Media Swarm Suspended Lupine Hills Boy Story

News outlets and online forums have flared with talks about a hazy case of play yard touching that resulted in the suspension of a Lupine Hills first grader.

Thursday, the New York Times published a story about a six-year-old Herculean who was accused of sexual assault after allegedly touching another child on the upper thigh or groin during a game of tag in December.

The story said there were no apparent witnesses of the touch but that a sexual assault charged was placed on the child's permanent school record. After the boy's parent the school district, her child’s record wasn’t wiped clean, the Times reported. The parent then transferred her child to another school.

After the story published, websites, including patch, and a local TV news station picked up the story. Commenters on were divided on the matter.

"The principal's behavior is beyond outrageous. The parents are doing a service to ensure this type of out of control logic doesn't continue or be covered up..." one commenter wrote.

Others said there was not enough information from the other side (the principal, student who was allegedly touched and that student's parents). "There appears to be a lot of conjecture without access to the actual facts re: incident, reporting of it, other child's side of story, actions taken prior to suspension, requirements of the district in such cases etc," a commenter wrote.

Most recently, Wednesday, the San Jose Mercury News followed up on the story and put out numbers from the California Department of Education related to the story:

• Number elementary students suspended for sexual assault rose from 263 to 329 between the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years.

• Total numbers of suspensions rose from 1,032 to 1,179.

• Elementary expulsions went from 24 to 40.

• And total number of expulsions jumped from 189 to 241.

The Mercury News story reported that Lupine Hills Principal Cynthia Taylor is still mum on the issue. West Contra Costa Unified School District spokesman Marin Trujillo has not given many details about the incident. Trujillo did say that he thought the story that started the commotion about the suspended six-year-old was one-sided.