Posts Tagged ‘schools’

Reluctant to recant rape accusation

Brian Banks served more than five years in prison after an old friend “falsely accused him of attacking her on their high school campus”:

In a strange turn of events, the woman, Wanetta Gibson, friended him on Facebook when he got out of prison.

In an initial meeting with him, she said she had lied; there had been no kidnap and no rape and she offered to help him clear his record, court records state.

But she refused to repeat the story to prosecutors because she feared she would have to return a $1.5 million payment from a civil suit brought by her mother against Long Beach schools….

It was uncertain Thursday whether Gibson will have to return the money.

[AP via Balko, Volokh; & welcome Reddit readers] Update 2014: School district obtains default judgment against Gibson; contrary to reports at the time, the amount paid in the original settlement is now reported at $750,000 rather than $1.5 million.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, high-profile Brooklyn sex crimes prosecutor Lauren Hersh has resigned following a furor over a sex trafficking case in which “prosecutors had held on to documents showing the victim recanted rape allegations one day after making them.” [NY Post, more] P.S. Daniel Fisher reminds us of Hersh’s “starring role in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s expose of Backpage, the Village Voice’s online personals section.”

Education roundup

Lawyer-dad: so what if my son cheated?

“The parents of a Peninsula high school sophomore are suing the school district for kicking the teenager out of an honors class because he cheated.” Jack Berghouse and his wife do not dispute that their son committed plagiarism, but their lawsuit claims “the school’s policies regarding punishment for cheating are vague and contradictory and shouldn’t be enforced.” [KCBS, KGO, San Jose Mercury News]

Labor and employment roundup

Sacramento’s Bad Humor Man

Assemblyman William Monning (D-Carmel) wants to ban food trucks from parking anywhere near where schoolkids might be; under legislation he has proposed, they would need to keep even farther away from schools than medical marijuana dispensaries. Since schools dot the urban scene, a side effect would be to seriously curtail adult access to the trucks, which serve a large population of working adults and have lately found new popularity among foodies. [L.A. Times via Heather Mac Donald, Secular Right, earlier]

C.S. Lewis and the food police

“It may be better to live under robber barons,” wrote the British author, “than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” [Barton Hinkle, Richmond Times-Dispatch] The federal government is preparing new rules restricting snack foods available through local schools, “which could include banning the candy sold for school fund-raisers,” notwithstanding a recent study finding no link between vending machine availability and child obesity [New York Times] And a blog supporter of bans on birthday cupcakes and soda machines in schools responds to her critics [Bettina Elias Siegel, “The Lunch Tray” and more]

P.S. And thanks to Pete Warden in comments for the relevant George Orwell quote.