Instructor allegedly injures student and is arrested
- Thread starter Bill Mattocks
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punisher73
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Good call by the school to immediately take charge and notify the police and the parents.
Accidents can happen in a martial arts school, but this was just stupid.
Accidents can happen in a martial arts school, but this was just stupid.
After reading the article it's hard to imagine in what context this could possible happen where a 5 year old would be involved.
I agree it was a good call on the part of the school to immediately call the police.
I agree it was a good call on the part of the school to immediately call the police.
Native
Yellow Belt
This happened in my neighborhood. Unfortunately I think it is bad for the entire local MA industry. I'd bet most parents or potential students don't make many distinctions between schools or styles.
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I am trying to wrap my head around the short description of the incident contained in this brief sentence: "Police say Branick grabbed the victim, a 5-year-old boy from Bristow, by the ankle and threw him over his shoulders and onto the ground. The boy lost consciousness, Probus said."
Horseplay gone really wrong during a kids' class? Trying to teach them a double-leg and not stopping to consider what the difference in relative size would do? Or, standing up and literally doing as described, like tossng a bag over the houlder and dropping the tyke?
It's a bad look, that's true enough... and I agree, the general community is probably going to give the entire local MA community a black eye over this. Unfortunate.
Horseplay gone really wrong during a kids' class? Trying to teach them a double-leg and not stopping to consider what the difference in relative size would do? Or, standing up and literally doing as described, like tossng a bag over the houlder and dropping the tyke?
It's a bad look, that's true enough... and I agree, the general community is probably going to give the entire local MA community a black eye over this. Unfortunate.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #6
Yeesh. From the original description I thought maybe the instructor was "just" being negligently careless during horseplay. If the police are correct that he got mad and slammed the kid deliberately then that's even worse.
Those were re-prints, not quite follow-ups in the great new Internet age of news we now have. No new info. It'd be good to get some security cam footage, wouldn't it. Or, a disinterested witness' statement abut what happened. But... still not good.
OP
RTKDCMB
Senior Master
Some martial arts schools should do a better job of screening their instructors.
You can say that again. It's not just that sick bastard who's to blame here. I put just as much blame on the Chief Instructor who put that clown in the position to teach and watch over children. How can someone do that? And I don't want to hear "how could he know what that guy was really like?"
You don't put somebody in charge of kids if you don't know what they are really like. You teach kids yourself.
I hope he goes to a hard prison.
Before the lynch mob forms, can I ask how, unless the person already has a felony record of child abuse, the school can be expected to predict this behavior?
Perhaps by starting with teaching under supervision, and always having at least 2 adults present and involved in running the class? Maybe by having parents around when 5 year olds are being taught?
The school in question is a small chain, heavily oriented on the daycare/after-school pickup model of martial arts schools. I suspect that a lot of their "teachers" are hired from within, as part of their "black belt program." They may or may not even be really paid, rather than students expected to "further their training" by running classes. I don't know what application process or hiring process may have been used.
I have a problem with the model, as I've made clear many times, I think. Want to use a day care model to support your school, great. MEET DAYCARE STANDARDS! I've dealt with schools where notable numbers of the staff running the daycare program barely speak enough English to get by... (Yeah, not a fan of foreign lifeguards, either, but that's a different issue.) I don't have any particular insight to this particular incident -- but it screams out to me that there don't have appropriate supervision levels, that they don't have a solid model to prepare instructors and monitor them.
I will give the school credit: when another staff member became aware, apparently the next day, they called the cops immediately. I'm kind of annoyed that neither the medics (if EMS was called; articles I've read are unclear), the hospital staff, nor the parents did so more quickly, though we don't know what they may have been told.
We don't know any of that. For all we know, this guy had been a student at that school since he was 4.
My point is that it's not really possible to predict aberrant behavior, and that there's probably no real basis to start blaming anybody other than the person who commited the actual deed.
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