Family Forum / Parenting / Parenting / July 2005

I find it hard to believe that Americans could be this stupid, but then
this supposedly happended in California.

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/news/84407.php

Her family says Maribel was simply defending herself when 9-year-old
Elijah Vang and several other boys pummeled her with water balloons
outside her home in a poor Fresno neighborhood in April. They say she
quickly sought help and tried to apologize to the boy and his family.
The Vangs have since moved away.

"She's 11 ... they're treating her like she's a violent parole
offender," said Richard Beshwate Jr., Maribel's lawyer.

Maribel, who speaks limited English, spent five days in juvenile hall
with just one half-hour visit from her parents. She then spent about
three weeks under house arrest, forced to wear a GPS ankle bracelet to
monitor her whereabouts. She's due in court Aug. 3.

Officers denied that their response was influenced by the setting, a
low-income, largely minority neighborhood, or language difficulties.
Maribel's family speaks limited English, and the responding officers
don't speak Spanish.

With help from their church, the family hired Beshwate to represent
Maribel at her upcoming trial. The lawyer says prosecutors aren't
interested in a deal. Assistant Fresno County District Attorney Bob
Ellis said he couldn't comment on the case because it involves
children.

Maribel's family said the soft-spoken girl, who turned 11 in March,
remains terrified - she's a good student who struggles sometimes
because English is her second language, but in a neighborhood where
kids grow up fast she keeps close to home, helping her mother take
care of her four younger siblings. Maribel attends school with the
boy, and says she's been taunted by him in the past.

She says she was playing on the sidewalk with her 6-year-old brother
and other younger children on April 29 when the boys rode by on their
bikes. They started teasing her, calling her names and hitting her
with water balloons, she said, holding her 1-year-old brother in her
lap in her family's modest living room, where a couch and a dining
table share space with a crib and a bed.

When the boys refused to leave, Maribel threw a rock at them, hitting
Elijah.

The aunt of one of Maribel's playmates saw the boy's forehead was cut,
got him a towel to stop the bleeding and called 911, the family said.

Maribel ran to the boy's house, two blocks from her own, to tell his
parents she was sorry, she said.

Police responded to the call ready to tackle a hardened criminal.

The officers "grabbed me from behind, by my shirt" the girl said in
Spanish. "I was so scared. ... I didn't know what they were doing."

Maribel panicked. The officers had the slight girl down on the ground,
and one of them put his knee to her back to restrain her, her mother
said in Spanish.

Guadalupe Cuevas couldn't communicate with the officers because she
doesn't speak English, and was pushed away when she tried to reach her
daughter.

Maribel was crying, the police report said, but Officer Christopher
Green, who handcuffed her, wrote, "We were able to get Cuevas into the
back of the patrol vehicle."

Guadalupe Cuevas said she didn't understand what was happening. "The
officer was just saying, 'I don't care, I don't care,' " she said in
Spanish. "He told my nephew he didn't speak his kind of English."

The police report said Green read Maribel her Miranda rights twice, in
English. The report also lists the girl's emotional state as
"apologetic" and "hysterical."

Maribel's mother and her father, Martin, were able to see their
daughter for half an hour the day after the incident. The girl's
wrists were bruised, her mother said.

Maribel was kept in juvenile hall without seeing her parents again for
five nights. When released, she had to wear an electronic monitoring
bracelet that kept her under house arrest for about three more weeks,
leaving school early to get home before the 3 p.m. curfew.

This is a case where the Police Department "overreacted and won't back
down," Beshwate said.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits