The dad of a 14-year-old boy allegedly coward punched at an Ellenbrook Shopping Centre says he is disappointed the school that both boys attend has failed to confirm whether the alleged attacker has been expelled.
The dad, who we cannot name under WA law to protect the identity of his son, spoke to WAtoday to express his frustration about how the incident has been handled.
The boys involved in the alleged assault were from Aveley Secondary College.Credit: Facebook
His teenage son was at Ellenbrook Central on April 2 meeting friends, when a 15-year-old boy allegedly assaulted him.
The alleged victim suffered a broken jaw requiring surgery and had recurring seizures as a result of the incident. He has spent over a week in hospital, had surgery and is now only able to eat liquid food through a straw.
Both children are students at Aveley Secondary College.
The father said he was told by the school that the alleged perpetrator, who is out on bail after being arrested over the incident, had been on suspension for a separate alleged incident involving his son until the day of the alleged assault.
Now he is demanding to know whether the boy will return to the school.
“They won’t tell me anything,” he said.
“I don’t know if I need to start looking at moving, to get my son out of the area.
“Even if he doesn’t return, we have been threatened by his associates, he will still have to face them.”
He also said that while he was appreciative of authorities holding a meeting to discuss how to deal with ongoing youth crime in the Ellenbrook area, it wasn’t enough.
It is time that the Department wakes up, takes its head out of the sand and takes a zero tolerance policy that the community is crying out for
“Sound bites from our politicians are no longer enough. We demand lasting change,” he said.
He also said that in a meeting with Ellenbrook Central management, they “have acknowledged that things have been escalating for some time”.
Since the alleged assault, scores of other parents have spoken out about bullying at Aveley Secondary College and Education Minister Sabine Winton spoke with the mother of an eight-year-old boy that was also assaulted at a separate Perth school on the same day.
“I have stated and will continue to state that the fault does not lie solely with individual schools, for they have mandated policies that are guided by the Department of Education,” the father said.
“It is time that the Department wakes up, takes its head out of the sand and takes a zero tolerance policy that the community is crying out for.”
The Department failed to respond to questions.
The alleged offender will appear in Perth Children’s Court later this month. The dad said he would be at the hearing to protest his release on bail.
He said he was “traumatised” after witnessing the aftermath of the event as he had been waiting outside the shopping centre to pick his son up.
“I keep having flashbacks of my son lying on the floor,” he said, adding that he had hardly slept as he sat with his son beside his hospital bed.
He thanked the “heroes” that helped his son on the day of the incident, “and to those who did not stand idly by filming but actively pursued the [alleged] perpetrator.”
A GoFundMe page has raised over $14,000 for the boy and a petition to stamp out youth violence and bullying in the wider Ellenbrook community has amassed over 1000 signatures.