5 at elementary school suspended

Five students at a Roxbury elementary school -- four girls in the first and second grades and one boy in the fifth grade -- were suspended yesterday for sexual harassment stemming from an incident on a school bus that involved lewd language and touching, according to a spokesman for the Boston public schools.

The R.W. Emerson School students made ''explicit statements about and to each other, and there was some level of very minor touching going on," said School Department spokesman Jonathan Palumbo, who would not provide details.

John Chery, the father of a 7-year-old girl who was suspended, said his daughter told him they had choked, scratched, and touched one another during the Thursday morning bus ride.

Chery said the school principal, C. Sura O'Mard-Gentle, told him and his daughter yesterday that one of the other girls who was suspended had referred to the events as ''the rape game."

No one was hurt in the incident, said Palumbo. He confirmed that O'Mard-Gentle heard the term ''rape game" from one of the girls but said the principal told him she had never heard the phrase before.

After meeting with each child and his or her parents separately yesterday, O'Mard-Gentle suspended the children starting Monday for violating the school system's ban on sexual harassment, Palumbo said. The disciplinary code bans ''sexually related physical contacts or offensive sexual insults or comments."

The girls got one-day suspensions. The boy got a three-day suspension because he did most of the touching, according to Palumbo, who said he was unaware of other cases where such young school children in Boston had been suspended for sexual harassment, he said.

School systems, by state law, must have policies barring sexual harassment. The policy is in a code of discipline approved by the School Department in 1982 and revised several times since then.

But Chery, whose daughter is in the first grade, and officials from ACORN, a neighborhood advocacy group, said the incident underscored a desperate need for monitors on Boston school buses.

''The Boston public school system is totally upside down," said Chery, a bank security guard who plans to drive his daughter to and from school from now on. ''They don't have any supervision on that bus."

During school desegregation in the 1970s, Boston had at least one monitor on every bus. But the numbers plunged in the mid-1980s as a result of budget cuts. Today, Boston has monitors on about 7 percent of its buses, said Palumbo.

Owen Toney, a parent organizer for ACORN, said his group urged Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant a few years ago to provide more bus monitors. ''Kids are stressed when they're on the bus," Toney said yesterday. ''They're fighting and bullying. If there were a monitor on the bus, then it wouldn't be happening."

Steve Gillis, president of the bus drivers' union, agreed: ''Things like fights on the bus, students not obeying simple instructions like staying in their seats -- things like this just don't happen when there are monitors on the bus."

Palumbo said the school bus apparently did not have a monitor. The school system will meet with officials from the bus company to determine whether a monitor is necessary on that bus.

Chery said his daughter told him and the principal during their meeting that one of the girls who was suspended, a second grader, was a bully who threatened to beat her up if she did not participate.

The girls also had to let the 12-year-old boy, who at one point fondled himself, touch their buttocks as they stepped off the bus, Chery said.

''My daughter explained that she did not want to be part of the game," he said.

The suspensions occur four months after the Brockton public schools suspended a 6-year-old boy for three days for allegedly sexually harassing a girl in his class. The boy's mother said school administrators told her that her son placed his hand inside the waistband of a girl's pants, touching the skin on her back. School officials later apologized to the boy's family after the mother said he did not know what he did was wrong.

At the Emerson School yesterday, parents waiting to pick up their children said they were shocked by the incident this week. None said they had ever heard of anything called ''the rape game."

''That's crazy!" said Joanna Lopes as her son, 7, climbed into the car. ''You know, as parents we can't blame the teachers or the bus drivers. This comes down to the parents. They need to be more involved in their kids' lives, find out what's going on with them."

Priscilla Banister, a teacher in the Boston public schools who was picking up her 6-year-old grandchild, expressed similar frustrations and also called for better monitoring on school buses. ''You know, I don't understand why video cameras on school buses are not legal," Banister said. ''The children just being aware of the camera will change their behavior."

Beyond that, Banister said, it is up to parents to teach their children right from wrong and to turn off the television when adult programs are on. ''This behavior is picked up from somewhere," she said. ''Children repeat what they hear and see. And there are too many young parents who allow their children to watch the same kind of television shows they watch. Parents need to understand kids model what they see."

Tracy Jan of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com; Tench at mtench@globe.com.