Siparia po­lice have re­vealed that they will not be lay­ing charges against three teenage boys from Siparia West Sec­ondary School, who al­leged­ly beat up a Form Two stu­dent in the school wash­room last week Wednes­day.

This is af­ter the vic­tim’s moth­er said she was pleased with the ac­tions tak­en against the at­tack­ers by the school.

The in­ci­dent left the Form Two stu­dent with bruis­es and rib in­juries. Last Thurs­day, his moth­er filed a re­port at the Siparia Po­lice Sta­tion, re­quest­ing charges be laid. How­ev­er, po­lice said the moth­er re­turned to the sta­tion on Mon­day in­form­ing of­fi­cers that she was sat­is­fied with the school’s ac­tions, as of­fi­cials had sus­pend­ed the stu­dents in­volved and arranged me­di­a­tion ses­sions.

The con­fronta­tion is be­lieved to have stemmed from a “ba­by pow­der slap­ping game” oc­cur­ring among stu­dents in re­cent weeks. The moth­er ac­knowl­edged her son’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in this game, where stu­dents re­port­ed­ly slapped each oth­er with hand­fuls of ba­by pow­der, and sug­gest­ed it may have pro­voked the at­tack.

Po­lice said the as­sault oc­curred on Wednes­day dur­ing the school’s lunch break. Two 14-year-olds and a 16-year-old al­leged­ly con­front­ed the Form Two boy in the wash­room, where he was re­port­ed­ly punched in the face and kicked in the ribs. School of­fi­cials, up­on learn­ing of the in­ci­dent, took the boy to the Siparia Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he re­ceived treat­ment be­fore be­ing dis­charged.

Po­lice had raised con­cerns over in­creas­ing peer con­fronta­tions and re­tal­ia­to­ry games in­flu­enced by so­cial me­dia trends among teenagers. Com­mu­ni­ty po­lice of­fi­cers ac­tive in the school planned to host more ses­sions to warn stu­dents about the risks of par­tic­i­pat­ing in such games.

Ear­li­er this month, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice South, Wayne Mys­tar, warned that bul­ly­ing is a crim­i­nal of­fence that can lead to se­ri­ous charges, in­clud­ing as­sault. He urged par­ents to re­port in­ci­dents to the po­lice if they feel schools have not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed them. Mys­tar’s com­ments fol­lowed the death of Jay­den Lalchan, a stu­dent of St Stephen’s Col­lege, who died by self-harm af­ter fac­ing bul­ly­ing at his school. His death trig­gered na­tion­al out­rage, with stu­dents com­ing for­ward to re­port bul­ly­ing and vi­o­lence in sev­er­al schools.