Fathers have a sworn duty to protect their children. We repeatedly tell our sons and daughters that we will, “Always be there to protect you,” knowing the whole time that we have vowed to do the impossible. We then pray that they will be safe when we cannot be there to protect them.
We have to let go. Beginning when they are very young we allow them to go to pre-school and then school, secure in our belief that responsible adults will prepare them to be productive and well-rounded citizens. In this case the educational community failed to protect a 15-year-old girl from the predatory behavior of one of her teachers.
When the family discovered what the police agreed was an “inappropriate emotional relationship” between the 42-year old teacher and his 15-year-old student they went to the police at 3:00 a.m. The authorities took no action against the teacher because they couldn’t determine that laws had been broken. At approximately 9:45 a.m. the teacher showed up at the girl’s house. When he refused to leave the girl’s father beat him with a baseball bat.
Within six hours the girl’s father had learned about a much older man who was making sexual advances toward his teen-aged daughter and then confronted the man when he showed up unannounced at the family home. For the second time in a brief period of time the teacher had failed to respect social boundaries.
The teacher acted very aggressively when he first showed up at the girl’s house, and then refused to leave. The girl’s father simply sent a very strong message to the teacher that the police could or would not send, “You will not mess with my little girl.
That he sent that message via a swinging baseball bat is appropriate given that at least two trusted institutions had failed to protect his child from a much older man whose intentions, as illustrated by his actions, were predatory.
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- Edwin Rojas attacked daughter Jessica Rojas’ alleged killer, Jose Santiago.
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- I also carry the weight of a courtroom outburst.