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Attorney General-‘What On Earth Were You Thinking?!’
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Tuesday, April 24, 2018
 

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden took his place behind a podium in Sun Valley this week.

Then, in his mind, he looked 63 miles to the south where a 2015 locker room incident had garnered worldwide attention as he challenged several hundred teachers, prosecuting attorneys and law enforcement officers to stand up for students against bullying.

“Solving the issue of bullying won’t be quick or easy, but it’s time to fulfill our duty to our students and children,” he said. “We must remember: Change starts with us.”

Wasden made his appearance at the Idaho State Prevention and Support Conference, started 25 years ago to teach how to reframe responses to children who act out or have trouble coping because of physical and emotional abuse and neglect.

Wasden noted a 2017 study in which one in four Idaho students reported being bullied on school property.

Then he told how his own son had come home crying after his high school football teammates shoved his head in the toilet when he was 16.

“I got face to face with the coach,” he said, “And I said, ‘I blame you. You created the environment where this took place.’ ”

Wasden’s face reddened as he tensed up, recalling the 2015 incident of Dietrich High School football players who assaulted a black, mentally challenged teammate with a clothes hanger. Three boys were charged.

“They picked on anyone who was vulnerable,” he said. “Some said, ‘Boys will be boys.’ But this was not a case of boys being boys. What happened in that locker room that day was a crime—the latest in a long run of bad locker room behavior.”

Wasden said that the coaches fostered an environment where players got away with calling the boy racial slurs.

“I wanted to take the police report and read it to the coaching staff line by line and say, ‘What on earth where you thinking?! How could you allow that to happen?”

Adults who could have stopped it didn’t, he added. As a result, many teachers, counselors parents, others had their live turned upside down that day.

“We can point a finger at young people and say, ‘You should have known better. But we need to take a closer look at ourselves,” he added.

Wasden noted that he was put on the spot after his friend and fellow Republican Mayor Brent Coles allegedly used taxpayer money to pay for airfare, lodging, meals and car rental for a trip to New York where he acknowledged filing a false reimbursement expense for tickets to a Broadway show.

“Good people can do bad things and, when they do, they should be held accountable,” he said. “I had to file charges against him and send him to jail.”

Sherri Ybarra, Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction, pitched her new Keep Idaho Students Safe (KISS) initiative during the conference.

The measure involves a 45-hour course teaching educators how to address risk behaviors, provides resources for rural schools to hire and train security personnel and creates an Idaho crisis communications counselor to respond to threats and crises.

“The other thing we need to do is put counselors back in our elementary schools to offer training on how to deal with things like bullying,” she said, drawing applause from those in the Limelight Room.

Ybarra recounted the story of a third-grader she once taught who was smart and compliant but always came to school with dirty fingernails and poor hygiene. Two years later, she said, he hung himself in what turned out to be a dungeon-like basement in his home.

She noted that one in four high school students say they have seriously considered suicide.

“The number one question I’m hearing as I travel the state is: What are you doing to keep my child safe?” she added.

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