Student searched and suspended for - Witchcraft?

Student searched and suspended for - Witchcraft?

by A Person | Published on January 30th, 2009, 11:42 am | Religion

I am reminded of the words of H.G. Wells rephrased

No-one would have believed, in the first years of the twenty-first century century...

In a case reminiscent of the Salem Witch trials, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma today filed a federal lawsuit charging that school officials violated 15-year-old Brandi Blackbear's rights when they accused her of casting a hex that resulted in a teacher's illness.

"These outlandish accusations have made Brandi Blackbear's life at school unbearable," said Joann Bell, Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. "I for one would like to see the so-called evidence this school has that a 15-year-old girl made a grown man sick by casting a magic spell."

Evidence? We know how that goes

It's a good thing for them stupidity is legal.

funny- when I saw that headline, I thought " Oh no, not again. Not another case like Brandi Blackbear's" ( she has such a cool name it was easy to remember.)
I see with some relief that it is Brandi's case - not a new and different student.
That OK school district was fuxking nuts

I'm sorry - I missed the date on that. Old news indeed.

My apologies

RebelSnake wrote::evil: It's a good thing for them stupidity is legal.

Perhaps it isn't against the law -- but it's still inexcusable.

It seems the case was dropped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandi_Blackbear

Finally, her parents went to the ACLU, where they were told they had a good case against the school for violating her civil rights. The ACLU sued the affluent school for $10 million, even though the Blackbears were not sure they deserved that much based on what Brandi had suffered. Still, the ACLU argued that the school wouldn't take any lesser claim seriously. When the school offered a settlement, the Blackbears refused. They were not interested in the money, despite needing it; what they really wanted was to have their story heard in court to inform the public that the school had mistreated Brandi. Unfortunately, the judge ruled to dismiss the charges rather than going to trial, and ordered the Blackbears to pay $6000 in court fees, which they could not afford. Eventually it was agreed to drop the fees if the Blackbears dropped their appeal.

A Person wrote:I'm sorry - I missed the date on that. Old news indeed.

My apologies

No matter. Stupid lasts a very long time, IMO.

Not just American fundy-nuts buying into this paranoid crap over the past decade:
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/news1/an010105b.html#18

18. Boy turned into yam is guarded by police
The Sunday Telegraph (England), Dec. 31, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/Off-site Link
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Hundreds of curious people flocked to the police station in the northern Nigerian town of Maiduguri in Borno state earlier this year after radio reports that a local schoolboy had been turned into a large yam by witchcraft.

Three pupils at the local primary school had rushed into the headmistress's office the previous morning and said the boy, whose name was not given, had been transformed into the root tuber after accepting a sweet from a stranger.

The headmistress found the tuber and took it to the local police station, where at the time of the report it was being kept under guard by Divisional Police Officer Adamu Tukur, who said the sweet- giver was being sought.
(...)

Such stories of witchcraft are not confined to the developing world, as the following reports show. Charlie Bushyhead, the assistant principal of Union Intermediate High School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, suspended 15-year-old Brandi Blackbear for 15 days in December last year for supposedly casting a magic spell that caused a male teacher to become sick.

That MUST be a wannabe Onion story... :pray:

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:That MUST be a wannabe Onion story...

it reminds me of some of Elroy's stories on alt.atheism but apparently it's for real

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -shot.html
'Witchcraft' lynch mob members shot

By James Allan
Last Updated: 2:11PM BST 19 Jun 2001

TWO members of a lynch mob in Lagos, Nigeria, who attacked a man they believed had turned two children into dogs, were shot dead by police.

A rumour had swept through the Lagos suburb of Oko-Oba that the man, a dealer from northern Nigeria, had transformed a missing boy and girl after giving them each 20 naira (10p). Local vigilantes detained the man and gathered up the dogs. Police arrived as they were about to lynch him and arrested 15 people.

During the fighting, two of the mob died. The rest, including the dogs, were taken to Lagos state police command in Ikeja.

A police spokesman, Victor Chilaka, said: "We do not know quite what happened so we are detaining all of them." Including the dogs? "Including the dogs." On what charge? "I am not sure," he said. "I am sure we will not hold them for long."

Belief in witchcraft, and the power of humans to transform themselves into animals and vice versa, is widespread in Nigeria. In the past two years newspapers have reported alleged incidents of a vulture which became a man and a schoolboy who turned into a yam.