A thirteen-year-old boy was brutally beaten by his peers on September 1st in the evening hours on the playground in Budva's Adok settlement, but he will not be held accountable for that, because the prosecutor on duty assessed that they are minors who have not reached the age of 14, who are neither criminally nor misdemeanor responsible.
Whether their parents will be sanctioned as a misdemeanor will be known after the Budva Center for Social Work issues an opinion on the event, the editorial office of the Police Directorate was told.
The mother of the beaten boy told "Vijesta" that the incident was preceded by "her son's disagreement with a peer regarding basketball".
After that, she claims, that peer sent him threatening messages, and then waited for him with about twenty other boys on the basketball court, where they inflicted numerous injuries on him, including a concussion, for which he was referred from the Budva emergency room to the "Vaso" hospital in Risan. Ćuković". According to the mother, his seven-year-old brother also suffered from the stress, and the gathered boys did nothing to prevent it, but instead cheered for the thugs, incited and filmed while the thirteen-year-old was brutally beaten.
The editors are in possession of those videos.
"The boy, the 'principal', with whom my son had a disagreement two nights before regarding basketball, did not come that fateful night, but sent a 'team' that my son does not even know," the mother of the beaten man told "Vijesta" a boy.
UP IS AWAITING THE OPINION OF THE CENTER FOR SOCIAL WORK
The Police Administration (UP) told "Vijesta" that "following the report of the mother of the beaten boy, they took actions within their jurisdiction."
"Officers of the Police Administration collected the necessary notifications for the record, and presented the case files to the prosecutor in the Basic State Prosecutor's Office, who declared that the actions of these persons do not constitute the elements of a criminal offense, since they are minors who have not reached the age of 14, and have not criminally or misdemeanor responsible", replied the UP.
They said that they had "informed the Center for Social Work in Budva, as well as the schools that the children attend, of the entire case files in order to take measures and actions under their jurisdiction."
"... While the police will appreciate the possible existence of elements of misdemeanors in the actions of their parents, in accordance with the Law on Protection from Domestic Violence, after collecting information from children by the Center for Social Work", they told "Vijesta" from UP.
TARGETED WITH BALLS, STONES AND THEN BEATEN
"The night before the start of the new school year, our thirteen-year-old son played basketball with his younger brother on a nearby court. Previously, he received threatening messages from a peer, who allegedly wanted to defend his friend, with whom my son is in the class, with whom he had some discussion regarding basketball. My son had no idea that they had already formed a group that was ready to beat him up that night. The attack came when the children, who normally live on the other side of the city, came to the field and challenged him, threw balls and stones at him, insulted and provoked him, and then they brutally attacked him from behind," says the mother of the beaten boy.
He points out that one of the boys hit him in the head several times, after which the thirteen-year-old fell and lost consciousness.
"...What did this one use to continue beating him. The others were filming with their phones while my son was lying helpless in the stands, and our seven-year-old in fear and panic did not remember to come and call us, and he was afraid to leave his brother alone. The thugs also threw his slippers over the fence, so he came home barefoot. Seeing all this, my seven-year-old son was shocked. In fear, he brought him home, injured in this way, in an unconscious state, with visible injuries. We took him to the emergency room, filed a report with the police, and from the emergency room they gave us a referral to the emergency center in Risno, where he was hospitalized by a surgeon due to serious injuries. He was monitored during the night because he was diagnosed with a severe concussion, along with hematomas on his body, and he was hospitalized," the boy's mother told "Vijesta".
She said that "no parent should experience something like that, and no child should face the first day of school like that."
"To make things worse, there were over 20 children at that training ground who witnessed the attack, cheered on the thugs and recorded it all with their phones. We got the video the same evening. The worst thing is that the children who played with my son and who came to his birthday parties also took part in it," says the mother of the beaten thirteen-year-old.
She also said that her thirteen-year-old son has been the target of peers from school for some time.
"They harassed him on various grounds, broke his glasses, called him all kinds of derogatory names. On several occasions, I went to school, talked to the parents, both me and my husband, and the same boy who organized all this, also organized his bullying earlier. Everything would end with a conversation with the parents at the principal's office, and then the school told us that their hands were tied. They can't sanction the children, and moving to a new school doesn't help either, and what are the consequences? This is precisely this violent behavior," said the boy's mother.
She appealed to the competent institutions, the police, the prosecutor's office, schools and ministries, to punish the perpetrators.
"Minors, it seems, can do whatever they want. There is no law for them", she told "Vijesti".
PENALTIES POLICY OF TREASURY
"Vijesti" previously wrote that according to the data of the Administration for Statistics (Monstat), almost 2.600 juvenile delinquents were prosecuted in Montenegro in the period from 2011 to 2021. 1.557 minors were accused, while 1.382 minors were sentenced by the force of law.
The most minor perpetrators of criminal offenses were registered in 2021 - 265. Data from the State Prosecutor's Office, published in annual reports, are even more pessimistic. In the same year, 462 minors were reported to the Prosecutor's Office.
Juvenile perpetrators are considered to be teenagers who were 14 years old at the time of the commission of the crime, up to the age of 18.
According to the data of the International Network for Children's Rights, as in Montenegro, children under the age of 14 cannot be held criminally responsible in other countries of the former Yugoslavia, nor in Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Cyprus, Spain and Slovakia.
In the publication of the Center for Civic Education (CGO), based on an analysis of judgments from the judiciary's website from 2018 to mid-2022, it is stated that their content indicates that the penal policy towards minors is rather mild.
"And especially towards minors who are repeat offenders", the publication says.
It is added that the biggest problem when executing sanctions against minors is the lack of infrastructure.
"It is enough to bear in mind that minors are serving two types of sanctions - an educational measure of referral to a correctional institution and a juvenile prison - within the Penitentiary Home in Spuz, which is very bad for their further development and resocialization."
And the Protector for Human Rights and Freedoms previously stated in his opinions that "it is inadmissible for a child - a minor to serve an educational measure in prison with adults, because there is no institution where this measure can be carried out".
The CGE states in the publication that in the period from 2017 to July 2020, according to information from the annual reports of the prosecutor's offices, 38 minors served a sanction in violation of the legislative framework of Montenegro and international standards.
Parents responsible for what their children do
CGO recently presented the results of two parallel surveys (students and adult respondents), according to which more than half of high school students know someone who was a victim of peer violence, and at a certain frequency, peer violence was witnessed by over 66 percent of students.
The most common form of peer violence in schools is psychological and physical violence. Of the students who were victims of violence, 64,2 percent reported the violence, while 35,8 did not.
"The adult respondents consider parents to be the most responsible for peer violence perpetrated by their children, and the vast majority believe that the media and social networks influence the appearance and development of juvenile delinquency and peer violence, announced the CGO.
Bonus video:
