Part Two: Ethical AnalysisEthical violations occur in the current settings with poor coverage since the perpetrators want to avoid associated liabilities. Most of the time, some occurrences demand severe punitive actions only for the contrary to occur. In this case, there are various ethical violations that were not represented appropriately since the institution wanted to shift blames in spite of the material evidence that stated otherwise. It is unethical to conduct security or disciplinary stings without proper supervision, application of relevant expertise, and the creation of safety mechanisms that alleviate possible harm to the involved personnel.
The story raises several ethical problems throughout the rape sting right from the planning stage. It was correct to catch and punish the boy who was sexually harassing students; however, selection of the bait can be considered as unethical. The rationale is that officials were not supposed to use a young girl to catch an older predator since she cannot defend against the stronger opponent. If it was a must to use such an age group, poor supervision and utilization of unqualified personnel for the operation made it worse since the young girl was discovered once the rape had occurred, and no material evidence remained to incriminate the targeted individual.
Failure of the plan forced the school officials to make attempts to cover their mistakes through misrepresentation of information, destruction of evidence, and limitation of information that reached mainstream media outlets. Shredding records of the older boy did not conform to ethical regulations since the school was supposed to provide sufficient information about the occurrence, take the necessary measures to avoid a similar occurrence, and accept responsibility for the subsequent consequences. Instead, the boy was placed in an alternative school due to institutional decisions to destroy his records and limit information presentation.
Another issue raised by the article is regulatory frameworks in schools and their functioning in terms of instilling discipline, gathering evidence and record keeping. As per the rules, issues of sexual harassment must be supported by tangible evidence “being caught in the act”. Due to this policy requirement, an individual with a long history for violent and sexual misconducts was left to roam within the institution harassing girls; and forced the teachers to send the young girl into the bathrooms in order to catch the perpetrator red-handed. Rather, the girl was raped, the school refused to accept the responsibility, and the board attacked the media for presenting information about the failed policies, negligence, wantonness, and announcement of the crime as “inappropriate touching”.
These ethical problems can be addressed using the utilitarianism theory due to its applicability in normative ethics. It outlines that the best moral action maximizes utility. Utility is the ability to maintain the wellbeing of entities through the elimination of sufferings involved in particular actions. Through this theory, administrators could have focused on rules, individual actions, and resultant outcomes to determine the best method of catching the boy involved in instances of sexual harassment. Being consequentialist theory, the consequences of an action define whether it was wrong or right. In this case, the consequences were anal rape, physical harm, and refusal to take responsibility of which is morally wrong.
Professional violations also contributed to the wrongful occurrence where teachers set the young girl for sodomy, then left her without qualified assistance. From an ethical perspective, counseling services were supposed to be availed immediately, and proper situational supervision could have prevented the rape. Teachers have professional responsibilities to protect their students, make decisions that maximize learner interests, and offer necessary assistance depending on the nature of emergent issues. On the contrary, the court did not use evidentiary material to support state law provisions that outline punitive measures for negligence, professional misconduct, and violation of ethical rules.
As such, ethical violations such as manipulation of information, violation of personal rights, and professional misconduct were propagated from the school board to teaching ranks. Some attorneys indicated that school officials omitted several parts of the story in order to shift liabilities, blames and deflect their moral responsibilities. What happened was misrepresentation of the rape as “inappropriate touching”, destruction of records through shredding and violation of the victim’s rights by not providing necessary professional counseling services. This resulted in physical and emotional harm to the young girl due to sodomy, lack of professional counseling services for up to two months and absence of conviction in spite of the evidence.
Part Three: Research History
Selection and verification of the featured article required the application of varied academic research methods to ensure validity and relevance of the presented information. Occurrence of this story was first discovered in a civil liberties website, http://www.alternet.org, before conducting additional investigations to verify the facts. The same story was found in other online sources such as Free Though Project, New York Daily News, and some social media threads although their presence did not receive widespread coverage. Free though project outlined the occurrences where a young girl was approached in a sting operation, raped, and courts sided with the school board.
New York Daily News highlights how the young girl publicly alleged being used as bait only to be sodomized, and no conviction took place. Similar sentiments took center stage on twitter as initiated by the free though project. Although the outlets offered different versions of what transpired, their basic ethical considerations, concerns, and sequence of actions was similar indicating minimal discrepancies. Comparison of different news sources, media statements, and legal analysis from different perspectives corroborated the sequence of actions, decisions taken by administrators, ethical violations and measures take to avert institutional responsibilities.
