September 7, 2019

This week one of my coworkers got a frantic phonemail from her 12-year old son. He and some of his friends had gotten kicked off the school bus for throwing water at each other. I heard her tell him to go immediately to the other bus stop at the top of the hill, and not to walk through the neighborhood, as he had his uniform on.

The neighborhood is predominantly Protestant, and he attends a Catholic school, which his uniform indicates.

As she and I went to pick up a family, she drove past the bus stop she had told him to wait at, and there he was, with two of his friends. She called out and asked if he wanted a ride, and all three boys ran across the street, nearly getting hit by a car, so eager were they to get in to the van. We dropped them off with her strict instructions to walk through an alley, and go straight home, which all three apparently did.

The next day she read out to us from the local news; two other boys who had been kicked off the bus and were dropped at the wrong stop, had got beaten up. Both were hospitalized, one with a smashed jaw. To add to this nightmare, a man recorded the beatings, and posted his video on social media. He can be heard condoning the beatings, and calling the victims “bastards”.

These are children.