In my sec­ondary school days, we had our fair share of school fights, but those fights looked vast­ly dif­fer­ent from what we see to­day. Back then, a school fight start­ed with an­gry words and threats, then led to a few slaps or a cuff and one or two bad­ly aimed kicks. There were al­ways a few friends hang­ing around try­ing to break up the fight and keep­ing their eyes out for adults. Just one glimpse of a teacher, ap­proach­ing adult or po­lice led to every­one present quick­ly flee­ing in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions.

Yes, we had a healthy fear and re­spect for our el­ders. It was in­cred­i­bly rare that sto­ries of these fights would be told to par­ents, be­cause our par­ents would not tol­er­ate any dis­play of in­dis­ci­pline. No doubt, pun­ish­ment would have been dished out at home for be­ing in­volved or even be­ing too close a spec­ta­tor.

Mod­ern-day school fights have tak­en on a new di­men­sion. School fights now are akin to gang wars by mi­nors in uni­form. Adults are afraid to in­ter­vene, as this may re­sult in in­jury or harm, as re­cent events have demon­strat­ed. Charges, sus­pen­sions, ex­pul­sions and po­lice pres­ence do not seem to de­ter our youths.

Fights are ex­treme and not re­strict­ed to our male stu­dents alone. There is a grow­ing trend of girls be­ing ac­tive­ly in­volved, dis­play­ing a lev­el of ag­gres­sion that may be a tell-tale sign of a more se­ri­ous is­sue that needs to be ad­dressed.

The af­ter­math of school fights is some­thing that should be con­sid­ered. Re­cent­ly, there was one child so bad­ly in­jured that it ap­pears he was ly­ing un­con­scious in the road­way and was al­most run over by a car. There have been fights where chil­dren were shown bleed­ing from var­i­ous blows to their faces and heads.

Uni­forms have been torn to pieces and the con­tents of school bags emp­tied and de­stroyed. No doubt, many of the chil­dren who were on the re­ceiv­ing end not on­ly suf­fered phys­i­cal dam­age but would now suf­fer from var­i­ous forms of psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age.

Imag­ine their fear of re­turn­ing to school, of be­ing the vic­tim of a fight again and be­liev­ing that no one in or out­side the school com­pound is ca­pa­ble of of­fer­ing pro­tec­tion.

Par­ents, hav­ing been in­formed that their child has been in­jured, would rush home from work or, in some in­stances, to the hos­pi­tal. Mon­ey would be spent on med­ical ex­pens­es and time off re­quired to care for the in­jured child. This can be seen as an in­sult to in­jury. Just imag­ine your child has al­ready been a vic­tim and, now, the par­ents must ex­pend monies they had not bud­get­ed for due to the acts of vi­o­lence by some­one else.

Par­ents need to start se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion for per­son­al in­jury. Yes, par­ents can bring an ac­tion. Not di­rect­ly against the mi­nors, but against their par­ents, who would be the next friend of the mi­nor.

A civ­il claim in per­son­al in­jury does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that re­pay­ment of med­ical bills alone will be sought. It is time we con­sid­er all as­pects of the dam­age done by these chil­dren. In a civ­il claim, com­pen­sa­tion should be sought for dam­age to school uni­forms, re­place­ment of school bags and books. Mon­ey for loss of in­come for par­ents who need to stay home to care for the in­jured child, or pay for a car­er to as­sist them, or where chil­dren have suf­fered trau­ma and need the as­sis­tance of ther­a­pists, can al­so be sought.

Par­ents, in go­ing to the court, should al­so con­sid­er seek­ing re­lief for ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages. In our le­gal sys­tem, ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages re­late to the hu­mil­i­a­tion and men­tal suf­fer­ing that the vic­tim ex­pe­ri­enced and en­dured.

Imag­ine a child be­ing beat­en, in­sult­ed and cursed in the pres­ence of count­less school­mates and the pub­lic at large. Then, a video which was record­ed is up­loaded to so­cial me­dia and shared by strangers. The video makes it pos­si­ble for a larg­er au­di­ence to wit­ness the events, fur­ther adding to the vic­tim’s hu­mil­i­a­tion.

Un­der­stand­ably, some par­ents may not be in a po­si­tion to pay for le­gal ser­vices. This is where the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty can ren­der as­sis­tance. Aside from this, if one looks close­ly enough, there are al­ways some firms will­ing to as­sist.

The flip side may well be that the vic­tim’s par­ents are un­will­ing to bring ac­tion, as they be­lieve that the ag­gres­sor’s fam­i­ly may not be in a po­si­tion to pay any award by the court. But judg­ments by the court can be reg­is­tered against per­sons and there are var­i­ous means of col­lect­ing.

Peo­ple are mo­ti­vat­ed by dif­fer­ent fac­tors in life. It seems clear that some par­ents, in dis­ci­plin­ing or ex­pect­ing bet­ter from their chil­dren, are not mo­ti­vat­ed by the fear of im­pris­on­ment for their child.

Some are not even mo­ti­vat­ed by the thought of their child be­ing re­moved from the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. How­ev­er, per­haps, when their child’s ac­tions or be­hav­iour af­fect them fi­nan­cial­ly, then maybe they will be more in­clined to­wards en­sur­ing bet­ter con­duct and be­hav­iour.

Pavi­t­ra Ramharack is head of cham­bers at Pavi­t­ra Ramharack At­tor­neys at Law and can be reached at ramharack_pavi­t­ra@out­look.com