The 20 April 1999 Columbine High School at Littleton, Colorado USA resulted
in the deaths of some 13 teachers and students. The question I ask is could
it happen here?

I was chatting to my twin sister last night and she mentioned a Friday
afternoon 21 May, 2004 assault with a weapon (to-wit a baseball bat)
occasioning actual harm, that was precipitated dayes earlier by an offensive
behaviour as sexual assault made by a senior male student against a Year 11
student.

The assualt which occurred at a central Gippsland Catholic College resulted
in the Senior Student receiving a strike to the back of the head and a
broken arm, and the victim of the sexual assault sustaining a broken nose.

My sister actually forbade me making any public comment, as the ground swell
of public opinion by concerned parents is already such that, not only is it
general knowledge about the rural community as gossip in the Supermarket,
but they will ensure something is done about it.

However I am concerned for the following reasons:

1) The Catholic scholastic and ecclesiastical authorities have engaged in
unreasoned propaganda, extolling the virtue of a suspected perpetrator of
recently discovered serial child sexual abuses at a Catholic educational
facility some 20km away. This propaganda ignores the suspect's renowned
adverse reputation amongst past students for a propensity to engage in harsh
and overbearing conduct and the undertaking of brutalising and
sadomasochistic punishment.

2) The Gippsland Catholic College were the Friday assault occurred held a
public assemby in order to deal with the matter, thereby infringing the
privacy right of the individual originally subject to the offensive
behaviour as sexual assault--The school hierarchy holds the irrational view
that the two individuals will be, as a consequence of the action already
undertaken by the school, best of friends by week's end.

3) The perpetrator of the sexual assault has a long history of
anti-social and violent behavioural problems including attempted drownings
of other students, which because it involves a name of some reputation
amongst the local Catholic community as some familital members are clergy
and nuns, will undoubtedly have result in a lack of balanced and fair
judgment occurring in the circumstnace.

4) As the matter involves premeditated offensive behaviours as sexual
assault and assault with a weapon accasioning actual bodily harm, does the
Catholic School Education System have protocols in place to adequately deal
with the social phenomenon of aggressive and anti-social Roman Catholics
males. And whether such protocol ought to involve reporting the matter to
the police. If the crime is of such a magnitude that if it occurred within
the public sphere, the police would normally be involved, whether in the
circumstance the College's Principle is simple an accessory after the crime
and ought to be dealt with according to law, as though they themselves
committed the crime.

5) And whether, give the history of anti-social and violent behavioural
problems a child over the age of 16 years may be finger-printed and a DNA
sample taken as a means assisting future investigations which the police
will undoubtedly have to undertake in the individual's lifetime.

I appreciate some discussion on this subject.

- dolf
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