The video shows a Florida school bus crowded with a dozen or more kids and at least two adults who are all sitting back and watching what looks to be a 12- or 13-year-old boy and another younger boy wailing away on the head, neck, and face of a small, nine-year-old girl. She is seen doing her best to shield herself with one arm while hanging onto a blue backpack with the other one.
In response, Mark Gregston of Parenting Today's Teens says fewer parents are rearing children with morals and self-control.
"The examples that a lot of them have before them are in the form of video games, usually somebody beating up [or] shooting somebody," he observes. "What's the concept of the world when we allow abortions to happen and we destroy life?"
He says many kids lack the basic skills they need to function in society.
"They haven't learned conflict resolution," Gregston submits. "Those things that they don't speak out, they'll act out."
For him, the most shocking thing about the video is knowing that two adults – the bus driver and a chaperone – are just sitting there watching the little girl get pummeled. He figures that if someone had the time and awareness to videotape the assault, then they could have done something to stop it.
"It's affirming the very thing that our kids feel about the culture anyway – that life really isn't as valuable as it needs to be, and when you have a problem, nobody stands up for anybody," Gregston laments.
Fox News reports that the mother of the nine-year-old girl is pressing charges against the school, Coconut Palm K-8 Academy in Homestead, and is pursuing criminal charges against the assailants. Miami-Dade County Public Schools has said "the offender" has been arrested and "will be charged accordingly."
