Wow. Just...wow.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Five fifth-grade students face criminal charges after authorities said four of them had sex in front of other students in an unsupervised classroom and kept a classmate posted as a lookout for teachers.

The students were arrested Tuesday at the Spearsville school in rural north Louisiana, authorities said. Two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year old boy were charged with obscenity, a felony. An 11-year-old boy, the alleged lookout, was charged with being an accessory.

"After 44 years of doing this work, nothing shocks me anymore," said Union Parish Sheriff Bob Buckley. "But this comes pretty close."

Authorities said the incident happened March 27 at the school, which houses students from kindergarten through 12th grade. A high school teacher normally watches the fifth-grade class at the time, but went to an assembly for older students and the class was inadvertently left unattended, Buckley said.

The class, which had around 10 other students, was alone for about 15 minutes, he said.

"When no teacher showed up, the four began to have sex in the classroom with the other elementary students in the classroom with them," he said.

It took a day for authorities to find out about the incident. A student who had been in the class told a high school student about it the next day, Buckley said. The student told a teacher, and school officials notified the sheriff's office. Detectives began questioning students Thursday.

School officials did not return calls seeking comment.

The students, who were not identified because of their age, were released to their parents after their arrests, Buckley said. They will next be arraigned in juvenile court.

A message seeking comment from the district attorney was not immediately returned.

Buckley said it was unclear what penalties the children could face.

I already heard about it on another message board where this has sparked a lot of debate. I think one of the best points raised by someone there was "incidents very similar to this one have happened at least once before this one, but didn't make the news because culture was more about forcing silence than selling scandal".

That's true, Smindas...I'm not defending in any way kids this age doing what these ones did....BUT, it's been happening since the invention of the "boy and girl" parts, and I'm sure most if not all of us either did or know kids who did what these kids did at the age they did it...NOT a good thing, but the sensationalist media is the problem in this case. Now we'll have copy-cat incidents just like this all over the place......

i was sexually active at 13 too... of course we didn't have an audience

Meh, this doesn't surprise me at all.

I didn't know I what my penis was for until I was like 18. Haha!

That's really sad.

Yep. Not very surprising at all that this is going on between 11-13 year olds, what IS surprising is that they did it in school in front of a class!

I fooled around myself way younger than that, I think most kids have, even if it wasn't actual sex.

Yeah, "you show me yours, I'll show you mine" is very, very common among kids, but actual sex?

Required Fields wrote:

Yeah, "you show me yours, I'll show you mine" is very, very common among kids, but actual sex?

That "show me" game is typical of 5 year olds, not 13 year olds. We should all be surprised at this behavior. Am I the only one shocked at this? I realize most kids don't wait for marriage or even love before becoming sexually active, but I refuse to believe this is normal behavior common to most children. I think, possibly quite naively, there are still plenty of kids out there who have more respect for themselves than to act like this.

Stuff like this was more like urban legend at my school. We were very rural, also. Mainly, kids just liked to talk. It is worth noting, though, that about 1/3 of my graduating class was knocked up... I maintain that it had less to do with rampant promiscuity, and more to do with the fact that there was nothing else to f****** do in that town. Everytime they built an arcade or a skate ramp, the elderly city fathers would have it shut down...

In rural Louisiana, though? Yeah, this about right.



)+(

quiettype wrote:

Required Fields wrote:

Yeah, "you show me yours, I'll show you mine" is very, very common among kids, but actual sex?

That "show me" game is typical of 5 year olds, not 13 year olds. We should all be surprised at this behavior. Am I the only one shocked at this? I realize most kids don't wait for marriage or even love before becoming sexually active, but I refuse to believe this is normal behavior common to most children. I think, possibly quite naively, there are still plenty of kids out there who have more respect for themselves than to act like this.

I really don't think we should be that shocked. Well okay, perhaps a little but.. basically, the way I see it is it amkes perfect sense for kids to be sexually driven at this age - hormones are literally everywhere. I really don't see sex at this age all that surprising, although it may be done in an irresponsible manner. I think the only thing that's incredibly off in this situation is their choice of location and the fact there's 5 of them.

I think it's pretty shocking myself.

My mother told me that my sister is starting to flirt... so I called her and said that i'll be hovering with a baseball bat and hitting any boy that touches her. She was not amused.

Chairman_Smith wrote:

My mother told me that my sister is starting to flirt... so I called her and said that i'll be hovering with a baseball bat and hitting any boy that touches her. She was not amused.

I have two teenage daughters. I tell all the little sniffers, "I have a .45 and a shovel. I'm sure nobody would miss you a bit." My girls are likewise not amused.

threatening physical violence on a child is not the way to handle things

mc666 wrote:

threatening physical violence on a child is not the way to handle things

Actual physical violence is no way to handle things. A threatening presence in the mind of a 17 year old male can sometimes be very effective.