well.
Presiding juvenile court judge Chris Washington determined that the fight was by “mutual agreement” and that the junior was not guilty of second-degree assault. The issue of bullying was not a topic during the trial.
The freshman’s mother denounced the verdict, expressing frustrations with Mount Si administrators for what she considered their lax response to the incident and poor efforts to address bullying on a schoolwide basis.
The defendant’s father, however, thanked the witnesses for their honesty and asserted that his son had never participated in antigay crimes.
