The teenagers charged with forcible touching in a locker-room hazing incident need to learn a lesson — but having them busted and sent to court took it too far, school parents said.
“They got arrested for that?” one parent at James Madison High School in Brooklyn told The Post on Tuesday. “They’re not supposed to be arrested for that. They could be disciplined, but not arrested.
“I think it’s too much,” he said. “Nobody was hurt, nobody was sodomized. It’s something that boys do, that athletes do in the locker room.”
The three teens were arraigned in Brooklyn Family Court on forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment charges on Friday, two days after they allegedly held down the 14-year-old victim, took off his pants and twice struck the boy’s penis, according to authorities.
The incident forced the team to cancel its season and allegedly cost one coach his job.
Yet, the father of one of the accused teens told The Post this week that the incident was nothing more than “horseplay,” and said the hazing ritual was just “pantsing” and done to several players.
Most parents interviewed outside the Midwood campus on Tuesday seemed to agree.
“I don’t think it needs to go that far,” another parent said. “But there should be some type of discipline. I definitely believe it was horseplaying…. But clearly there’s an issue going on.”
Pierre Renold, whose son is a sophomore at the school, said it should have been deal with in house.
“We have to find out exactly what going on because we don’t want these three guys to have bad records,” he said. “When you take it to court, if the judge finds you are wrong, you have a bad record. The school should have dealt with it. It shouldn’t have gone to court.
“Later on a bad record will affect them, like going to college. It wasn’t serious enough for the court to get involved, it’s something the school could’ve handled,” he said.
But not all parents interviewed agreed — some said the teens got what they deserved.
“They definitely should not be playing around like that. I really think it’s not right,” one Madison mom said. “That was too much going on. Going to Family Court is the right thing to do. This was much more than horsing around. I definitely think it shouldn’t have happened. It crossed the line.
“It causes trauma and things like that to the kids that it happened to.”
Officials at James Madison referred questions to the city Department of Education, with has not commented since issuing a statement on Sunday.
“Bullying and harassment, including hazing, have no place in our schools – period,” the earlier statement said. “Upon hearing reports of hazing, the school immediately acted. Parents were immediately notified, the school is providing supports, and an investigation is ongoing.”