Two female students at Chopticon High School in Morganza, Md., in mostly rural St Mary’s County, have been accused of repeatedly abusing an autistic boy, who is also a student at the school, the Washington Post reports.
Lauren A Bush (St Mary’s Co. Sheriff)
Police said the two girls, who are 17 and 15 years old, assaulted the boy repeatedly between December and February and used their cellphones to record the attacks. Only Lauren A Bush, 17, of Mechanicsville, is being charged as an adult in this case; she faces charges of first- and second-degree assault.
In an interview with the Post, the 16-year-old boy’s mother said he was “not a good judge of people. … I keep trying to talk to him about it, but it’s hard to get much out of him. I’ll say, ‘This is what so-and-so told me, and I know this happened,’ but he’ll act like, ‘Oh, [the girls] were just playing around.’ He didn’t deny anything. I am trying to make him understand that people are talking about this all over TV, but he wanted to go to school today.”
The paper reported, in fact, that the boy had characterized much of the abusive behavior as playful and even considered the girls his friends, perhaps even one of them his girlfriend. Most other reports don’t mention this, though, developing sensationalist stories on such Internet sites as “Moral Low Ground,” here.
Other reports say the girls stabbed him, kicked him in the groin, forced him to perform sexual acts with an animal, and made him walk across a frozen pond. At this point, it’s not easy to tell fact from sensationalism in the reporting, but it is clear some bad stuff went down in Morganza.
Police have reviewed the cellphone videos, and the girls have also admitted bullying the boy, including dragging him around by his hair and failing to help him up after he had fallen on the frozen pond. “His vulnerabilities made this crime more heinous,” Sheriff Tim Cameron was quoted as saying Wednesday after the suspects’ arrest in Southern Maryland News.
Lauren A Bush, 17, pleaded guilty today in St Mary’s County juvenile court to misdemeanor charges (second-degree assault and distribution of an obscene video) in connection with this incident. She will be sentenced next week, and the most she could get is four years at a secure juvenile detention center in Maryland or out of state. Note that her name was released because she was originally charged as an adult.
Full report in the Washington Post.
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