Pencil Twirling leads to near loss of Parental Rights

[Spekio]

Source

A simple pencil-twirling incident landed Ethan Chaplin in hot water with his school, which threatened to suspend him after a classmate claimed he was spinning the writing utensil like a gun.

After media attention from PIX11 and around the world, school officials backed off — but child protection agencies did not.

Letters to Ethan’s father, Michael, show the school found his son did nothing wrong at all, and that there would be no disciplinary action. The superintendent was even confident the issue would be behind all of them.
Teen claims he was suspended from NJ school for twirling a pencil

Ethan’s father says his son was just twirling the pencil, not pointing it like a gun.

And that’s exactly what happened, until Ethan’s father received startling communication from New Jersey’s Department of Child Protection and Permanency and Department of Children and Families.

“I received a letter from them saying they had found an incident of abuse or neglect regarding Ethan because I refused to take him for psychological evaluation,” Michael said.

In an effort to play along and clear his name, Michael agreed to take his son for an evaluation.

READ RELATED: Father claims son was removed from NJ school for twirling a pencil

Ethan was seen by a social worker, and had his blood drawn and urine taken. In the end, no behavioral problem was found.

The state, it seems, is ignoring that set of testing, demanding further evaluation and threatening that if Michael doesn’t comply, they are will terminate his parental rights and free Ethan up for adoption.

“All I can do is keep fighting, keep telling the truth and (keep) presenting the evidence. That is all I can do and hopefully the state does the right thing,” Michael said.

He has even reached out to Governor Chris Christie’s office, who replied they would contact the Dept. of Children and Families to investigate.

“…I’m scared because they have a habit of running away with things unchecked and that’s exactly what’s going on,” Michael said.

PIX11 tried to get a comment from DCPP and NJ Department of Children and Families but received no answers.

The agency told PIX11 they can’t discuss the allegations or even acknowledge they have involvement with the family.

This popped up in front page of reddit.

[Mr Bean]

Yes so many great lessons can be taken from this story.

Lesson 1
Anything can be a gun, and if you pretend it's a gun it will be treated as a gun

Lesson 2
If anything happens in school before they have even investigated the incident they will pass it along to child services.

Lesson 3
If you cooperate with Child services they will punish you anyway

This is very much a great object lesson moment where fuck up on fuck up piles on until we have a full what the fuck mountain by the end of the story.

[TheFeniX]

Ethan was seen by a social worker, and had his blood drawn and urine taken.

Oh yea, nothing like inflicting pain and shame on a kid for pencil twirling. I mean, if the kid wasn't threatening anyone, I guess it's up to child services to handle that end: brow-beat and terrify a family so you aren't forced to get laughed out of court trying to get a protective order.

If this story can be taken at face value, people need to lose jobs over this. I might be able to get behind the first round of bullshit, but continuing pushing after the family already relented once is just twisting the knife.

[Spekio]

If this story can be taken at face value, people need to lose jobs over this. I might be able to get behind the first round of bullshit, but continuing pushing after the family already relented once is just twisting the knife.

Never appease the State if it can be avoided.

[Irbis]

Yes so many great lessons can be taken from this story.

Lesson 1
Anything can be a gun, and if you pretend it's a gun it will be treated as a gun

Lesson 2
If anything happens in school before they have even investigated the incident they will pass it along to child services.

Lesson 3
If you cooperate with Child services they will punish you anyway

Lesson 4:

When your country is so absurdly overmilitarized keeping social order requires people looking more like military than civilians the atmosphere of fear and doubt will inevitably lead to knee jerk reactions and overcompensations that would never happen in a country bereft of this sick, toxic miasma. All in the name of keeping the Golden Calf idol set up by gun lobbyists all happy and fat.

Lesson 5:

Which is not really a lesson, because we all know it will happen anyway: NRA-drones will scream the usual soundbytes of broken rights, guns being innocent, evil/opressive state, and the need of MORE GUNS, all while ignoring and attacking everyone who dares to raise dissenting voice, such as people who actually know how life in *gasp* underarmed (read: actually statistically normal) country looks like.

Which is not that different from the behaviour of people who were pro heavy smoking in public places and kicked everyone who dared to limit their RIGHT to smoke when you think about it, thankfully history already marched over these types.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Jesus, talk about taking things too far. I once totally lost it and mildly concussed someone with a chair and the worst that happened was the headmaster was very annoyed until I explained why. Certainly no child services getting involved.

Are these people thinking at all?

[Mr Bean]

Something occurred to me as I was reading this. How shit how fucked would I be if my school was still operating like it was in 98? We were a public high school with a gun range on campus and our gun policy was "They have to stay in the gun rack on your truck during school hours".

Can you image the pants shitting terror that would go through the mind of this teacher if she had taught at my school?

[Simon_Jester]

Lesson 4:

When your country is so absurdly overmilitarized keeping social order requires people looking more like military than civilians the atmosphere of fear and doubt will inevitably lead to knee jerk reactions and overcompensations that would never happen in a country bereft of this sick, toxic miasma. All in the name of keeping the Golden Calf idol set up by gun lobbyists all happy and fat.

Oh horseshit.

This is not a gun control issue. This is one of those school districts so terrified of violence of any form, combined with overzealous child protective services, that stupid things happen.

[Batman]

Leaving alone the fact that it's physically impossible to spin a pencil 'like a gun' because unlike a gun, a pencil (at least usually) doesn't have a trigger guard to put your finger in and spin the gun around that, when you twirl a pen you usually do it using several fingers, yeah, right, what?
This is ridiculous.
And seriously, 'spinning' it like a gun? 'Pointing' it like a gun I could-barely-accept as cause for some microscopic amount of concern (aided by the fact that that's actually doable). It's not like people twirling pens is all that unusual.

