Sir,– Imagine if your newspaper reported the following: “Teenage girl abducted. A teenage girl was tied up by five men using cable cord, who then blindfolded the girl and drove her to a nearby location. The abducted girl was eventually located by friends, set free and brought back to her school. Her classmates were said to be horrified by what had taken place.”
This story is true, save for the fact that the perpetrators were in fact not men, but other teenage girls.
If this story, as cited above, was reported in the media there would be uproar and a criminal investigation. But because this occurred in a context rather euphemistically described by some as school leaving “high jinks”, it is said to be “just a bit of fun”. How long before your paper reports on a case of school leaving “high jinks gone wrong”?
Will the people who dismiss such behaviour as harmless then say it was “just a bit of fun gone wrong”? And who will these people blame for tolerating and indulging such behaviour? The very authorities they are now castigating for taking such incidents seriously. – Yours, etc,