More school quarrels wind up in court
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer
It was a case of schoolyard gossip that ended up in court.
A 14-year-old 'Ilima Intermediate student was accused by another girl of threatening to beat her up after a name-calling incident. The pair found themselves facing of a judge after their parents filed requests for temporary restraining orders to keep them apart.
Even one of the girls' fathers, who filed the request for the temporary restraining order on her behalf, agrees it went too far.
That kind of situation is alarming Honolulu district court judges, who have noticed a marked increase in requests for temporary restraining orders, or TROs, filed on behalf of children against other children.
As a result, in late March, district court judges began referring some child TRO cases to the Mediation Center of the Pacific as part of a six-month pilot program. The center provides trained mediators to help parties work out their differences. Since the referrals began less than two months ago, 12 cases have been mediated, 10 successfully.
What is particularly troublesome is that parents are asking the court to solve cases of schoolyard name-calling, or girlfriend/boyfriend disputes, said district court Judge Rhonda Nishimura.
The district court only recently started tracking the number of child TROs and does not yet have an exact count, but Nishimura said there has been a significant increase.
The total number of TROs on O'ahu has more than doubled in the past five years, reaching 1,600 last year. Nishimura estimates that TROs involving schoolchildren make up less than a third of the total.
"Generally the courts are the last resort for people to resolve their disputes, and the courts may not be the best forum to resolve certain kinds of disputes, especially those involving children," Nishimura said.
The phenomenon of teenage TROs can be traced to a litigious society, experts say, combined with the fear that schoolyard disputes will escalate into something more serious.
But the situation in Hawai'i sometimes has become unreasonable.
In some cases, Nishimura said, parents insist on pursuing restraining orders even when the children themselves already have made up. And schools find themselves in an administrative nightmare trying to follow court orders to keep students apart in crowded classrooms and school corridors.
"This is not a good message to send to our youth — that the way to handle a problem is to go to court and get a TRO," said Tracey Wiltgen, executive director of the Mediation Center of the Pacific. "They're not addressing the underlying problem of why this is happening."
"Our long-term goal here is not just to refer them from court and mediate them, but to educate the community and schools and parents that before going to court, what they should look at is ... other possibilities of resolving the problem," she said.
Parents still have the option of returning to court if mediation is not successful and cases that have the potential for violence are not referred.
Wiltgen said many misunderstandings are sparked by gossip or stink-eye.
"Oftentimes, when we mediate, we find it's gotten blown out of proportion," she said.
At the same time, the experts aren't dismissing schoolyard gossiping or bullying as insignificant. Such behavior can be as destructive as physical violence, said Ruth Tschumy, a school consultant and trained mediator at the Mediation Center of the Pacific.
"There's no hard evidence that teasing leads to bullying that leads to sexual harassment that leads to domestic violence, but I think that as a society we've promised children that they will be safe at school," said Tschumy, who believes many parents are beating a path to the courts because they feel the schools are too busy to help them.
Schools chief Paul LeMahieu said he's aware of the problem and already has earmarked $240,000 of federal money to set up an alternative dispute resolution program to train principals and teachers to resolve conflicts.
As for for the 'Ilima Intermediate student, she and the other girl went to mediation and solved their problem in just a few hours. The Advertiser is withholding her name to protect her privacy.
"They talked to us, and it's settled, and it's better than having to go back to court," she said, breathing a sigh of relief that she no longer has to worry about being arrested if she walks in the wrong place at school.
It was the second time the girl has had a TRO filed against her. Her father has thought long and hard about why he and others are winding up in court over the children's conflicts.
"I think it's parent involvement," he said. "I think that one of the reasons is that parents chose to shy away from confrontation and they chose to let somebody else do their legal battles for them. ... Instead of being a parent and coming down and knocking on my door and saying that you have a problem with my child for this reason, that we can ... work this out and find out each side of the story — it just doesn't happen any more."
Like his daughter, he's relieved that mediation solved the problem.
"The whole story, it ends up, was based on the little girl's friend telling her that my daughter was going to beat her up," he said. "The whole thing was just hearsay and that's more or less what came out in the mediation."
It turns out, all they needed to do was talk.
Alice Keesing can be reached by phone at 525-8014, or by e-mail at akeesing@honoluluadvertiser.com.