[Spekio]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

[Rogue 9]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

The kind with a target shooting team, to take a stab in the dark. It's an Olympic sport, after all.

[Mr Bean]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

The kind with a target shooting team, to take a stab in the dark. It's an Olympic sport, after all.

The kind where the start of gun and bow hunting seasons are days off school because otherwise school attendance would be under 50%. The kind where venison is a normal part of the diet of a large part of the student body.

[Grumman]

This is not a gun control issue. This is one of those school districts so terrified of violence of any form, combined with overzealous child protective services, that stupid things happen.

They are not terrified of violence, they're terrified of accountability. Zero tolerance policies exist so that cowards can pretend that they had no choice but to enforce the rules as written and so cannot be held responsible for their actions.

[Spekio]

The kind where the start of gun and bow hunting seasons are days off school because otherwise school attendance would be under 50%. The kind where venison is a normal part of the diet of a large part of the student body.

That is actually justified and reasonable. Huh.

[Eulogy]

There is another reason for this bullshit going on, and it's an unsurprisingly sinister one.

[loomer]

There is another reason for this bullshit going on, and it's an unsurprisingly sinister one.

Is this where the thread starts getting insane?

[madd0ct0r]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

hell, my school did and we're in the UK!

[His Divine Shadow]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

A good one.

[Simon_Jester]

There is another reason for this bullshit going on, and it's an unsurprisingly sinister one.

You just linked to... a blog that asserts that the "child protective industry" is evil.

No specific information, no obvious sign that anything is even wrong in the state where this happened. Just "Child protective agencies are EVIL INDUSTRIES DEVOTED TO STEALING YOUR CHILDREN!"

This is exactly the kind of attitude I was talking about earlier- hysteria making it harder for CPS to do their jobs even when they do try to do it. Hysteria that is, granted, brought on by CPS screwing up their jobs in the first place.

[TronPaul]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

My high school has a gun ranged but it's closed. I'm not sure when it was closed but I think it had been around since the late 50s. There was a rifle club at the time and had about 175 members.

[loomer]

There is another reason for this bullshit going on, and it's an unsurprisingly sinister one.

You just linked to... a blog that asserts that the "child protective industry" is evil.

No specific information, no obvious sign that anything is even wrong in the state where this happened. Just "Child protective agencies are EVIL INDUSTRIES DEVOTED TO STEALING YOUR CHILDREN!"

This is exactly the kind of attitude I was talking about earlier- hysteria making it harder for CPS to do their jobs even when they do try to do it. Hysteria that is, granted, brought on by CPS screwing up their jobs in the first place.

Don't you know that us foster carers and our case workers run around with nets when the schools let out?

[TheFeniX]

They are not terrified of violence, they're terrified of accountability. Zero tolerance policies exist so that cowards can pretend that they had no choice but to enforce the rules as written and so cannot be held responsible for their actions.

They don't have any kind of good choice. The policies come down from the top: people who likely have no actual dealing with students but have to answer to parents and the community screaming at them to do something. So, no tolerance seems like a good idea: no weapons or drug on school campus.

Except teachers and lower level administrators can't use any judgement because they'll destroy their careers doing so. There's been cases of honor-students getting expelled for having a kitchen knife in their truck-bed, that was only there because it fell out of a box when they were delivering food to a homeless shelter. Kids gets expelled for Tylenol or just pointing breaded chicken fingers.

If administrators do nothing, they get fired and black-balled. If they instead act punitively, all the burden gets pushed back onto the school system and the taxpayer when the school is inevitably sued. So, lose-lose except one option doesn't cost you your job.

[ZGundam]

What kind of psychotic place has a gun range in a high school?

I went to high school in Florida from 1979-1982. I was in ROTC and we had a rifle range & the rifles were always locked till we learned how to use them and some of us were on the rifle team.

Course we had instructors, and teachers, who cared more to teach us properly.

I can contact some old school mates and see if we still have the range and rifles.

[Batman]

Given the proliferation of guns in US' society I'm not sure having gun ranges in High School is that bad an idea, really. A reasonably high percentage of those kids are going to end up gun owners and this way (assuming it's done properly) they'll at least know how to properly handle guns by the time they get them.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

They are not terrified of violence, they're terrified of accountability. Zero tolerance policies exist so that cowards can pretend that they had no choice but to enforce the rules as written and so cannot be held responsible for their actions.

They don't have any kind of good choice. The policies come down from the top: people who likely have no actual dealing with students but have to answer to parents and the community screaming at them to do something. So, no tolerance seems like a good idea: no weapons or drug on school campus.

Except teachers and lower level administrators can't use any judgement because they'll destroy their careers doing so. There's been cases of honor-students getting expelled for having a kitchen knife in their truck-bed, that was only there because it fell out of a box when they were delivering food to a homeless shelter. Kids gets expelled for Tylenol or just pointing breaded chicken fingers.

If administrators do nothing, they get fired and black-balled. If they instead act punitively, all the burden gets pushed back onto the school system and the taxpayer when the school is inevitably sued. So, lose-lose except one option doesn't cost you your job.

Of course, none of that even factors into the thinking of hoplophobes like Irbis. Why reevaluate the folly of zero tolerance when one can just go "THE GUN IS EVIL" ad nauseam?

It wasn't too long ago that I was in high school, and in a perceived hotbed of gang activity, no less. I should count myself fortunate that bullshit like this never happened in my school district, but the situation may have changed between then and now. If I face losing my job due to failing to report a kid twirling a pen or pointing breaded chicken fingers at others (that really happened?), maybe I should rethink my decision to become a teacher.