State Sponsored Sexual Assault Up For Debate in the Supreme Court

Imagine a teenage girl forced into a small room. There she is ordered to undress by force. Adults leer at her nude body, examining it closely. Then she is told to dress and go on her way.

This was not a kidnapping, this actually happened at a school! In America!

In Safford, Arizona several years ago Savana Redding, described as a "shy and nerdy" eighth grade honor student, was forced to undress by a vice principal. Did they suspect she was armed, about to kill a fellow student? No. Was she about to offer heroin to a classmate? No.

They suspected that she had contraband ibuprofen in her underwear. No, check that. Extra strength ibuprofen. Worse than anything else, the students knew what had happened to her. When her mother April protested, she was told that her daughter was lucky that nothing was found.

She was scarred for years, humiliated by the event. Redding feared going to the school. Who could blame her? An institution of the state basically raped her and neither she nor her parents could ever hope for justice against the perpetrator.

Fortunately, in one of the few good rulings you will ever see from here, the 9th Circuit stood up for Redding's civil liberties. If a strip search is not a violation of the right to be secure in your person, what isn't. Also in this day and time when improper contact between teachers and students is reported from somewhere almost daily, who wants to trust these people with this kind of power?

Were I in Arizona, I would tell my children to refuse any orders to remove clothing unless they could produce a warrant signed by a judge, as is required by the Constitution. If I found out that they had been strip searched, I would be the next one in jail. These are not prisoners, these are children. They do not leave every constitutional right at the door when they enter school. If the Supreme Court rules that they do, it is time to abandon the public school system in states that allow such monstrous practices.

No wonder civics is not taught anymore in many areas. Why would administrators such as the vice principal in Safford want these children to understand the Bill of Rights? It is so much easier to terrify them into submission, over ibuprofen.

Time For State Leadership on the Drug Issue

Six people arrested in Keyser. A 19 year old dies of a drug overdose in Jackson County. Drug gangs from Detroit own Huntington.

It is time to see aggressive leadership from Charleston on the drug issue. Hard drugs such as meth, crack, heroin and almost anything else flood not only the streets of West Virginia's major cities, but also the small towns and hollows. The Legislature must enact stricter laws, and not against college students with an ounce of pot. We need to hit back at the gangs now controlling the drug trade.

State, county, and local police must not only share information on known gang members, but also work with prosecutors to make sure that gang affiliates get arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible for every violation. Gangs must be made as uncomfortable as possible in West Virginia. A unified effort from the Governor down to the town police officer can make that happen.

The alternative, if we continue to do as we do now, is frightening. Like the inner cities, kids coming up want material rewards. Do they get them the easy way or the hard way? In a state with as few opportunities as West Virginia, kids will be more likely to take that easy path and perpetuate the blight of hard drugs.