Brickbats

Child Abuse

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It's right there on seven-year-old Randy Castro's permanent record at school: "Sexual Touching Against Student, Offensive." Sexual touching? It turned out the boy slapped a girl on the bottom one day at his Prince William County School. School officials not only wrote him up, they called the police. Randy's mother, herself a teacher, says what he did was wrong, but she doesn't understand why they called the police. Nor, for that matter, does the mother of the girl he slapped. She said her daughter didn't like it but she quickly forgot about it. "We didn't pay attention to it, because we know it's just children playing around," the girl's mother said. "He didn't mean anything by it. I'm upset with the school."