Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
Now we can rest safely in our beds
A 12-year-old schoolboy was arrested in Bowmanville last week and held in police custody overnight to await a bail hearing.
What, you might ask, was the crime this alleged young offender committed to warrant a night in a police cell, following, of course, a mandatory search of his person? It appears the boy objected to receiving a Hepatitis B vaccination needle and became so agitated that he “threatened to damage the school” where the Hep B clinic was being held.
The school was the Ross Tilley Public School, which, like all public schools in Clarington, for some reason falls under the jurisdiction of the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board and not the Durham District School Board.
Judy Malfara, a spokesperson for KPRDSB, told me the boy became so upset at the prospect of receiving the needle that he yelled threats. She said those threats were not aimed at any specific individuals, but against the school building. Ms. Malfara said, however, she could not go into details about the threats.
“When threats are made, we have to react immediately,” she said. “We'd rather err on the side of caution.”
That reaction meant calling in the police. Ms. Malfara also told me the Hep B shots are mandatory under public health legislation and children who don't receive them are suspended from school. However, Glendine Collins of the Durham Region Health Department, which administered the needles at the clinic, said the Hep B shot is not mandatory.
“If the child does not consent, he doesn't have to have the shot,” she said.
Ms. Collins went on to say that nurses who staff the clinics try to reassure children who are anxious about receiving needles, and added that parents can take their children to receive their shots at a clinic at the health department headquarters if they choose.
But when asked why nurses staffing the clinic at the school allowed the boy in question to reach such an agitated state that the police were called in, she said she could not speak to that specific case.
“It's a police matter,” she said.
So I called the Durham Region Police, where I was informed by spokesperson David Selby that he wasn't allowed to say what threats were involved. He did say, however, that no weapons were found on the child, nor, indeed, anywhere in the school. Nevertheless, the boy was taken to jail and charged with threatening.
Mr. Selby was quick to point out that the boy wasn't in jail: he was in a holding cell. Somehow, I think that little exercise in semantics might have been lost on a 12-year-old boy.
So what we have here is a 12-year-old boy objecting to a needle, a right which is extended to school children in the rest of Durham Region but not to him because he goes to school in Clarington; staff at a Durham health department clinic who apparently were not only unable to soothe his anxiety, but unable to prevent his anxiety from escalating; a school board which apparently can't recognize the difference between a legitimate threat and an outburst from an anxious schoolboy; and a police department which considers the boy such a threat to society that they have to lock him up and send him for a bail hearing.
Indeed, Mr. Selby is quoted elsewhere as saying: "We just wanted to send a strong message to everyone out there ... that this will not be tolerated in schools."
Nothing like a night in jail for sending a strong message to 12-year-olds!
But the school board, the health department and the police all say they can't talk about the specific incident. That looks like a rather convenient way for them all to avoid accountability.
It seems to me the only one being held accountable is a 12-year-old schoolboy.
Tell me, am I wrong?
